BONUS EPISODE: Fawning: The Trauma Response Hiding in Plain Sight With Dr. Ingrid Clayton | Ep 152

Hello and welcome back to the Holistic Inner Balance Podcast. I am Hadlee.

And I'm Dr. Nicole.

My mind is blown after, after this conversation. You guys are in for such a treat. For any of you, I mean, especially women, but really anyone that's listening to this podcast, like The stuff that we talk about is, is just absolutely mind-blowing.

Yeah. Let me introduce our guest. This is, uh, Ingrid Clayton, and she's a licensed clinical psychologist with a master's in transpersonal psychology, and she has a PhD in clinical psychology. She's had a thriving private practice for over 15 years and is a regular contributor to Psychology Today. Where her blog, Emotional Sobriety, has received over 1 million views. And she's the author of the brand new book, comes out September 9th, 2025, and it's called Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves and How to Find Our Way Back. You're in, as Hadlee said, for a really great episode. So without further ado. Are you ready, Hads?

Let's get into it.

So tell us about fawning. A lot of us are thinking about deer. They're like, oh, it's a fawn. What is fawning? What is this word?

It's so funny. When we went to, you know, get the book published, we thought, you know, no images of baby deers ever, right? Because it's just, I don't know, it evokes such a different, different feeling tone. But, um, fawning is a trauma response, and it was coined by the psychotherapist and complex trauma expert, um, Pete Walker. And we all know about fight, flight, and freeze, and so this is an extension of that into fawning. So it's, you know, the F, the alliteration, it's sort of a nice, a nice ring to it. But it is in fact a trauma response, and it's a relational trauma response where you appease, caretake, sort of lean into the relationship that is causing you harm in order to Reduce the harm, reduce the threat.

Hmm. So it's a trauma response, and it's to try to reduce the threat by appeasing to the would-be perpetrator, right?

That's right. And it might be a specific perpetrator. It also shows up in anywhere there's systems of power, right? Anywhere there are hierarchies, the body kind of knows where it exists in the pecking order of all things. And You know, when you think about something like the fight response, for a lot of fawners, the fight response made things worse. The fight response was not available to them. Perhaps they were a child or they're a person of color, right? It can make things worse. And so fawning became this other adaptation where you can't flee the environment that you're in. It's the water that you're swimming in all the time. How can I make my situation just a little bit better, kind of get out unscathed, right? So, um, that's a presentation of fawning.

And you talk about how fawning is a hybrid trauma response. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Yes. So when you think about fight-flight energy, it's very mobilizing, right? It's active. And at the other end of the spectrum, we have hypoarousal, which is really this Downregulation and something like the submit response, or what we also call collapse. You see this in the animal kingdom where there's a prey animal and it's like caught in the clutches of the lion and it just plays dead, right? There's no muscle tone, there's no act— it's literally its body just spontaneously plays dead. That's the submit response. With fawning, the hybrid is in that it's hyperarousal and the hypoarousal happening at the same time. So when we think of fawning, we usually think of the aspects that are more— what's the word I'm looking for? Well, they're more obvious. They're about managing the states and moods of the people around us. Hi, can I help you? Where we're smiling, we're dancing, we're flirting, all of these things, right? making people laugh. It's very active, but at the same time, the hypoarousal means we are disconnecting from ourselves, from our needs, from our values, from our boundaries, right? This hypoarousal is the piece that makes this other active part possible. And, you know, what I've seen and experienced as a fawn or myself is that we're shamed for this active part. It's sort of like, well, why don't you just raise your self-esteem and like get some healthy boundaries and It seems so simple. It seems so cognitive and rational. And we go, well, yeah, why don't I do that? Well, I don't do that because part of the fawn response in order to survive my environment has me disconnecting from self to the point where some people don't even know cognitively that they're in an abusive situation at all. Right? So

they— I really appreciate that. And it, it can be so appealing to have somebody who's a fawner in your life. And I'm thinking about how I, that's how I identify as my main way of responding to trauma too.

Yeah.

Is I'm a master fawner and I didn't realize that it was a relinquishing of self, a relinquishing of identity, saying no to myself again and again and again

to

appease other people. At the end goal of trying to feel safe and protected. And so I really appreciate that, that juxtaposition you're kind of introducing us to, that hyper in combination with hypo.

Yes, because to your point, we're in a double bind, right?

Yeah.

And the body has to choose, and it chooses safety over self.

Oh.

It's always going to choose survival, right? It's not interested in my opinion of like, but I'd like to have more of a voice. If my body does not feel safe, my body is going to respond accordingly, right? And so part of the work then, particularly for complex trauma survivors, is starting to discern and teasing apart, like, is this really unsafe? Or is this just that old discomfort and the alarm bells going off, like it's not gonna be safe, right? Like, we know all of our trauma responses, particularly with complex trauma, which basically means ongoing, you know, day-to-day prolonged traumatic experiences over time, that evokes ongoing prolonged experience of a trauma response to where we don't even know that we're living in a trauma response all the time. That's why I call us fawners. It's not like you're in a specific traumatic situation. It just becomes sort of who you are. We start to think it's just our personality. Like, I'm just being nice, right? I'm just an accommodating person. And in truth, you're living in survival mode. And so we have to sort of start to slow things down and reconnect with our body in a different way and discern, is this in fact Dangerous, or is this just discomfort? And I need to practice being with myself in the face of conflict, essentially, which is like the thing we've all been avoiding. The stakes are too high.

The double bind is real. I, I think about how I so relate, and that's why I was so excited to interview you, is I so relate to this because my history is fawning, especially for my father, just fawn, fawn, fawn.

Yeah.

And through doing a lot of trauma work and doing shadow work and this kind of exploration is I stopped fawning as much. I still fawn a little bit. It's a very easy go-to.

Yeah.

But what that resulted in as I reclaimed and reconnected to self more, that caused a lot more strife and stress in my relationship with my dad.

Yes.

Who was used to me. I listened to heavy metal cuz he liked heavy metal. I thought golden retrievers were the best because he thought golden retrievers were the best. Right. I had all the same opinions as he did and really lifted him up and parent pleasing, you know, and all of that. And when I started to phase that out, Yeah. It created more and more stress and strife with him to where I don't really have a relationship with him anymore. That was a relationship that I. He didn't want to be in relationship with me because suddenly I'm not the person that he thought I was.

Yeah.

And so there's a definite loss. And so I feel like for some people that double bind is really real, and it's like, am I going to lose myself or lose this relationship? And/or am I going to be in danger of this relationship?

Yeah, it's such an important point, and it's such a personal process, right? So I can't tell anyone that one side of the spectrum is actually the right, you know, one to choose, if we could sort of choose it so effortlessly, right? Some people are going to say, no, I'm going to choose the relationship.

Mm-hmm.

And that's fair, right? Um, but I want us to be able to have a sense of choice so that we can know that that's the difference. And, and The other thing you're saying is like, I still fawn. And I go, well, yes, because we still have a body.

Yeah.

I'm— I say this all the time on social media. It's like I've just written the book on fawning and I just fawned 5 minutes ago because it was my go-to response in childhood. Similarly, I lived there for decades. It was my body's sense of safety in the world. And there are times that I feel unsafe, and I'm not mad about that. I'm not, you know, I'm grateful. Our trauma responses are these genius, adaptive, you know, hardwired instincts. The point being, I don't want to live there all the time where I don't have a sense of choice, right? For me, where I go, I don't even know what kind of music I like or what my opinions are, right? So it's a brave, brave journey to unfawn and to encounter what you did, which is that a lot of our relationships will have to change, and some of them will not make it through to the other side, you know. Mm-hmm. And there's a big grieving process that goes there, not just in terms of Maybe the loss of relationships. But when we realize how much we've been sacrificing for so long, like, that's a lot to grieve. You know, what would it have been like if I actually had a sense of myself in my 20s and my 30s? You know, I'll never, I'll never really know.

I'm resonating with this so much. I think I'm— I think I do more fawning than I thought I did. Even just Describing the hypo and hyperarousal that you were talking about, I— we've talked on the podcast, um, about how my tendency is to kind of go more into hypoarousal, but no one would actually know that.

Yeah.

People— because people are constantly telling me, wow, you have amazing energy, you like are always like on. When, when I'm with other people, I can, you know, put it on and perform and make them feel good about themselves. So this is so fascinating. And I've been following you for a while on Instagram and learning more about this.

Yeah.

And I'm curious, you talk about how fawning is different from people pleasing and it's different from codependency. And I think I have kind of identified myself as a people pleaser. And so I'm wondering how that is different. different and how maybe I, even though I don't really identify as having a lot of like past trauma and complex trauma, how, what, what, what's the difference?

Yeah, I think, I think of it less as in contrast to or different from and more that fawning is the heartbeat or the foundation of what we have historically called People pleasing or codependency. I think these terms, um, you know, they came up prior to our knowledge of trauma and looking at things through a trauma-informed lens. And so consequently, they are not trauma-informed. And the difficulty there is that they can stay in that very rational cognitive space of like, well, why would you want— why would you care what someone thinks of you? Yeah. Well, yeah, why would I care? And then you go, well, I care because there was a time in my life where the stakes were really high if I didn't care, if I didn't prioritize someone's feelings about me. And so that's one piece of it, right? So I really do see it as— I see it as one and the same, except that it was only when I understood fawning as a trauma response that I stopped feeling like all the self-loathing that I'd been feeling my whole life. I was able to go, that's why I do it. That's why I continue to do it. That's why it's so hard to pivot out of, right? Because it's still about safety, relational safety. But to your other point about feeling like, well, I don't have any trauma, Ingrid, like, how could this relate to me? I will say that I am a trauma therapist, a clinical psychologist. I've been— I'm almost sober 30 years now. I've been doing work on myself forever and ever. Hadlee, I don't have real trauma, right? Most of us— No, you don't. Using this trauma measuring stick, I call it, to kind of go, they had it so much worse. That's real trauma. Okay, and so Here's what we know about trauma. It almost makes me emotional every time I talk about it because it's so big. Trauma is not in the event. There is no trauma measuring stick. I cannot look at anyone else's life and say, but you had a car crash, but your dad left when you were born, right? That seems obvious to me. You are allowed to use the word trauma. Okay. Trauma is what happens to us internally in the face of an event that overwhelms our nervous system. Okay, so what's also true here is that 5 people could experience the same exact event and they would all internalize it very different ways. It's not about the event. It's an experience. And we'll put it in the context of the need to fawn. It's an experience of going, I'm not safe or seen. I am not able to advocate for myself, and you're not actually advocating for me in a way that my body seems to know that I need. Mm-hmm. That, and then to experience that day in, day out, right? So complex trauma, synonymous with Developmental trauma, childhood trauma. These are experiences where you are out of the gates disempowered. You're a child. What kind of power do you have, right? You are— we as a species are dependent on our caregivers for longer than almost any other, right? Until we're 18 years old, really. Our brains aren't even developed until we're in our mid-20s. That is a long period of time where we are needing the people in our lives to essentially co-regulate and to see us and to shepherd us into adulthood. And it's not even by any fault necessarily of the caregiver, but people are dysregulated, they're dealing with their own generational trauma, they're— right? It's like people are living in circumstances where it's genuinely really hard to kind of show up and, and provide the kind of attunement and attachment that most of us actually really need. And so We get missed and we get missed and we get missed. And you might not have any actual narrative memory or something that you can point towards. And this is what I say to my clients all the time because they come in, they go, Ingrid, I don't have trauma. They bristle at the word trauma. And I go, cool, cool, get it. Like no trauma in your history. But then I say, let's look at your symptoms. Let's look at the things that continue to show up, the ways that these— the same dysfunctional relationship keeps happening over and over again, different relationship or different, uh, same relationship, different face, right? It's like, why does this keep happening? Or to your point, you're like, you can't really see how I'm disconnecting to myself, but I know that it's true. But I sure know how to perform. I go, that's the evidence. It's in the symptoms now.

Mm-hmm.

And if we continue to use this idea that we need a trauma measuring stick to afford the opportunity or the ability to use the word trauma, guess what we're losing? And this is what makes me so sad again. We're losing access to all of the tools that work because it's tools like trauma therapy and going back into the body and all of these things. I go, if I didn't finally allow myself to say, you know what, that was traumatic what happened to me, that's real Quote unquote trauma. I would not have availed myself of the things that have absolutely changed my life for the better. So almost in a way, I go, okay, maybe it's semantics and who effing cares, right? It's just like, can we just give everyone the opportunity to have the tools and the information that's finally going to free them? We all have a body. Yeah.

So good. It's so good. Yes, I love that. I needed to hear that because I do the— I, you know, I go to therapy, I do the, the work and all of that. But yeah, I totally am like, I had great parents, I had a great childhood. They were very, like, well-versed, like, you know, whatever. Um, and I don't have that many specific memories that feel like this, like, overwhelming sensation when I think of them or anything like that. But yeah, I mean, I've got the symptoms of fawning.

So here's the other thing, and I talk about this in the book, that you're a woman. We live in a patriarchy. If you look at the definitions, even for what it means to be feminine, you could probably swap a lot of those words for the definition of a fawner.

Ah.

We are conditioned, right? It's also a learned response. So is it instinctual? Yes. Does it also look like I'm just meeting the expectations of what everyone's telling me I need to be? You know, I thought about this idea that like, when I walk down the sidewalk, how often is it usually a man and he's like, why aren't you smiling? Hey, you know, as though it's my job to welcome him to the sidewalk that we happen to be sharing, right? It's like, We get these little nods and prods, like, all day, every day. You know, little girls, oh, you look so beautiful. We learn that that's our currency, is our ability to sort of, like, be aesthetically pleasing for other people. There are so many things that we don't think about, but that our body is picking up on all day, every day. Mm-hmm. And this also has an impact, right? So we gotta look at not just our familial context, But bigger than that and bigger than that and bigger than that. And we are embedded in so many systems of power all the time. We're not thinking about it. We'd never leave the house, right? It's not like you're thinking about these things, but your body's encountering them. And it adds up.

I'm wondering about the, the, the history, the epidemiology of fawning responses. Throughout history and in different cultures, have you had an opportunity to explore that?

I mean, not really in different cultures. I will say, you know, I'm including 7 clients of mine in this book. I wanted to have as much of a diversity of experiences I could share, but within the limits of my private practice, right? But I will say it does look different for my Latina client versus my Black client versus my white clients or my Jewish clients. That there is this different sense of what it means to be safe, who are the perpetrators, right? If you even look at something like code-switching, for instance, that could be seen as an example of fawning, but, but at least that terminology implies the context, right? Similarly, with something like masking for the neurodivergent community, The term masking implies there's a reason I have to mask. And to me, the language of fawning also— this is what's different about people pleasing and codependency too— fawning implies this context that we're talking about. So being trauma-informed isn't just the body piece, which is a huge part of it, right? That I'm hardwired to have these instincts. This is what happens when I feel unsafe. But also, I feel unsafe for a reason because I live in various contexts that were not designed for me, are not supportive of me, that have tried to steamroll me in various ways. So that's the other piece that I think reduces the shame as you go, right, that's why I do that, because it was necessary, you know. Um, but I, I think My hope is that this conversation is going to continue to happen. Like, the fawning conversation is still a brand new conversation, and I'm hoping that people take that as a springboard and go and do the research and look at it in the different contexts and how it manifests and how it's manifested from the beginning of time. Um, but this is my, this is my slice of, of the conversation.

So if someone was to make— if there's like a self-assessment checklist, if someone's listening to this and they're like, maybe like in Hadlee's shoes, and they're like, I didn't really identify as having gone through a trauma, and wow, I didn't really, but I really have the symptoms, but I didn't really identify as that. Yeah. And so if, if, if there was a checklist of some of the, the indicators that maybe fawning is something that That your body uses to cope? What would that include?

I think one of the biggies is that fear of conflict, right? It's like, it's not that we don't get mad, it's that we can't tell you that we're mad, you know?

Yes, I do still get mad.

I know, right? We feel it. We're just like, oh, we learned how to squash it and sort of sideways. And that sideways thing that might be visible to you is, do I have a ton of resentments that are unprocessed, right? Like, they never show up for me and I do all of the work. And, you know, where it's like we're parenting our partners and our friends and they're not reciprocal relationships. Like, we're mad about it, but we're not able to then go to that friend and be like, you know what, I feel really let down. Or if my even saying that ignites terror in your body, like, no, I could never do that, right? Fear of conflict is a biggie, again, because conflict is an example of a healthy fight response. And for a lot of us, a healthy fight response got snuffed out. So we're building a new relationship to it now as we come out of a chronic fawn response. There tends to be that, you know, the self-abandonment piece means that we tend to get small. So It could feel like everyone in your life sort of has a sense of power and you go along to get along and I don't care where we eat and you don't really have a lot of opinions. I'm even crouching if they can physically see me, I don't know, but it's like your body gets physically small. Your voice can even get higher and smaller and sweeter and it's okay, but it's also going up to my head, which means I'm not in my body. Right. I'm not like, hi, it's like, hi, I'm not, I don't really matter, right? There's this sort of like, it's all okay. I'm not really, I'm here, but I'm not really here. There's this, we go missing. Mm-hmm. We go missing in our own lives. And that can translate to all kinds of things. Like, why aren't I advancing in my career? And why can't I get traction in these certain areas in my life? So these are a couple that come to mind. Wow.

Do you resonate with any of those, Hadlee?

Yeah, so much. Especially the conflict. The, like, you know, like, I've gotten better at asserting myself with, like, what my desires are. But if someone— if I feel like, you know, something— like, there's some sort of conflict between myself and, like, a friend or something, it's really hard for me to talk about it. I can do it with my husband. That's totally fine. But anyone else in my life outside of him, it's like terrifying.

And to that I say, it is terrifying. And we need to take that seriously. That's the other piece for me that goes missing in some of the casual discourse around people pleasing. And we literally are asking people to face Such real terror and stakes that feel higher than they might ever be capable of tolerating. And we know this in trauma work generally, it's sort of like healing from complex trauma is one giant rescue mission after another to go back and help and heal all the parts of you that got so deeply wounded and steamrolled and sort of letting them know like, I've got this, I've got this now, right? Like you weren't safe, meaning. My younger self in this case. But I've got this now. But what that takes in terms of what we actually have to face, and process, and hold, just that line alone, like, I literally feel terror, like we throw it out casually, like it's terrifying, but it's real. It's so brave. Even just pausing there, if we can't do anything else, Notice if that comes out of your mouth spontaneously, like, it's terrifying. See if you can slow that down and just notice, what does that feel like in my body? Can I notice that I'm even just being a witness to it? And in that moment, we start to change our relationship to our ability to maybe choose even just a teeny tiny bit different.

So in an example of this taking place, so you work with clients, and so, and I, I do this. Yeah, as a patient. So I, I worked with a lot of really wonderful, talented clinicians, but I fawn so hard.

Such a good point.

Yes, in therapy. Yes, yes.

I, I remember I worked with this like very Very top-level EMDR clinician.

Yeah.

And I loved her, but I was so concerned about, is she getting bored? How can I make sure that I'm getting better doing EMDR? So what is the right thing to say? Is that I was so stuck in this fawning loop that I didn't get as good of results as now. I'm working with a different therapist

who—

Mm-hmm. For all intents and purposes, kind of terrifies me a little bit. Like, I don't want to be her friend. She'll like call me out and then I'm like offended. And when I'm like sweet, she doesn't care. And I'm like, that doesn't work. But it's actually so good for me.

That's—

And so for, for you as a therapist in the moment, like if you and I were doing therapy and you noticed the fawning taking place, or with anybody, what do, what do you do in that moment? As a— so to create a meta experience to help someone who's trying to shift out of that.

Yes. Well, I love this point. It's such an important one for clinicians and therapy-goers alike, that clinicians will mistake a fawn response as like, therapy's going so well, I'm a genius clinician, look how compliant they are and how well they're doing. Because therapy in and of itself is still another hierarchy, right? I'm going to this person and they're an expert and they have all the answers. But as a chronic fawner, to your point, this is another symptom I didn't name, which is I need you to like me.

Mm-hmm.

I need you to think I'm doing a good job, right? I need to impress you. I need to perform. And this is that idea of connection is protection.

Mm-hmm.

And so here we are trying to make ourselves safe in the way we always have, connection as protection, but it's getting in the way of us actually being seen, and even by our, by ourselves. So first, I think education goes a long way. As a therapist, you're like, hey, this is the fawn response. I'm wondering if this resonates with you. And it's also why I tend to lead as a therapist on social media and in my practice more with my sort of humanity or my survival story more than my expertise. Call me, call me Dr. Clayton, right? It's like, no, no, no, call me Ingrid, call me a fawner. I'm going to tell you how I fawned 5 minutes ago so that you can know that that kind of stuff is safe here.

Hmm.

We have to go first. We have to go first. I have to go— a client comes in and maybe I know I said something shitty, or I don't know it, but I saw the slightest, like, movement in their body where I could tell maybe there was a misattunement there. They're never going to tell me, right? But maybe they come back and I go, you know, I've been thinking about that thing that I said, and I— it makes me wonder if it landed in, in this kind of way and you interpreted it that way, or whatever, right? I need to be curious Mm-hmm. When I see any potential sort of, or if things are going too swimmingly well, I'll be like, I'll be curious, like, what aren't we talking about? Like, what do you think about outside of therapy that never makes it in therapy? Um, what if, what would happen if you weren't doing a good job? And then for the, for the client, I say, this is our hardest work, but we have to risk not being liked. So to your point, now my greatest work with my current therapist— and I swear to you this happened on Tuesday of this week— I'm dysregulated and I'm overwhelmed and I'm processing some really heavy stuff, and all I can think about in this moment— my therapist is Holly— is I'm going, Holly thinks I'm totally making this up right now. She's bored. She's judging me. And so I have to, in that moment, Stop whatever I was just doing and say, Holly, I think that you're judging me and that you think I'm stupid and that I'm making all of this up. I have to make it relational with her in the way that disgusts me and horrifies me the most. And here's the thing, there's that saying, you know, wounding happens in relationship, but healing happens in relationship.

Hmm.

When I bring those Oh, I feel so cliché is the word that always— I feel so cliché and stupid and I should know better and I can't believe— when I bring that to Holly and she meets me there time and time again, it changes my life. That's the most healing and helpful thing in our therapy oftentimes is when I can get real with her I feel like I want to perform for you. Do you think I'm doing a good job, Holly? You know what I mean? It's like, that's the stuff. When I can pull my own covers and say, I'm doing it again, I'm doing it right now, do you notice that I'm doing it? And then it gives her more information, and then we can continue to move on from there. But how many of my clients have said, Ingrid, I'm your favorite, right? Like, we joke about it, and they're like, but But, but you know, I'm your favorite. Like, we're all trying to be our therapist's favorite.

Yeah, it's so true.

Maybe this is why Gloria chose Fitz Pearls. Do you remember the Gloria videos?

Yes. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to go back and watch that with like fawning in mind. That's so— that's interesting.

What is this? I don't know what you're talking about.

Hadley, they're like basic counseling curriculum. They make us watch the Gloria videos. Like, I feel like everyone who's gone through counseling school had to watch the Gloria videos, which is where this patient agreed to do sessions with the different types of therapy. So she was with like a behavior— a cognitive behavioral therapist. She was with Carl Rogers. She was with Fritz Perls and maybe one other person I can't recall.

There were 4, but I can't remember.

Apparently it wasn't as— he wasn't as exciting. They were all white guys, and that's interesting, you know. And so they're all— they're like sitting back and smoking. But Fritz Perls, he's Gestalt. And so during the interview, he just felt like he harassed her the entire time. Yeah, he's like, why you kick your foot? And she's like, why are you judging me kicking your foot? And so they just like went back and forth the whole time. And then there's this session with Carl Rogers, and he was so feeling and loving and compassionate. But if— and this is just conjecture because I like to theorize.

Yeah, yeah.

But perhaps it would have been easier for her to fawn with Carl Rogers and like have that like, oh, I just want him to like me. But there was a part of her that benefited from Fritz, who's challenging her, calling her out, she's able to say things in the moment. She doesn't have to please him because he's gonna pick on her anyway. So I don't know, it's just kind of interesting. I, I want to go back after this conversation and watch that again too.

Because I could almost— I totally am hearing what you're saying, and I could almost argue it in the other direction. There's nothing to fawn for with Carl. He's so open and available, right? Which is almost maybe boring, like there's no there there. But

yes,

Fritz, he, he was sort of poking and prodding, which again, if you think about the hierarchy and like, you're really coming at me, so I gotta work now even harder to get you to like me, to stop pointing out my foot. It could create this unconscious again Fawning response where she convinces herself. So going back to what I said at the beginning, we don't even know when we're fawning. Sometimes, sometimes we do and sometimes we do not. We genuinely believe because we need that person to like us so much, we genuinely believe that we like them back.

Mm.

Oh my gosh, that's genius. So it's probably the opposite of what I said. That is so good.

Oh my gosh. It's another way, but I'm curious because that's when my fawn response gets ignited. Maybe that's—

Me too. Yeah, when there's conflict is— and or when, when someone— when I can sense that someone doesn't like me, that's when I go out of my way to just be like, no, no, really. Like, I'll even like reach out to people. They're not even in person with me. I'm like, Like, what is this?

She has to choose him, right? To be like, but I choose you, right? Like, am I— oh my gosh, am I good enough now?

Yeah,

this is how angry evil men rise into positions of power.

Oh,

I mean, are we gonna go there? But yes, that's exactly right.

I'm not talking about anything in particular, just general specifics.

Yes, yes, you're absolutely Wow.

Wow. So what do we do next? So I always want to leave our audience with a, okay, well, what's next? I just learned about this. I feel it so resonates with me. What do I do next?

Well, everybody goes and they buy my book. No, I'm just kidding.

Yes, they do.

That's—

yes, they do.

Absolutely.

Go buy the book.

No, I'll give you the shorthand of what I'm going to tell you in the book, and essentially you can do that. Here's my biggest belief. I am not the expert on anyone's life, nor was Fritz, nor was Carl. We are the experts on our own life. And so my biggest flex, my biggest pivot that I'm inviting people into is essentially if we look at fawning as all of the permission and validation for my life, for what I say, what I wear, what I do is external. Do you like me? Do you endorse it? Do you validate me? Are you gonna make it safe? Right? We find all these ways to go to the external first to find internal safety. I'm going to invite you to cut out the middleman, even just for a moment, like in your own house, and be curious what you're just experiencing right now inside your own body. See how it feels to turn your gaze inward. And what I feel called to do right now spontaneously is what I often do, which is I put my hand on my own heart on my chest. If you can even do it skin to skin like we do with a baby when they're first born, that releases oxytocin. We can release that feel-good bonding hormone by ourselves for ourselves. And this is just a stance of self-compassion. And I spontaneously take a deeper breath. Which also signals I'm becoming more regulated, connected to myself. And this is the essence of the practice, is slowing down, turning inward, trusting what we need, and knowing that it matters, right? That we matter. And listen, listen to the nudges, listen to the calling. Listen to the opinion that you may never say, but what's it like to notice that you have one? Listen to what you're mad about. Again, I'm not telling you go run out and tell that person what's the matter with you, like have some self-esteem. I'm saying listen and put your hand on your heart and be a witness to yourself. And I believe and trust that over time, practices like these We start to cultivate enough of a sense of self, enough of a sense of internal safety, regardless of what's happening external, that we spontaneously start to have some of these conversations that felt so terrifying. I'm not asking you to go walk through the fire. I'm asking you to notice the fire that's already within and start to fall in love with it.

That feels so good.

Yay!

So per— like, just permission to meet yourself where you are rather than forcing yourself to do something that you're not ready for.

Oh my gosh, that's re-traumatizing. Please don't do that.

Right? Especially if you get a bad response from the person that you go and talk to.

Oh my gosh, then your body's like, I will never do that again, right?

Yeah.

So yeah, no, it's starting absolutely where you are and it's building slowly from there.

I especially love that because it's a way of perhaps seeing yourself, even because I think about with trauma is sometimes it's not about what did happen to us but what didn't.

Yes, thank you for that.

Yeah. And so, oh, that self-love. And Hadlee, you teach a lot about self-touch and like resting your hands on your shoulders, but I love the skin-to-skin of your hand on your heart, whatever would feel right and safe for, for each of us. So thank you for that really beautiful practice. I felt that in my heart. I felt that in my chest. So very grateful for you. And so people are going to love this book. Everyone, please buy it. Thank you. It's called Fawning and Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves and How to Find Our Way Back by Dr. Ingrid Clayton. And so tell us a little bit about how people can get into your world, get into your community.

Yeah, I'm pretty active on Instagram, and it's my name, Dr. Ingrid Clayton, or @ingridclaytonphd. And also I'm on Substack now, so it's a bit longer form stuff that People are enjoying, and I invite community responses. So people are sharing their unfawning journey, and you can start to see what that looks like for other people. But my website has all of the places and spaces. It's ingridclayton.com, so you can find me there.

Incredible. Thank you so much for this conversation. It's been such a joy.

Yeah, thank you. I feel like I just went through a— an hour-long therapy session.

Thank you for having me and being so open to the topic. And yeah, it was— I really enjoyed our conversation.

So wonderful. Thank you.

Awesome, everybody. We'll see you all later.

Bye.