00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 317, "Fawning: What, Why, and How to Stop." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:23 

Well, hello there. Welcome to the podcast. I am so glad to have you here with me today and I am, as always, glad to be here with you. Really loving the content that I've got ready to share with you today. Before we jump in, I want to remind you that starting in September, I'm going to be doing some group coaching classes. These are just so fun. I keep the group small, no more than about 10 people, so that we can have some great conversations. Everybody gets to be involved. They are cheaper than one-on-one coaching because we've got a group, and I just really enjoy them a lot. I don't have them nailed down yet as far as topics go, but if you think you are going to be possibly interested in looking at those and seeing if those are a good fit time-wise and topic-wise for you, make sure that you have signed up for my email that I send out every...most...weekends, so I'm going to qualify that. Go to tanyhale.com and you can scroll down to the bottom I believe or go to the "contact me" button and scroll down. I'm trying to make some adjustments on this to figure it out and have not been able to yet to make that easier, but I think if you go to "contact me" and scroll down just a little bit, you can sign up for what's called the "weekend win." 

01:41 

This is just a quick email that I send out on Fridays or Saturdays or Sundays, meant to be read in like two minutes or less, but if you love this content, you're going to love that. It's just a little snippet to go, "oh, huh, there's something to think about that I haven't thought about before." I enjoy sending those out, and that is the first place that these classes are going to be put out and introduced to you on. To be honest, I am far enough ahead on these podcasts that by the time I have those classes nailed down and start talking about them here on the podcast it might be kind of late to get into those classes, so the email is going to be your best bet, just so that you know. 

02:23 

Okay, and with that let's jump into today's topic. We are talking about fawning: what it is why, we do it, and how to stop. So there are some basic stress and survival responses that our brains go into. You've probably heard them referred to often as the "fight, flight, freeze" response. Though they may often get a bad rap, it is important to understand that these responses are rooted in survival. It's our primitive brain's way of finding ways to adapt to situations in order to keep us safe. Many of these are developed when we're children and our brains have limited information on how to keep ourselves safe in healthy or more effective ways. As well as because of the power differential between an adult and child, these responses may be our only go-to options when we are children. 

03:16 

So if you will remember from the podcast on Taryn's Reel's book, "Us," that when these adaptive child behaviors show up in our adult relationships, that they are often dysfunctional and they serve to destroy our relationships rather than progress them into healthy, emotional, intimate spaces. So learning to understand our pre-programmed responses and clean them up is a super important part of growing up, of having healthy adult relationships. 

03:48 

In recent years, there has been a fourth response added to that list, and it is called "fawning." Fawning, F-A-W-N-I-N-G, just for those of you who like to get that in your head, fawning is defined as "a display of exaggerated flattery or affection, typically in order to gain favor or advantage." So here's kind of in my own wording, it is putting ourselves in a one-down space with an effort to align ourselves with the perceived threat, meaning often the other person. Where the fighting response, when we talk about fight, flight, freeze, the fighting response is often seen as a conflict strategy, flight and freeze are seen as avoidance strategies. Fawning, however, is seen as an appeasement strategy, and this is when we try to manage what we perceive as dangerous situations by moving into relationship with whoever or whatever we see the source of the threat is. 

04:58 

In the work that I do with midlife relationships, fawning is something that I see showing up consistently in many struggling relationships. From what I perceive, it is a form of neglecting our own wants and needs, and abandoning our own selves in order to fit in, to keep the peace, to be low maintenance, to reduce conflict. In essence, fawning is a way that we, both men and women, have adapted to learning how to create safety for ourselves. And yet, it only creates safety short-term. Remember, our primitive brain is very short-sighted. It does a lot of things that only help us short-term. Long-term, we create resentment, contempt, anger, and rage. And those have disastrous consequences in our relationships, especially those relationships that we hold most dear. 

05:55 

Those of us who use fawning as our go-to stress management tool will find that we are generally pretty exhausted emotionally because we spend so much time trying to control the responses of other people, something that we're just not able to do, and that depletes energy. The more healthy responses will actually create energy, but these more destructive responses deplete our energy. We use other people's reactions as a way to satisfy and judge our own self-worth of being good enough. We need other people's validation to feel that we are doing enough and being enough. Fawning is a way of perceiving that we are creating safety, but what we are really doing is trying to control other people's responses in order for us to feel safe. 

06:50 

And this external approach will never really work. Safety has to come from inside of us to perceive that we are strong enough, good enough, and worthy enough just as we are. It cannot come from outside of us or from other people's behavior or responses to us. I think it's fascinating to look at where these fawning behaviors stem from. At some level, part of it is going to be nature. We are born with certain personality tendencies and traits. Some things will feel more comfortable to us than others, some ways of responding and interacting. And also, many of these behaviors stem from nurture, from learned behaviors to our environments. Fawning patterns of behavior often start early in life, and it is for a young person a great way to manage unstable caregivers. 

07:48 

So as children, when we are around adults who struggle with their own emotional regulation, They may pull us into their world as a way to soothe them, and as children, we learn very quickly to adjust our behaviors accordingly, to placate them, to keep them happy. Our emotional and sometimes physical safety depends on our adaptation. A healthy, for a young child, adaptation can be to step into fawning. I don't think most of our parents did this intentionally, or even consciously, but as humans we have ways of manipulating others, especially young, impressionable children, to appease us. The child may learn that if the adult is angry, that I disappear. Maybe I clean the house, maybe I clean up dinner. They may learn to just fall in line with what the parent expects and not have an opinion or have wants or needs because those things might exacerbate the parent's anger or displeasure. 

08:59 

So of course, an adult who's not paying attention is going to love when a child does this because then the parent doesn't have to manage their own emotions. The child is managing their emotions for them. So when we have a parent who doesn't emotionally regulate themselves and a child who is prone to wanting to fawn, these fawning behaviors will become ingrained responses to a person who is perceived as being one-up. It is basic survival strategy 101 for the child's brain. "How can I survive this situation with the least amount of damage? How can I protect myself from this perceived danger?" That's what the child's primitive brain is thinking. And it can be extreme situations where this occurs or they can be very subtle, very unintended responses on both the part of the adult and the child. It's just our brain moving us out of perceived danger, large or small, real or perceived, in the only way that it knows how. 

10:05 

As a child, these processes were pretty brilliant. They took a disadvantaged, smaller, weaker person and helped them to survive a dangerous situation by using their brains. That actually is pretty darn amazing when you think about it. Then, as we grow up into our adult selves, these behaviors have become a part of our unconscious responses to any perceived danger. And danger doesn't have to be the fear of being beaten or physically harmed. Danger, as we enjoy adulthood in this day and age, for most of us, is mostly just the fear of not being accepted by the tribe, by rejection. Our daily dangers don't usually involve life or death situations, but our brain absolutely sees not being accepted by those around us, especially those with whom we want to have closer emotional relationships to, as a dangerous situation. 

11:07 

So, our brains are pretty amazing at always scanning for threats based on our past experience, and then anticipating the danger that is coming, and moving into behaviors that will meet the need that will appease the person before the danger shows up. We become incredibly adaptive in order to manage everyone else's emotions and the situation. This is how we develop fawning behaviors and how they show up. And the amazing part is that our brains create a story about how incredible we are for doing this. I took so much pride for so many years as a wife of being a low-maintenance wife. And I was so impressed with myself, with how good I was, when in reality, I was actually just shelving my wants and needs to keep any situation from moving into conflict. I was appeasing those around me rather than acknowledging and addressing my own wants and needs. 

12:13 

For many, many years, this behavior will not even be on our radar as a dysfunction if we even see it at all. I didn't see it at all until probably four years after my divorce. It was just such a part of pride for me that, "listen, I'm just low-maintenance." So we may call it "low-maintenance." I did. We might also call it being a peacekeeper, being adaptable, being flexible, being versatile. Our brains will call it whatever word will make us feel like we're doing great things. But if the reasons we are moving into these behaviors is from a place of fawning, then it's time for us to take another look at the behavior. 

12:59 

So as I continue to do this work, I am surprised by how often I will fawn completely unconsciously. It's just behavior that I've always done, behavior that I feel had always been expected of me by society, by people around me, and by myself. Often, I don't even realize I have been in fawning mode until after a situation has run its way through its course. It's really fascinating to watch my brain start making connections. 

13:32 

One reason that fawning is so harmful to relationships is because it's a very dishonest interaction. We make the other person think we are submitting, that we agree with them, that we have opinions we don't really have, when in reality we are just appeasing them while building up resentment and contempt deep below our surface, because we are not feeling like we are being seen and have a voice. 

14:03 

So let's look at some of the ways that fawning shows up in our daily lives. One of the more common phrases we use in talking about fawning is saying that we are people pleasing. When I was younger, I used to think that people pleasing was actually a good thing because it was making other people happy. It was pleasing other people. But now I understand that trying to control other people's emotions and situations is manipulative and getting into their lane. I understand that abandoning myself, doing things at the expense of myself, will never create a good result. It has me showing up in a one down position. Oftentimes, I will then flip that into a one-up and tell myself the story that I'm so much better than them because I'm willing to make such sacrifices. But this one-down position, this people pleasing, keeps me out of equal relationships, which is the space that is 100% necessary if we are to have emotional and intimate connection. 

15:16 

Another way that fawning shows up is not being able to say "no." Again, this is an appeasement strategy used in order to align with what others want rather than aligning with what we want. It is a way of moving into relationship with the threat. In this instance, with a person who asks something of us that we really don't want to do. And we say "yes" to avoid the conflict. Fawning also shows up when we cross into other people's lanes. We get involved with other people's problems and try to solve them for them. This can be our children who need to be solving their own problems of the size at their age, or it can be our spouses, our friends, or other family members. We are stepping into their space thinking we have the answers for all that ails them. This is not our place, ever. Even if they ask for help, we need to tread lightly. Give them the space to figure it out for themselves. And if they ask specifically for advice, we give it and then we step way back and we let them use it or not use it without any expectation or retaliation. We have to stay out of other people's lanes. 

16:38 

Fawning will also show up with us having a fear of conflict. We are so afraid of other people being mad at us, not accepting us, that we avoid all conflict by deferring to them, placating them, being passive aggressive, lying, giving in, all tactics to manage the threat of the other person. And here's the focal point. This is what underlines all of these fawning behaviors, the reason that we engage in fawning. It comes from a lack of self-identity, needing other people to validate our self-worth. We feel as though we need their love and acceptance in order to be worthy. We are afraid that if they really knew us, they would never love us. We are dependent on other people to help us feel emotionally safe and we often lose ourselves by setting aside our own values, ideas, and beliefs in order to fit in with the other person. And we consistently put our true selves on the shelf in the back room as we downplay, and even dismiss, our own wants and needs. And then we create resentment that turns into anger that can, and often does, turn into contempt toward the other person. And then we hold back even more because we can feel so much angry pressure and we fear that if we even get a crack in our lid that we will explode and behave in ways we don't want to. So we double down on shushing our wants and needs, our desires to be seen and heard, and we engage in even more fawning. We end up exacerbating our fawning response, which then just creates more contemptuous pressure for us. 

18:32 

So standing back a bit, it's fascinating to watch these processes in action. Fawning is a compulsion to control other people's feelings, thoughts, or problems. We're trying to control how they see us, what they think of us. We're trying to take away their stressors so that they behave the way that we want. It's all very subtle, but the manipulation and control is very pervasive in a fawner's behavior. This is not to say that anytime we agree with someone's opinion or put someone else's needs before our own that we are fawning. 

19:10 

The problem, or not problem, with these behaviors lies in our reason for them. If we are seeking to appease to keep the other person from getting mad or not liking us or trying to diffuse uncomfortable situations that are not ours to work out, we are fawning. If we are trying to ease our own discomfort and avoid having a difficult conversation because we're afraid of conflict, we are fawning. However, if we gain new information that helps us to change our perspective or our opinion, that's not fawning. If we realize that a compromise in this situation would actually bring about the best resolution, and if it doesn't compromise our values or our wants and our needs, then we're not fawning. 

19:57 

But realize that if fawning behaviors are patterns that have been in your relationship for a long time, there is a lot of inertia keeping these patterns in play. Your primitive brain knows how they work, it knows that it gives you some semblance of power and control, it knows that it keeps you from volatile situations, and so they will be your primitive brain's unconscious go-to responses. So what to do? If you recognize fawning behavior in your responses, and you are seeing that it is causing problems with your self-respect, and that is keeping you from working through situations in your relationships in healthy ways, in ways where you feel like an equal, what are some ways to proceed? How do we address the fawning? 

20:48 

One of the first and most important things is to start to engage with ourselves in a way that we are our own sense of safety, a place where we have our own thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and opinions, and we support ourselves in who we are. We have to start seeing ourselves as individuals, unique and separate people who recognize our place in the world. We have to own ourselves. We are clear on what is our lane and what is the other person's lane. We recognize that we are responsible, what we're responsible for, and what we're not responsible for. This concept is called differentiation. It's a space of recognizing and enacting our own emotional uniqueness from the people around us. It is about maintaining individuality, while also being able to step into deep intimacy with another person. 

21:51 

This is part of us seeing ourselves as equals to the people we're engaging with. Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and ideas are just as important as the other person's, and the ability to put them all out on the table, be known for them, and also to see the other person, and really know them, and not feel as though we need to adopt or embrace the other person's point of view is an amazing space of differentiation. The more we can learn to distinguish between what the other person wants, and what we really want, and embrace the idea that our wants and needs are just as valid, and then tap into a sense of strength and determination to show up equal, the more we will get a handle on our fawning behaviors. 

22:39 

From this place, we will gradually figure out how to expand our field of authentic self-expression and show up more equally in our relationships. We will begin to set clear boundaries around what is okay and what is not okay. And these boundaries  will not only be set with behavior that is appropriate for the other person, but also boundaries set with ourselves, where we decide what behavior is okay and not okay for us to engage in. 

23:10 

Setting these boundaries with ourselves will involve really getting clear on what we really feel and believe, what we want and need, and learning to have the courage to put these on the table. The more comfortable we become with this deeper version of ourselves, the more protective we will also become of her, and the more courage we will garner to step into ourselves more. We will start to see ourselves as our own solution. We will more clearly understand what is ours and what is not ours, and we will start staying out of other people's lanes. We won't feel the need to solve their problems or manage their emotions. We will learn to be okay with them not being okay, and not feel as though we need to fix it. And we will get to establish our own code for what it means to be a good human, a good enough person, regardless of what the other person's wants and needs are and of what their expectations of us may be. 

24:13 

When working with a long-term relationship where these patterns have been established and run deep, I want you to realize that you need to expect some challenges and even expect things to get worse before they get better when you start addressing your fawning. When you change the dance steps, it will be uncomfortable for a person who is always acquiesced to, who never gets told "no" by you. There will be some dicey moments when you start standing up for yourself, no doubt, and not necessarily because the other person wants to see you as less-than, but because you are changing the rules, the dance steps, and showing up different, changing what they're used to. You will need to learn to recalibrate the relationship, your engagements, your conversations to make things more equal. You will need to start speaking up about what is okay and not okay, setting clear boundaries and having your own back when you get some pushback. And very likely you will. 

25:18 

This will be a fascinating time in your relationship because you will get to see what happens when you break out of familiar scripts. If you have always been the giver and the other person the taker, what happens when you begin taking more and asking them to give more? Who is this other person when you are not fawning? There is some really good data available to you. Although, as mentioned just a few minutes ago, it may be shocking and unnerving for them to have you behaving in such a different way. But their resistance doesn't mean they are a hopeless cause, it just means, especially at first, that something new is going on and they haven't figured out how to respond yet. They're used to having things their way and all of a sudden they're not getting them their way. And they get to re-evaluate how they show up when you show up more equally. And sometimes this can take some time to adjust. So be patient with the people around you as you start stepping out of your fawning behaviors. Just because they struggle with it doesn't mean they're a lost cause and you need to get divorced. Continue to show up consistent, consistent, consistent with these new dance steps. Then over time you will start to see how they readjust or not. 

26:47 

So how do you do this? I would suggest looking around you to healthier examples of people who don't fawn and learn from them. Listen to the phrases that they use and try them out in your own space. Watch how they share their opinion and make space for the other person to have a different opinion. If possible, have conversations with this person who you're using as an example so that you can see how they think about the differing opinions and learn how they support themselves in being themselves. Practice the "owning your own" sentence structure for sharing your thoughts and feelings. So there's a whole podcast on this, but as a refresher, this own your own sentence structure says, "when you're going to (name the circumstance,) I feel (name the feeling) because I'm thinking (and then name the thought.)" This is a way to introduce your own thoughts and feelings with less of a chance of putting the other person on the defensive. So go check out the how to own your own podcast. I don't have the number at the top of my head. Check that out. It's probably about a year ago, okay? 

28:00 

So if fawning has been a part of your emotional engagement for a very long time, it will take some work to identify and clean up. And it's very likely that you will feel like a horrible person when you first start to rock the boat. But I want you to know our goal here is to rock the boat, but not to walk on eggshells. Eggshells means we're not having the tough conversations. When we're walking on eggshells, we avoid them and we do a lot of fawning. Rocking the boat is inevitable in relationships. We are different people with different ideas and opinions, different personalities and perspectives and preferences, and all of those for both of you matter. You will rock the boat in relationship. And, we can learn to send gentle waves instead of tsunamis by how we choose to approach the topics and share our opinions. And this is where owning your own comes in. So  though at first you may feel like a horrible person, here are some things to remember. You are a good human who wants loving, engaging connections with others. 

29:20 

So I heard these three questions last week around this topic of deciding whether we are showing up good enough. Am I a good person? So I love these. I thought these were great. I wanted to share them with you. First question, "did I bring my heart to this situation?" Meaning, was I compassionate? Was I full of grace? 

29:39 

Was I benevolent? Was I kind? Did I really try to bring my heart? Second question, "did I try hard?" That doesn't mean we were perfect, but trying, working to incorporate good tools, working to do what I know how to do. It doesn't mean you knew all the answers and did it perfectly, but did you try hard? And the third question, "did I learn along the way?" Did I learn things about myself, about my motivations, my desires, about how to move forward? Did I learn and adjust my trajectory and my self-reflective? These three questions are really a space of saying, listen, if I can answer "yes" to those, I'm a good human. I'm never going to be perfect. I'm never going to do all the things just right. But if I am engaging those three things, I'm a good human. I'm showing up good enough. That doesn't mean that there aren't more things to learn and more things to incorporate. 

30:43 

But we're never a perfect end specimen. So remember, if your goodness or your being okay or being enough is dependent on other people, you will always struggle because you can't control what others think about you no matter how much you fawn. Self-acceptance is the antidote to living in a fawn response, and it's okay if others don't accept you. It's not their job to accept you. Guess whose job it is? Yours. It is your job to accept you, and that's where being able to show up as an equal partner begins. Because only then are you in a place where you can start accepting and loving others in a way that you've never been able to before. It has to start with us accepting ourselves, and then we can accept others. 

31:43 

If you see that you're a big fawner, okay, you have good reason for having developed these patterns of thinking and behavior in the past. Accept that. Don't freak out. That's what it is. But now let's just look a different direction. Let's learn and grow and start creating something different in your life. No shame. No beating yourself down. Just becoming aware, acknowledging it, learning, addressing it, and moving on. Fawning will not help you create these amazing relationships in our life, whether it be with a spouse or with children or with friends or with parents or co-workers. 

32:40 

Fawning is a problem. Let's clean it up. Let's start showing up with a sense of self that is strong and powerful, with a sense of self that empowers us to create the life and the relationships that we desire. Seeing these patterns of behavior, seeing these adaptive child behaviors, and learning to address them and clean them up is part of our growing up process in middle age. And growing up is amazing. Let's get some work done, shall we? If you notice you're a fawner, if you feel in over your head, you need some help, I can help you recognize and clean up your fawning behaviors. Go to tanyahale.com. You can go to the "free consultation" tab at the top and you can access my calendar. And you can get on there and we can have a nice coaching session and I can help you see things and you will gather some good data as to whether I am a good fit to work with you one-on-one as a coach. 

33:53 

Okay, that is to do it for me, my friends. Love this content. Love that we are growing and progressing together. Have a great, great week and I will see you next time. Bye. 

34:07 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.