So today we're going to break down people-pleasing and the FON response.
This is the survival skill that not enough people talk about as a survival skill.
We talk about people-pleasing,
We label people people-pleasers,
But today I want to go deeper into this idea so the people who struggle with it,
They understand themselves.
And it's important that you understand that if you are a people-pleaser,
Take a deep breath,
There's nothing wrong with you.
People pleasing does not mean that you're weak.
Although many of us feel that way.
It's not even a character flaw.
We have to start understanding it as a survival adaptation.
We want to understand where it comes from so that we can,
As we are today,
We understand ourselves.
We make sense to us.
Many of us understand fight or flight.
When the brain perceives a threat,
The body mobilizes into action,
Some sort of action.
Some of us will fight,
And some of us will run away from a threat.
Some of us will freeze.
But the fourth response that very rarely gets talked about nearly enough is the fawning response.
Now,
Fawning is when the nervous system has learned that the safest way to survive a threat,
And that could even be an emotional threat,
Is to appease the threat.
It's to soothe it,
It's to become agreeable.
To become really helpful,
To become so easy around this threat,
Whoever,
Whatever it is,
That they might not hurt you anymore.
Now we have to ask,
Where does a child learn to fawn?
So let's break that down.
If you grew up in a home where a parent was unpredictable,
If they were angry and volatile,
If they were emotionally unavailable,
If they suffered from addiction or were narcissistic,
You could not fight that.
You were small.
You could not flee.
Where would you go?
You depended on the very people who frightened you,
The same people that gave you your food and your shelter,
The same people that you loved.
So your brilliant little nervous system did the only thing it could do.
And this all happens on autopilot.
It's not like you did it.
It learned to read the room.
It learned to scan faces.
It learned to anticipate moods.
And you learn to shapeshift.
To whoever was threatening you just to keep the peace.
Now,
Research suggests that children who experience chronic stress in their childhood homes,
Their brains become hypervigilant as a way to survive.
So they're always scanning for danger.
While the thinking brain,
The part that asks,
What do I need and what do I feel,
Never gets fully activated.
Imagine it never gets a true seat at the table.
And that is the root of codependency.
Now,
Codependency is what happens when a child has learned through repetition,
Observation,
And consistency.
This happens all the time.
That their worth is tied to how well they manage other people's emotions.
Now,
The sad thing is that the child has to abandon their inner world to survive their outer world.
And then that child grows up and the danger is gone.
But the programming is not.
What I mean by that is that the person who is oppressing them has gone.
But their programming what they learn to do and how they learn to survive remains because now it's a Habitual pattern of thinking it's ingrained.
It's had habits even of reactivity and activity So you want to really start understanding that this subconscious?
Programming is still active long after you leave a home that Demanded that you appease the people who cause you to feel afraid you can literally be a year old person that bumps into a chair and says oh I'm sorry.
You can literally be someone who says yes when your entire body is screaming no.
You can be somebody who knows that they should set a boundary but can't set the boundary and ends up apologizing for things that are not their fault and backing out of their boundary.
Because of this childhood conditioning and this survival adaptation that is known as the FON response.
This is a painful truth,
But once we see it,
Then we can begin to interrupt those patterns,
Actually make real change.
People pleasers are often taken advantage of.
And it's not because we're stupid.
It's because of the way that we've been trained as children.
A fonder will lead relationships through accommodation.
They telegraph,
I'm not going to push back.
I will absorb whatever you give me.
I will put up with whatever you say and I'll never set a boundary.
And to a healthy person,
That's a yellow flag.
But to a manipulator,
A narcissist,
Or an emotionally immature person,
An emotionally immature taker,
That is an open door.
Takers are attracted to fauners the way a lock is attracted to a key.
Your childhood literally carved into you the exact shape that a taker's dysfunction requires to take root.
So a people pleaser and a fauner,
Someone who's codependent,
They know how to caretake.
They know how to self-erase and they know how to over-function.
Takers,
They know how to receive,
They know how to blame,
And they know how to under-function.
When we meet takers,
If you're a Foner,
It feels like chemistry,
But it's actually pattern recognition.
Two wounded people finding a familiar dance.
And this is why people pleasers so often end up in relationships.
That drain them,
That echo the childhood home.
It's not because the people pleaser enjoys being in pain.
It's because the nervous system confuses the familiar with safety.
So I want to leave you with something that you can use today that can help you begin to change.
And it's this.
You must begin pausing.
Before you say yes.
And that's it.
That is the doorway,
Because the FON response is automatic.
It fires faster than conscious thought.
So your work is not to stop people pleasing overnight.
Your work is to insert one sacred pause between the request of someone else and your response.
So the next time someone asks something of you,
Practice saying,
Let me get back to you.
And in that pause,
You will begin to turn inwards.
You're interrupting the fawning pattern.
And you ask the question you were never allowed to ask as a child,
And no one ever asked you.
What do I actually want?
What do I actually feel?
And every time you pause,
You are training and teaching your nervous system.
That your inner world matters.
This is how you begin reparenting the child within who had to disappear to survive.
And the great news is if you flesh this out long enough,
You stay in the path long enough,
You're going to realize that you were never not enough.
You were never too much.
You are an innocent child whose brain and nervous system were doing something extraordinary,
Which was surviving.
And the important thing to remember is that this was learned and whatever is learned can be unlearned.
So just remember.
That it's just your programming and programming can always be rewritten.
You are enough.
Until next time,
I so hope that this has been helpful.
Bye for now.
