Fawning is a survival response to trauma where one tries to ensure their safety by meeting the needs of others. Fawning often develops in an environment of conflict/uncertainty, or emotional distance.
In contrast to fight or flight responses, fawning may appear “normal” and socially acceptable; therefore, many do not realize they are fawning. However, over time, fawning causes emotional exhaustion, bitterness, and a loss of self.
Recognizing these signs will help identify when being kind is a means of survival instead of being a genuine expression of care or compassion.
1. You Automatically Agree Before Checking How You Feel
You agree quickly without taking the time to consider what you want and are feeling. You don’t pause to think about your own needs because agreeing feels better than hesitating.
You may later feel overwhelmed or regret agreeing. The reason you agree is not that it is generous but because you want to avoid feeling uncomfortable.
Your nervous system responds with a level of compliance before a thought and conscious selection. Fawning can override self-awareness in the interest of immediate harmony. This habit can cause a disconnect between what you like to do and what you feel you should do.
2. You Feel Responsible For Other People’s Emotions
When someone experiences an emotional shift, it is natural for many people to feel the need to “fix” that emotion (i.e., if someone is upset, then you feel like it is your responsibility to try to calm them down).
The discomfort that you feel for your friend causes you a lot of anxiety and stress. Even if you did nothing wrong, you may apologize to them out of obligation or an instinctual need to take on that responsibility.
You have a burden of responsibility for keeping your friend emotionally stable, so it can seem to you like you are under constant pressure to do so; therefore, you will experience emotional burnout and always be on guard.
3. You Apologize Excessively
You apologize when an unwanted thing happens to you. You say sorry if you ask too many questions or take up too much space. You think that it makes other people feel protected.
Apologizing makes things less tense and gives people less reason to see you as a threat. Your constant apologizing diminishes how important you think you are and reinforces the idea that you will cause inconvenience for anyone who is meeting your needs.
Your excessive apologizing is often fawning and presented as being polite.
4. You Struggle To Say No Without Guilt
Saying no is uncomfortable for almost everyone. Even setting reasonable boundaries triggers feelings of guilt and fear. Explaining yourself too much or softening the refusal will cause your “no” to become “yes.”
The lingering effects of guilt can stay long after the interaction is over. If you are a fawner, you will see boundaries as dangerous.
Your nervous system identifies rejection and conflict with refusal; therefore, you try to say ‘yes’ to everything, and it damages your self-respect.
5. You Change Your Personality Depending On Who You’re With
You are capable of adjusting your tone, humor, and values to fit in with other people’s moods, opinions, and preferences, and the way in which you do this often creates confusion for you as well as others about who you really are when alone.
Also, you will have more difficulty identifying yourself without being in a relationship because you are always fawning.
Fawning is a response to the pressures of social acceptance, which leads to the eventual fragmentation and obscuring of one’s identity.
6. You Avoid Conflict At All Costs
Even with healthy conflict, it can be experienced as threatening. You prefer silence over any risk of causing tension. Conflict can create anxiety or shutdowns because of its unhealthy feel.
You may give in just to maintain the peace; fawning is a way to reduce the potential for emotional escalation. This can lead to unresolved conflicts and feelings of internal resentment.
Keeping conflict from becoming too big protects the other person and maintains your sense of comfort.
7. You Overexplain Your Needs
When you express a need, you keep justifying it. You add context, reasons, and reassurance so that someone accepts your request.
Your requests are usually said in a way that makes you feel like you’re not being demanding. This over-explaining is usually rooted in the fear of being rejected. In many cases, fawning teaches us that we have to “earn” our needs.
Over time, the act of asking for support can become very tiresome and scary, rather than being a natural part of the way we connect to other people.
8. You Feel Drained After Social Interactions
Socializing takes a lot of effort out of you. Even when the conversation is a good one, it is tiring and stressful for you to interact with others. You feel like you constantly need to be on your best behavior.
You always monitor the responses of the person you are talking to, changing your responses to match the other person’s behavior while constantly suppressing your natural replies.
You feel like you are performing every time you engage in a social event. Engaging in the activity of fawning consumes all of your energy because your sense of safety feels uncertain. True connection with another person replenishes your energy, while performing to please others drains it.
9. You Fear Being Seen As Difficult
The fear of being seen as demanding, selfish, or difficult influences the way you act by creating an urge to do everything possible to avoid others having negative perceptions of you.
You tolerate discomfort in order to prevent someone from seeing you negatively. Fawning is an automatic link between safety and being liked.
Being easy-going is perceived as a mechanism of self-protection. Eventually, however, you fear being too much and end up being too little for yourself.
10. You Feel Relief When You’re Alone
Resting alone allows your body and mind to be at complete ease without having to manage or keep anyone else happy. The relief of solitude reveals the amount of work and energy it takes to fawn.
Solitude also gives you time to recover from the effort of “masking” yourself.
While alone time can be beneficial, relying on alone time to help you decompress from the effects of masking indicates that you are finding it very difficult to maintain a true, authentic personality and connection.
Born and raised in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ever since I was a little girl, my imagination knew no bounds. I remember vividly how I’d scribble down short stories, each page bursting with adventures and characters conjured up from the whimsy of my mind. These stories weren’t just for me; they were my way of connecting with my friends, offering them a slice of my fantasy world during our playtimes. The joy and excitement on their faces as we dived into my fictional realms motivated me to keep writing. This early passion for storytelling naturally evolved into my pursuit of writing, turning a childhood hobby into a fulfilling career.