Fawning Part 2: How to Finally Stop People Pleasing
If people pleasing had a spirit animal, it would be the chameleon.
Chameleon-ing to the environment around it so it doesn’t stand out too loudly for fear of getting eaten alive.
The purpose of the fourth survival skill, Fawning, is to protect yourself from predators by camouflaging yourself.
Fawning is the emotionally intelligent sibling of the other three survival skills: fight, flight, or freeze.
In Part 1, we defined FAWNING as becoming someone you’re not as a way to keep the peace, get the love, or secure the belonging you crave.
I asked you 4 questions to uncover the motivation and fears beneath your people-pleasing pattern but there’s more.
Once you discover the worst-case scenarios you’re avoiding by people-pleasing, you need to do what the poet Rupi Kaur suggests:
“to heal
you have to
get to the root
of the wound
and kiss it all the way up.”
In other words: If you want to heal chronic people-pleasing, revisit the memories that taught you that the only way to get what you want is to become someone you’re not.
If Part 1 was about revealing the fears that stop you from being yourself like the fear of rejection, Part 2 is about getting to the root of where fawning began.
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Here’s some context:
I had a client who had a hard time saying what she thought in team meetings. Her throat would literally close up.
On days when she mustered the courage to speak her mind, she’d spend a solid hour ruminating on it, worried that her boss was mad or that her coworkers thought she was trying to seem better than them.
This client couldn’t feel feelings in her body, so instead, I asked her to picture the part of herself that was afraid of making someone mad.
Then, I asked her to picture the part of her that was afraid of seeming like she was better than her peers.
We put these parts in a room in her mind’s eye and began a conversation. Since she felt shame and anxiety talking about it, I had her tapping the EFT point
I like to blend Parts Work and EFT tapping, my favorite stress reduction tool based in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, because it decreases a client’s stress response, and helps them connect to their calm-creative thinking brain.
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Parts Work = A modality where you relate to obstacles, emotions, and even your inner critic as parts of you versus all of you.
It can help you reconnect to your TRUE self and have compassion for the many masks you’ve picked up on this journey of being human.***
As we tapped and talked to my client’s various parts, she discovered that they were much younger than her.
Sitting before her was a five-year-old hiding in her room. Her dad was yelling at her for talking back to him. He was scolding this young part of her for thinking she could question his authority.
Then there was her inner 14-year-old who had gotten a full ride to a prestigious private school. Her peers, who used to be her friends, were shutting her down with jabs like, “Oh you think you’re better than us? You’re too good for public school now?
When you want to do powerful somatic work that sticks, you need to follow the surface pattern down a specific route to where it all began.
For her, it began in two places, with two different parts of herself that needed completely different things.
The five-year-old part needed to be able to have an opinion that was different than her father’s without being punished.
She needed a voice.
She needed to be told his anger was over and that she never had to live with an angry man
ever
again.
It would take multiple sessions for her to settle into that safety, but by slowly building trust (and a lot of emotional regulation), her younger self and nervous system finally believed us.
The teenage part needed to see her older self, see that she had grown up, had left that small town, and surrounded herself with a sisterhood of powerhouse women who would never dare shame her for succeeding.
They would be her biggest cheerleaders, even if her growth meant leaving them behind.
It took a few sessions to reckon with both parts and the unique trauma held in her body, but this is why I love advanced EFT techniques: I could guide my client to give her younger selves exactly what they needed… Something a script could never do.
That is the beauty of blending Advanced EFT Tapping with Parts work:
There is no script. It’s tailored and unique to each person’s story.
If you use a generic script, you will never uproot the memories that taught you that hiding your true colors is the only way to avoid judgment.
Consistent Parts Work will reparent your parts with this mantra:
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You’re not a chameleon: Being YOURSELF is safer than disguising yourself as SOMETHING ELSE.
My challenge for you: Bookmark the following Daily Parts Exercise and do it 3x this week.
It will change your life.
Daily PM Parts Work Exercise
Place a hand on your heart. Begin massaging or tapping your chest.
Think of the last time your inner people-pleaser emerged.
Embody the energy of compassionate curiosity vs. an agenda to fox this part of you.
Ask yourself: How old is this part of me?
What or who are they afraid of?
Remember: You don’t need any fancy Scripts. Learning to tap on your unique story is best
Sit with this younger version of you. Hold or comfort them until they trust you’re there without an agenda.
Validate the beliefs they internalized: Remember how the inner teen internalized that “seeming better than your peers leads to judgment?”
Thank them for doing their best given the tools they had.
Lastly, tell them how their situation has changed. Remember how the inner five-year-old needed to know that she no longer lived with her angry dad? Show your inner part how different your life is now compared to that season in your past.
Breathe as you reconnect to the TRUE ADULT you.
The more you do this, the more you’ll view every pattern, whether people-pleasing, jealousy, or anger, as a younger version of you (or your client) who needs loving comfort, not a scripted exchange.
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If you want to change others’ lives with EFT and Parts Work, you might be a good candidate for my Expert Level 3 EFT Training.
View the Expert Level 3 Workshop page or email me at jackie@theeftmasterclass.com to see if you qualify.
My intention is that you change your relationship to your inner people pleaser. That you no longer shame them, but comfort and honor them.
When you do this consistently, your life will change.
If you want to change others’ lives by learning to blend Advanced Emotional Freedom Technique, Parts and Inner Child Work,
For all dates and learning modules, click here.
It’s the last time I’m teaching this workshop for at least a year so I have ALL the feels about it.
Sending so much love to you and the fawning parts of you,
Jackie (sending kisses to the younger self) Viramontez
P.S. If you want to pass these tools on to others, I would love to see you at my virtual EFT Expert Level 3 Training. I currently have 2 spots left (unless I add another assistant) so reserve one of these spots here.