“If love is given too freely or easily, it doesn’t feel safe.”
When I wrote a Twitter thread about my people-pleasing tendencies, I didn’t at all expect for it to go viral. Yet that’s exactly what happened.
As I shared my own experience, I was hit with an avalanche of emotion. So many of you could relate to this phenomenon known as “fawning,” and it became immediately clear that we needed this resource to exist outside of a thread on social media.
So let’s keep the conversation going.
I’m going to share both the original thread here, as well as building on it.
Confession: I am a people-pleaser.
It took me a long time to realize this, though. Because I’m opinionated, at least on the Internet! And I can speak my mind! I’m an “open book” about a lot of what I’ve been through.
Clearly I don’t care what people think… right?
But in the last year, I’ve come to understand that people-pleasing is a lot more complex than that.
We all curate our lives to some extent, and may even “mask” to an extent to be more likeable.
But for people-pleasers, the ways in which we appease others often stems from a place of fear and a lack of safety, more than simply trying to be liked.
Most people know about trauma responses like fight, flight, and freeze — but another response, “fawn,” is at the core of what people-pleasing is often about.
To avoid conflict, negative emotions, and in some cases, abuse, people who “fawn” when triggered will go out of their way to mirror what they believe to be the other person’s needs, wants, and desires.
They may go out of their way to align with someone’s opinions and appease them, in order to deescalate potential conflict or harm.
For me, this meant that the more invested I was in an emotional connection, the less likely I was to criticize that person, vocalize when my boundaries were crossed, express unhappiness with their behavior, or share anything that I felt might damage that relationship.
This could come across as being excessively nice and complimentary, overly-concerned with another person’s happiness, and waiting for cues in conversation to determine if something was “safe” to share or disclose.
You could say that people-pleasers are sort of ’emotional chameleons,’ trying to blend in in order to feel safe.
We try to embody whatever articulation of ourselves feels the least threatening to the person that we’re trying to be close to.
This can show up in a number of ways. People-pleasers are often really warm, encouraging, and generous people. They tend to overextend themselves and say “yes” to everything and everyone, eager to make those they care about happy and comfortable.
This tendency usually stems from childhood. They often grow up in very controlling and chaotic environments, and internalized the idea that if they were perfectly good or well-behaved, they could minimize conflict and secure love and attachment.
Contrary to what some may think, this often isn’t a very conscious process, at least at first.
That’s because much of fawning, like other trauma responses, is driven by emotional flashbacks (unexpressed feelings of hurt, anger, betrayal, etc that stem from past trauma) and conditioning that goes much deeper than a deliberate and conscious decision.
When you have this tendency to defer, make yourself subordinate, try to become smaller, ignore your boundaries and intuition, and minimize your own needs… you are profoundly vulnerable to emotional abuse.
This vulnerability to abuse is often a continuation of the familiar, chaotic dynamic from earlier in life.
When you are excessively concerned with pleasing others, you learn that in order to be effective at this, you have to shut down your gut instincts, your values, your emotions — because being an individual, rather than a mirror, doesn’t serve you in securing the love and security that you need.
That’s why people-pleasers can feel drawn to non-reciprocal relationships, and repelled from relationships that are abundantly loving. We’ve internalized the idea that love has to feel “earned” in order to feel secure.
In other words? If love is given too freely or easily, it doesn’t feel familiar, so it often doesn’t feel safe.
This means people-pleasers can be drawn to relationships that are controlling (they feel safest when they defer to others), emotionally-withholding (they are driven by the need to “secure” affection, and feel elated when they do), and even abusive (their lack of boundaries can be exploited).
Another part of being vulnerable to abuse is that people-pleasers can be more easily gaslit, because when they’re already inclined to suppress their own instincts, values, and beliefs, they’re more likely to unconsciously defer to an abuser’s version of events or narrative, and to struggle with self-trust.
I’ve personally noticed that fawn types can go through cycles of restricting emotionally (I can’t be “too much” for others) and then purging emotionally (“unloading” onto a trusted person) because the expectation to be perfect and to repress gets to be too much.
I think this is why so many of us have eating disorders, too. The ways in which we restrict and purge emotionally and relationally can be reflected in the relationships we have to food. Making ourselves smaller emotionally makes making ourselves smaller physically seem completely sensible.
It’s driven by an internal battle of being “too much” and “not enough.” It’s fundamentally the same fear: of simply being ourselves.
In more intimate relationships, We May gravitate towards hot/cold dynamics, where affection and love are offered unpredictably.
This is where the emotional abuse piece comes into play. I wrote about this dynamic previously in my controller/pleaser article.
You have someone who is inclined to engage in ways that are controlling. So, someone who feels safest and most secure in relationships where they call the shots, and feels secure (and therefore, loved) when someone is actively seeking out their approval.
Enter: The “fawn” type.
Someone who needs a sense of control to feel secure in relationships might offer just enough validation to keep the fawn type engaged in the relationship.
The scarcity of that affirmation can make love from a more controlling type feel special when it’s offered — an especially intense love for a fawn type, who believes that love isn’t simply offered, but rather, earned on the basis of “good behavior.”
But if control is how a person feels secure relationally, they’re likely to withdraw that affection or pull back before the relationship becomes too intimate, which ensures that the fawn type will once again endeavor to earn their affection.
This is very much a more hyperbolic version of the dynamic between someone with an avoidant attachment style and an anxious one.
Someone who exerts control to feel secure, and someone who fawns to feel secure, can be locked into a dynamic in which the fawn type repeatedly suppresses their sense of self and agency to try to please the other, while what pleases the other person is, in actuality, the cycle of becoming “unpleasable.”
By rotating between offering abundant affection as a reward, but then withdrawing it completely, the fawn response is activated over, and over, and over again.
I know this dynamic better than anyone, really, because it’s come up in my life repeatedly.
I felt called to share about what I learned with respect to fawning because of the sheer number of traumatic relationships I’d thrown myself into — professionally, personally, romantically — up until my mid-twenties, pulverizing any shred of self-esteem I’d managed to stitch together before diving into the next one.
It took stepping away from a friendship that had so thoroughly gaslit and demolished me — while plummeting into the deep depths of anorexia — before I realized that my compulsion to chase controlling, emotionally unavailable, and even abusive people was crushing my spirit.
I sought out the most emotionally inaccessible people, and I threw myself into the pursuit, somehow believing that if I could secure the love and affection of the most unattainable person, it would indisputably prove my worthiness.
It’s a painful cycle. But for me, simply being aware of it has been the first step towards healing.
Ironically, there has since been a proliferation in recent years of essays, TikToks, and other shame-fueled content suggesting that it’s people-pleasing that is actually abusive and manipulative.
It’s important to understand that fawning isn’t a Ploy Designed to Manipulate Others.
When we talk about manipulation, we’re usually referring to behaviors that are designed to overpower and exert control over others, replacing their sense of self and narrative with our own.
But people who are fawning as a trauma response are actually untethered from their sense of self.
That’s not to say that people in relationships with us can’t be hurt or harmed by people-pleasing! Fawning may be damaging to otherwise safe relationships, in that the individual who is fawning isn’t showing up authentically, which can feel very destabilizing and unsafe for folks who are expecting a level of emotional honesty from us.
But this isn’t quite the same as exerting power and control over someone.
In fact, the fawn response is actually an excessive relinquishing of personal power, driven by fear and a desire for safety through validation and reassurance.
When someone disconnects from their needs, wants, desires, and agency, they are made vulnerable, as I described earlier. It is disempowering at best, and can be dangerous depending on the context, even if it also can be harmful to safe loved ones who were expecting a more honest and intimate relationship with us.
Both can be true: Fawning is a trauma response that harms the person engaging in it, and while not the typical definition we associate with “manipulation,” can still be harmful for folks on the receiving end.
For folks in a relationship with someone who fawns as a trauma response, it’s understandable to feel hurt by the lack of emotional safety that results from someone showing up in a less authentic, boundaried, and open way.
If you’re reading this and saying, “Holy sh!t… it’s me. Oh god. What do I do?” Don’t panic! I’ve got you.
For starters, I’m going to ask you something: Which of your friends do you cancel on?
Personal experience: I had a tendency to bail on friends, partners, acquaintances, whoever, that were the most generous, warm, and emotionally-available.
I avoided those relationships where love was free and easy. Because it didn’t feel “earned,” so I didn’t feel “worthy.”
Which isn’t to say that everyone with this trauma response does this, but humans often seek out the familiar. Which means many of us tend to avoid what feels unsafe.
For people-pleasers, we’re so used to working endlessly hard in relationships — it’s disorienting when we aren’t expected to.
Upon realizing this, I made a google doc (no, I seriously did) where I listed out people who were “way too nice to me.”
And then I asked myself, do I like this person? Do I enjoy their company? If I did, I sent them a text message and told them I wanted to commit to spending more time with them.
I was completely honest about my process with those folks, too. I said, “Listen, I get really scared when people are nice to me. You’ve always been SO nice to me, and I feel afraid of disappointing you. But I want to change that, because I just enjoy your company so very much.”
In my phone contacts, I put emojis by their names. I put strawberries next to people who were loving and emotionally available.
So whenever I saw a text from them, it reminded me that I should prioritize that message. 🍓
And?
My life completely changed… in every imaginable way.
My ‘strawberry people’ went from being sort of friendly to becoming chosen family that I can’t imagine my life without.
With the help of some amazing therapy (trauma-informed therapy, if you can access it, is a game-changer), I grew to love myself so much — because that love was being modeled for me in a healthy way.
I’ve struggled with addiction and eating disorders, because I’ve taken this out on my body as much as I have my mind.
When you have an overwhelming sense of being “too much” and “not enough” all at once, it’s not surprising when you try to numb every emotion and shrink yourself down.
And my strawberry people (who are now all in a group text together!) have been there every step of my recovery. I reached a year in my sobriety this last month. And I’m finally medically stable after being severely malnourished from anorexia nervosa.
Choosing love — unconditional love of self, and being loved unconditionally by others — literally saved my life.
It all began just by affirming, “I am enough, here and now, and I deserve love that doesn’t hurt.”
It’s not an easy process by any means, but I can’t begin to tell you how much happier I am as a result.
If this all sounds familiar, I do have some recommendations on next steps — because this blog post is really just the tip of the iceberg.
I genuinely believe that every single person should be reading Pete Walker’s book about complex trauma. It’s called “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving,” and it’s absolutely incredible.
So much of what I know about complex trauma and fawning is from the groundwork that Pete laid out in that book. He’s uniquely positioned as both a trauma-informed clinician and as a survivor of complex trauma.
I’ve also created a list of favorite reads about people-pleasing beyond Pete’s book that I would recommend as deeper learning and healing; some readers may find these texts to be more accessible and less clinical.
I also have a few blog posts around complex trauma that I think are Pretty useful…
Blog posts about fawning and complex trauma, specifically:
- Am I traumatized enough for a Complex PTSD diagnosis?
- 7 subtle signs your trauma response is to fawn
- How to stop people-pleasing: 5 ways I’m unlearning my fawn response
And blog posts about deepening your relationship with yourself & others from an authentic place:
- 10 ways to reach out when you’re struggling with your mental health
- Trauma made me afraid of being alone. Here are 7 ways I learned to cope
- How not to be codependent: a self-care guide for reconnecting with yourself
“Where is he now?” Updated blog posts, five years later, about what I’ve learned in my journey:
- Why I’m no longer striving for my best, highest, or “healed” self
- 3 questions to meet and release your fawn trauma response
Most of all though, I just want to validate the hell out of you.
I understand the very difficult cycle that we find ourselves in when we’re consumed by this idea that we need to be “exactly enough” — and that, if we somehow measure it out correctly, we’ll never hurt or be hurt again.
But relationships involve putting ourselves in harm’s way sometimes.
What they shouldn’t involve, though, is self-harm — and ultimately, that’s what fawning does. We’re harming ourselves. We’re making ourselves smaller, we’re self-silencing, and we’re punishing ourselves under the guide of becoming “more likable.”
You are allowed to have all the feelings. You are allowed to take up all the space. You’re allowed to be everything that you are and then some.
The right people — your people — will love you even more when they see how expansive your life becomes by giving yourself that space.
It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process! But I want you to know that it’s a process you can begin at any time.
It’s never too late to give yourself permission to be, to show up more authentically, and to find those who will celebrate you for it. I promise you that. 🍓
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Photo by Kylli Kittus on Unsplash.
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