Greetings, Reader!

When there is danger, you only have a few options. You can:

1. ​Fight​
2. ​Run​
3. ​Hide​
4. Diffuse the bomb

Collectively, these survival responses are often called the 'F' responses: fight, flight, freeze, and today's topic, fawn.

If you assess a potentially dangerous situation and decide that you can't escape, your last option before your body completely shuts down and causes you to dissociate is to try to pacify the threat, either by calming the other being down, or by making yourself more amenable so you aren't the target.

In the book Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes us Lose Ourselves—and How to Find Our Way Back by Dr. Ingrid Clayton, the author beautifully described fawning as, "Finding safety in an unsafe world, often at our own expense."

Chronic fawners learn to prioritize the needs, wishes, and demands of others over their own because, as Dr. Clayton says, "Connection is protection."

From the outside, fawning can look like care, which is why I like to call it the tend and befriend survival response.

It can look a lot like being a good partner, a good friend, a good employee, or a good daughter: caregiving, anticipating needs, being agreeable, and compromising.

But on the inside, you become so attuned to other people's nervous systems and so disconnected from your own that you disappear to make space for whatever they need.

Like all survival responses, fawning happens automatically, so before you have time to think about it, you are already saying yes, apologizing, or defaulting to someone else's needs.

Survival responses are not choices, they are instincts. People-pleasing doesn't happen because you aren't strong, have low self-esteem, or don't have good boundaries; it happens because your nervous system is trying to diffuse a bomb.

It's a form of self-preservation that often gets wrongly judged as self-abandonment.

We are social beings, and from an evolutionary perspective, we can't survive alone. Many of our survival responses become patterned when we are children and we learn that we can earn a little bit of safety by becoming useful to the people who are supposed to be taking care of us.

As a kid, I learned to read the room. I was like a weathervane, and I always knew which way the wind was blowing. Knowing the moods of the adults in the room, and knowing how to balance being quiet and invisible with being helpful kept me safe.

When we tend and befriend the people who are hurting us, it is often because we are dependent upon them, and we must maintain the connection in order to survive.

This can happen in traumatic ways, and in insidious ways, such as over-apologizing, agreeing to keep the peace, or choosing something you don't want because it is easier to do what the other person wants than to fight to get your needs met.

Fawning can also be anticipatory: choosing to hold your tongue to prevent someone from getting mad, avoiding conflict, or trying to be what you think the other person wants so you don't rock the boat.

When you can't anticipate how people are feeling, such as when you don't get an immediate reply to a text, or your partner walks in the room and you can't read their mood, your body goes into overdrive trying to fix a problem it doesn't even understand in an effort to prevent an explosion.

Fawning can be misconstrued as personality, but it is really an incredible protective strategy your nervous system has learned that has kept you safe and connected.

If you have survived by tending and befriending, I hope you don't internalize the judgement that can be heaped upon fawning. The part of you that has learned to sacrifice yourself for others has been working incredibly hard to keep you safe.

In the moment of danger, fawning was a brilliantly successful strategy. If the danger has passed, now you have an opportunity to transfer those skills of attunement back to yourself. Your sensitivity can become your superpower if you learn how to listen to what you need, and start tending and befriending yourself.

Somatic work can help you attune to your needs, wishes, and desires after a lifetime of suppressing them. In a safe, supportive relationship with a somatic practitioner, you can learn what it feels like to have your needs come first, and you can practice, in slow, titrated doses reading your internal weather and responding with care.

I'd love to help you speak your body's language and attune your nervous system to safety and connection.

​Click here to book a free consultation with me.

And, in case your nervous system feels like if you book a call, you'll be roped into something you aren't sure you want and you won't know how to say no, I want you to know that I don't believe in urgency or pressure. If you want to hear about how I can help you, I'd be happy to share and answer your questions so you have what you need to make a decision your nervous system feels good about. My role in these calls isn't to try to convince you into anything, but rather to help you gain clarity about what you need and want, whether that is with my support or through a different path. I trust your wisdom, and I'll help you trust it, too.

In love and solidarity,

Rachel Doctor of Physical Therapy & Integrative Pain Specialist Rewire your nervous system and break the cycles of chronic pain, depletion, burnout, and overwhelm so you can be fully present for what matters most in your life. Start with a free Nervous System Attunement Strategy Session​