Fawning is not a flaw. It’s a learned language.
A look inside our Extended Learning workshop with Ingrid Clayton, PhD.
When we asked Ingrid to lead this workshop, she felt her own fawning response light up. The dread. The spinning stories about whether she would disappoint us. The pull to over-prepare and hit some imagined mark. So instead of a polished lecture, she did something braver. She walked us through unfawning in real time, using herself as the example.
It's not a flaw, it's a language
Fawning is a relational trauma response. Somewhere along the way, often across generations, our nervous system learned that connection felt safest when we were pleasing, useful, agreeable, or impressive. Ingrid describes it almost like learning a language. We picked it up the way we picked up our mother tongue, by hearing it around us until it became the only way we knew how to relate.
That is why advice like "just set boundaries" or "raise your self-esteem" so often falls flat. As Ingrid put it, it can feel like being told to suddenly speak Japanese. The instruction is not wrong. It just is not available yet. Seeing fawning as a learned language, rather than a personal failing, is where the shame starts to loosen its grip.
Unfawning doesn't mean never fawning
The goal is not to go from fawning to never fawning. As Ingrid says, she wrote the book on fawning, and she probably fawned yesterday. The aim is to stop living inside a constant fawn response, to stop self-abandoning the second things get relational.
And it begins smaller, and more inward, than you might expect. Before any boundary or any hard conversation, the first move is simply noticing. The racing stories. The certainty that someone else holds all the power. The quiet voice that says she should be the one giving this talk. Can I stay with that a bit longer? Can I bring a little curiosity instead of rushing to perform? That pause, Ingrid showed us, is where unfawning actually starts.
None of this is a quick fix, and it is not meant to be. But there is real relief in finally seeing the pattern for what it is.
About the presenter
Dr. Ingrid Clayton is a clinical psychologist, trauma therapist, complex trauma survivor, and author of Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves and How to Find Our Way Back.
In the full workshop, Ingrid explores how to recognize fawning as it happens and find different ways to respond. The recording is available on demand.