Chapter 19 Autistic Fawning - what is it and why do we do it?
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- Опубліковано 29 лип 2023
- Chapter 19 recapping my unexpected Autism and ADHD year: this week I'm talking about autistic fawning - what it is and why some of us do it.
Drawing the link between a) trauma and stress responses, b) fawning and c) autistic masking and camouflaging, I'll consider fawning as an attempt to appease others by avoiding conflict or discord, and how adopting this as a sustained behavioural model can lead to exhaustion and burnout for people on the autism spectrum by trying to 'fit themselves in' to a neurotypical world that that doesn't work for them.
Please do like and share this video and subscribe to my channel if you find any of it useful, or message me to get in touch and connect.
Contact email: amineurodivergent@gmail.com
Some useful links:
AQ Autism Self-Test:
I'm going to keep posting the link to the AQ Self Test for autism every Sunday in case this is the first video in the series people come across. Take the self test (remember it's JUST a self-test) and see how you score. You may have been on the autism spectrum all along and just had no idea, like I was:
psychology-tools.com/test/aut...
ADHD Self-Test:
(with all the same caveats as above) an ADHD self-test. ADHD is even MORE common than autism (and many of us will have both); the vast majority of ADHDers just struggle through from childhood through adulthood having no idea that they even HAVE ADHD, let alone working out strategies to cope and deal with it all better to be happier and less frustrated with ourselves and others.
psychology-tools.com/test/adu...
I had never heard of this, but it's exactly what I do. I was once told after a first date I was "too easy to get along with." I thought I was being nice. Nope, fawning. Relationships intimidate me. I was today years old when I put this together. Thank you!
Learning how to tell people to "get fked" is my new life mission. Not joking. A lot of folks need to hear it from me. And probably from many of us in here. I am so sick of being nice to every A-hole I have ever known.
Fawning does so much damage to us on so many levels. Self inflicted too.
This is practically my whole personality. I want to cry hearing someone else describe it. Thank you for talking about it.
I call it my Salesman survival strategy.
This is so real and relatable and I realized I'd been doing it (poorly) in a friendship that recently ended and when I tried to go on dates with people - my problem is that I feel like if I'm NOT fawning then I come across as super aggressive, or at least more aggressive than I intend to be or feel.
Thank you so much. You are incredibly articulate & concise. I am sharing this on my facebook page because I know the more I have listened to fellow neurodivergent (and often adulthood diagnosed neurodivergents) the less I feel alone and out of place in the world. This video is the most comprehensive one I've ever seen covering the subject of fawning and all the ways it may manifest . I truly appreciate all time and energy it has probably taken to put this together and put it out there. Thank you and all the very best to you.
Thank you so much for your kind words and for sharing my video, I really appreciate it.
My mother (who is obviously autistic) does this when I assertively take a stand against unreasonable behaviour (on the part of others) but she is so keen to be liked that she will prioritise the person who is bullying me by fawning and acquiescing to their demands basically undermining me.
I have asked her to go to therapy for trauma and get formally assessed for autism but she won’t do either. Until she gains some insight into her behaviour and stops wishing to be popular by fawning at my expense I cannot have a more normal mother daughter dynamic with her.
Generally speaking fawning puts the autistic person at real risk of exploitation and abuse. Moreover it certainly isn’t conducive to us as a group being treated with more respect.
I hear everything you're saying, though counterpoint is that for some people on the spectrum (and particularly so for people who don't realise they're on the spectrum yet) fawning is essentially both a coping and survival mechanism to get by. It's really tricky. It also sucks that it's impacting your personal family relationships. I hear you on family members not being interested in exploring their own issues and thinking they 'cope' in ways that actually cause damage to you. Really tricky.
You just described one of my family dynamics perfectly. Stay strong, I hope your mother takes your thoughtful advice!
@@amineurodivergent hey, I just want to point out that while it is great that you are advocating compassion here, and having the explanation of fawning is a good thing for, it should never be an excuse. Autistic women really need more safety. We suffer assault and chronic health issues stemming from a lack of safety at extraordinarily high rates. Assertiveness, especially for autistic women, is key to our survival. To prioritize the “trickyness” of the situation over affirming this commenters position is piling on to the pressure to “put others needs first”. Fawning is itself a form of privilege when your biggest issue is being liked, as opposed to being safe! It is not right to assume that a person is safe. When a parent chronically requires a child to fawn at the expense of their actual wellbeing, at the expense of reality, and while refusing to take accountability for their own dysfunction, that is abuse. The situation described here is definitively abusive. We autistic women don’t need autistic dudes telling us to be compassionate towards our mothers. We are already pulling compassion duty at 20x the national average, just like we are experiencing assault at 20x the national average. Prioritize safety and respect first! And the rough edges will smooth out with time. Don’t ask young women to ameliorate your discomfort.
@@malapropia Hey, thanks for this challenge, sincerely, all of that is really fair and if the original poster sees this, I 100% defer to the poster above. I'm still finding my way with all this somewhat, and at times struggle to see things through lenses other than my own (or those that closely chime with mine - I'm really trying to work on that), and I think sometimes feel a pressure to respond rather than just listen. Thank you for the above and I will try to be better and more careful with my own responses in future. Thank you also for taking the time to set all that out in such a considered and understandable way.
Still the best, most down to earth, accessible description of the true lived experience of someone late diagnosed with ASD. Keep going.
Thanks a lot for your kind words and encouragement, it means a lot.
@@amineurodivergent 🫡
I never knew the name of the behaviour - but I have always tried to be mindful of it because it often ends up being a one-sided relationship with other people - thank you.
Thank you so much for the video. I’ve just realized I fawn all the time. Whenever I can’t run away, I’ll fawn instead, especially at work. Your videos have been seriously helping me out. I’m 35 and I was diagnosed three years ago. Cheers from Brazil!
Thank you so much! I just happened upon your channel last week and devoured every episode. I'm 64 and just coming to terms with being a high masking autistic woman. All of a sudden, soooo much makes sense. Waiting on assessment, but really only for the possibility that it will help with available resources. I've been a huge fawner all my life. Working at changing it, slowly, as I start gradually unmasking. It's been such a relief to understand that I have a different brain, and I'm not just broken. And it's all just really exhausting. Thank you for everything you're doing. It's very helpful and appreciated.
same here and lm 62 yrs man, long story short ...everyday is a struggle in some shape form or another, and the reality is as you said... its only because the brain is wired differently... so to speak... its not broken or defective in some way- not at all, l find its a lot to do with terminology... often if when lm in conversation l find if l dont understand what someone has said ...if then they say it in another way l then understand them better... not always though .
I'm 68 and recently diagnosed AuDHD. I had to know. Now embracing my diagnosis! Beginning to feel actually happy. All the pieces seem to be coming together. Memories of my responses and difficulties with understanding others and trying so hard to compensate for my lack of getting ahold of what was being said or intimated. Fawning to survive galore! Here we are at this time and there is a sense of relief and joy knowing my reactions were exactly correct for being neurodivergent all that time ago and to the present in a very neurotypical world. Learning sooo much! Thank you. Love yourselves! Yes, different not broken.
Really appreciate what you're doing here. Thank you from my heart to yours💗🙏🏼💫
Such an astute & thoughtful take on fawning. Your statement that the world needs more neurodivergent people, now more than ever, is something I also have been thinking of for quite some time. Thank you for your insight.
Thank you for this encouragement - getting to a place of enabling more neurodivergent voices to be heard is 100% the end goal of my project now. I'm just working out how to put the pieces together.
Your videos are great and super insightful. Coming up 30 and left every job I have had due to stress and eventual meltdowns. I've always put it down to social anxiety but knew I was experiencing hardships with it more than my friends/family. I have however, completed university a few years ago which was in music, so I can hyperfocus and acomplish things on my own to a high level. My recent meltdown has me begging for answers and I strongly suspect that it's a masking issue. I'm constantly being told it's ADHD and not Autism although I know I've had an extremely hard time socialising for the majority of my life. I will be looking for an official diagnosis in the near future, just building up to it I guess.
Thank you, what you've described sounds very relatable. I don't know if you've come across it but if you feel you have autistic traits but have been masking for a long time, the CAT-Q test (Camouflaging Autistic Traits) is quite interesting to take (I'm not sure if the link will show up in comments but I'll give it a go): embrace-autism.com/cat-q/ - all the best!
@@amineurodivergent Appreciate the response, I can say a fair few of the questions listed in the test hit close to home. I have taken a few self-tests online and results are midfield.
Makes me feel bitter that have bottled stuff up for 45 years but least have made it so far.. thinking back about other people's inc teachers snide comments & parents at times
such a beautiful video and the way you describe your own experience and call out societal failures in their approach!
Other coping mechanisms are:
Fight - vigilance
Flight - Escape
Freeze - Fear
Submit - Shame
Attach - Needy
Fawn - please appease
When I first heared about it, i recognised the behavior, but did not think it was me . . .until I came out of a talk with a psychiatrist trying I went to to get an autism diagnose and realised I was fawning like crazy . . .i instantly hated the realisation . . .
My way of dealing with being abkut to faint where people will notice is doing my very best ti asure them everything is alright . . .i pretty much never complain cause I am just thankful tgat it was not worse . . . I hate it so much
wow!! @ now 42 years old i just thought i was really really good at joining peoples wavelengths my whole life i never even considered as to the why i even do what i now understand as 'fawning' i just knew that i had to somehow.
Currently on the waiting list for adhd/asd assessments as a result of finding wayyyyyyy too many traits in my self during a long journey with my 17 year old daughter who now has an official diagnoses of Autism after years of misinterpreted/ misunderstood struggles most of her high school years.
If it's a behaviour/ something you find to be a positive (i.e. joining peoples wavelengths), what I would say is don't necessarily flip it into a negative/ something to change just because of a re-framing, it's up to us as individuals to frame our behavioural strategies however we want to and interact with the world in ways that keep us as individuals level and comfortable. We have to do what works for us.
I worked in construction and was raised in a family where being aggressive before a perceived injustice was respected. Regarding construction, losing it with a boss, or with a colleague was acceptable as long as you could claim an injustice of sorts. It’s like the culture totally fit my personality-in retrospect I was actually having meltdowns and it rarely backfired on me because of that culture. They’d say “oh that just David” construction in the states imo is kind of like the new version of the old west. Where resumes aren’t needed, aggressively verbal confrontations are often the norm. Many employees have criminal backgrounds. But now that I am older and don’t have the physical abilities to put the brick in the wall (I AM LOST) because now I can’t hide behind culture, because now I only fit into the management or office version of construction, which many ways lacks the physical stimulation I need. But I still lose it. In 35 years of my career I was never fired or lost a job for losing it, however in the last 2 years I’ve been through 3 jobs.
This is really, really interesting to me, thank you for sharing this. I've come to realise that the vast, vast majority of my own meltdowns/ temper tantrums/ angry outbursts over the years have been over perceived injustices. And from reading about other autistic people (both adults and kids), this seems also to be broadly the case. It's interesting this was respected in your family. With apologies if I'm crossing any lines, I wonder if you had a strong strain of the good stuff running through your bloodline and everyone just saw temper and anger as a valid emotional response and surfacing that as a valid way to resolve disagreements to get to the nub of the perceived injustice. Injustices SHOULD piss us off. What you've said about the construction industry also interests me, particularly about many employees having criminal backgrounds. Prisons are stuffed to the gills with neurodivergent people (diagnosed and undiagnosed) that were never given the right environment for their processing and emotional and cognitive profiles. It's actually genuinely heartbreaking to see the emerging stats on this. With your family and on the construction site, I suspect you were by and large 'with your people' in terms of neurodivergence and didn't mind riffing on each other because it was broadly accepted as that's the way that's fine to communicate - when it comes from a good place/ a place of justice. In an office environment where neurotypical hints and double speak and talking around issues and being as un-direct as possible are king, less so. Apologies if I'm way off base with this (or alternatively have basically just restated what you already said) but I just found it really, really fascinating. Sorry you're burning through jobs now. My unbidden three cents of worthless advice would be: 1) join a gym for the physical stimulation aspect, 2) talk to an autism-aware therapist for the emotional regulation aspect, and 3) write a book about the psychology of construction sites - I for one am feeling the need to rabbit hole about it after just one paragraph from you.
Hi just wanted to thank you for sharing your experience and journey. Fawning is something that is hitting home here.
Thank you for this video, I had no idea about this concept but I see SO much of my behaviour reflected here, especially in my workplace.
This is the first video of yours I’ve watched… Thank you for sharing.
When I was young I would mouth everything I said after I said It
Thanks Brother, for being a voice that needed desperately right now 🙏
I recently as of a few weeks ago talked to my gp and after explaining some of the things I do they agreed that it seemed like I was probably on the Autistic spectrum somewhere. And I did the AQ test before hand and got like an 18 which was like on the line of likely and highly likely. So it was nice to get some confirmation from an actual doctor that yes this is valid and not just in your head.
Wow! this is 100% true with me.
It seems like as soon as anyone figures out that I'm an autist, they start being condescending and try to coach me, unsolicited, in their idea of life skills. So annoying, and the main reason I use various masking techniques. It gives them a sense of social superiority otherwise.
Yeah, I see this quite a lot. I think a lot of people - NTs and NDs both, to be fair - have this "here is a problem, let me give my opinion in how it can be fixed" attitude. Which is great when looking for solutions, but not when the subject is a person. As much as it annoys me in other people, I think I even do it myself a little bit (particularly now since getting diagnosed). Always horizon-scanning for what might help. Sometimes the skill is just shutting up and listening to the person talking, but it can be hard. And it can push the other person back into masking because they don't want to be 'fixed' or condescended. Thanks for flagging this, this can be quite a difficult two-way communication problem I think.
I'm struggling about the negatives of our therapists giving us positive feedback? Mine did that today and I said thank you and I do feel I've made massive efforts lately to overcome my agoraphobic tendencies and I've reached out to get help and I honestly don't feel like she was condescending when she was congratulating me. It just isn't making sense that it wasnt ok to just say thank you.
I'm trying to address my fawnyness and I have been, maybe not enough, but I have stood my ground with my kids a bit lately and well, it's a work in progress. I only just got my diagnosis recently and its still sinking in. I know I fawn and I know why. I'm also diagnosed with cptsd. Thank you for speaking so frankly, though. I just found your channel and I've subscribed .
Hi, thanks for the feedback - I think I may not have worded that section as well as I could have: what I was meaning was not liking the way the first therapist I had was only seeing autism in a very old fashioned way and describing it purely as a disability, in negative terms and congratulating me on the ways I've overcome my quote-unquote 'disability'. It grated but I just said thank you rather than calling her out, that was I think my frustration - not getting positive feedback per se. I've been pleased to get positive feedback when I feel a therapist 'gets me' and I've genuinely made progress on stuff we've worked through together. Saying thank you for genuine progress made is fine and I'm very happy to to it - it's the saying thank you when someone's condescending and minimising either me or autistic people that gets me bothered. Sorry for the confusion, I listened back to that bit and I could have been more clear there!
Hi!! I need the new user manual, I've been using the old one too! I really like how you put that. I connected with lots of your topics I'm glad I watched !
This is exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you!
I was in a stressful trip situation recently and I was like a super butler for the group. I don’t like it. Nobody forced me but it was like automatic??
I'm not "helpful" to fawn.
It allows me to feel like I'm contributing. But with the real benefit being - if I'm busy, nobody stops me to chit chat. Interaction with others is strictly limited (because I'm "busy"). I can focus on a single task, which I find soothing, in part because it burns off some of the anxious energy of social situations.
It's still masking, of a sorts. But it's a coping mechanism I view as taking charge of my needs rather that trying to please others.
@@KarenParkerArtist OMG please yes give me a repetitive task I can lose myself in!
We need neurodivergent voices!
I am 65 and was diagnosed at age 63. I think I did this a lot b/c I didn't really understand what I was supposed to do. For example, I was trying to fit into a "normal" role and I thought this was how it was done. So if someone laughed at me for something I was doing, I then tried to illuminate that and change to fit what I thought other people were like. I became an expert chameleon. I could fit in almost anywhere, but it would often be horribly uncomfortable. I knew in my heart what I wanted, but I was uncertain if I as right. Does that make sense?
It makes 100% sense! - So much I could almost have written it myself. Very, very relatable, I think I also became an 'expert chameleon'.
Fawtistic awning.. you like it?... no i was not disagreeing with you..🎉😅
I showe your video to my sister about fawning she had 2 questions I couldn't answer and one a comment......
"he is good!"
What work does he do ?
and she also wondered "how much these traits could be handed on by a neurodivergent parent?"
Hi, thanks for watching - I'm not an expert in this AT ALL, just my personal impressions and reflections as a late-diagnosed neurodivergent individual trying to get to grips with what it all means for my own and others' behaviours, but my guess would be as well as neurodivergent traits being quite hereditary in and of themselves, learned behaviours will certainly play a part as well. i.e. if you see a parent fawning and succeeding doing so, my guess is you'll be more likely to pick up the behaviour yourself.
@@amineurodivergent thanks what line of work are you in please
@@kayjay-kreations I've done so many different jobs over my years - my spirit animal never quite settled. Book store, video store, archery & crossbow instructor, tourist office, journalist, events management, ghost tour guide, press researcher, political researcher, project management & regulation consultant, academic. Right now I'm a civil servant on a mental health break!
@@amineurodivergent wow you are a jack of all trades
@@kayjay-kreations And 100% master of none! 🤣
Wow, so wierd you threw in that bible verse. I just randomly thought that verse today wondering what exactly it could mean. Who are the meek.. crazy, cuz this is the first video of yours ive seen and you say that scripture. Coincidence? I think not 💖
Honestly, it was just a throwaway comment my associative brain made when I was thinking about learned submissive behaviours and misbalance of cognitive styles in idea-sharing in the public agora as I was trying to wrap up the video notes for this one. That said, I do believe in synchronicity and our brains' inner GPS telling us to notice certain things at certain points!
Neurodivergent......what does that actually mean. Is it a " Im never going to fit in" or is it " I will fit in" or is it " I know more than you intelligently" or is it " i struggle in society" ....seriously, we cant have it all. ... we cant play the victim amd we cant play the know it all
Now let that sink in.
You are either humble or not.....no one has to understand anyone, there is no such law. Can you tolerate yourself and allow yourself to make the decisions on your own boundaries. We are so not in this together, we are individuals.
This is exactly what I'm trying to sift through in my own mind. Maybe all of the above, maybe none of it. I don't know. The realisation my brain is different to most people floored me and I'm looking for a house on a hill where everything could be possible for people who struggle in similar ways. But that house may not exist. That may be the conclusion I come to. Sorry if I'm getting it wrong as I explore. Trying to find the balance between speaking for myself and speaking for others who may be in a similar position to me is really hard.
@@amineurodivergent there you go. You have hit the spot! That was your humble moment and from here on in I get you. We are no more deserving of any understanding than our own. ....we can't change the world on how they think of us...we have to do that on an individual note....that is what we struggle with. We need to bond on our own ...join together on our own. We can't change injustice but meeting people who we like is our......dream
We cannot trauma bond, we need to learn of being autistic and go with the common friendships. There's no war....we just have to be friends...listen to me....neotypical people create friendships...we can do the same...no war ...just let's be us in all our weirdness. We might actually have a bit of a laugh
I actually like being weird. .the next conservation should be...what is weird? ...the war really is in side ourselves .
@@soyunperderdor7246 But there is a bit of me that still thinks these two types of human brains can find a way to 'click' and start working together cohesively and hit some kind of new stride together. Maybe that's the naïveté that needs to get hammered out of me and the purpose of pulling these videos together, I don't know, to explore all possible outcomes and land on the most realistic. I haven't quite given up on that all encompassing one yet though. I don't think.
@@amineurodivergent p.s...how long really would it take while you are on that hill...that you got bored and lonely?!