Anxiety Recovery and the Fawn / People Pleasing Response (Episode 72)
Disordered: Anxiety Help
Josh Fletcher and Drew Linsalata
4.9 • 665 Ratings
🗓️ 26 July 2024
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fight ... flight ... or freeze. But what about the fawn response?
This week on Disordered, Drew and Josh explore the fawn response and people pleasing. While this may not be a response we see directly like we do with fight, flight, or freeze, the fawn response that leads to habitual and almost automatic people pleasing can get in the way of the recovery process. It's not exactly easy to choose to do difficult scary things to get better when you may have been conditioned by past experiences to keep yourself under wraps and not rock the boat or risk rejection or harm.
We're examining some common experiences that can deal to developing and fawn or people pleasing response and looking at how the fawn response can impact family relationships friendships, intimate and romantic relationships, and even career or social group performance.
One item of note. It's perfectly OK to be shy. Being considerate of others and trying to be a good person is not a problem. We're not trying to erase these parts of our personalities. Overcoming the fawn response and excessive people pleasing is not about becoming hyper-independent or insensitive. This is always about bringing behaviors and beliefs back into a healthy, beneficial place in one's life.
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Struggling with worry and rumination that you feel you can't stop or control? Check out Worry and Rumination Explained, a two hour pre-recorded workshop produced by Josh and Drew. The workshop takes a deep dive into the mechanics of worrying and ruminating, offering some helpful ways to approach the seemingly unsolvable problem of trying to solve seemingly unsolveable problems.
https://bit.ly/worryrumination
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Visit us on the web at https://disordered.fm
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You might be going to work dealing with your OCD, your panic attacks, your agoraphobia, etc., your intrusive thoughts. |
| 0:06.5 | And then on top of that, you might be someone who finds it difficult to say no. |
| 0:11.2 | And you're constantly people pleasing and you, at the expense of your own opinions and your own feelings, |
| 0:16.6 | you worry about people's judgment of you. |
| 0:19.9 | You're afraid to say no because you're afraid of that person that may reject you or push you away. |
| 0:25.6 | Here we are, a million years later, still really, really driven to work collaboratively and belong to not be left alone, not be isolated. |
| 0:33.6 | It's really hard to intentionally choose to be uncomfortable and trigger yourself |
| 0:39.1 | and do scary, difficult things if you have been conditioned to keep yourself under wraps all the |
| 0:45.0 | time or risk disapproval. |
| 0:52.9 | Welcome to Disordered. This is episode 72 entitled People Pleasing and Forning. |
| 1:00.0 | I'm Joshua Fletcher, also known as Anxiety Josh, and I'm a psychotherapist specializing in anxiety and anxiety disorders based in Manchester in the UK. |
| 1:09.0 | It's a privilege to co-host the Disordid Podcast, and I'm the author of the book, |
| 1:14.8 | and how does that make you feel? |
| 1:16.5 | And a good book it is. |
| 1:17.7 | I am Drew Lin Salata, the other co-host of this fine podcast. |
| 1:21.4 | I am a therapist practicing under supervision in New York, specializing the treatment |
| 1:24.7 | of anxiety and anxiety disorders, an author, a podcaster, a psychoeducator, and a former sufferer of anxiety disorders and depression for many years of my life on and off, but doing better now. And happy to be here for episode 72. We're going to talk about people pleasing and the fawn response. What do you got on that, dude? It's a good one. Oh, yeah. Well, shall we kick off with the did it anyway we've got loads |
| 1:45.2 | of written did it anyways um and a scarcity of audio ones so if you've got a did it anywhere and you |
| 1:52.0 | want to send it in via audio feel free to send it in we've got loads of written ones which we're |
| 1:56.8 | really happy to have but um i was going to ask you, Drew, can I have the piano music? |
| 2:01.7 | You can have the piano music. |
| 2:02.8 | I will play that for you. |
... |
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