Negotiate Anything Why People-Pleasing Makes You Lose Yourself (And How to Get Back)
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Sep 8, 2025 Ingrid Clayton, a psychologist, trauma therapist, and author of 'Fawning,' discusses the toxic cycle of people-pleasing. She reveals how fawning trauma rewires our nervous systems, often trapping us in unhealthy relationships. Ingrid emphasizes the importance of personal agency for setting real boundaries and highlights the significance of self-connection in healing. Also explored are the pitfalls of toxic positivity, embracing difficult emotions, and the journey toward self-acceptance. This conversation is a powerful guide to reclaiming your true self.
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Complex Trauma Reframes People-Pleasing
- Complex trauma is ongoing relational harm that rewires the nervous system and looks different than single traumatic events.
- Understanding fawning as a survival response reframes people-pleasing as adaptation, not dysfunction.
Body-Based Trauma Explains Why Boundaries Fail
- Trauma is stored in the body so cognitive fixes like "just set boundaries" often fail.
- Fawning is a survival adaptation developed in dysfunctional systems, not an individual moral failing.
Hot Tub Memory That Shaped A Life
- Ingrid recounts being a 13-year-old in a hot tub and instinctively fawning to stay safe with her stepfather.
- That survival response later produced shame and long-term relationship patterns she needed to reprocess.
