tags: people-pleasing

Notes

• fawning is a symptom of original-spin

Biology of fawning

• Fawning is when our bodies reflexively appease another body. This includes everything from agreeing to compliments to sex. The key word here is reflexive.
• When we experience threat, or perceive threat, our bodies get flooded with stress hormones. This excess of stress hormones can move us directly into a trauma response: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
• Fawning is not a choice. It is a very different feeling in my body when I compliment from fawning and when I compliment from a conscious, authentic place.
• What happens when we fawn ?
  • Fawning is a hybrid response because three big things happen.
  • We say "yes" when we in actuallity have a no.
• The roots of fawning
  • Fawning has sophisticated roots. The purpose of it is to keep us alive during relational threats.
  • Here are specific purposes during real-time relational threats where fawning saves our lives:
    1. When an animal might attack us.
    • Images from movies and real life come to mind of someone speaking calmly to a growling dog “Nice dog…nice dog. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m your friend” in hopes that the dog leaves them alone.
    2. Armed robbery.
    • The person at the cash register says “You can have whatever you want. I won’t call the cops. I promise” so that the robber will leave them alone.
    3. Kidnapping.
    • I can fawn and seemingly befriend my kidnapper and that might tell them that I want to be with them. This is why, in some cases, people are able to escape because their captor allows them to use a bathroom at a gas station, check into a hotel, or even go get groceries & then they’re able to flee and get help.
    4. Sexual assault.
    • Fawning is a major life raft when we’re forced into sexual experiences with someone who may be, or is, violent. Pretending we like it and even going along with it can literally save your life.
    5. Domestic violence.
    • Whether you’re a child in a violent family or a partner in a violent relationship fawning is often employed to settle the nervous system of the aggressor in the family home. Fawning with a parent or a partner can save you from being abused day by day.
• This is why fawning exists. It’s a brilliant mechanism to propel us into pleasing the person who has our lives in their hands. What we want to identify is this:
  • Have we experienced any of the above in the past?
  • Are we currently experiencing any of the above?
  • Do we come from families and people who have experienced any of the above?
• Then fawning becomes personality
  • The problem with fawning has nothing to do with the aforementioned examples. I hope I fawn if I experience those things so my life can be saved.
  • Being trauma simply means that the traumatic event still lives in your body and so your body still stays active in the automatic trauma response.
  • That means you could have experienced any of these situations and then continued fawning in situations that weren’t threatening because your body is stuck there.
  • More likely, you have inherited fawning from your family and your society. You’ve inherited it from people who experienced these things.
  • It has transformed from a temporary, life-saving response into a personality. It is the role you play with this around you and, at this point, they expect you to.
• practice: making the fawn response conscious
  1. Look for a time today (or even yesterday) where you agreed, complimented, or did whatever someone else wanted.
  2. How does it FEEL in your body when you picture this? Is there constriction or ease?
  3. With fawning, there will always be construction because it’s a hybrid response of freezing our truth to perform and please. So notice the constricted part.
  4. What did this constricted part actually want to say or do? What did it need?
  • These 4 steps, as simple as they seem, are the beginning to freeing yourself from a lifetime of fawning.

Lookup

• free E-Mail course from person.luis-mojica
• How to stop people-pleasing?