[0:00]Well, welcome to another Friday night. We started a a little series on fawning, which I think is the least understood of the four major ways of responding to trauma. But it's the most common way within complex trauma, relational trauma. It's the ultimate survival for a child who couldn't fight or flight and freezing was okay to an extent, but they still needed their needs to get met. And so they had to get the people who were responsible for them to like them enough to meet their needs and keep them safe. So they learned to please and appease the very people who were abusing and neglecting them. And so we're doing a little deeper dive into what are some of the characteristics of a person who's fawning. So initially, they fawn to survive. But as they come into adult life, they continue to fawn, and it's driven now by a shame belief that says, I'm not good enough on my own. Nobody will want a relationship with me unless I earn their love, because I'm not good enough. So that shame then morphs into other characteristics that we're looking at. So we're looking at the internal life of a fawner, who on the surface their external life looks very happy. Looks like they're getting lots of validation, looks like they love themselves, looks like they're wonderful, balanced, capable, successful people. But what's their internal world like? So I want to cover three more characteristics today. Number one, is a deep longing for validation. So if you go back to a child who has to fawn to survive, it's a child who's neglected or abused. Another way of looking at that is a child who felt that they weren't seen. A child who their needs didn't matter. A child who wasn't valuable enough to their parents that their parents would take an interest in them and care for them and meet their needs. And so they didn't feel seen, they didn't feel they had value. And so, sadly for many of them, what they begin to realize is the only time their parents give them attention and want to connect with them and therefore validate them, is, number one, when they're bad, and then their parents give them attention, or, number two, and this is the more desirable one, is when they do what their parents want. When they conform to their parents' beliefs, their parents' interests, their parents' thinking, their parents' moods, when they merge with what their parents want, that's their best chance of being valued by their parents, of their parents liking them, of their parents going, oh, you're such a wonderful kid. I'm so glad I have you, I will meet your needs. And so the only way to get value is to become what their parents want, and what this is what they realize, they don't believe they have value just by existing. Because if they just exist, they get ignored or abused. They only have value if they earn it. That is fawning, so it creates within them a hunger for validation because they want their parents to respect them. They want their parents to approve of them. They want their parents to connect with them, to like them, to have fun with them, to meet their needs. So they're constantly working to earn validation. And what they find is when they get that validation from their parents, so their parents praise them for being such a giving child. Their parent praises them for helping out so much around the house, for taking care of their upset dad. They they love that, and what happens when they get that validation is it takes the pain of their shame away. It helps them get rid of those negative feelings temporarily. So that's a double benefit. So not only are they connecting and getting noticed and positive, but it's medicating all of that pain and emptiness inside. So Dr. Ingrid Clayton, and I've referred to her book Fawning, which is excellent, says this. There's one theme underneath all the signs of fawning: the need to be chosen, the need for external validation, the need to be rescued or picked. This is in fact a counterpoint to self-abandonment. If there is less of me, I need more of you. So what is happening as you minimize and you lose yourself and you abandon yourself and become totally attuned to the other person, is now I need you to validate me constantly because I can't validate myself. I need you to be what I should be to myself. So they're necessarily less of me because that's how I survive, but now I got to have more of you validating me, more of you making me feel good, more of you doing all the stuff for me that I should be doing.
[5:37]That is what is happening with fawning. And that is a sad part of fawning, is there's always a trauma bond that develops with this validation piece. So let's take it a little farther.
[6:42]So, a child then is learning what gets me validation, because that's the key to my survival. That's what I long for. So when I get validated, they like me, and now they're not going to hurt me, they're going to meet my needs, and it sure feels good. So, I better find out what gives me value. So is it my brains? Is it my looks? Is it helping others? Is it being funny? Is it being successful? Is it getting money? And so if I can find what my parents validate, and then if I'm good at that, then I will focus on becoming a professional at that. I will become the best in the world in this area, because this is my bread and butter. This is my ticket to love, this is my ticket to relationships.
[7:59]So if you look at many faers, they are good socially, they are funny, they're great at telling stories, they're great at taking care of people. So on the surface, and here's what I want you to see, on the surface, it looks like they are good at connecting with people. Because they get other people laughing, they get other people full of admiration of them, and other people want to connect with them, it looks like. But here's two things that I want you to see. Number one, many faers, they will express frustration that many of the people that they're trying to connect with and have a relationship with are emotionally unavailable. And they'll go, I am so tired of emotionally unavailable people. And in their mind, because they're faers, they think they're emotionally available. They think they're always trying to connect with people, but what they don't realize is that they're actually also emotionally unavailable. They might not be conscious of it, that's the problem. They have practiced and perfected looking emotionally available, but they've abandoned themselves. They're disconnected from themselves, they're actually emotionally unavailable. So let me take you to the second thing. When we look at the four trauma responses, it's very easy to see fight, flight and freeze are incapable of a healthy relationship. But what many people think is that fawning, that person must be capable of a healthy relationship. Because wow, they take care of people, they listen so well, they're funny, they tell good stories, they communicate so well, they must be good at relationships. No, they are not. That is the subtle deception of fawning. It makes it look like you're good at connecting and good at relationships, but it never leads to healthy connection. Because a fawner can't be authentic. A fawner has to abandon themselves. They have to earn validation. You can't have a healthy relationship that way. A fawner has to become smaller. You can't have healthy relationship that way. A fawner has to make their needs less important than your needs, so that they're inferior to you as a superior. You can't have a healthy relationship that way. So fawning looks like it's going to lead to a healthy relationship, but it never does. It is incapable of a healthy relationship. I hope that really hits home for some that are still hanging on to fawning and justifying it. There's a fifth characteristic of fawning that I think is so important to understand, and that is faers though probably totally unaware of it, but at a subconscious level, they have a deep anger and resentment. So it's really important to understand that fawning is all about avoiding anger. So you avoid conflict, but it doesn't mean you're not mad. So to the other person, to their face, you act so pleasant, you act so kind, you act like you're in love, but deep inside you resent that person. So you're angry at them, but you can't tell them that you're mad. So you denied that you're angry to them, and you even denied it to yourself, but deep down inside of faers is a deep bubbling anger because they're being neglected, abused, used. They're having to deny their needs, suppress their needs, sacrifice themselves, sacrifice their needs, put others ahead of them all the time, not have their needs met. They're angry. There's a deep anger there, but they're not even aware of it because anger scares them to death. Many faers don't feel entitled to be angry. They're afraid as a child that if they showed anger, they would get punished, they would get rejected. Anger in their mind became something bad. You're bad to be angry, you're a bad person if you're angry. And so they suppress their anger, suppress their anger, denied that they even had anger, put on a happy face, tried to be happy all the time. But now if they start becoming aware of their anger, they're afraid of it. Because they begin to realize there's such a deep reservoir down there of anger that if they ever open the floodgates on that, it would drown them, it would consume them. That's how much anger is there. So what I want you to realize is that for a fawner, there's a deep incongruence between how they act and what's really going on in their internal world. So on the external, they look like they love you. They are happy, they're full of joy, they're caring for you, they they look empathetic, they look considerate, but deep inside often there's just a deep anger and resentment at you. Because you're not respecting them the same way they're respecting you. You're not meeting their needs the same way they're meeting your needs. You're not caring for them like they're caring for you. So there's faers and this is what they often don't realize and are often unaware of because they've suppressed it so much, is the deep incongruence, almost, you could say hypocrisy, between their external actions and their internal world. So, many faers begin to become aware of their simmering resentment, whether it's from having to be the responsible one in the relationship, or having to make most of the sacrifices or do most of the work, or that they take care of everybody else's needs, but nobody takes care of them, or that we have to tolerate things that nobody should have to tolerate, abuse, neglect, constant demands, nobody doing anything for them. Then they begin to realize that they're angry. Or they begin to realize that they're meeting everybody else's needs, but nobody's taking care of their needs. They're tolerating all kinds of abuse and neglect, they're angry. They begin to be aware that anger is there. But they think it's just in that moment. Just because, oh yeah, I'm I'm abused today or neglected today, or I'm doing all the sacrificing today. They don't see the the full depth of it, that it's deep, deep, deep, that they've always been neglected, and they've abandoned themselves. But here's where it gets tricky. You see for a fawner, you can't then express that anger because anger's bad. So, you have to find an outlet for your anger that's acceptable. And so, for most faers, they find an outlet for their anger by gossiping to their friends or whining to their friends about their situation. So they couldn't go to directly to the person that's hurting them, that's abusing them, that's neglecting them. No, because then that would be confrontation, that would be conflict. That could lead to the other person being angry with them. That would not be acceptable. So, let's use an outlet that would be acceptable, let's just whine to my friends and tell them about how terrible my partner is and laugh about it, and then we all have a bitch session together that gives an outlet to our anger.
[16:09]Or, some go to, let's beat up myself. It must be my fault, I must be doing something wrong. I must not be loving enough, I must be too selfish, and they beat themselves up. So their anger gets turned on themselves. And then for others that just leads to a deep depression. And so this whole anger thing is such an important part in understanding fawning. So hopefully you begin to get some insight into that. The sixth characteristic is comes out of the anger, but it's conflict avoidance. Again, the child in conflict complex trauma was abused or neglected. They couldn't confront the people that were doing it. That would involve conflict, that would involve being judged and hurt even more and punished. And so what they began to realize is that conflict always leads to more pain. So you're in pain already, but if you engage in conflict, you end up in even more pain. So avoid conflict, go to fawning, that will at least maybe alleviate your pain a little bit. So conflict is something that scares faers greatly. And so, for many people in adult life, if they see potential conflict about to happen, it triggers them in such a way that they will immediately go into a fawning response. They will immediately start taking care of the other person's emotions and all of that. So, what happens to the child then that conflict is a no-no? Well, let's become a peacemaker, peace at any price. So, never rock the boat, sweep everything under the rug, go along to get along. Never confront, never disagree, never argue, never express a hurt, swallow your hurt, swallow your pain, put on a happy face, conform. That's the only way to have happy relationships. That's the only way to have peace. Don't deal with the real problem. And sadly, many get validated for this. They get told, oh, you're so forgiving, you're so giving, you're so accommodating, you're so tolerant, you're just so easy to get along with. And they think, wow, this is working, this is wonderful, this is good. So it's important to understand that for many people with fawning, they develop workarounds with conflict. So conflict would be, I would have to go and confront the person who is abusing me or neglecting me or hurting me. But I'm not willing to do that, because that will lead to more pain, that's the belief. So I need workarounds. So what are the workarounds? Well, are there any ways that this conflict could get resolved without direct confrontation? So I'm having a problem with this person in authority that I'm in a relationship with, but I can't confront them, but I want to fix the problem. So how do I do that? Well, I could go on the internet and maybe there's some quick fix out there that if I just use this tool that'll fix. So I'll do that. Or, I could go to therapy, and I could find a way that I could do something different that would fix this problem. So I'm going to do a work around to the actual conflict that should happen by going to therapy and looking for a quick pick fix. Or I'm going to drag my partner to therapy, and maybe the therapist will get my partner to change. That's a good work around from actually having conflict. Or, I will just drop hints, or I will get friends and family to maybe say something. So I'll triangulate. So instead of me confronting my partner, I'll get them to confront my partner and them get in his face or her face about their behavior so that I don't have to do it. Or I'll get the kids to do it, or I'll get really sneaky, crafty and about sharing my opinion about certain things that is dropping hints, or I'll I'll just share some articles or videos with them that might help them see their things. Or I'll say, I'll give in and say yes to every demand they have to avoid conflict. But then I'll look for ways to get out of having to do what I agreed to do. So those are all the workarounds that people do to try to avoid conflict, but still try to get the problem addressed. So those are three more characteristics of fawning. So again, I hope that helps you. We're going to get to the healing of fawning, kind of un-fawning eventually. Right now, we're just really trying to understand it in depth. That's the end of our talk. I just wanted to say that we've discovered that about half of the people that watch this haven't subscribed to our channel, and we would just love if you would take the time to subscribe, to like, to share this with others, that just helps with the algorithms of YouTube that then make this available to more people. So thank you again for your time. Have a great day.
