Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves—And How to Find Our Way Back

Drawing from personal experience and seven case studies, psychologist Clayton (Believing Me) presents an empathetic primer on fawning as a survival response in an unsafe world. Unlike fight, flight, or freeze, fawning neither risks greater harm nor complete shutdown, making it a valuable tool for winning favor from the powerful in a patriarchal, neurotypical, and able-bodied society. But when fawning becomes habitual, it causes shame, depression, and anxiety, rendering efforts to “just get over it [and] grow up already” futile, as it’s not a choice or personality trait but a survival tactic. To change, readers should reconnect with their intuition and redirect the “sensitivity, empathy, patience, and all the goodwill and wisdom” they’ve devoted to others back to themselves; more concretely, they can take such steps as learning to feel healthy anger and setting clear boundaries with others. Clayton valuably illuminates the inner workings and invisible tolls of fawning as a response to trauma, and her unfailingly empathetic tone ensures readers won’t feel judged. This edifies and reassures. (Sept.)