Why We People Please
The first thing to know about fawning or people pleasing is that it is a survival response that likely began in childhood. We’re not weak or disgusting. We’re using a response that kept us safer in childhood and is deeply conditioned for us. With awareness, we can see the impact in our adult life and work toward healing this pattern.
This week we go back to the expert on Complex PTSD, therapist Pete Walker. The information below is from his wonderful book Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving.
“The Fawn Type seeks safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others. The price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences and boundaries.
We learn to be a helpful and compliant servant and often at least one parent is narcissistic. The child is parentified, takes care of the needs of the parent, and may adapt by being entertaining and responsible for keeping the parent happy. Pressing a child into codependent service involves scaring and shaming them out of developing a sense of self. Fawn types are the most developmentally arrested in their healthy sense of self.”
This autumn we’re working with friendship. People pleasing or fawning may be affecting our ease and authenticity with some friends. Most of us have healed enough through our adult life that our situation may not be as extreme as what Pete Walker presents in his book on Complex PTSD. Still, I find it fascinating to see where elements of old patterns have lingered and we might still be holding ourselves back from deeper friendships.
“Healthy relating occurs when two people move easily and reciprocally between assertiveness and receptivity in an easy back and forth between talking and listening, helping and being helped, and leading and following. Trauma-induced codependency is a syndrome of self-abandonment.
Codependency is a fear-based inability to express rights, needs and boundaries in relationship. It is a disorder of assertiveness, characterized by a dormant fight response and a susceptibility to being exploited, abused and/or neglected.
We seek safety and acceptance in relationship by listening and eliciting.
1 It is safer to listen than to talk
2 To agree than to dissent
3 To offer care than to ask for help
4 To elicit the other than to express yourself
5 To leave choices to the other rather than express preferences
Most people who fawn find relief at learning about the 4F’s and fawning. It helps to recognize what draws us to narcissistic types, to giving ourselves away by over-listening to others, and to seeing how we had to relinquish our fight and flight response as children.
We lessen the grip of our conditioning by
Shrinking our characteristic listening defense
Practicing and broadening our verbal and emotional self-expression
Practicing and role-playing assertiveness
Recognizing the critic voices that short-circuit assertion and put us into an emotional flashback
Notice and then stop apologizing for everything, including other people’s mistakes and bad moods
Reclaiming our anger
Read through Pete’s list of Human Rights here.”
In our somatic inquiry this week:
Bring to mind a friendship where you feel uncomfortable and you hold back. As you feel more anxious, you find yourself disappearing. You’re activated into a fawning response when you’re with them (as a strategy for social and emotional safety).
I have the right to have my own feelings, beliefs, opinions, and preferences.
When I say something you don’t agree with, you indicate you think I’m stupid to feel that way, or you ignore what I’ve said and double down on trying to convince me your view is the right one.
When this happens, I feel …
I am angry that …
Fawning or people pleasing is a survival response. Practice and focus on being grounded in this moment in time in your body and in the safety of this moment. Breathe.
Imagine their response then your response to them. Stay out of shame and bring yourself into your own heart with kindness. Standing up this way is difficult because it relates to survival. The quality of our friendships is high stakes.
We have the right to enjoy friendships where we experience respect and closeness. Strategies that were necessary when we were younger may cost too much now. We are more resourced and can stop limiting ourselves to allow an opening into more depth and richness in our friendships.
This takes courage, support and being on our own side.
As always, we welcome you to join us in our Sunday free community class to explore and practice together.