Fawning as a Coping Mechanism

Hello Invisible Audience,

 

The countdown has begun. I’m five days away from the end of my stay in Puerto Escondido and starting to think about what “home” will look like. I say “home” in quotes because it is my home but I’ve found that I have come back to myself here in a way that I didn’t expect, and I’m not sure that feeling will stay with me when I’m back in the States. There are so many things I love about the Leavenworth area that I miss, but there are many ways I don’t feel like I fit there that fall away when I’m abroad.

 

Ironically, it’s become very clear to me that Puerto Escondido isn’t home, either. Turns out I’m more of a mountain girl than a beach bum, yet there are pieces here that I have unearthed that have surprised me. Mostly, it’s a feeling of contentedness with who I am, and the ability to hear myself without the unrelenting noise of the U.S. culture in my ears.

 

It feels important to tell you that this contentedness has not come without a price. True, I post a lot of pictures of two-for-one happy hour drinks on my social media and talk about the cool things I’m doing or eating, but all this head space has meant I’ve had to face some things that have been surfacing for a while. The biggest and most explosive is my fear of conflict, and how that fear has led me to avoid tough conversations and even let relationships die instead of facing it. This is not a new realization, but it has come to a head lately because of the constantly splintering points of view on quarantining and masking up and vaccination that are coming up now that a large portion of the U.S. population is vaccinated while the unvaccinated continue to get sick. Everyone I know, it seems, has a different opinion on what level of quarantining and masking is safe, and some have very clear and loud ideas about how much others not following their opinion are pieces of shit. And that’s all fine and dandy, Invisible Audience, except when my fawning behavior comes in.

 

It used to be that the talk around traumatic responses revolved around fight or flight. Something scary happens, the stress hormones in the body kick into gear, and the person either runs away as fast as they can or they turn around and fight off their attacker. This isn’t always a literal physical attack, mind you—it can just as easily be an argument for people like me who suffer from PTSD. But those are not the only two responses to a perceived threat. I learned about a third about a decade ago that applied to me: freeze. This makes sense and it works just the way it sounds: there is a perceived threat and you freeze. You can’t move and just hope your stillness will mean the threat will pass you by. This is literally what happens to a deer in the headlights.

 

So that’s all well and good but there’s one more that I’ve only begun to hear about lately: fawning. And dammit if fawning isn’t exactly why I find conflicts so painful.

 

According to psychologytoday.com, “The fawn response involves immediately moving to try to please a person to avoid any conflict.”

 

DAMN IT, INVISIBLE AUDIENCE.

 

The article continues with a list of fawning behaviors. I’ve only included the ones that I most readily recognize in myself:

 

·      You look to others for how you feel in a relationship or a situation

·      It is difficult to identify your feelings, even when you are alone

·      At the first sign of conflict, your first instinct is to appease the angry person

·      You ignore your own beliefs, thoughts, and truths and accept those of the people around you

·      You feel self-anger and guilt some or most of the time

·      Saying no to those around you is a challenge

·      You are overwhelmed at times but take on more if asked

·      You lack boundaries and are often taken advantage of in relationships

·      You are uncomfortable or threatened when asked to give an opinion

I may have already been aware of fawning, but reading this list for the first time the other day was like getting punched in the gut. The second one, “It is difficult to identify your feelings, even when you are alone,” is the reason why being in Puerto has been so helpful. I don’t really know anyone here, and I don’t have close relationships with anyone here, so I essentially gave myself two whole months to finally sift through all the noise and hear myself think. I suspect it’s also the reason I love to travel so much alone in general.

 

The next two after that—"At the first sign of conflict, your first instinct is to appease the angry person,” and “You ignore your own beliefs, thoughts, and truths and accept those of the people around you”—are the reason the pandemic and all the chaos surrounding it has been so difficult. As people around me get angrier and angrier that others are taking a different stance, I find it harder and harder to figure out what my own thoughts are on their views and others. I find myself trying to peace keep for my own peace of mind instead of being able to hear what their concerns are and also offer my own opinion, because most of the time I can hardly figure out what my opinion actually is.

 

Covid-19 aside, this also explains why it’s so hard for me to have hard conversations, Invisible Audience. As soon as the other person’s voice starts to twang with anger, frustration or any sort of feeling, it’s almost as if I step outside myself, wall off my own thoughts and find that the words coming out of my mouth are about appeasing, placating and consoling. It is infinitely frustrating. Certainly, it’s good to be able to put myself in someone else’s shoes and have compassion for their point of view, but at the end of the day I need to be able to also understand my own needs and have my own opinion. When I don’t in these situations, I end up walking away feeling nauseated by how thoroughly I have abandoned myself. 

 

Believe me when I tell you I’ve done a lot of work around healing. One of the things they say helps people with PTSD is exposure therapy, which just means introducing situations that trigger a response a little bit at a time until it doesn’t feel so scary anymore; until it doesn’t illicit the same response. This is harder to do when the whole damn world feels like it’s found a hill to die on around quarantining and vaccination. It’s why being able to sit in a foreign country where I can tune out my non-native language is such a relief. Suddenly it’s just white noise; suddenly, I don’t have to take it in.

 

I don’t have an answer to this right now, Invisible Audience. There’s no pill I can take to fix it unless I want to drown myself in numbing coping mechanisms. And before you ask, I’m not looking for the right answer to the quarantine/vaccine debate, so please spare me your take. What I’m looking for is the self-compassion to recognize this in myself; to let myself sink into a better understanding of what brought me here and how the mechanism works in me so I can have more awareness in the moment when I begin to fawn. And maybe from you I just need to know that someone heard me and sees that I still struggle, but I’m here, and I’m trying. And in my opinion, that’s all anyone—myself included—is allowed to ask of me.

 

Love and that’s-what-I-think kisses,

Morgan 

 

 

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