THERAPY FOR CHRONIC PEOPLE PLEASING IN COLORADO
Staying with yourself.
A deep, painful internal longing is still holding the torch for embodied authenticity and an aligned, meaningful life. This longing is your resilience.
Chronic people pleasing is a survival response not a personality trait.
The truth behind chronic people pleasing is a nervous system safety switch that’s always on. It’s called the fawn response. And it is joined by fight, freeze, collapse, and flight.
It’s an exchange: self-abandonment for love and safety in relationships.
Chronic people pleasing can go by many names: codependency, compulsively caretaking, the friend who “shows up,” masking, the “good” kid, appeasing, and threat-based code-switching.
Are you stuck in chronic people pleasing?
You are overly responsible.
You are quick to meet another person’s needs without considering your capacity or values. You can take blame and be accountable for other people or environments like nobody’s business. Perfectionism, compulsive caretaking, workaholism, and chronic self-sacrifice are a result.
You don’t want to have needs.
Boundaries and saying no are a challenge. Conversely, difficulty expressing wholehearted yeses in the face of an environment or people saying no. Authenticity feels dangerous and like a total hassle. It can look like being adaptable, easy going, and “good.” But actually, little is even known to you about being your own person.
You are hypervigilant to other people’s moods.
You know another person’s desires and feelings, and work to mold yourself into what they need from you. It’s an automatic, quick self-abandonment. In return, you are uncertain if the other person knows you and your struggles and difficulty asking for support.
You are sooooo burned out.
The burnout is real. The stress that builds from living in relational hypervigilance, over-performing in relationships/work, and living a life that’s for someone else eventually wears on the body, mind, and soul. People often describe feeling alienated, disassociated, and disconnected from themselves.
You have little self-compassion.
Fawners take on so much from their environment and convince themselves (or be convinced of) their control of it. It can translate into strong self-hatred and negative self-talk. This can substantiate and lead to continual self-neglect.
You hate receiving care.
Whether it’s from others or yourself, you can’t wait to pop out of feeling nourished. It feels wrong and maybe even dangerous to feel fulfilled and nourished.
An exchange of self-abandonment for love and safety in relationships.
Stay with yourself. Invest in safe, loving connections. Feel the nourishment of a life embodied.
*And when it’s not safe, I can choose to fawn (or flight, freeze, fight) and take care of myself afterwards.
What’s the fawn response?
Fawning is an immediate, whole-bodied response to toxic relationships and cultures.
After flight, freeze, and fight, Pete Walker, MA, MFT conceptualized the fawn response. The fawn response uses the social engagement system to maneuver unsafe relationships. It means being an expert in another person’s psychology and adapting yourself to that person’s needs and desires in order to minimize harm and find safety.
An overactive, chronic fawn response is often created in response to ongoing interpersonal maltreatment such as: childhood trauma, emotional neglect, narcissistic abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, physical abuse, toxic work environments, medical abuse, toxic friendships, coercive control, parentification, immigration, discrimination, oppression of marginalized communities, and more.
Healing a chronic fawn response:
Feel the nourishment of a life embodied.
Body-led:
Let your body and second-brain (the gut) tell the story of who you are and what’s happening through Somatic and EMDR therapies.
Stay with yourself.
Automatic:
Practice taking a mindful pause and making conscious assessments and choices with Gestalt and Mindfulness-based therapies.
Invest in safe, loving connections.
Relational:
Build a compassionate connection to your authenticity and maintain it in community with Social Justice, IFS and Attachment therapies.