The Habit Of People Pleasing

Discover practical insights into the habit of people-pleasing, also known as fawning, and how it relates to our nervous system’s survival responses. This video explores why people-pleasing often arises in situations with power imbalances—at work, at home, or in society—and how it is shaped by both personal history and systemic oppression. Through guided somatic mindfulness practices, you’ll learn to recognize your own patterns, understand the emotions and sensations that accompany them, and develop greater self-compassion.

This session offers a grounded, healing space to reclaim presence and kindness toward yourself.

Transcript

One of the things that we often will do when things are tense or we have a lot of fear is that we'll avoid that somehow.

Often we avoid being in our body.

How am I coming in?

Let yourself be here.

Practice includes whatever we're looking at,

Which today is people-pleasing or fawning.

It also really includes what's my relationship with myself?

What's happening in my body?

Am I breathing?

Am I scared?

Am I tight?

Am I loose and joyous?

What's my experience right now?

So much of what we're working with in terms of daily life,

Enjoying life,

Is what's happening in my nervous system.

To really assess that,

We need to look at both thoughts and sensations and energy in the body,

The breath.

Tuning in to all of that,

We might also notice,

What is my level of friendliness towards myself?

Can I genuinely offer myself some kindness?

Not just kindness and compassion,

But also patience,

Respect.

We are living in a difficult world and we're doing our best.

Could we approach this life of ours,

But also this particular inquiry around people-pleasing in that spirit of acknowledgement,

Patience,

Validation?

I'm doing my best.

The thing about the nervous system is it is very powerful.

Our priority is to keep ourselves alive and the nervous system is very committed to that.

One of the ways it does that,

It activates a fight,

Flight,

Freeze or fawning response.

Appeasing,

Sucking up.

There's a lot of different ways that that's described.

There's also a lot of shame being someone who is people-pleasing.

It feels like there's something wrong with us,

That we're not very strong or courageous.

We have a lot of conditioning and judgment around this.

What is my experience with this and how could I be kinder about it to me?

And also,

How could I maybe not do that as much or how could I shift the dynamic of that?

Within the context of we live in a world that's very unequal,

People-please in terms of protection from somebody with more power.

So we live in a society that has systemic oppression and systemic and power imbalances.

It's not fair to put all of that on ourselves.

We do these because that is our nervous system's perception of what's the best way to stay safe.

Let's settle into that.

What's happening right now in your mind,

Your heart,

Your body?

Be sure to keep some awareness of your breath and of your body so that you're here.

Anchor into your time and space.

We're not actually at work fawning to our boss.

We're not actually in any situation right now.

We're here doing a practice and an inquiry.

Notice the rhythm of your breath.

Notice if you're breathing with some ease as you're going through.

We're poking the bear a little bit.

We're noticing,

What is my experience bringing up something that might be difficult?

And then we're also,

Look around the room and we remember that we're here in this situation and we can offer ourselves some kindness.

Bring forward an example.

There's a difference between being cooperative rather than being compliant or throwing ourselves under the bus in order to keep ourselves safe.

So bring some example to mind and notice what it feels like in your body as you're bringing the example.

So it might be someone's face.

It might be some words.

It might be something really specific that pops right into your mind.

There could be urgency.

I need to make sure that I'm not seen as the enemy and then we can very much go into a fawning response.

See yourself in the image or the video clip.

If it's at work and you're being nice to your boss when truthfully you think they're kind of incompetent or something,

Don't just look at the boss.

Also put yourself into the frame so you can see what's your body language,

What's the look on your face and what's your memory of what was going on inside as you were fawning or being a little more compliant than what was really in your heart?

What does it feel like in your body?

Is there a feeling of fear?

Is there shame?

Is there anger?

What's going on emotionally and what are the sensations and energy in your body?

If the image feels compelling,

You might want to work specifically with the image for a moment before you come into your body.

Put that image into a frame on the other side of the room.

See yourself in the image as well as the other person.

Take a look at it.

Notice your space all around the outside of the frame.

You can let your eyes go around the empty space in one direction and then another.

You're always kind of dancing between the thoughts,

The images and the sensations.

And as we come into our body,

Notice again how you're breathing.

Sometimes just a big inhale and a long exhale can reset a little bit.

If there's words that are coming in,

Like I feel disgusted with myself,

Then let's work with that.

So you might put the word up in a frame over there,

Disgusted.

What does it feel like in your body when you feel disgusted with yourself?

If that's what you're feeling,

People will be feeling different things.

And as you look at it,

If you were to have somebody sit down and talk it through with you,

Or if you were to be talking with someone who feels that way,

Someone you care about and who you respect,

What might you say to that person?

I get feeling disgusted.

I'm angry with myself that I didn't stand up for myself,

That I acted in that way.

And notice if you're disgusted with the other person.

The way we feel towards ourselves is often a lot more harsh.

We can see it with more perspective when it's somebody else,

Especially someone we care about.

Well,

I get it.

The only way that you could really get along in that situation is to talk to that person.

Is to fawn.

In the long-term,

We might look at ways to get out of the situation,

Or we might think of other ways to address it.

The thing about all of these survival responses is that they just come up.

Our nervous system assesses the situation,

And then it decides on a survival response.

So you might have had a response of anger.

Some people do.

Non-cooperative with the boss.

And you might have had that more neutral,

Like they're doing their thing,

I'm just gonna do my work and try not to be so affected by it.

Or I might freeze.

Or I might go into fawning.

So there's no inherent worthiness or judgment around which of those survival responses come up.

Part of why it's really important to be working with compassion.

Take a step back a little bit.

We do give each other more grace.

Could we give ourselves that as well?

Fawning always happens when there's someone with power over.

What are your thoughts about that?

What's the context that that happened in?

And often these are very high stakes,

And they happen on the street,

They happen at home,

They happen at work.

Sometimes they happen kind of spontaneously,

All of a sudden we stumble into something.

Sometimes it's a pattern in a relationship.

Step back a little and just describe what's the situation,

The power dynamic that created this in the first place?

Probably has something to do with some kind of systemic,

Society-wide situation.

Women,

For instance,

Will often fawn to men,

Maybe to get out of a tricky situation where we feel like we're being stalked or there's some kind of a sexual threat there.

Men don't often fawn to women,

So there's a power structure that we live in.

How would you explain that?

I behaved in this way and these were the dynamics of the situation.

And notice if your mind's kind of going off,

It might be going off into a flight.

You might be feeling kind of numb,

Like,

Oh,

This is just too much.

You can always step back.

One of the ways we step back is by doing what I was just describing.

How would we describe the situation?

What are the dynamics?

Because that helps us to realize it's not actually that I'm doing something wrong.

It's not that I'm weak.

It's that I'm in a situation where I feel a threat and I'm responding in a way that I think will help.

That is a different picture,

A different explanation,

Maybe.

If we have an inner critic saying you're weak,

You're disgusting,

That's not fair.

That's not true either.

We're just trying to get along in a very unfair,

Very structured power imbalance.

Come back into the body if that feels okay for you.

What's happening in terms of emotion?

We can work with the shame and the disgust and it's often helpful to really come back and look at that.

But what's happening in terms of your emotion?

Are you feeling any anger?

At the system or maybe about that person?

Often these are situations that started in childhood when we have a parent who's made us feel somehow that we're responsible for keeping them happy or regulated or how we're trained or how we're conditioned as a child is part of what makes us go into the different responses as well.

I'm responsible for myself.

I'm not responsible for someone else's happiness.

And I'm also responsible for my own survival,

Whether that's financial,

If it's a job,

Which we're using that as an example.

How am I going to work with this in the most skillful way possible?

We really need to see it clearly.

We need to stop blaming ourselves for systemic oppression and for the situations that we find ourselves in where the way to get through it is by being cooperative,

Compliant,

Fawning,

People-pleasing.

There's a slippery slope there.

And part of it is how we're judging ourselves.

So if you were to get in touch with anger,

What does that feel like in your body and what comes to mind?

Let's take a few breaths.

It feels demeaning when we people-please.

And sometimes we then get really angry at the person who we were sucking up to.

That's normal.

It's natural.

Of course we feel that way.

We threw ourselves under the bus or we didn't act with the dignity that we feel like we could have.

Right now,

We're not in the situation.

We're doing an inquiry.

Although in your personal life,

You might still be in a situation where that dynamic is present.

Bring this back into more of,

I'm on my own side here.

I'm doing things that are protective for me.

I could honor myself for surviving in all of the ways that we've survived.

And one of those is fawning.

It's something that we all do.

And what would release us from feeling so much judgment around that or so much shame?

Maybe bring ourselves into our heart.

It can be very helpful to recognize that we don't shame others the way we shame ourselves.

So could we bring some more compassion into our own heart for ourself,

Just as we would for somebody else?

If your friend or child or somebody came to you and said,

You know,

I'm so mad at myself that I just keep falling into this pattern.

I feel so ashamed.

What would you say to them?

And what could you say to yourself?

Can we come back into some dignity and respect for ourself?

We're not bad or weak.

Fawning doesn't mean something about us.

It just means we were in a situation and that's what we did.

Now we're here.

So as you look around the room,

Perhaps again,

Notice your environment.

The situation is something we're working with in our body and our mind,

But it's not actually presently happening.

And in the long-term,

We can often make a difference.

And this is really helpful to do again and again,

Just looking into what does it feel like?

What are the precursors of me going into fawning?

There's some kind of threat there.

We don't do this randomly.

We do it with people who have more power.

So this is definitely something to do with systemic oppression,

With the way our culture is set up.

It's gender-based,

It's class-based,

It's racial-based.

There's a lot of ways this works.

All these components together.

And could I offer myself some respect and kindness?

Let's just take the last couple of minutes of the practice to offer that to ourselves.

I could understand this dynamic.

I could offer myself some compassion,

Some connection.

You want to put your hand on your heart.

It's okay to feel angry at injustice.

That is appropriate to feel anger at injustice,

But we don't need to be angry at ourselves.

We could offer some softness there.

Maybe do a little bit of cyclic sighing,

Those deep double inhales through the nose and let yourself really release this as you breathe out.

Let it go out of your forehead,

Your jaw.

We often hold back,

So it might have a very tense jaw.

You could move your jaw around,

Move your shoulders around.

After we're finished here,

You might want to stand and shake it all out.

Let go of some of that energy.

These are things that we can continue to work with.

It's very complex.

It's very nuanced.

Somatic mindfulness is when we notice,

I'm starting to feel this familiar feeling.

I'm starting to feel myself go into a bit of fawning.

What's going on?

What's the actual situation?

After the fact,

We can look back and go,

Okay,

I see that was the dynamic.

What am I going to do next time?

It might be next time I'm going to say,

Excuse me,

I need to go to the washroom and leave the room.

Maybe we could hold our own hands or we could focus on our breath or do something to stay regulated.

So we need to remember fawning is a survival response.

It's in the nervous system.

And then how can we come back into more stability in our nervous system?

And from there,

We will act in a different way and we will be kinder to ourself.

But we have to come back to that regulation first.

We can always come back to kindness.

It's always helpful to be kind and respectful with ourselves.

And when we notice this is going on,

There are a lot of things that we can do short-term and long-term.

Reviews

Really helpful thank you. Feel like I need to come back to this again and work on it some more, appreciate you offering this ❤️🙏🏻