Finding Brave 315: FAWNING: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves
On the surface, you may look like the model employee, partner, or friend: always dependable, always agreeable. But beneath the surface, you may be carrying a lifetime of survival strategies that keep you invisible in your own life. This is the story Dr. Ingrid Clayton knows both personally and professionally, and it's the story she helps so many of us begin to rewrite.
Dr. Ingrid Clayton is a licensed clinical psychologist with advanced degrees in transpersonal and clinical psychology. She has maintained a thriving private practice for more than fifteen years and writes the popular Psychology Today blog, Emotional Sobriety, which has been read by over a million people. Her latest book, FAWNING: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves—and How to Find Our Way Back, unpacks the subtle but profound ways we abandon ourselves by prioritizing others' approval.
In our conversation, Ingrid reflects on her own experience as a childhood trauma survivor and how it revealed the fawning response: the instinct to please and appease in order to stay safe. Unlike fight, flight, or freeze, fawning resembles caretaking, compliance, and endless yeses, but it often leaves us feeling resentful and disconnected from our own needs. She explains how this adaptation becomes ingrained in the nervous system, how it shapes our relationships and careers, and why breaking the cycle can feel like stepping into the firing line.
Yet within that discomfort lies the path to healing. Ingrid offers tangible practices for reclaiming your agency: pausing before you agree, noticing where resentment signals self-abandonment, and daring to let your voice be heard even when it shakes. Listen in to discover how to stop surviving on others' terms and begin living on your own!
Key Highlights From This Episode:
- An introduction to Dr. Ingrid Clayton and her new book on fawning. [02:17]
- Ingrid's personal story of childhood trauma and survival. [04:40]
- Defining the fawning response and how it differs from fight, flight, or freeze. [06:19]
- The spectrum of trauma responses and how conditioning reinforces fawning. [12:16]
- Signs of an ongoing fawning trauma response and why conflict feels unsafe. [15:02]
- How fawning embeds in the nervous system and what it takes to heal. [19:59]
- What happens in the body during the fawning trauma response. [22:22]
- Fawning behaviors and skills, where they originate, and why they're so common. [26:43]
- Practical grounding tools to restore safety through your body, senses, and curiosity. [32:05]
- How to get in touch with a psychologist in your area and find Dr. Clayton online. [37:50]
For More Information:
Dr. Ingrid Clayton on Instagram
Dr. Ingrid Clayton on Facebook
Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:
Check out Dr. Ingrid Clayton's new book FAWNING: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves—and How to Find Our Way Back, and her Emotional Sobriety blog. Explore Dr. Clayton's other titles, Believing Me: Healing from Narcissistic Abuse and Complex Trauma, and Recovering Spirituality: Achieving Emotional Sobriety in Your Spiritual Practice. Listen to Kathy's interview with Andre Sólo, Being Highly Sensitive Is a Superpower — Embrace and Leverage it.
Read more about trauma and the nervous system in The Body Keeps the Score. Find a psychologist in your area with Psychology Today's nationwide directory
———————
Join Kathy starting October 15, 2025, in her brand new monthly "The Most Powerful You" Group Coaching Program!
Over the years, many graduates of my courses and readers of my books and articles, and other professionals have told me:
"I wish there were a way to keep my momentum going — with supportive guidance, community, and accountability all year long."
This program is the answer to that wish.
Beginning October 15th, 2025, you'll meet monthly online in a small, global group for 12 months of live 60-minute coaching calls where you'll:
- Celebrate wins and breakthroughs
- Bring real-life challenges for direct support and guidance
- Revisit and apply core success and growth principles from my courses, articles, and 500+ interviews with top experts
- Learn from peers, insights, and encouragement
- Sort through key decisions in front of you
- Leave with clear, actionable steps to move you forward fast in your life and career
You'll also get:
- A private Facebook group for ongoing support
- Call recordings if you miss a session
- Exclusive perks (with upfront payment), including additional curated resources, free access to Kathy Caprino AI, LinkedIn support, and two private coaching calls with me
This is a space for professionals who are ready to grow their confidence, impact, and fulfillment — with consistent and uplifting support all year long.
👉 Learn more and join here: The Most Powerful You Group Coaching Program
(If you prefer private, 1:1 support, explore my 6-session Career & Leadership Breakthrough program and other private coaching programs.)
And don't forget to leverage Kathy Caprino AI – my digital career coaching tool – for instant access to answers and guidance about your most pressing career and leadership growth challenges.
———————
Order Kathy's book The Most Powerful You today!
In Australia and New Zealand, click here to order, elsewhere outside North America, click here, and in the UK, click here.
If you enjoy the book, we'd so appreciate your giving the book a positive rating and review on Amazon! And check out Kathy's digital companion course The Most Powerful You, to help you close the 7 most damaging power gaps in the most effective way possible.
Kathy's Power Gaps Survey, Support To Build Your LinkedIn Profile To Great Success & Other Free Resources
Kathy's TEDx Talk, Time To Brave Up & Free Career Path Self-Assessment
Kathy's Amazing Career Project video training course & 6 Dominant Action Styles Quiz
———————
Sponsor Highlight
I'm thrilled that both Audible.com and Amazon Music are sponsors of Finding Brave! Take advantage of their great special offers and free trials today!
Quotes:
"A lot of what I call fawners, the people [who] have this long-term experience of a chronic fawning response. — We don't really know where fawning ends and where we begin. We don't really have conscious agency around our caretaking or appeasing. It just happens so reflexively all the time." — Dr. Ingrid Clayton [0:07:38]
"Even though [the fawn response is] a genius adaptation, even though it keeps us safe, even though I'm grateful for it, it causes us to self-abandon at the same time. Because, — we're having to privilege and prioritize our external environment over who we are." — Dr. Ingrid Clayton [0:08:07]
"I was repeating these dynamics over and over, not knowing that one part of that is the fact that I was living in survival mode in a chronic fawn response, and that leads to trauma reenactment." — Dr. Ingrid Clayton [0:09:11]
"This is some of the hardest, bravest work I've ever had to do, and I've ever invited my clients to do." — Dr. Ingrid Clayton [0:18:01]
"If you think about childhood, we need our caregivers longer than any other species, and it truly is life or death. You cannot essentially believe that your caregiver is a monster — so you have to find a way to stay alive in this system, which means [that], ultimately, the child goes 'It must be me.'" — Dr. Ingrid Clayton [0:27:52]
"I'm definitely not trying to pathologize us for having a trauma response, or living [for] there long past when we needed to. This is normal. This is healthy. This is what it means to have a body, AND we don't want to live 24/7 in survival mode." — Dr. Ingrid Clayton [0:31:26]
Watch our Finding Brave episodes on YouTube!
Don't forget – you can experience each Finding Brave episode in both audio and video formats! Check out new and recent episodes on my YouTube channel at YouTube.com/kathycaprino. And please leave us a comment and a thumbs up if you like the show!