What is fawning and how did you learn it?

You’ve probably heard of people pleasing but did you know that if you are a people pleaser as a result of trauma you experienced growing up, you could be acting out what’s actually referred to as fawning?

The Cambridge Dictionary defines fawning as “praising someone too much and giving them a lot of attention that is not sincere in order to get a positive reaction.”

It is a wonderful and kind gesture to be pleasant to others, to praise, encourage and support the people in our lives, and we absolutely should be free to do that, but there’s a difference between wanting to help another through kindness and bending over backwards for someone as a trauma response.

Fawning is a result of learning, and forming a belief, that serving another person’s needs before, or instead of your own needs, is actually in your best interests.

Let me put it another way. Fawning is a result of learning, and forming a belief, that pleasing other people and fulfilling their needs before your own, continues to validate that other people’s needs are more important than yours; or that yours aren’t important at all.

So how did you learn this and come to believe this to be true?

Fawning is generally learned in childhood. Think back to a time in childhood when you didn’t want to go to a family gathering/sports game/shops etc but you were made to go anyway and you were either rewarded or punished for your choice.

For example, if you didn’t want to go to Uncle’s birthday lunch because he said weird things to you which made you feel awkward and uncomfortable or you didn’t want to attend your sports game because your teammates said mean things to you at training about your capability as a player or you didn’t want to go shopping because you were anxious about big crowds at the shops and being accidentally separated from your Mum. When someone insisted, or even forced you to attend anyway, you may have felt like you weren’t heard or that your feelings didn’t matter. And to repeatedly not feel heard, seen or valued is a kind of trauma.

To get you to ‘agree’ to go, you may have been rewarded with a treat or dessert, a present, more game/screen time, your choice of something if you attended without a fuss. Or you may have been grounded, told you were selfish or ignored for a period of time because you fussed about attending.

One causes pleasure – the rewards that meet your need of feeling valued and loved, the other causes pain – the punishment that caused you to suppress your own feelings and do what someone else wanted instead. Since it’s your brain’s job is to move us towards pleasure and away from pain, it will always try really hard to move you away from a painful experience and towards what it perceives as the more pleasurable option, in the name of survival.

Of course, as human beings we want to do nice things for others and help others out. Fawning is a result of experiencing this repeatedly throughout your childhood in a way that affected your ability to hear your own needs and wants and the way you ignored your own needs to do for another instead.

Fawning can become your natural state as a result of parents or other caregivers, relatives, school, teacher’s, peer group. In saying this, I don’t believe most Mums and Dads set out to traumatise us. Their experience of living, parenting, interacting, working, surviving comes directly from their own experiences as a child and the way those experiences have moulded and shaped the structure of the brain, the nervous system and their behaviour. Which came from their parents, family and community. Which came from their parents, family, peer group, community and so on it goes.

If you recognise fawning in your own behaviour you may wonder how do I break the pattern of fawning?
You break a pattern by recognising it, acknowledging it and by consistently and often reminding yourself that you are important too. That your needs are important and that your feelings are valid.

Soothe yourself with kind words that you’re safe to want what you want and it’s ok to want what you want.

Practise putting your needs first.

It may feel horrendous to begin with as your brain fights you to return to a state of familiarity rather than this new and scary state. But eventually it will become familiar to prioritise your own needs instead of fawning over another.

Always remember, “You are significant because you are and I love you because you exist.”