Fawn: The Hidden Stress Response Impacting Your Business

Fawning is one of the four survival responses that we inherited from our ancestors: Fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

Fawning is when you become whoever you need to be in order to keep the peace.

Does being a YES person keep the peace at work?

Then you’ll ignore your boundaries and sacrifice your needs to meet the needs of the company.

Does being agreeable keep the peace around your boss?

Then you’ll camouflage your confusion and critiques even when they impact your bottom line.

You can tell if Fawning is your go-to instinct if you:

• Ignore your own needs as a way to meet others’ needs

• Struggle to know how you’re feeling because you’re more concerned with how others are feeling

• Change aspects of your personality depending on who is in the room

• Feel guilty asking for what you want if it could inconvenience someone

These modern-day signs of fawning are evidence that your stress response is activated.

The stress response is the ancient part of your brain that says, “You’re unsafe and should go into survival mode.”

If you checked 2 or more of the above qualifiers, your go-to survival instinct might be to fawn versus lashing out, running from your problems, or freezing. The difference between fawning and freezing is fawning makes you shut down parts of yourself while freezing makes you shut down all of yourself (think: deer in headlights, an inability to speak or respond, or literally feeling stuck in your seat).

Despite these modern-day examples, fawning as a survival skill is ancient.

Your ancestors have been fawning for centuries:

• They lied about their religious beliefs to not get persecuted. The consequence of not fawning was often death.

• They changed their last names to conceal their heritage. If they didn’t hide their authentic lineage, the consequence was slavery and persecution.

• They pretended to have the wealth to attend certain events or wear certain clothes as a way to move up the social ranks and escape poverty. If you revealed your true state, you might be shunned from society.

Fawning, or camouflaging your truth, in order to survive is ancient history.

When I first set out to put my people-pleasing ways in my past, I bought books and downloaded EFT tapping scripts:

The scripts said things like:

I choose to be myself

I choose to show up authentically

I release the fear of rejection

I release feelings of inadequacy

These scripts gave me momentary courage for sure but then my boss would ask me to work over the weekend and I’d find myself smiling and nodding: “Whatever you need sir!”

Subtext: My needs don’t matter.

Deeper subtext: Who taught you your needs don’t matter? I digress: I’ll get to that in part 2.

Have you been there?

Have you downloaded books on codependency and listened to meditations on people pleasing but still find it hard to release responsibility for others’ feelings, voice your needs, and stand in your authenticity?

Trust me, I get it.

The scripts and YouTube videos didn’t work for me either.

Nothing changed until I become a detective, exploring when I learned that the only way to navigate a tricky situation is to become someone I’m not.

Ask yourself:

1. When was the last time you became someone else (fawned) to avoid judgment, awkwardness or discomfort?

2. In that moment, what were you avoiding? What fears? Opinions? Feelings? Worst case scenarios?

3. If you weren’t allowed to fawn, but had to say exactly what you were thinking (or do exactly what you wanted) which of those fears, opinions, or worst-case scenarios might you face?

4. If you were completely immune to other people’s feelings, opinions, expectations, or reactions, how would you finally get to show up instead?

Now that you’ve identified the fears and motivations behind your fawning pattern + the authentic self waiting underneath, you can use EFT tapping to shift the pattern.

As I said: I’m not going to give you a script; Scripts don’t work.

Tapping works when you use your unique fears and motivations, and the memories that spawned them.

Let’s practice:

• Tap or Massage your chest point.

• Read your responses to questions 1-4.

• With your free hand, circle the words or phrases that stand out to you.

• Next, tap as you reread the charged words. Keep tapping until you can read your responses without feeling emotionally activated.

Bravo. You just made your first powerful tapping script!

Even better, it was FREE and more effective than any tapping app or script you could Google.

To show up fully in your career and relationships without fawning, you don’t need a script.

You need to reckon with the specific motivation that makes pleasing others appear more attractive then pleasing yourself.

When you tap and answer the questions above, you’re already doing that.

What’s a sign that you’re stepping away from fawning and embodying your empowered self?

You’ll be able to imagine fears and worst-case scenarios without getting emotionally dysregulated.

Emotional regulation is when you feel calm, cool, and collected despite could-be triggers.

For example:

• You reflect on the misunderstanding with your client and suddenly it feels very easy to clearly communicate what you need.

• You reflect on the memory when your boss was disappointed and you feel compassion for yourself for not always being perfect… and compassion for your boss who’s going through a stressful season.

• You look at your to-do list and instead of telling your boss you’re fine, you have the creative solution to delegate a few tasks and the codices to ask your boss for help.

In my EFT workshops, I explain this shift as moving from the 4 Fs of stress to the 4 C’s of peace: Your body surrenders fight, flight, freeze, and fawn and instead, you embody calm, confidence, creativity, and compassion.

Here’s the catch: There is a part of you that might always be afraid of being yourself because authenticity, and the potential rejection, are scary.

That is why in part 2, I’ll be sharing how to revisit the memories of when you first learned that people-pleasing was the best way to survive and thrive.

More on that next time!

Jackie (your people-pleaser advocate) Viramontez

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