Stop Fawning with Dr. Ingrid Clayton

Hello everybody and welcome back to the podcast. This is Our Whole Childhood. I am your host Patrick Thien and this is the podcast where we discuss everything childhood trauma from the issues that we experience to the stuff that comes up in our families and to the healing work that we're all trying to get done. If that's interesting to you, let's check out this episode. Well, I'm enjoying the book. I've read a lot of it. I want to talk about like how, and I'm sorry if I missed this in the book, about how fawning is different than the others in the way that it's extremely relational. Yes, yes. It's a relational trauma response. Yes. You know what I mean? Like fight is too, you know, I've been both a fawner and a fighter later as they kind of bounce between the two, but it's not like someone who freezes is they're not asking questions, right? They're not navigating somebody else or someone who escapes. It's like, forget it. If they're, if they're out of there, you know? That's right. That's right. So I think that that would be a cool thing to just kind of like talk about. And do you address that in the book in some way? I do. I mean, I name it, yes, as a relational trauma response. All the others are in fact relational, but to your point, they're also the ones that we turn to in these acute traumatic events that aren't relational. It's why an understanding of complex trauma or relational trauma is so important. I give that little primer in the book. It's really the reaction to interpersonal trauma. And I'm not saying the others aren't. It's like fawning doesn't happen in a vacuum. That's the whole point. It's why before I talk about the signs and symptoms of fawning, chapter two is like, here's why it flourishes, right? It's not just interpersonal. It's even these larger systems that we're in relationship to, whether it's your spiritual community or, you know, recovery community too. That's right. That's right. All of these things sort of set up these systems of power and hierarchies that are relational in nature. In my group work, when I've seen people really dig in, it's not like we're doing groups on childhood trauma. We're not really doing groups on specific trauma responses. But all of that comes in the way people relate to each other. Do you know what I mean? Where I might have a childhood trauma survivor who goes to fight mode. They tend to go big. They tend to bring a bazooka to a toothpick fight. Someone who fawns, they might want to bring something up, but then apologize for bringing it up when it doesn't go well. Do you know what I mean? Or apologize for it in general. It doesn't matter. But I know one of my clients who has a tendency to fawn or is a fawner. I know that they've done a really a lot of work when they go to this, like, not today, Satan, I'm not letting this go. And in some ways they feel the need to be a little bit extra aggressive in their statements. And that's like part of the process too. Totally. Before they become more comfortable in their own skin about it. But I just, it makes my heart sing when I've noticed someone who typically just takes care of everybody in the room in a group therapy. And then they actually kind of go, actually, Mary, I think you're totally wrong here. And the way you treat Tim is just kind of shitty. Yeah. You know, like that. You're just like, yeah. Yeah. We're regaining access to a healthy fight response. But if you haven't had one your whole life, yeah. We kind of move towards it in this way that's awkward, right? You're learning to walk on legs that have never even stood before. And, you know, I talk about that. Regaining this access to healthy fight response is so important to come out of chronic fawning. And for most of us, you know, I can say for myself, just existing feels assertive for a fawner. It might even feel aggressive. Taking up any space at all feels like I'm not allowed. Right. I don't have permission. I'm taking up space from you. And it feels terrifying. And so when you think about the terror that we're stepping into, of course, there's going to have a little bit of an edge when we're like, oh, my God, I'm stepping in. And it feels like life or death. So I got to kind of armor up in this new way. I love the awkwardness of it, too, because it's a sign that we're moving in a new direction and giving our bodies the chance to experience healthy conflict, hopefully in a way that is new and lets us know that it's possible and that there's repair on the other side. Right. These are things that that most of us have no experience with. I love what you just said about healthy fight response, because I was going to ask you, maybe just ask you now, what would be the opposite of fawning for the listener? Because maybe that's what you mean is a healthy fight response. I think maybe to zoom out a little bit, it's about having bodily autonomy. So the essence for me of this fawn response is that my sense of safety, of relational safety, lies completely outside of my body. Right. That's why I'm so oriented to the other, whether the other is a family member, a partner, a system, a boss. I'm like, are you OK? Do you like me? Do you like what I have to say? Can you give me permission, validation, etc.? My entire sense of safety lives outside my body. So the opposite of fawning is turning inward and growing a new relationship to self where I start to become the center of my own life. I start to form what is a healthy sense of internal safety, maybe for the first time. And so internal safety means even if this conversation goes bad, I have my own back. It's not like I'm giving my power over to you. And if it doesn't go well, I'm devastated. So an aspect of that is a healthy fight response. But like I said, it's also just existing. It's being able to say no. It's like not being overly accommodating and caretaking and volunteering. It's just being able to take up space in the world like you're entitled to it. I think we can just end the interview right there because we started at the end. Because that is so true in the way that maybe having a healthy fight response is like what comes as a byproduct of being comfortable in your own skin for the first time to say, wait a minute. Do I even like Mary to take care of her? That's right. Do I even want to do that? Do I have to do that? Fuck that. You know what I mean? Or that the person is now like how, you know, you beautifully said they are allowing their own existence. Therefore, their own rights, their own right. What am I? Did I come to a group therapy with Patrick to make everyone feel comfortable in their process? Or did I come here to work on my own childhood trauma? That's often a thing. Of course it is. And I love what you're saying that it's a byproduct. I mean, I think that that's exactly it. And it's why historically when we've talked about these types of behaviors and we've told people, well, Ingrid, just raise your self-esteem. Like, why would you care what someone thinks about you? Just set a healthy boundary. We're starting at the end of a process rather than where that person needs to begin, which is in relationship with themselves in a way that feels safe. And so then when they can't do those things that seem so obvious, like why wouldn't I? They feel even more shut down like it's, you know, they're fundamentally broken. We really have perpetuated this problem in mental health, I'm afraid. At least I sat on a lot of those couches for a lot of years with people giving me all these solutions that quite frankly were not available to me. But also, and you're getting my hackles up about the same problem, is giving solutions without directions. Yes. You know what I mean? Like, well, you just need to raise yourself. Just speak up. Just go tell your uncle who makes weird sexual comments at Thanksgiving that it doesn't make you feel good and just speak up. I mean, you can do that, you know? Yes. How? Just go destroy your entire world that holds your entire sense of safety, security, and well-being. Like, oh, okay, right? Like, because I'm going to have self-esteem, but now I'm not going to have a place to live, you know? Right. And there's just like, there's the advice and the outcome that the therapist is suggesting, but there's no process provided in therapy about making those, working with those beliefs. I don't want to get into, like, the therapy is shit podcast with Patrick, you know? Yeah, I hear you, though. I mean, there is space for that conversation in here. And I've said this to you before, but I think about it every time you and I connect that, you know, it makes me emotional that you were very fortunate to have encountered a deeply trauma-informed therapist early on. Trauma-trained. Trauma-trained, thank you. Yes, thank you. And I always make that distinction, so I thank you for making it. Yes, trauma-trained, not just like, oh, yes, I've heard of relational drama. I'm informed. But, you know, the gift of that, and I am coming to understand that world very essentially late in my life, late in my career. So I spent a lot of time doing the things that were suggested in a way that really ultimately kept me stuck. So then it's not even just this paradigm of, like, I have this information, but I think the other piece that has been missing, and it's something that you do beautifully and I try to do the same, which is if we're dealing with relational trauma, where there is a hierarchy, right, where there's someone who has power over us and we're sort of at the mercy, how have we perpetuated this in the mental health field where the therapist has all the answers, right? And they come in with this mask of expertise and this voice of, right, call me even Dr. Ingrid Clayton. And I think the disservice that we provide to people along those lines is we are maintaining the very structures that have kept them stuck. And so by disclosing the fact that I'm just a person, I'm a person actually who has relational trauma. I have a body to this day, which means I'm still going to fawn, for instance, right? I'm going to have these instincts. I'm going to be in relationships. And I am in the trenches with you. This is part of the thing that can flatten this hierarchy and make it possible even for clients not to have to fawn with their therapist. It's sort of like we have to go first, right? And I think a lot of us, it's not maybe sexy marketing. Like we don't really want to make ourselves that vulnerable, and yet it's not like we make the therapy all about ourselves. Certainly that's not the case. But if I'm not willing to get in there, I think we need to ask ourselves, how are we keeping people stuck? I wanted to tell you that one of my questions was about that power dynamic. Oh, yes. And that one of the questions, and we can get to this now or we can get to this later. I want to introduce you, introduce the book. The idea around my experience with clients who suffer from fawning, they want to be and they become the favorite client. And if you have a therapist that's like, I'm Patrick Tan, and I have got like a sports coat with like, you know, like the pads on it, you know, like smoke a pipe. Like the fawner wants to impress me or do therapy right. Yes. And if I'm in my, if I'm a therapist in an egoic place, I'm like, yes, that's right. You're, you're, you're disorganized attachment. You know what I mean? And that the, I'm creating a ridiculous picture here, so I don't, but there's just been plenty of times that I've had fawners who I can pick up on is that they want to do therapy right so that I'm not mad at them. That's right. I'd have to kind of work with them and address that out that I know that they're making progress when they can push back on me. That's right. But I think they can be more real with me. But a lot of therapists miss that. Yes, they mistake this. I'm such a good client. Oh, I went and did the exercise that you suggested and it was so helpful. They mistake that for like, look what a great therapist I am. Therapy is going so well. And I will say, even as a client myself, I can think back, you know, years ago, a therapist would say, oh, try this thing. And I go, okay, I'm going to try it. I'm going to try it in the office. Oh, I'm supposed to close my eyes. I'm supposed to do this. And what I'm literally thinking is, how long do I have to do this to make them think that I really tried? Right? Because there's no part of me that feels like I have access to the thing that they're asking me to do. Or maybe I just feel awkward or maybe I think it's stupid, but I can't say any of these things. And so I just sit there and pretend. And I go, okay, because also I am there because I earnestly do want the help and want to change. Right? So I don't want them to think that I'm not like super invested. But if the only way that I could communicate through my whole life that, you know, I need you to like me, I need you to want to help me. The only way that I was able to achieve that was when I leaned in to what the other person wanted or needed. And so here's the bind. If I don't have any sense of internal safety, how am I meant to expose myself and communicate that in this relationship that I'm turning to for help? Unless the therapist makes it so abundantly clear, like, you can't do this wrong. I want to hear whatever your experience is, even if it's like, Ingrid, fuck you. That's so ridiculous. I think this breathing exercise is stupid. Yes, exactly. That's right. I don't have any connection to that. And the other way that I have made that possible is to really make it clear. Some clients love this idea or this intervention or whatever. And some people are like, it did nothing for me. And so I have to make all the space so that they can start to move in and be on the lookout, like you said, for this abundance of like, oh, yes, this is very helpful. And you're a great therapist and I'm doing fantastic. It's like, OK, then what are we not talking about? Because no one's that fantastic all the time. Right. My mentor, the woman you mentioned earlier, Amanda Curtin, in supervision when I started my practice years ago, we kind of were able to name a client who was like that. It would be the client in group that they're there in group because they had a horrific childhood trauma history. But they're fine. They're fine. Oh, yeah. They do the homework. They do the things. They show up to group. They are very engaged as a therapist. Like, you know, like what you kind of said is like, I don't like this exercise. And Amanda and I would kind of say I would be talking about somebody who is experiencing this or how I felt about them as their therapist. And she let me know that the ones who seem fine are really not doing well. But she also sort of said to us as therapists, we're human and we can assume that they're just doing the work. Yeah. But they don't actually feel safe in that group or safe with you as the therapist. They haven't learned that they can be real with you yet in some way. It's so profound what you're saying. It's a thing, you know, in a way that, you know, even I've caught up. I'm like, wow, I guess they really like doing the inner child dialoguing. You know, like, are they just there? They've never been late to a session. That's right. The change would be like they're 20 minutes late to a session and they're just like traffic sucked. Sorry. Oh, my gosh. When those clients pay me late. Yeah. I get so excited. Like, they're not always paying me in advance. One day they're like, oh, my gosh, I forgot to pay you. And I'm like, I am so thrilled. Like, this is huge. But I also have to admit that for someone, even as a therapist who lived in a chronic final response for a very long time and didn't know it. It's not like I was in the therapy seat inviting conflict. Right. Because even then my body was bracing against it. And so we as therapists have to look at what has brought us to this work. And have we done enough of our own to be able to actually be an open system for someone to be able to say like, Ingrid, what you said to me last week really fucking hurt. And I didn't like it. Right. Like, I have to admit, there was a part of me that was guarding against that for a really long time. And I also didn't, you know, I was as helpful as I could be with the capacity that I had at the time. But boy, do I wish I knew more and had done more healing a lot sooner. Right. Because when the therapist maybe has their own childhood trauma to explore, might they fawn with their client. Yeah. Not want to make them uncomfortable by being real with them. That's right. That's right. Wow. I couldn't even risk, I couldn't take the relational risk even as a therapist. Right. So these are huge themes that we need to explore. Right. And speaking to that, I'm going to introduce you 20, 25 minutes into this like amazing conversation. I'm with my good friend, Dr. Ingrid Clayton. We're talking about her new book. Her first book was Believing Me, which I adored, and we had a really great conversation about that. Your second book, much more of, instead of a memoir, more of like your clinical work. And it's beautiful. It's very engaging. It's very thought provocative. This is fawning. Why the need to please makes us lose ourselves and how to find our way back. So I'm going to just show you the book really briefly. This is due out what date officially? September 9th. September 9th. And you were able to get me an early copy. I dug through it. I took some notes and I have some questions. Yes. And I know that we're having like a really rich, beautiful conversation. So sorry to like kind of shift it into like what I had prepared. But probably whoever is listening or watching to this, they probably know what fawning is. I think the people who seek out this content are way more psychologically informed than you or I ever were 20 years ago when we were a mess, either getting sober or whatever. So that is both amazing. But for somebody who doesn't really know quite about it, they probably know a little bit about it. Two part question. Ready? Yes. What is fawning and how did you start to do it as a child in the family? Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Sorry. That's OK. I just want to take a brief pause here and talk about something that is near and dear to my heart. On this podcast, I don't have outside sponsorships because I feel like those sponsorships kind of muck up the message of the kind of work that we're doing. The thing that is near and dear to my heart is my monthly healing community. This is a program that I started about a year and a half ago, two years ago, when I really noticed that my audience did not have access to kind of a community of like minded people or resources or just specific guidelines and tools about how do you start working on childhood trauma. The membership is really comprised of three things. The first thing is weekly journal prompts that I send out every week. They are really focused on specific issues that childhood trauma survivors struggle with and how to reparent the inner child. They're really journaling, dialoguing, inner child prompts. The other component is a whole bunch of coursework that people get, things like the Children's Bill of Rights, the family rules. My favorite on there is reparenting the inner child, which teaches you how to dialogue with your inner child and do some self-led work. And lastly, the third part is every two weeks I do a live Q&A to give specific attention to members' questions and we talk about it. Those are all recorded as a resource in the membership as well. There's a platform that's very, very easy to navigate. And I really love it. It's essentially a program I created for people who wanted to start doing some childhood trauma work and maybe they didn't have direct access to a therapist. The community component is really just one part of it. Many people kind of enjoy that. Many people just want to do self-led work, which is all OK to do that there as well. You just go to the podcast description, click on my website and look around for membership and all the information is right there and you can sign up today. And I hope it's helpful to you. That's OK. All right. So fawning is a trauma response and it's a relational trauma response. So what we've long known and talked about in the field is fight, flight and freeze. But what has gone missing because what else went missing for a long time was childhood trauma and complex trauma. We only thought about trauma from these like acute traumatic events perspective. But now that we know more about complex trauma, we can see that there is this other more nuanced response, which is essentially to appease, to caretake, to manage these relationships that are ultimately causing us harm in the hope that we can lessen the harm and the wounding and the threat. Right. And it presents differently depending on the context. And I just generally sort of share this from a personal perspective in fawning that with my stepfather, who was the aggressor, he was coming for me, he was closing in. My fawning looked like doing a bit of a tap dance, right? Like literally singing for him and with him and reminding him that I'm a person. And I kind of say like I did not like him. I needed him to like me. Even though him liking me also came with dire consequences because there was a lot of grooming behavior there. And on the other hand, right, with my mom, who was more absent and neglectful and not really showing up, my fawning looked like, hey, how can I help you? How can I literally endow you with my resources or with this fantasy of resources that you don't even possess so that I can help you to finally stand so that you can take care of me because I need you. So it's the more caretaking presentation. So fawning looks differently depending on the context. You know, there's a reason, and we already spoke about kind of leveling this hierarchy between sort of like the person who has all the answers, the therapist, and like the client or the reader in this case, that there's a reason that I start the book when I'm 13 years old and I'm in the hot tub with my stepfather. And it's one of the first clear moments that I recall where he wasn't being aggressive. He wasn't overtly terrifying. And I knew those aspects of him as well. He was presenting more sort of friendly and innocuous. And here's an olive branch. But my body knew, actually, there's something going on here and I am not safe. But rather than turn to a fight, flight, or freeze response, and here's what is important to understand, fighting him would have made things worse. In fact, having a voice at all often did. So the body knows, whoop, that one doesn't work. The flight response, where am I meant to run? I'm in a hot tub kind of in the middle of nowhere in the mountains of Colorado. I don't even know my neighbors, right? It's like, where am I going to go? The freeze response, there is an element of a freeze in terms of this dissociative quality that can happen with fawning. But for most of us in these ongoing harmful relationships, we have to like get up and go to school every day, right? There's like, we got to kind of go along to get along in order just to have a life. So fight, flight, and freeze were not available in my body instinctively. And here's what we need to understand about trauma responses too. They are unconscious. They are reflexive. We do not call them online. The body responds in a nanosecond with the response that it thinks will get us out unscathed as quickly as possible. And so I found myself kind of going along with what he was saying and sort of staying neutral and pleasant. And yet again, my body was feeling this terror. So there's this incongruence between what I'm feeling, which is terror and overwhelm, and how I'm responding, which is like nothing to see here. No big deal, right? This response was necessary pretty much day in and day out. And so when you look at a lot of childhood trauma survivors in particular, we're living in essentially a chronic trauma response as our bodies are growing and developing. And this is one of the reasons why fawning can feel so hidden. We genuinely think that it's just our personality. I'm just a caretaker. I'm just really nice. I'm just being kind. I just like being generous. And the reality is— Sorry to interrupt you. Just like what people around me sort of said, like, geez, Mrs. T, and your son is so polite, and he just asks me questions, and you know what I mean? He's just such an old soul. An old soul, yes. We get that all the time. There's another piece, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, is that for the listener, I had a lot of deep-seated shame about the way that I could befriend the psychopath at the party or on the train or whatever, and then walk away going like, what is wrong with me? Why did I cross the alliances? Why did I—you know what I mean? I do know what you mean. As a young man, I was comfortable with very uncomfortable people, and that made me feel like shit about myself, to be honest. That's right. Our need to seek safety with the most dangerous person has us not knowing how unsafe we actually are in the moment, right? It's this desire to seek safety, so I'm leaning in, but I'm leaning in with, like you said, a psychopath, and it's such an important point. I lived there for a very long time. This manifested in not just my family but in romantic relationships time and time again with friends, with mentors, and to your point, the shame of going, why— And meanwhile, what we've already said is I'm getting all this messaging of just like, well, Ingrid, just pick a healthy person, right? But I don't have that blueprint in my body of what it looks and feels like to pick a healthy person or quite frankly to be picked back, right? And I go, what do you mean? This is where my chemistry is. And so going back to that 13-year-old example of being in the hot tub, part of my experience was being groomed, so being sexualized very young. And so talk about shame. There was a part of me who knew that my power lied in my ability to be a sex object. And I literally felt, before there was any even physical anything going on with my stepdad or anyone else, right, before I maybe had even kissed a guy, I felt like I was prostituting myself in order to stay safe. And I think I even used that language, right? So you talk about the shame that we're holding. It's like I'm totally stripped of all power, and the only power that it feels like I'm given is my ability to be attractive or to be sexy. And of course, my body learns that. It gets the message loud and clear and goes, oh, well, that's what you have to do out in the world in order to stay safe. And this for me is why understanding how trauma works and how trauma responses work is so important because these are embodied nervous system responses that have nothing to do with my opinion or what I think I know about a thing. They come online, like I said, without my knowing that they're unconscious. And so living in that for so long and not understanding why, it even perpetuated the shame further, right? So I'm already ashamed because no one loves me like I deserve to be loved. Now I'm ashamed because how? Responding to that is this way where I'm sort of appeasing and smiling when I feel like shit and even trying to be attractive. And then when you tell me just to go set some healthy boundaries and I can't do it, it like triples down on the shame now and it's devastating. Yeah. That's what we would call in RRP, Amanda's work, like the relationship recovery process of helping like someone in your situation as a child, it's the same with me, like sort of being what we talk about a concept called the setup. You were saying you had, you know what I mean? Two things is that you made the thousand percent right choice to engage with him because that was your only option. So these responses are genius. That's right. So it's shifting the narrative in a way like fawning with my very hungover, rageful, volatile, alcoholic mother was genius. That's right. And then I had no help or whatever and later genius to like side with the sociopath at the party so other people wouldn't get hurt or something like that or to deescalate them or something. So part of that recovery is I think in my mind shifting that story, a fawner can walk away feeling very cowardly and feel like a weak manipulative person when that's not the case is that we were set up to kind of like go into the lion's den. That's right. With a lot of people. So it really can be a mind F on somebody that isn't 100% important to flip that around. One of the last question on this is, and it's a, it's a deep one, you know, but I don't know exactly what I'm kind of asking because I think a bit of this happened to me is that you were set up to fawn with this completely sexually inappropriate stepfather that I remember. I think you wrote about the hot tub and other situations and believing me, which was very brave to do that. I think that that's why I love the book so much. But my question is, is as time went on now that adolescence development, teenage years, for me, I became more dissociated from my actual true feelings and wants and fears to the point that it was all trauma responses and not knowing what I actually really felt about the psychopath on the train or the girlfriend who was using me or whatever. Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean? Makes complete sense. Yes. And so the way that I understand that is that fawning is a hybrid trauma response. So one aspect has that fight flight energy, which is very mobilizing and very active. It's the part of us that leans in to, you know, talk to the sociopath about how their day was. Right. Yeah. And so the hybrid is that there's another aspect of that, which is a hyper arousal, which is a down regulation, a dissociation or depression. This is the piece and this is the heartbreaking piece to me, is that in every sign or symptom of fawning, there is some level of self abandonment. So we are disconnecting from ourselves in order to find safety with somebody else. And particularly when this becomes chronic, right? So to your point, yes, we have to highlight fawning is genius. It's a genius adaptation. I'm grateful for it. And we are not meant to live in a trauma response 24 seven. We're not meant to live in survival mode. So it starts out as genius and adaptive. But when we look at it long term over time, it absolutely becomes maladaptive where we have now gone missing in our own lives. It's why to go back to the beginning of the conversation, this idea of flipping the script from my safety lies in your body to my safety lies in my body is so crucial because we're growing this sense of, right? This is what it means to kind of come out of this numb, dissociated disconnect from self state. It's why that work has to come first, because how can you advocate for yourself when there's no self or you've disconnected from that self for so long? The way I look at a childhood like yours and a childhood like mine, another piece to it is that, and that was totally right on in a way, like it's just, it's kind of the weird economy of this stuff. If you have the fun, you have to give up being in your body and feel joy or feel safety. With all of the trauma responses, with all trauma. But for the listener, there might be a listener out there that I would agree with and identify with. And I think you would too, is that it's not like we had healthy attachment and lost it. And also in many of these childhoods, it's not like there was a prior experience of not fawning or not being in our own skin. So in other ways, by the time I got to therapy, I thought my personality was numbness. Do you know what I mean? I thought that that's who I was. It can be a confusing thing for somebody, like if we sort of say, well, we chose to give up on our inner joy is for me, you know, for me, that's, it's, I know what we mean semantically, but it's not, people have the experience of sort of saying it was never there due to the really early neglects to begin with. That is such an important point. And it's also why talking about complex trauma versus acute trauma is so important because often with acute traumatic events, there is a before and an after, right? There's like before I went to war and when I came home, there's before the car accident and there's after. With complex trauma, there is no before. We have no baseline, which is why the reparenting work and the inner child work is so crucial because you're literally growing that now. And yeah, I appreciate you naming that. Cool. Next question. Yes. I want to know, you wrote Believing Me, which again is genius, but where did this book come from? Oh my gosh. They're extremely different books. This one is a memoir and this one is really kind of like a, it's like being in a boxing ring. Just reading it, I think, you know, like I'm like, I've gotten this feedback as well and I was reading it and I was thinking about that feedback is it's not criticism. It's just sort of like, it's really, you don't hold any punches. This is what it is. This is what it looks like. This is where it comes from. And I'm not trying to freak out the reader to it. It's like, I'm saying I appreciate that that is very much, it's very much a clinical piece of work versus a memoir. And that clinical piece of work is you're really not holding anything back. Whether that's from a systemic place, do you know what I mean? Or whether that's from a familiar place. That kind of a thing. But where did the book come from? Where did it go from Believing Me to where we are now? Well, I could not have written this book if I didn't spend five years writing Believing Me. So that's a huge piece of it is that writing my memoir was the thing that started to give me to myself for the first time ever, right? It was foundational and it took as long as it took for that reason. Writing that book was what led me really to know that I had complex trauma to lead me to this lens and language of fawning for the first time. So fawning was coined by Pete Walker. He's a psychotherapist who specializes in complex trauma. And learning about these pieces, right? But also unpacking them so specifically, the nuance of them. It changed my life. And it's why I decided to publish the memoir because I said, if I'm a psychotherapist who had all this training and information and didn't know how all of these things were living in me and now I do, how can I help people understand that? And I really, truly believe in the power of storytelling as teacher, right? It's not like, let me tell you about a thing. It's like, no, let me show you what this looks like in these ways. And maybe you can see yourself reflected. Because again, if there's no self and there's self abandonment and you're numb, it's hard to see these things reflected unless you see it through story form. The memoir came for me. I never sat down to go, I'm going to write a memoir on childhood trauma. It woke me up in the middle of the night. I had to write it. It came for me. It was an obsession that I couldn't shake if I tried. I was like, I don't, this is horrible. I don't want to do this. And it was like, my body was like, yes, yes, you have to. This is the path to your healing. And differently, but somewhat similar, is that I had no intentions to write a book on fawning. There was something else that was happening with my memoir that's not important to go into, but it led me to call the woman who became my literary agent, Jan Balmer, who I'd been in relationship with for years and just knew her as like a kind and generous person. And I was like, Hey Jan, I have some questions I'm wondering if you can help me with. In her desire to be helpful, she shared my memoir with her friend and co-agent. And next thing you know, I'm sitting with the two of them on a Zoom call and they're saying Big Publishing wants a book on fawning and we think you're the person to write it. It's so weird, Patrick, that I'm sitting here right now because they just sent me the big old box of these books. And you know, you and I had been in conversation right around that time because the memoir was out and it was doing well and it was sort of like, well, what are you going to do next? Like maybe you do this and maybe you do that. And everything was like, no, it doesn't, I don't know, none of that really feels right. And on that Zoom call, my body just lit up with this knowing that my whole life is led up to my ability to be able to write this book, not just write it as a clinician, not even just write it as a survivor, but write it as a survivor who's been living in this stuck place for so long alongside clients who similarly have been so shamed and so stuck for so long. Like I just was like, yes, it's a thousand percent yes and whatever I need to do to make it happen. And we kind of went off to the races. So whereas it took me five years to write Fawning, we sold this book very quickly. I wrote it in six months. I turned to my practice, which was very vulnerable, and I asked my clients, some of which I've known and have worked with for 16 years, and said, I'm doing this thing. It's about fawning. Would you be willing? And they were like, yes, yes. And not from a fawning place because rest assured, we explored that. It was like, this has changed my life. And my friends don't know what fawning is and like, how do we share this information with others? So I took what I knew about our ongoing relationship, obviously from case notes and things like that. But then I did these separate interviews with clients and it's like, we did what I did with my memoir with each of their stories. Like what are the scenes? What are the moments? What did it look and feel like? They answered these exhaustive questionnaires that I'm embarrassed now that I even asked them to do it, but they allowed themselves to go there. And this was the amazing thing that happened almost with every single one of them, right? Because they're chronic fawners like me. And here I am going, here's your chance to be helpful. And what does the fawner do in our desire to be helpful for others? We'll go to any length. And so suddenly they're answering these questions and we're having conversations trying to like get to the, you know, heart of the thing. And they're like, suddenly they go, gosh, Ingrid, I don't even think I've ever told you this before, right? So mining their own experience for the sake of the other, allow them to go even deeper and like connect to themselves and their own story in this way that became even more powerful. So it was definitely a win-win for everyone, but it is different to your point. It's a, you know, self-help book. It's in that sort of category, but I still tried to maintain the teaching through story aspect. Only now it's not just my story. It's with these seven clients who also have a diversity of experience, right? They come from all kinds of different backgrounds and different sets of experiences. And that felt important to me. And then cobbling that together with, you know, what information we have in the field and to your point going, I need to give this experience a voice in a way I felt like I need to be an advocate for this population of people that have gone completely missed. And I don't know how you say it. I'm not going to pull any punches or whatever it is, but I was like, I'm just going to name the thing. I'm going to name it as they've experienced it, as I've experienced it. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I'm not going to pretend like I now have the fancy list of 10 things like, well, just do this because I have it all figured out. It's like, no, fuck that. I'm I'm going to start the book in the hot tub and I'm going to end the book saying I don't have all the answers, but can we finally have the real conversation already? That's what I want to do. And this is my contribution. Ten rules of life for a fawner. Be a snow crab. That's hilarious. Hearing you, I had another question, the last question on this was, could you put a percentage on how much of your Ph.D. goes into this book versus your shared experience as a child and an adolescent and a teenager along with your client's experience? Yeah. I want to say, and in fact, I said this when I met with all the different publishers, right? I did not fawn in any of those meetings. It feels sort of miraculous. I came in as me and I flat out said to these people, oh, because they had a lot of power. Oh, believe me. Are you kidding? It's like I'm sitting there and it's like Hollywood Squares with all the who's who and publishing and I'm just like, who am I? Right. I did the self-published memoir, but then they're like, you know, what do you have to offer? And I said, well, I'll tell you right now, I'm never going to be the smartest person in the room. And yes, it's nice that I have this Ph.D. or whatever, but that is absolutely in my backpack pocket. Like what I have to offer is my lived experience. That's what I'm going to share. It's my clients. And in fact, this book is not even my book. This always makes me emotional, too. It's our book. It's your book, too, Patrick. It's like the fact that you would endorse it and do it so generously and have this conversation with me today. It's like this is our book. And I didn't learn about any of this in graduate school. Quite frankly, I mean, I went a long time ago, but I'm also referencing like this story where I'm sitting in class one morning and these kids are kind of joking in class, like, you know what the fourth F of trauma responses is, right? Ha ha ha. Fight, flight, freeze, and fuck. And the professor is like, well, yeah, there's truth to that, right? And everyone in the room knows there's truth to that, but no one is talking about it beyond that little joke, you know, out of the gate. And yet here I am with this lifetime of what I now know is this sexual, sexual fawning. It's this fawn response on overdrive related to my sexuality. And so this is all hard earned life experience. Beautiful. And I really love and want to really support that you talk about the sexual aspect to it, because if there was ever a ground zero, I think, about a deep core of shame, yes, is learning to be sexualized and learning that as a thing to keep us safe. Yeah. You know, because that doesn't get I don't think it gets more vulnerable than that. And in the middle, I'm actually a slut or a sex addict or all these other things, right? It's like, what's the matter with you? It's like, oh, my gosh. Let's go back a minute and recall, this was the way my body geniusly adapted to really dysfunctional environments. And now you're calling me dysfunctional as a result. Like, I am so tired with that narrative. And again, because we don't have any help, we believe that that's who we are. That's right. Yeah. Ingrid, like this one quote that kind of I think that that's the the boxing ring. There was a quote that you had in here where you were talking about, I'm going to paraphrase it. It's something like, I fond because chaos felt like home. Yeah. And fawning became the furniture. And that blew me away because it's so well-written. Wow. Thank you. Wow. Did I write that? That's good. That's good. That's good. What did you mean? I think I know what you mean. And I related to it. But for the listener, how does fawning become the ways that we furnish our lives? Yeah. I think I was trying to communicate just that there it is the air that you breathe. It is breakfast to bedtime. It is if your only sense of safety is this like connection as protection. It is the literal fabric of your life. Right. And so you don't recognize it as something foreign or that doesn't belong there. It is this well-worn sofa that you've lived in and curled up in every day of your life. And, you know, the more even sort of conversations I've had about fawning, just this nature of how hidden it feels to us because of that, because it's the fabric of your life, but also because it's so endorsed, applauded, expected, and all of these other systems, right? It's literally taught. It's taught in dysfunctional systems, but it's also taught just in the sense of like, you know, well, why aren't you smiling? And just say you like the gift. Like we're literally told to kind of self-abandon and act in a way that that prioritizes someone else's needs or feelings all the time. I named some of the environments in the book, but you could go on and on and on. In fact, I said this chapter should be 10 books and I'm trying to condense it down just in the interest of brevity. I'm from New England and you're making me think of around Boston. There's a specific type of very friendly and helpful Bostonian. I'm not saying it just happens in Boston, but when we think about someone who is automatically people-pleasing that they don't really even know that that's a thing. So I've had neighbors up there that you just kind of watch them like they're in the middle of a blizzard. They go around knocking on all the doors to shovel their driveway because they want to make sure everyone can get home safely. And they're usually with an emotionally battering spouse that they don't even like pay attention to. They do that at work. Their whole like sense of existence, and this is what I'm thinking about, the furnishing is like they're living and breathing, giving away their power. That's right. And they might be doing that with the emotionally battering wife. They may be doing that in a way that they are extremely enabling to their kids, that their kids can never be mad at them. So they provide and they provide and they provide. And as I got healthier, I started to see people like this in my life. I kind of knew it at the time and my thinking was, and it's not like it was incorrect. I would just say like, wow, that person's really shame-based. But not recognizing that they're fawning. I guess when I would think about fawning back then would have been like, you're mad at me. It only exists in conflict, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I would only think about fawning as a conflict-oriented, okay, I'm sorry I brought it up. I am bad. I am forever bad. But the furnishing that you're speaking of makes me think about those guys up there. That's right. That's such a great point. They could be generous. They could just be nice guys. But who gets up at like 3 a.m. in an ice storm to ice everyone's driveway to make sure that there's no accidents? Yes. So part of what you're saying is that we come by these behaviors honestly in the face of threat and dysfunction. But because for most of us, they came on board so young and so necessary most of the time, the trauma response starts to be in the driver's seat all the time, whether we're in the face of threat or not. I out of the gates am having to caretake and appease. Out of the gates. And I don't even know that that's what it is. And so starting to differentiate between like, well, what is like healthy sort of generosity or being of service? And when is it at my own expense? And do I even know what that means or looks like? And for myself, I honestly did not. I mean, look at me. I became a therapist, okay? What a perfect extension of the Fong response. It's sort of like, I don't really matter. Let me be a blank slate for you and run all of your stuff through my nervous system because I'm super used to digesting everyone else's stuff and handing it back in a way that's like helpful for them. Even my work as a therapist for a long time, like I said, was driven by fawning. And you and I have had this conversation too, in terms of growing up in 12-step recovery. Like in September, I'm going to be 30 years sober. I'm so grateful for it. Like it's been foundational to everything else. But in terms of perpetuating a chronic Fong response, constantly being told, well, just get out of yourself and go be of service to somebody else, it kept me fawning. It kept me disconnected from myself. Well, just forgive and acceptance and all of these things. It's like, I haven't even metabolized my own life and my own experiences in a way where they even belong to me, but I'm already being asked to kind of let them go and accept it and kind of keep my eye on my side of the street. Like this is one example, but I think there are many, whether it's systems of therapy or spirituality or religion or communities or culture, where we're told, like, basically self-abandon, right? It's a Fong response is deeply supported and expected. Yeah. I'm excited about what you just said, because my next question was about, you discuss the fawning family tree, and you critique the ideas around people pleasing and codependency. And I thought that was actually a really unique way, because I believe that we're all a little bit codependent and the work around codependency, I think is important, but related to what you just said is that in that chapter, you specifically talk around, and like, especially in 12-step, if someone is going to codependence anonymous, on one hand, it's extremely helpful or AA or whatever, but much like how therapy can miss the Fong response. Yeah. So can those programs miss it, if not in some way, support it, specifically my, you know, we talked about before is sort of doing the amends process in AA can be sometimes encouraging someone to forgive and forget, which has its own good qualities to it. There could be with the wrong type of person encouraging fawning without having someone have a process, you know? So you talk about the behavior of those things, people pleasing and codependency as up top behaviors with the root of fawning being something else. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, it's just because for me and, you know, a lot of my clients, we did not really see ourselves reflected in the language of people pleasing and codependency. In fact, that language inspired even more shame. And I think for the reasons that we've already talked about a little bit, I think historically, yeah, because if you even look at the definition of codependency sort of originated, I think it was in the eighties as a counterpoint to chemical dependency. So already it's being seen in this disease model, which is that you have a problem. You are the problem. The problem resides in you. And it's related to things like being a control freak and all of this language that to me, it was like, I wasn't enabling my parents drinking as a child. I wasn't controlling. Well, we're fully submissive. That's what your problem is. Thank you. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Right. I could see where that... And so there were aspects of that that they did not contain this adaptive, genius, necessary root of the thing. So if I can't see that, it's sort of like you're pathologizing and stigmatizing the thing that saved my life, but you're not acknowledging that it saved my life. You're not acknowledging the roots of it at all. And now you're just telling me to stop doing it. And so it stayed in this very sort of behavioral realm in the symptom of a thing. And again, the origins are not conscious, they're physiological and it missed that too. So for me, I'm saying even the language of codependency, I feel like it was necessary. It was an important part of what is this ongoing conversation, but it was not trauma informed. I think some people, you probably being one, obviously with your lens and language of what you know about childhood trauma has been able to sort of weave that in with the language of codependency, but historically that is not true. And I think people are still steeped in this idea of just set healthy boundaries, right? So it was important for me, what fawning did for me was take these ideas and it extended them in two directions, which were both equally important. One was into the body, right? And they go, oh, right, here's the roots of the thing, but also to put it back in context, which codependency also doesn't do a great job of historically. Again, you're the problem. It's not that you were in a dysfunctional environment and your body adapted it. So the dysfunction is in you. So fawning puts it back in the context of relational trauma. Something happened. Something happened a lot. It was ongoing. It had an impact. Can we also talk about that, the context of it? That's where that comes from for me. I'm not sure if that answers the question or if there's more nuance you wanted to get to. It does. It does in a way, like I think the literature on codependency is extremely helpful. I've also decided that as children, to normalize all this stuff, as children, we're naturally codependent. As human beings, I guess that's a part of my other... We are literally hardwired for relationships. So I think the other thing that's done is it stigmatized the people who genuinely are necessary caregivers, right? We've kind of put all of this sort of on their backs and then blamed them for it. Like, well, why don't you just put yourself first? It's like, well, because I'm meant to kind of take care of all the babies and take care of the family. And I think there's just so... I want the listener to understand in a way that you and I are not trying to demonize people who want to smooth things out or be helpful to people. Because you know what I mean? I've had a good friend of mine just kind of saying like, what's the definition between codependency and just wanting to be helpful? It was a really good question. I think what's missing maybe in that literature, and maybe I'm misspeaking or something like that, but like, in other words, I think what we're talking about is we can't talk about codependency in a vacuum without acknowledging what a child had to navigate. That's it. I think everyone's a little bit codependent. You're married to someone who struggles with a mental health diagnosis. You're gonna be, even though they might be a pain in the ass, there's a natural way to just kind of say like, okay, if you're not feeling great, we won't go to the party. But that adds up and that adds up over time. Do you know what I'm trying to say? There's just like... I do. These things are not always symptoms and totally bad. It just depends on the severity in context of someone's history. And to that point, I would say the same is true with fawning. It's not about going, I'm never going to fawn, right? Great example that you gave of like sitting with a psychopath and sort of going, tell me about your life. It was maybe four or five months ago, I was at my son's baseball game. And I'll tell you, the one person that I leaned in for relationship harder than anybody else was the dad who was a bully, who was yelling at the kids on the field. I didn't do it consciously. I wasn't turning away from these other perfectly nice families in order to be like, well, that's the guy that I want to be friends with. My body just naturally, instinctively was like, I need to be on his good side, not just for me, but as a sense of protection for my son. And you know what? It worked. Well, my son, he did not, right? Did he see him in a different light where it was like, oh, I see where your kid's coming from, right? It worked, but what I had to also look at, and maybe this points to your friend's question, what did I miss as I was leaning in to try to mitigate the harm that was happening with this guy? What did I miss in terms of me having more healthy, reciprocal relationships with some of these other parents that I might like to have, right? Good point. That opportunity was kind of lost as my eyes are locked on like, oh, there's the danger. How do I sort of run circles around it? So if you've made it this far into the podcast, you must be asking yourself, does this guy have a newsletter? I really hope he has a newsletter. Guess what? I have a newsletter. And if you've subscribed to that newsletter, you get a bunch of very, very helpful announcements from me. My favorite one is I announce when a new RRP therapist that we've trained, this is a childhood trauma relationship recovery process therapist, is forming new groups or accepting new clients. I love bridging my sort of audience with people who are skilled in childhood trauma work. You'll get announcements about that. If you subscribe to the newsletter, you'll also get a series of resources from me. These are things like video recommendations, journal prompts, other resources that are very, very helpful to get you started to do some childhood trauma work on your own. And like, you'll get the other announcements for me about goings on, about on stuff on my YouTube channel, or if we have membership spots opening up in my healing community, as well as discounts or announcements for that. So you really can't mess with subscribing to this newsletter. If you just go to the podcast description, you click on my website. It's all right there, takes you right to it. And you could do it right now if you wanted to. So all of this is complicated and ongoing. And I will probably never get to a place where I don't have an aspect of fawning. I'm also always probably going to be someone who is empathic, and I'm probably hypervigilant, and I pick up on things in the environment, and it impacts the way that I respond. The point is, I'm not living in a fawn response 24-7. That's the difference. I have more access to myself than I've ever had before. This is who I am, and this is the book that I would write. And if you're interested in that book, I'm your gal. And if it's something else that you want, it's not me, right? And me being able to do that, because my sense of self and safety does not reside in a publisher's hands or anybody else. It's like, it resides in me. I know who I am and what I bring. And I guess part of that, to go back to this question, was knowing how I never felt myself really seen or reflected, certainly not holistically in those terms. I know a lot of people have. I'm not here to take that away. I'm simply saying, we know more. Can we add more to the conversation? I think that's the spirit of it. Well said. Before we go, I have two remaining questions, and then I want to hear more about what the plan is around this book. You know what I mean? Like, how can people reach it? But before, related to what you just said is, we can do work around our trauma responses, but my question would be, someone buys this extremely helpful book from you, and there's journal prompts towards the end, there's recommendations for therapy at the end, there's sharing of your own process of how you got to the point where you weren't living in it 24-7, you know? But how does someone practice not being in their FON response as much as they are? What would that practice look like? So I do speak to tools and practices that people can try, but what I'm primarily trying to offer to the reader is a window into being curious about a connection with themselves in a way that I could never prescribe. That, in fact, if I lean too heavy on that idea that like, well, here are the tools, and here are the things, and just do this, even if they're helpful, I'm staying in the driver's seat of someone who has the answers. And what I'm genuinely wanting people to find is that their body has its own wisdom that I, even if I sat with them once a week, 10 times a week, I could never actually know, right? If you even look at, well, how did you write this book, Ingrid? Well, it woke me up in the middle of the night, and basically I had to sit here and write it. That was my calling. That was my need to sift through and sort through and process some of these things. And even in my seven clients' presentation, each of their roads out of chronic fawning look very different, different moments in time, different touch points, different practices. And so the heart of it is saying, I want you to know that the wisdom is in you. And part of the problem is that we've been told not to listen to it because I'm supposed to do this for you and show up for you and perform a life rather than live one. I want people to actually live and be in their own bodies. And so I do believe there's a lot of practical stuff in there, but I almost don't even wanna lead with that because to me, it's the least interesting in a way. It's like, I want people to know that they make sense, first of all, they always made sense, and they can either restore or for the first time have this healthy relationship with themselves that ultimately doesn't need someone else telling them what to do and how to do it. Right, because they feel whatever it is, it's gonna be, I like that you clarified that. It's not gonna be do these three steps at the baseball game. Right. Where you gray rock the coach, you make a heart-based connection with the other mom, you give your kid a snack, boom, boom, boom. That's so amazing, oh my God, yes. It's not gonna be about that. I think what we said earlier about finding some good therapy, finding some good insight, getting curious, and getting to that place with, it's a process, it's kinda, for me, it was very messy, but getting to a place where I could accept that I took up space, that I could have the right to exist. That's right. Is what maybe allows us the freedom to gray rock with that guy, or give the kid a snack, or befriend the mom, or. That's right. In that way, because we're not doing anything bad if we don't de-escalate him. Or we have enough sense of ourself that when we even do find that we're fawning, or whatever, or we, like, listen, unfawning also means that we feel the shame we've been avoiding, we feel the terror, like, that we're growing our capacity to do that. That's the other thing that we're harming people when we say, well, just go do this behavioral intervention. We're not at all accounting for the fact that we're asking them to walk through fire. Yeah. So the basic sort of foundation is, like, notice the fire that exists within you already. What's, like, how long can you dip your toe in? What does that look like? And it can be anything from going on a walk to going away for the weekend. I mean, there's eight million different things, right? That's the sort of thing, is I can list them all. But the point is, I'm hoping through these stories and through some of these offerings, people notice, well, what resonates with me? What am I interested in? What did I like to do as a kid? When do I remember feeling most connected to myself? Even if it wasn't the whole enchilada, it's like, where do you have a wisp of that experience that you can kind of recall? And where are you able to maybe be curious about that now? It's so deeply personal, this work. Basically, what we're saying is, how do you be yourself? And how can I tell someone else how to be themselves? It's sort of like, I don't even know who that person is. They're the only one who could know. So that's the heart of it, right? It's like restoring a sense of autonomy and agency is going to look different for probably every single person. Will there be similar themes and things that they've tried? Yes, and we can talk about that. But the heart of it isn't about starting with those things where we feel like, I did it. I checked off the list. We could do that from a very disembodied place. Right. We gotta go. My experience was, the work I was doing got me to a place where I became comfortable kind of being an asshole. But my version of being an asshole just simply meant that I wasn't taking- Right, it was just breathing. Pretty much, and I wasn't taking care of you. You know what I mean? Like, and being allowed that. So my experience was wrestling my way to becoming more comfortable with power. That's right. And I think having power was just, felt awful when I was a kid. Or in better words, it's like people with power really were awful. So I equated having any kind of personal power with being an awful human being. So that was a messy experience for me. For the listener, where can they find this book? Well, hopefully every single place that books are sold, all over the world, really. I think we have lots and lots of territories that also have their own version and their own language. But yes, all of the usual places, and it's available on September 9th. If they wanted to grab it right now as they're listening, what website would they go to to grab it? Well, you know, a lot of us turn to amazon.com, but Audible, it's also in audiobook. Barnes & Noble, on my website, ingridclayton.com, it lists all of the individual booksellers in all the different territories. And depending on when this comes out, I'm gonna be live in person with Dr. Romany at Roman's Bookstore in Pasadena on Pub Day, September 9th. And I'll be in New York with Laura McCowan, Bostonian author, is coming down to meet me in New York. We'll be at 92nd Street Y on September 12th. So if you are close to those events and wanna come say hi and have me sign your book and I'll give you a hug, that would be amazing. Lovely. So you're doing like a cross-country little short tour. Yeah, just one on each coast. Pasadena to Boston with it? Yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. Really cool. And also for the listener, if you subscribe to Ingrid's Instagram, as well as my own, in the coming weeks, there's gonna be a book giveaway. It'll probably show up as one of my stories or Ingrid's stories. So just be on the lookout for that. Really thrilled for you about this book. I'm really proud of you. I'm also just like, she must be exhausted. Like this was. I know, when you said, what's gonna happen now, I'm like, I'm gonna take a nap. Yeah, six months into it and, but people need to know about this. And specifically, I really love your message around, it's gonna be about coming back into your body and taking up space and that's uncomfortable. Yes. It's not gonna be about navigating people in a different way or something like that. Like finding why the need to people please makes us lose ourselves and how to find our way back. Thank you so much. Thank you, Patrick. This was amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.