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Those who fawn become flexible, leaving them vulnerable to being stretched and bent by those more rigid.

Fawning is a survival strategy rooted in our need for safety and connection.

Putting others first disconnects you from your own needs and emotions and hides your needs from others.

Have you ever found yourself:

Apologizing to someone else who was actually in the wrong?

Calling yourself sensitive or otherwise judging yourself when someone else did something hurtful to you?

Internally invalidating your own feelings or needs by telling yourself you "shouldn’t feel that way" or "shouldn't need that thing"?

Agreeing with something, even when you didn’t believe it, just to stop things from escalating?

Keeping your needs inside rather than expressing them?

Being hypervigilant about making sure your partner is OK, and losing touch with your own emotions?

If so, you know something about fawning, a survival strategy in which we shrink ourselves to maintain harmony. In addition to fight, flight, and freeze, we can also fawn when facing relational stress. At its core, fawning means putting others above yourself, minimizing your feelings and needs to stay safe from harm.

The Hidden Cost of Fawning

Those who fawn become flexible when threatened, leaving them vulnerable to being stretched and bent by those more rigid. Fawning often becomes part of a pattern in which demanding behavior from one partner elicits increasingly appeasing........

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