What Fawning Is & How It Causes Codependency
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- Your brain is creating codependent responses to keep you alive. Learn what this response is and why it is important to your healing:
Is it any wonder that you fawn? Your brain sees your survival is at stake!
"A fawn response is triggered when a person responds to threat by trying to be pleasing or helpful in order to appease and forestall an attacker.
Walker, Pete. Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A GUIDE AND MAP FOR RECOVERING FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA (p. 13). Azure Coyote Publishing. Kindle Edition. "
What is the threat we're facing?
Being discarded emotionally, physically, relationally, financially, etc. Discard leads to death in social animals. We are social animals.
Because identity and value are enmeshed with that person's approval and rejection, you experience the ultimate threat to your well-being: your sense of social and relational safety.
Is it any wonder that you fawn? Your brain sees your survival is at stake!
How does fawning show up?
1) Creating discomfort in your world to hopefully please the feelings of an abusive or neglectful spouse, partner, friend, or parent (or avoid upsetting them)
2) Assuming responsibility for their emotional reactions and responses to anything
3) Focusing on their emotional regulation at the expense of yours
4) People-pleasing
5) Fixing or rescuing people from their problems
6) Attempting to control their choices so you feel comfortable
7) Denying your discomfort, complaints, pain, needs, and wants
8) Changing your preferences to align with theirs
This list is obviously not exhaustive, but it is one I see frequently with new clients and students.
So how do you handle fawning?
1) Start creating space from the abusive person. The more space, the better. If no contact can be achieved, definitely do it. Your brain will automatically fawn when they're around because your brain sees them as a threat. Making space allows your brain to begin to consider safety again and begin to return to a baseline of calm
2) Begin to regulate your nervous system (Get CALM for free calm.freethesel...)
3) Begin to validate your experiences and feelings (Legitimize them!)
4) Begin to retrieve your value from outside yourself and cultivate it within you. This will help you differentiate your identity from others and become anchored in your innate and brilliant worth and value. This lessens the impact of rejection and approval and helps you build interdependent connections.
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2) Restoring self-trust through trusting in the legitimacy of one's experiences and reactions. Without this, one will continue to feel crazy, confused, and lost
3) Restoring sanity through befriending and nurturing one's lived experience and the emotions that come with it
4) Restoring one's Self through taking back one's worth and value
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It's been easier to stop impulsively fawning when I stopped caring about isolation. I am the most important person in my life ✌✌✌
But what to do if you are further in isolation because most people trigger you? I'm at this stage right now and I have a fast response of flight the minute I'm feeling triggered because of an unsafe interaction. I started out my adulthood with intense fawning responses and was very "popular" back then but lately (after 10 years) I'm living like a monk. I only have my therapist and one long term friend in my life.
@@LeMacMac This is a challenging one, as we have to take risks to build our safe relationships again. Trauma work will help you make a breakthrough on this, I suspect.
@@LeMacMac but good relational therapist together with book is best option. But they have to be able to reflect, teach and guide you on recovering your feelings. We're human ever since birth we project and reflect, it's how we learn. So we need to learn how to be socially us, instead of our caretakers toxic critic. So I find the best way to do it is with someone who you think would reflect your world values instead of critics in your head.
The takeaway from this video was NOT supposed to be narcissism. 🤦
I have a lot of experience with animals. I have seen dogs practice fawning. They will slink and try to placate the abuser. Socially, they are very much like humans. I have never seen a bunny, horse, guinea pig or other prey animal, fawn. Including fawns. When I volunteered with animal control, I worked with dogs who had been so traumatized, they started fawning without any threat present. They had learned that the mere presence of a human meant a threat.
As a physically disabled person, I've experienced that some strangers expect me to fawn when asking for something an able bodied person would consider a right or a common courtesy. They expect me to apologize for my disability.
Thank you for sharing 🌸
Omg this word I've been looking for it my whole life. I knew i wasn't fight or flight or freeze... I'm fawn thru and thru
WOW!! "The brain is configured" to respond to that abuser. My my my!!! Thank you for this video.
People know and understand what a broken/wounded leg looks like; but not what a broken/wounded soul looks like. Fawning is one of the many faces that a broken/wounded soul has. Thank your for helping us understand this crucial information about CPTSD.
You're welcome!
Wow thank you, this came at the perfect time. There is a lot of shame that is coming up for me right now regarding this. I’ve always had a sense of shame of this energy but didn’t have an understanding or words for it. It’s hard to put words to how I’m feeling. Like you said, fawning is how we survived. But it’s making me feel weak, like im a “little bitch” like this feels like the weakest of the survival F’s. Pathetic is the word that comes to me. The way a “ruthless” person sees me as being pathetic. I know thats not true though. I know it means that I actually have a huge heart and want to find the best in others and bring peace to chaos. I know it was the best way for my sensitive soul to come out the other side. But I’m still just feeling a bit of shame of all my past fawning. I can give myself compassion love for this.
I feel the same, i know about this concept for a long time now and I am working on changing the mechanism but I still feel a bit of shame.
@@siljamattmann8728 thanks for your response. I can tell you I have heavily put an emphasis on working through my shame and the fawning that goes with it over the last year and I have made leaps and bounds in my confidence and the boundaries that I desire. This healing journey has brought me to my knees over and over again but it’s so worth it.
Amen girl 🙌 amen.
Self advocating is the follow up lesson for this. Learning to ask for what we need in safe loving ways is key
i never realized i had stored trauma coz i denied it and made excuses for my parents. so i was doing eft therapy and realized im not responsible for my mother's pain, past, suffering, victimhood, im not going to feel sorry for her, or accommodate her control dramas. i feel like a huge weight lifted off me and was freer.
now that i accept i have deep trauma that has controlled me, and as i m researching trauma effects, i feel that fawning is 100% the definition that resonates with me. i actually got really mad and sad that it s taken me a half century to figure this out, and that ive been caught in some vortex for so long. i feel like if i take that away, plus i take away little me who did such a good job in protecting myself, im left with not really knowing what my identity is. i also dont know what to do with so many emotions! i had no idea what 'getting my emotional needs met' even MEANT! I HAD TO GOOGLE IT! wow. i thought i was so self-aware. here comes the huge journey that's meant to happen now i guess! xo
I am a Jedi level fawner.... Case in point: The man who mugged me with a box cutter ended up crying to me and telling me this life woes....
I hold space for you here as you face this. This is jedi level fawner like you say. This really tells the story of the hell you've lived through for a long while.
Thanks for making the distinction between fawning with old relationships and with new ones. It makes a difference to now if is a trigger or not.
I met someone new and although the situation is pretty healthy I definitely feel triggered and I’m in fawning mode and I’m trying to take a step back. I’m projecting my fears from past onto this new situation
try out the tools in BE CALM. They're free. They can help you regulate that anxiety and fawning. Here's the link: becalm.freetheself.com
Same, in this new relationship the other person is not abusive, I think I’m just very afraid of rejection if they seem me fully
Ive been struggling with the fawn response because I was taught (and mostly thought) that my visions werent real or I needed more confirmation to prove its existence and validity. Now I realize that my perceptions matter too, only I know my true feelings and thoughts and everyone has their own judgement on everything.
Thank you. You just helped me find a missing puzzle piece. I never understood codependency this better.
you're welcome!
This video is literally life-changing.
Recently, I received a letter from my brother. He sent it to me in error. He meant to send it to my sister and it was about me. In the letter he referred to me as a c*nt and he made up many lies about things I have never said or done. I immediately felt sorry fro my brother. How would he feel when he realised his error? How would he cope? Would he feel sad and regretful or embarrassed?
I can remember my earliest fawning responses: my mother pulling my hair and my feeling sorry for her in that moment. Or her hands around my throat and my thinking that she had lovely soft hands.
Yes! My brain is now configured to fit in with abusive partners. We fit together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Boom. That is huge! HOlding care for you as you explore this
@@healyourcodependency Thank you.
I found your story interesting and that you would be empathetic toward your brother and feel sorry for him. That is not the response I would have had..I would have been fuming and hurt to think a sibling would think of me that way. I would be offended and be on the defensive. I totally consider myself codependent tho, people pleaser, dont like to know I have offended anyone.. Thank you for sharing your story..
I wish I could communicate to you how much this video means to me. Such a huge breakthrough just happened for me today and 27 years of pain seems lifted just having the knowledge of this video. Still some work left to do but thank you
you're welcome
27 years of pain here too , and this video is as if speaking to me... , I hope to break through
@@pinkrabbit7672 you’re almost there! Keep working at it. I wound up cutting the parent out of my life. Not recommended for everyone - and it’s hard not to feel guilty. But MAN I’m a new person. It’s been great.
@@dannyd938 thank you for these encouraging words, so heartwarming
Today I'm "celebrating" a year since this harsh & painful waking up has begun; going down the rabbit hole of finding out that I had a covert-narc parent that programmed me from young age to be supply, ... And let me tell you - I was the best Narc supply around ... Including all additional "toppings" & side effects ..
Yesterday I realized I need clarity about fawning and stumbled upon this one ... I thank this guy deeply for talking straightforward and giving this to us
Yes I understand that I want to go no contact on that parent, and siblings and everyone in my family. I have had enough of being the codependent that takes care of the needy-narc parent , which the "role"everyone expects of me and only then approves me.
If this sick structure is "family" - then I want out
Like you wrote; having the knowledge leads to breakthroughs of clarity which eventually leads to break through this whole set of patterns and back to our authentic self
I'll say Amen to that!
Thank you
One of the best teachings I’ve heard on how to replace codependency with self love.
Thank you for breaking it down clearly. Recently bought Pete Walker's book too. Your extended explanation of fawning really helped me to highlight some reasons for certain behaviours whereas previously I would berate myself for feeling or behaving the way I did. Now I see how much importance I gave to unworthy people.
That's what I thought as well. I was unhappy with myself for have such 'weak' reaction, when I could just realise that I don't need to stick around. He is now blocked, so goodbye!
@@feelingoffbalance
Well done to you. Stay strong. You owe yourself some kindness, too.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! It felt really nice that you kept saying to be compassionate with yourself about it. I always beat myself up and feel like a wimp when I have a fawn response . I feel so much better with your encouragement thank you!!
Fawn responses still aren't a good thing and should be worked on in therapy. Difference between beating yourself up and enacting positive change.
@@YesYesYesJeff totally! Just saying that the first step for me was practicing not hating myself for it… and that takes time. Been standing up for myself in the ways that I can. It will get better. I’ll get stronger and I’ll also have the foundation of self-compassion❤️❤️❤️
I can think of every person in my life, and every person does this to an extent including myself, I am becoming more self aware, however from my perspective there needs to be a balance. Everyone has toxic tendencies, to say stay away from unsafe people would mean to leave this world. We can't always escape abusive people. Example work, family, going to a get together. I understand to lessen your time around people, but sometimes you can't do that.
This is the best explanation and support of the fawning response I’ve heard yet. Thank you!
You're welcome!
this is exactly what I was looking for, thank you! needs way more views
You're welcome!
My point is that people can be fawning and "fighting" at the same time
I think what you mean is u still kinda argue but you’re holding back is that kinda what you mean lol
Thank you for explaining so well. You just lifted a huge weight off my chest, a lot makes sense now. And I know how to move forward
This video was perfect! Exactly what I have been going through the last 13 years with my ex wife. This video will help many good people. Thank you for your time and efforts sir.
Love = threat 🤯
Spot on!
In a situation where you cant get away from the person, and still have to maintain a working relationship, fawning is often the easiest way to cope. For a long time i felt disgusted about it, now i know what it is and attach no value to friendliness or cooperation i have to show this person. Its a friendly type of grey rock. Total grey rock was very difficult for me. Maybe fawning is the first step to withdraw without feeling like youre killing yourself. Maybe its time to engage less.
Yep. I've done it. It comes down to survival in the work place
I think now you "got" me. Yesterday(?) I commented on one of your community posts about skepticism and now felt compelled to watch this video, and I really appreciate your non-accusatory tone when talking about non-promising strategies us fawners fantasize about out of habit. Thank you for your effort. ♡
You're welcome! Thank you for exploring what I teach and following your self-sense and skepticism. That's the work!
I can never be calm and feel safe. reality is too much so often
That's understandable. Sometimes we have to work with our circumstances first before we can focus on feeling safer. Being safe relies on being physically safe, so we start there.
Very good talk. Thank you very much
That feel I ngs is still with me
This work is amazing - you’re really speaking right to some very nuanced and difficult to articulate relationship and attachment patterns. Helping someone like me identify which is my voice - that’s it’s the one that’s there to protect and trying to employee these strategies- is really helpful. I’d find it really personally useful also to hear you speak about how having a parent who was severely codependent and not well able to set boundaries or take care of their own needs - or rather tried to take care of their own needs through meeting other people’s needs- impacts developing one’s own identity. It seems like the codependent doesn’t have their own identity and tries to get it through meeting the needs of others and even adopting the feelings of others or playing the role they think they should for approval, which in a parent child relationship can literally take away the ability the child has to develop their own responses to things, as they feel their parents need of them to be needed by them. It creates a terrible role reversal for the child with the parent seeking emotional approval and validation from their child, rather than the other way around, and their child is unable to get their own needs met as they are put in the position of being the provider for the parent and don’t want to hurt or disappoint them. Rarely see the topic of the codependence on those around them especially children of codependent parents- but that would be really really helpful to hear more about!
thank you!
Thank you. Beautiful, calming down, true, compassionate, understanding words.... 💛
One of the best videos on codependency and fawning that I have ever heard. Thank you. Its so important to listen to this over and over and understand how we sabotage ours own needs in order not to make someone else angry with us.
Seriously , Thankyou. I didn't know about this fawning thing . But I bloody well do it and I am horribly uncomfortable with that . But Thankyou so much .
you're welcome!
Thank you so much for making this video, so much suddenly made way more sense
So helpful! Thank you for being clear and concise with this information! I struggle with YT videos like this because the person rambles with fluff - not you! Thank you!
Painful and liberating at the same time. Thanks.
Thank you so much for this video!
Thank you. Good to be aware of this. I describe it as unconsciousness.
Brilliant vid. Huge love and respect!
I'm so glad you made this, thank you.
Oh my goodness Such a tough life to hold onto. I have pushed down emotions for so long that now my daughter is pushing me away.
This is so me. It's sad it's taken me this long and I allowed it to happen. For me it's my daughter who is the covert narcissist. I can already see issues with our grandchildren in response to her and her sudden outbursts, because I have the same thing with her. And you are correct, I have lived my life with her always trying to appease her, wanting her to love me, to like me, when in reality I was just being used.
Holding care for your grief and sadness that you feel and what you face here
Thank you for this!
Covid made me stuck with them for years and sometimes I just have to do this from time to time.
Thank you for making this video. I resonate with this so much. All of this is so true. At 2:50 you talked about limiting contact with parents/partners/etc. in an attempt to disassociate my mind from these people. If I currently don't have the means to move out, how do I give my brain a chance to get back to the place of safety that you were discussing?
I'd start with physical safety. Do you have a safe space or home? That would be your first place of safety. Then givign yourself mental shelter where you are not entertaining other people's thoughts. You're in your own space mentally.
@@healyourcodependency Thank you for responding to my initial response. I appreciate it.
@@livkin2245 You're welcome. When I was in a similar situation, I would spend time at a park, in the shower, or at work away to get my break.
I also learned how to comfort my body using somatic tools (felt-sense tools). You can get them for free here in my BE CALM system. They may help. Go here and try them out: becalm.freetheself.com
Thank you for your video. The last few sentences really moved me and i needed to hear them !
you're welcome
I’ve never heard of fawning? I need to look into it more
This has really saved my life thank you
Thank you for the video
Omg.thank you.... ❤❤❤❤
You're welcome!
Thank you for sharing this, it's life changing🙏💚
Thank you. I needed this.
Excellent, concise video.
Thank you so much for this
Thank you
Thanks you ❤️ i needed to hear this
What happens if that is all u know I have cpdst,over since I was a young child, I got 5 pretty hard traumas and the way what cpdst is but not to deal with my traumas? I'm a pretty unique individual to,be my personality so on.if you have time and the schooling, I will tell you my story,it's a best selling story I tell you that!🃏☮️🐺
thankyou so much very helpful
ive been healing so much recently, or i thought i was, but something happened today and i only have $60 in my bank account and i dont want to ask anyone for help because i dont feel i deserve help and help doesnt help me anyway because i have been paycheck to paycheck for years and i dont know how to make progress, no matter how much healing it feels like i do i continue to feel trapped and now i am just gasping for air again, shaking and shuddering, asking someone, anyone, under my breathe to please help me
all i can do to feel safe is be so incredibly kind and of service and useful in the ways i can, but i know it isnt enough, its never been enough and it all feels impossible
and there is no money for therapy
what am i supposed to do
please someone help me
Oh my Gosh . You're name is Marshsll ! (My father's name) (That's a good thing!)
Thank you! ❤
Good marketing !
good video, thanks!
How hard is it to find safe people? Rhetorical question.
To the person below dropping the "narcissism" comment-what an immature insult. When you've been through a few suicides, & murder, maybe you'll understand reasons people find loving others fucking dangerous.
Is it possible that the fawn response can show up when there may be no apparent threat? I know you mentioned fawning with new people, but only briefly. I have sexual trauma so I’ve noticed that I tend to fawn with people who are new, despite having them never personally abused or hurt me -it’s just become my natural instinctive response to put on a facade of comfort when faced with intimacy even when I am aware of my discomfort. In the past when I have opened up about my sexual discomfort after months or years of abuse to the abuser I have been immediately criticized, attacked, and shut down, and then after I have opened up I have immediately gone back into the fawn response and putting up with the discomfort. Ultimately, would you say that fawning in the face of no direct, apparent threat based on previous experiences could be normal or possible?
Yep, that can happen. This often happens because of trauma. The brain interprets a situation as a threat when in reality it is not.
This is exactly what happens to a PTSD sufferer. I find Richard Grannon's concept of an "emotional flashback" a very helpful way of framing this. It must be pretty common since we are such a traumatized bunch, but I would not call it "normal" since it's a trauma based response.
Meeting someone new is a threat, potentially. To your self-esteem, etc. You don't know how they will treat you, whether they will validate you or abuse you.
Of course, people who have not experienced trauma will have less of a response to this, but generally speaking, but even for normies, meeting new people is often stressful.
Great video🤩
New sub.
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authors Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson provide some practical ideas on keeping the monkeys away
On gaining distance, what about places? My family all lives elsewhere so theyre not around, but I'm staying in my childhood home again. My son and i moved in at the start of the pandemic.
Sometimes it seems like the house keeps me in certain thought loops. I've changed a lot in the house, but it still doesn't have that home feel that the other places I've lived in had. It also seems more difficult to clean 😂
Your body has somatic relationships with places, and that home carries a lot I imagine. It makes sense that there's thought loops and such when being there. Your body is recalling the past, as that is its orientation to that place.
5:20-5:35!!!
Also i screamed as i bite down on metal coathanger through my tongue..i choked on blood...at age 5
holding your pain and trauma in care
What about once after an abusive relationship you find a safe one but still fawn this person out of fear of it becoming an abusive relationship?
I don't know what one would do if one who fawns lives with one of the people they fawn with is in the same house?
My cousin fawns to all others around us but not to me. Im iced. It's hard not to wither (freeze?) . I try to ignore that she's fawning to others and "fighting" to me. It's hard though. I did withdraw in to myself and give up.
That just means she’s comfortable and not afraid of you that’s a good thing
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:14 🧠 *Fawning is one of the four brain responses to threat: fight, flee, fawn, and freeze.*
01:33 🤯 *Codependent responses are survival reactions to the threat of isolation or discard trauma.*
02:40 🤝 *Understanding the fawn response allows for compassion and the identification of needed changes for personal safety.*
04:03 🚪 *Limiting or going no contact with abusers, especially chronic ones, supports the brain in reconstituting its sense of safety.*
05:10 🧘 *Trauma keeps the body in a state of tension, hindering the return to a calm, regulated state.*
06:05 💔 *Healthy relationships don't require changing who you are; they focus on clear communication and mutual well-being.*
07:02 🚫 *Exiting abusive relationships, especially if there's no accountability or change, is crucial for allowing the brain to regain a sense of safety.*
11:24 🌬️ *Creating space from abusive individuals helps the brain regulate and reduces the impact of the fawn response.*
12:31 💪 *Retrieving your sense of value from within, rather than external approval, empowers and lessens the impact of approval and rejection.*
13:42 🌟 *It's okay to experience the fawn response; understanding and honoring it can lead to positive changes in building healthier relationships.*
Made with HARPA AI
I've noticed my fawning shows up in certain new relationships that remind me of my parental impactors (mom, grandma, aunt). So people that have a more domineering personality or highly critical. I revert back to my childhood self and it makes me sad. Should I break connections with people that trigger this or should I build resiliency to stand up to them?
What does your body want and need right now?
That's why people also tend to radicalize with religion in the west. Ethnic minorities often don't get enough recognition through education and highly paid jobs. Due to poverty and incompetent illiterate parents they didn't have a loving upbringing as children. They tend to flee to religion which 'ill give them recognition from the higher above. This often results them in backbiting fellow believers who are less pious. They take their trauma of not being good enough out on others this way. And the ironic misconception is they think they please god.
Great observation
Love this ❤️❤️ I’m starting my coaching career after healing myself. Going to launch a channel too. Maybe we can work together when I’m up and running 🙌🙌👏
Hi I am really very confused what is my mental state I am so depressed I am mother of 3 yr old son and doing wfh job. I always tries to do not start a fight with my husband I am socially isolated having no friends and no connection with parents now whenever there is any fight happens or any arguement my husband says that I am going to leave you. At the end of they I calls him to come back home because I am very confused what would be going to happen with my son in future people will just say him anything that your mother was not perfect. I am doing wfh even after that I am unable to sleep even 5 hours . Please help me if anyone can suggest me anything then that would be really helpfull
No . I don't think fawning is okay .
Can this show up when we have no.idea why it does? Esp. If we're not sure what triggered us? Just know it happens with a new person? Oh...i just heard ...you just answered part of that. LOL
Yes. That is called implicit memory. It usually deals with events that happened before we were able to create descriptive, explicit memory
Jeeez. Blimey .
also saying "sorry" every sentence... I hate me
Holding care for you and that part that feels all that pain
10:30
Im not sure if i froze or fawn..i just stood there while watching mom try to stab my sister
you froze, and naturally so. Holding your pain in care as you navigate this
How do you deal with a situation where a friend is fawning to you where you are sitting and having a visit thats connecting and happy?
If you're feeling happy and you're fawning, you need to determine if you're actually safe with that person. Check out the playlist on creating happy relationships for info on that.
Are you only marketing to elitists? The rest of us don’t have those options. You make it sound like it’s simple to get away. Many of us can’t though.
:( oh..... oops
C🆓; Joe is tB
But who are you???