People Pleasing Is A Survival Response

Just like fight/ flight/ freeze, fawning is a survival response. It is not an indication of our worth.
We please and appease to protect ourselves and also because we feel we can’t take the risk or afford to be rejected. There can be serious consequences if we stand up to a bully. A fawning response is intimately linked with social, financial, emotional and other types of power. Women fawn more than men and are harshly criticized and condemned when they are not compliant. We feel disgust and contempt for people who fawn. Others shame us and we shame ourselves for being weak and manipulative. We feel humiliated. When I catch myself people pleasing or being compliant, I know I feel a threat and have gone into a survival response. I fawn because of my past experience. I feel compassion for myself and offer myself support and caring

Transcript

One of the ongoing themes of our practice is to work with awareness of how does our system work,

What's happening in our mind,

Witnessing thoughts in the mind,

Noticing our body and the sensations and energy in our body.

And also to really understand and work with trauma responses fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

And fawn.

So I wanted to focus a little bit today on an inquiry into fawning or people pleasing.

What comes to mind when you hear that?

People pleasing,

Fawning,

Please and appease.

There's a lot of different descriptions for people,

But really what it is,

Is it's a survival response that sometimes we go into,

Just like we might go into fight,

Get angry and defend ourselves through anger.

Often we leave the scene,

We escape through flight.

We might escape into daydreaming or screens or getting really busy.

There's so many ways that we can escape.

Our culture is really set up to support flight.

Sometimes we'll go into more of a dull shutdown state of more of a freeze.

And fawning is more of a social response to threat.

And it's something that is related to submitting,

To trying to get on someone's good side so they don't hurt us.

There's some connections there to being bullied.

Often people will try to get on the good side of a bully so that they don't become the target.

There's a lot of complexity to this survival response.

It has a lot to do with power.

People with more power don't fawn to people with less power.

It's the other direction.

And it can be a very powerful way to protect ourselves.

And it's also a way that we often have more shame around than,

For instance,

If we were protecting ourselves through a fight response,

We might see that as I'm tough,

I'm strong.

So let's let all of those words settle in and we'll go into an inquiry in it.

It's always helpful to know when we're shaming ourselves about something because then we could let that go.

We could bring in some compassion,

But we could also see it more clearly.

Just like fight,

Flight,

And freeze,

Fawning is a survival response.

It's not something that we consciously decide to do.

It's something that happens to protect ourselves.

Many people are brought up in an environment where fawning is how we survived as children.

That's another element of this.

It's risky in some situations and in some relationships to not fawn.

Fawning is our price of admission into the relationship.

So with all of the complexity and all of the survival level threat here,

The survival level intensity,

It's really helpful to recognize this for what it is.

It's not something we're doing wrong.

We're not weak.

There's nothing wrong with us.

This is a survival response just like the other ones.

Take a few breaths.

Let's come into the body and notice how all of that is landing as you're listening to that,

Thinking about,

Probably for most of us,

There are some thoughts coming up about different relationships we've had or different experiences we've had with fawning or people-pleasing.

And there's a lot of cooperating that we do that's not people-pleasing.

Sometimes we go along with something that's not really what we want just to smooth things out socially.

That's not a problem.

There's a feeling in our body around fawning that can be an alert.

I'm giving myself away.

There's something here that's not comfortable.

It can feel a bit humiliating.

Where does all of that land in your body?

And let's take a moment to notice that and to let that ease.

Notice the whole of your body from head to toes.

Notice if you're tightening up somewhere.

You might have braced your shoulders.

You might be clenching your teeth.

With people-pleasing,

We're often in a position of not really saying what we mean or what we want to say.

It's too risky to do that.

You can go from just holding back or right into saying what they want to hear,

Which is more into the fawning response.

What does it feel like right now in your mouth and jaw,

Your neck and shoulders?

And we might do some breathing to ease some of the tension out of our body.

You can move your lower jaw around,

Loosen up the hinges of your jaw.

You bring your shoulders up on an inhale and then release on an exhale.

Stretch,

Move around a little bit for a few breaths.

When you come to your chest and your stomach area,

That's often where there's a lot of sensation or energy.

You could notice that as well.

Just talking about this,

I notice I have a bit of an energy in my chest,

My heart area.

We could bring our attention to it and notice the space around the sensation.

If it's feeling a little bit too intense,

We could do something else.

We could bring ourselves back a little bit.

We don't have to go into this too deeply.

We could nibble around the edges rather than jumping right in,

That's fine too.

What does it feel like to take a few breaths and let yourself settle into the awareness of your body?

We could do cyclic sighing or just some deep inhales and long,

Slow exhales.

Sometimes we use a sound on the exhale.

Peter Levine uses a sound voo,

But you could use whatever sound you'd like.

A deep inhale.

And if you're cyclic sighing,

It would be a long,

Slow exhale like you're breathing out through a thin straw after that deep double inhale.

Or if you're just doing a sound,

You might just breathe in deeply.

Exhale,

Voo.

And as you're exhaling,

Let go of any tension or tightness in your body.

Bring in lots of energy and oxygen on the inhale.

Just like everyone else,

I experience threat at times.

Sometimes I go into a fawning response.

As you're letting that be present in your awareness,

You could let yourself be aware of times that you have gone into fawning or people-pleasing.

Is it often a pattern with a certain person?

Because of the power structure here,

It would be someone with more power,

Financial,

Social,

Other kinds of power.

There's systemic power.

Women fawn more than men.

When we're fawning,

We're trying to get somebody with more power onto our side.

And at the very least,

We want that person with more power to not hurt us.

So it becomes very risky to speak up for ourselves.

We're not pretending that it's not.

What I'm really interested in looking at here is when I fawn,

Can I just take that step back just like I would with a fight response or a flight or freeze?

When I catch myself doing that or I'm too compliant and not really authentic,

I know that there's some kind of a power imbalance here.

I feel a sense of threat and I've gone into a survival response.

It can be neutral in a sense of I don't have to shame myself for that.

In fact,

Maybe I could bring some clarity and compassion in.

I'm feeling threatened and I've gone into a survival response.

Continue to notice what that feels like in your body,

Especially as you're remembering times when you have done that.

And for some people,

That would be like never or almost never.

Some people go into more of a fight response or a shutdown or a flight.

Might not be something that you've had experience doing,

Although I suspect most of us have at least sometimes.

But it might be something you've had experience other people fawning to you.

You could bring that into your awareness.

What does that feel like?

Many of us have probably had a little bit of both.

If you were to bring up an instance or a memory of some time when you did move into fawning as a way to get through something,

What would that look like?

Like how would you know?

What would be the difference between just being cooperative at work,

For instance,

And going along with what the boss says,

Even though it's not really what you think should be done?

But if it's not breaking the law,

If it's not against your ethics,

Often we'll just do that.

That's pretty benign,

Or it can be.

So what's the difference between that and somebody really sucking up?

And we all know these differences instinctively.

We feel that in our body.

Notice the energy,

Notice the thoughts.

And notice if there's an element here of shaming yourself.

Very common to feel humiliated and then go into some kind of an attack.

Well,

If you were stronger,

If you were tougher,

If you had more courage,

You'd have spoken up for yourself.

There's something wrong with you.

The inner critic might be in here.

You could see that for what it is.

It's not helpful or true.

And also there's an element here of,

I wanna be strong and regulated enough to not use this as a survival response unless I really need to.

If it's a situation of emergency where I need to fawn or appease someone to get out of a dangerous situation,

Then definitely.

This becomes a habit of the way we relate in the world.

There's a lot of reasons for that.

Unhealed trauma,

Systemic oppression,

Not being able to risk shifting a relationship.

We feel like we wanna be in an equal relationship and it feels unequal because we don't really feel comfortable expressing ourselves authentically.

Then that's gonna be a practice,

An inquiry.

There's gonna be things we need to do to shift that.

And some of those relationships are worth trying to shift.

And other ones,

We just have a sense of,

I don't think the other person is really on board with that or the consequences of that are not worth it.

So again,

We could look at this from a more practical point.

People-pleasing and being compliant to some extent has a good place or role,

But not if it costs us too much.

We go into shaming ourselves.

That's a high cost for getting along.

We fawn because in the past,

That's worked.

And as children,

We always have less power than the adults.

And also as women or as people of color,

Different social power structures that we're in,

We might still be in some relationships where that's a factor.

How can we be on our own side and use this a little bit more deliberately?

If we're going to go along with something to be really clear inside,

What would that feel like inside?

Notice your body,

Your breath.

I'm going to bring up this certain person.

Maybe it's someone at work or someone in your family or a friend,

Someone who,

Where this element of compliance or people-pleasing comes in a little bit at least.

And then imagine yourself shifting that.

This time,

I'm not going to go into compliance.

When they say that racist joke,

I'm not going to pretend that it's okay.

I'm going to say something like,

That makes me feel really uncomfortable.

I don't want you to say those kinds of things.

Whatever that might be for you,

Let's take a few minutes to try that on.

There's no social consequence here.

We're not doing it to them in person right now.

This is an inquiry.

Notice your body.

Once you start holding your breath,

You start fading out or going into a fight response.

Notice that,

Come back.

Let's practice this for a moment.

It's safe enough for me to do this,

At least in this inquiry.

What would it look like?

What would you say?

Maybe you could see yourself,

See your body language.

Even if it's only right now,

It might not be a relationship that it's practical to challenge.

But in our own experience right now,

Let yourself breathe,

Let your body relax,

Tap into your strength.

And let your internal experience be strong and grounded.

We're reducing the feeling of threat.

We're becoming more accurate right now.

Out in the real relationship,

We might still have to consider the power that they have.

But right now in our heart,

In our body,

Could we afford to imagine or visualize something different?

Even though this is just an inquiry,

It might still feel kind of scary or alarming.

The way our nervous system works,

It's always trying to make sure we're not taking risks,

Trying to protect us.

As you're breathing in and breathing out,

Acknowledge to yourself as well.

When I'm people-pleasing or being compliant,

It's because there's a threat and this is a survival response.

There's nothing wrong with me.

I'm not weak,

I'm not a coward.

I'm in a situation that's difficult and I'm trying to get through it.

Let go a little bit now of the visualization of you making that shift and come back into noticing now what does that feel like in your body?

What did it feel like to imagine saying something different,

Not going along?

Let's go back into some cyclic sighing or those long exhales.

Let yourself come back into being really steady.

If you're cyclic sighing,

It's that deep double inhale.

Long,

Slow exhale,

Like you're breathing out through a thin straw.

Let your mouth and jaw soften,

Your neck and shoulders,

Your whole body down to your toes.

Open your eyes,

Look around the room.

Notice that there's nobody else here that we're pleasing right now.

We're just doing an inquiry and now we're finishing with it.

And think back a bit to what was your experience during the last 20 minutes?

How did you land with that?

Were you able to stay with it?

Is it something that feels like,

Yeah,

I need to do a little bit more looking into this.

There's that one person or this situation that feels really troubling.

And we can always come back to compassion.

When we're in these situations,

It's a tough situation to be in,

To feel humiliated or to feel like we need to suck up to someone in order to be safe.

We could offer ourselves that kindness,

That support.

And let ourselves feel in our body the effect of the practice.

And we don't have to do anything startlingly different next time we are in connection with that person either.

Although we might.

Might just be like,

You know,

I've had it.

I don't need to do that.

It's an old habit.

As soon as I see it happening,

I'm gonna start to shift a bit.

And we might be like,

Well,

I can't really afford that,

But I could afford to come back to neutral.

So I could afford to maybe not challenge them,

But I could afford to not comply so much,

At least in my own mind,

My own heart.

That's a really interesting thing to work with,

This experimenting around.

How do I know when I'm in people-pleasing mode?

And to look at the threat and assess that accurately.

Is it true?

We have such a history of when it was true,

But is it true right now in this moment?

Could I either stay at neutral,

Maybe say something that would shift it,

Or leave,

Or what are my options there?

What agency do I have?

And if we do catch ourselves people-pleasing,

Then at least we could be kind and compassionate with ourselves and not let the inner critic give us a shame storm.

Reviews

I found this very insightful however for me it was a talk not a meditation. Thank you all the same 🙏🏻

It was a little difficult for me to settle into because of the "talking;" I wondered if I accidentally selected a talk instead of a meditation. But, once the meditation really began and I settled in..... I am looking forward to putting this meditation on repeat this month.

This was amazing. So much valuable information here. Thank you.

Listen to Stephen Schettini also. Growth occurs at the fringes… a small shift always helps

This is eye-opening. Fight, flight, freeze or fawn. Fawning is something I've done throughout my life and in most of my relationships. It's definitely my way to avoid conflict but it gets to be very frustrating and exhausting at times. Thank you for bringing me the awareness of what my lifelong "people pleasing" actually means.

Your voice is so calming and the exercise was truly excellent. And informative. Thank you so much!