You might see this play out in various ways that may not make sense on the surface.

“To put it bluntly, survivors ‘fawn’ because we live in a world where people are killed for upsetting men,” said Faith Ferber, a therapist at Viva Center, a practice supporting clients in D.C., Maryland and Virginia that specializes in using non-talk therapy to heal trauma. She has nearly 15 years of experience working with survivors of sexual violence. “Fawning keeps people alive.”

This was true for Alexis Flores, a survivor and trauma therapist in her 30s who lives in Southern California. She experienced sexual abuse at the hands of her high school partner.

“Fawn was not my go-to until this relationship, and, I believe, it prevented a situation from escalating in ways that could have been far more harmful and dangerous for me,” she recalled.

Groskopf clarified that fawning is automatic (not a choice), a natural reaction to danger and, in its own way, effective. “Fawning is deeply protective when the violence can’t be escaped,” she said.

“In the aftermath of an assault, the survivor is often left feeling deeply overwhelmed, disconnected and unsafe as their brain struggles to process the sudden trauma,” said Gillian O’Shea Brown, a psychotherapist, adjunct professor of trauma studies at New York University and author of Healing Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Clinician’s Guide. “The survivor is often left feeling trapped on autopilot, relying on familiar social scripts, like politeness, to navigate the terrifying shock of the assault.”

“This happens because a survivor may feel a deep longing to rewrite the past and approach the situation from a position of power,” O’Shea Brown said.

You might see this play out in various ways that may not make sense on the surface. For example, she continued, a survivor may try to seduce their perpetrator to transform the memory into something wholesome or empowering. They want a “corrective experience” to erase the past trauma and feelings associated with it.

This was the case for Rose, a 34-year-old in California, who was assaulted by a family friend in high school.

Groskopf said conflicting feelings are “totally normal,” especially when there’s an existing relationship. “Human responses to trauma are complicated, and behavior alone doesn’t tell us what someone was experiencing internally,” she added.

Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.