Latest / RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way / The Fawn Response: When People Pleasing is Survival
Transcript
- Voiceover: [00:00:00] Rise Up Live Joy Your Way from emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness. Coach Kamini Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit. Through these small bites of self visualization and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live, Rise Up Live Joy Your Way. Kamini Wood: Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Rise Up Live Joy Your Way, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening. Thank you for taking some time to hang out here with me for today's episode. And today I wanna name something that many high functioning adults, leaders, parents, helpers and survivors recognize in themselves, but rarely connect to trauma or as a trauma response. People pleasing perfectionism over-functioning. Those, [00:01:00] uh, patterns and how they show up are actually often praised. Um, they're rewarded in workplaces, in family systems, and social systems are described as strengths, and when I say that they themselves are described as strengths, I don't necessarily mean to say that people pleasing is described as a strength, but the result of making sure everybody is taken care of often is. Seen as a strength because it's seen as reliability. It's seen as work ethic. It's seen as a sense of emotional intelligence. Oh my gosh, this person really knows and pays attention to what we all need. But for many people, these patterns are not just personality traits or preferences. They're actually adaptations. So. In trauma informed psychology, what this is actually called, these adaptations. It's actually under the concept of fawning. Now, there's a lot of talk around fight, flight, freeze. We've heard fawn, but not a lot of focus has put on on fawning. I really am offering this. I'm not offering this [00:02:00] as a judgment, um, at all or as a label. I just wanna have a conversation around what this is as a way to understand how our nervous systems may have learned to survive different relational environments where. Safety depended on maybe being agreeable or useful or impressive or easy, or the person who can anticipate everyone's needs. So this episode is about expanding the understanding of what fawning is beyond the stereotypical, you know, and, and helping high functioning adults see how people pleasing perfectionism and over over-functioning can actually part of a trauma response, even when life looks su. You know, successful from the outside. And let me be super clear, I'm not here to say stop caring, um, or to strip away anybody's generosity or willingness to help or excellent, um, you know, work ethic. I'm not, I'm not here to say that at all, but it's about just differentiating care rooted in choice versus care rooted from a place of [00:03:00] fear. So I just wanna start with. What these patterns will actually look like in daily life. So people who struggle with fawning will often describe themselves as people pleasers, or they're highly responsible. They might say that they're emotionally attuned to others. They are reliable. They are hardworking. A lot of people will say that they're accommodating. Some will even say that they're flexible or considerate or empathetic. Self-sacrificing. They may even say yes when they really mean to say no or take responsibility for things that aren't theirs. Often these individuals will anticipate other people's needs before they're even asked, and they will be ready to smooth over any conflict. Like the moment somebody looks like, sounds like appears to be upset at all, these are the people who are gonna try to fix it and make it. Smooth it over as soon as that happens, and they strive to do everything right and they feel uneasy. If somebody is disappointed or upset, they over prepare, uh, for things or maybe even over deliver, just staying hyper aware of everyone else's moods, right? So the people who [00:04:00] might resonate with this are the ones, like if you notice that you scan con consistently about just paying attention to how everybody in your world is, um, you might notice you do this at work. You might notice you do this at home. Um, this might be. Something that you might wanna tune into and just pay attention to. Uh, in leadership, it can actually look like absorbing your entire team's stress or avoid avoiding conflict to keep the mor the morale stable. Right? It's like leaders will often be like, okay, I'm gonna absorb all of this because I don't want the morale to dip, or they overwork to prevent criticism. Fixing problems before anyone can even notice them. And managing everyone's emotions in families. Keeping the peace emotional, managing the emotional climates, like wanting everything to stay as stable as possible, being the responsible one, the one who manages all the schedules, suppressing your own personal needs. And then if we think about relationships, this could show up. And maybe just taking note, like do you find yourself overexplaining or maybe apologizing excessively [00:05:00] or maybe staying quiet to avoid tension or saying the wrong thing, or adapting yourself to be more palatable. None of this looks chaotic when you're seeing it from the outside. None of it looks unsafe. And because of that, a lot of times. Really goes unnamed, or it's, it's just named as like, well, I'm a people pleaser, or I'm a perfectionist, but the nervous system knows the difference between generosity and self abandonment or self erasure. So it's important for us to just slow it down to say, okay, well what, let's understand fawning a little bit, right? And to understand fawning, we need to understand safety. Now the nervous system's primary job is not happiness or fulfillment. It's it's survival. It's about keeping us safe, uh, when a person grows up or lives in an environment where conflict. Leads to emotional punishment or unpredictability creates anxiety or maybe an environment where approval equals connection. More of that transactional love, [00:06:00] uh, displeasure equals threat or boundaries aren't, are not honored. They're just ignored. Or even in an environment where emotions are kind of dismissed, they're weaponized, or sometimes they're just, they're not. There's not a lot to happen. What ends up happening is the internalization of that is safety comes from keeping other people calm, right? So fawning develops when maybe fighting feels too dangerous, like speaking up feels too dangerous or flight. You can't flee the situation. That's not possible and you can't freeze because that's socially unacceptable. So the system adapts to appeasement and keeping things as kosher as we possibly can. It's not manipulation, it's. Self intelligence under that pressure, right? The body learns that if I stay agreeable, I stay safe. If I'm useful, I won't be abandoned. If I'm perfect, I won't be criticized. In my case, if I am perfect, I'm not gonna be a burden, and then people won't be upset [00:07:00] if I manage everyone else. I'll be okay. And over time these behaviors become automatic. They stop feeling like choices and they start feeling like part of your own identity or personality. Right. So we might start saying to ourselves, well, I'm a helpful person, or I, I'm responsible. I'm the flexible one. I am, I'm the one who'll get it all done. And sometimes it's true, right? Sometimes we, we just are, we, we are those things too. And I'm not saying we don't wanna be, but sometimes it's actually a survival pattern that was never questioned. Uh, and one reason fawning is so hard to identify is that. Often these fawning behaviors are actually rewarded. So if we think about workplaces, for instance, you know, somebody over functions and they're available and they're willing to put in that extra emotional labor or self-sacrifice, we think that they're great workers. And in family units, we look at it and we're like, wow, there's compliance, there's emotional caretaking, there's conflict avoidance. And so we reward that too. And then in [00:08:00] social systems, you know, politeness is, is. It feels better than sometimes somebody being truly honest about how they feel and, you know, being likable over setting boundaries. Well, you know, we wanna be, we want, we wanna be liked. And so we, we are, you know, we even say, we will even hear people say like, wow, she's so agreeable. And it gets, it gets, um. Rewarded it gets, uh, uh, reaffirmed. And so people who fawn often receive praise. They often receive affirmation and promotions and approval, reinforcing the belief that this way of being is, is not, it's, it's not only normal, but it's actually necessary. It's necessary to, to maybe even keep whatever that relationship is. And so the problem is that the reward does not equal. Sustainability. So what looks like a, a strength in externally can become an internal erosion because over time, fawning will lead to things like chronic exhaustion. It can lead to [00:09:00] resentment, it can lead to a loss of. Of identity, sense of self difficulty, difficulty knowing what you want and need, right? So it's that self abandonment, it's a, it leads to anxiety when you're maybe not being useful or it's just this constant hum of anxiety about potentially worrying and fearing that you're gonna disappoint people. And for some of my clients, I know that they've just struggled with burnout. Because they just been going and going and going. And some even talk about like just that collapse after this long period of success. And that's why I think a lot of high achieving and high functioning adults do eventually at some point kind of reach a point where they recognize that they have been potentially living in on. On or in overdrive for a significant amount of time. The central issue with fawning is not, it's not kindness, it's motivation, right? So when care is rooted, really truly rooted in a, in fear, it does have a cost and fawning backfires because what it ends up happening [00:10:00] is, is it disconnects you from your own needs, your own internal compass of what you need, and it teaches your body that. Your worth is conditional. Uh, it teaches you that it's all transactional. It makes boundaries feel like they're dangerous and that you can't have them. And it creates resentment towards people who, um, who never even asked you to overgive, but they just became accustomed to it. And it keeps relationships somewhat in balance. So over time, your nervous system stays in this place of hypervigilance. Your nervous system stays in a place of constantly scanning and anticipating and adjusting and managing. And what ends up happening is you feel exhausted, first of all, but also your nervous system. Staying in that heightened state for so long generally will start to, uh, have physical and, and physiological outcomes as well. And, and truly what we're doing is we're not really truly building connection, um, where it's more about. We're building this sense of containment. [00:11:00] So I wanna offer a distinction that might be helpful by saying, right, so I said funding is care rooted in fear. Values-based care is care rooted in choice. And you guys, if you've been following me, have heard me say time and time again, um, values based decision, you know, coming back home to your values. And if you are making a values based. Decision that revolves around care, then that is care based in choice. Bonding is care that is rooted in, in fear. Now, they may look very similar, right? So on the outside they look similar and it's hard to distinguish between the two. But internally is where you're gonna feel. Difference. So if you're fawning, there's gonna be potentially a feeling of obligation or pressure, or you might notice that you're making choices from a very anxious place. Um, you might start noticing some [00:12:00] resentment, some depletion values-based care will feel like alignment. It'll feel like agency. It'll feel somewhat, uh, like clar clarifying, like when you're making that decision, because there's this sense of generosity without you losing part of yourself. Some ways to, to, to ask yourself to distinguish a chew is, you know, am I choosing this or am I afraid not to do this? Does this align with who I am? Can I say no without fear of losing myself? So again, it's not about making you colder or unkind, it's just. Really slowing things down to pay attention to the choices that you're making. Healing fawning doesn't mean becoming selfish or losing empathy, or just becoming detached from people and rejecting connection. It really just means developing a sense of internal safety so that care doesn't become. Just a reflex. It becomes an actual choice. [00:13:00] So what? What helps, right? Awareness without shame. Begin by noticing. When you feel compelled to please, you know, ask yourself, what am I afraid will happen if I don't say yes to this? Or I don't do this? Nervous system regulation. You can't logic yourself out of fawning, right? The body has to feel safer. So regulation matters. What do I mean by that? Grounding? What, what do I mean by grounding breath work? Um, mindfulness, right? Slowing down. Pausing before responding. Setting micro boundaries. You don't have to be super dramatic with your boundaries. They can feel super scary. So set, you know, small boundaries that can be repeatable ones. So even a small boundary could be, I'm gonna need a a little bit to think about that, or, let me think about that and I'll get back to you. That's a micro boundary that can be repeated and it's not. As scary, fawning often seeks external reassurance. So it's really important for you to take some time to do some internal reassurance like and, and practice your [00:14:00] self-talk. You know, reminding yourself it's okay if someone's disappointed, they get to be disappointed, and it's not my responsibility to own it. My needs matter. I don't need approval to be safe. And then I mentioned it before, values-based decisions return to your values. Whatever those values are, return to them. Let them be your guidepost for your behavior and the choices that you make. And as you're working through this and you're recognizing, okay, I might have these fawning, these fawning tendencies, and I'm gonna really try to work through that. There's gonna be some pushback. I don't wanna sugarcoat it because here's the thing, when people have gotten used to you showing up a certain way, they, and you stop doing that, it disrupts what they know, right? So they're gonna feel uncomfortable. That does not mean that what you're doing is wrong, and it doesn't mean that you shouldn't work on shifting this dynamic for yourself. The discomfort is not the, the problem or, or [00:15:00] dangerous. It means that growth is happening and growth will happen for you and for the people who feel uncomfortable with the fact that you're, you're no longer fawning. So just a couple things to think about. You know, where do I feel responsible for other people's emotions? When do I say yes out of fear rather than out of my own desires? What part of me learned that safety comes from avoidance or pleasing, and how does my body feel when I do imagine saying no. What would it look like to set a small boundary? What would that look like today? What could that small boundary be? And again, these aren't just, they're not about criticizing yourself or judging yourself. They're just to start getting the thought process going of how do we break the patterns of fawning? How do we shift from a place of fawning into a place of really being conscious about the choices that we're making? If you'd like to chat about this or anything else that you feel. That would be helpful to [00:16:00] support you in either your professional growth or your personal growth. Feel free to reach out to me anytime at coachwithkamini.com and until next time, stay well. Voiceover: Thank you for listening to Rise Up Live Joy Your Way. For more information, Book a chat with Kamini at www.chatwithKamini.com, or visit her website at www.kaminiwood.com. You can also find Kamini on Facebook or Instagram username, it's authentic me. Thank you for listening!