The Deeper Truth About Fawning: How Survival Turns Into Self-Abandonment w/ Ingrid Clayton
Adult Child
Andrea Ashley
4.9 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2025
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fawning isn’t people-pleasing — it’s self-erasure in the name of survival. This episode dives into the hidden trauma response behind your need to stay small and what it takes to finally come home to yourself.
Dr. Ingrid Clayton is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in complex trauma and the author of Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves — and How to Find Our Way Back, a groundbreaking guide to the often-overlooked “fourth F” of trauma. In this conversation, she shares how fawning once defined her relationships, identity, and sense of safety — and how becoming a mother and confronting her own mother’s denial of abuse ultimately exposed what it costs to keep performing peace.
✨ What this episode explores:
▪️Fawning as a Hybrid Trauma Response — How it carries both fight-flight energy and freeze-collapse shutdown and becomes the body’s default for managing power, hierarchy, and perceived danger.
▪️When Fawning Means Too Much or Too Little of You — Why some survivors over-function and take up more space while others shrink to survive, and how both patterns stem from the same survival reflex.
▪️How Fawning Shows Up in Parenting — How your child’s emotions can trigger your own suppressed ones and why breaking cycles means tolerating your kid’s feelings and your own discomfort.
▪️Sexual Fawning — How early sexualization and powerlessness can wire the body to equate safety with desirability and what it takes to reclaim agency, pleasure, and self-trust.
▪️When Healing Requires Distance — What it means to stop performing safety with a parent who refuses accountability and how to grieve someone who’s still alive.
▪️Reclaiming the Self Beneath the Survival Strategy — How somatic and parts-based healing help you reconnect with the voice, truth, and body you had to abandon to stay safe.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | How's the business going? |
| 0:01.1 | We're busier than ever, but struggling to get the staff we need. Recruiting can be such a distraction. We gave Job Centre Plus a try, and they've really helped us out. Really? Yeah. It was dead easy. We got our own employer advisor, Julie, who helped advertise our jobs, shortlisted candidates for us and letters interview at the Job Centre. We've hired some great people, and Job Centre Plus really took the hassle out of it, And there was no fee. |
| 0:22.7 | Brilliant. That's straight on my to-do list. you at the job center. We've hired some great people and Job Center Plus really took the hassle |
| 0:21.1 | out of it and there was no fee. Brilliant. That's straight on my to-do list. Find out more at |
| 0:25.9 | business.gov.com.ukes slash recruit. Eligibility criteria apply. When being yourself feels dangerous, |
| 0:33.6 | you learn to become whoever keeps you safe. My name is Andrea, and this is Adult Child. Let's just let it all go What's making you slow now? |
| 0:55.2 | Let it all go. |
| 0:58.3 | Welcome back to adult child, where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family. |
| 1:04.9 | Ahoy, my dear shit shows. |
| 1:07.4 | For any new listeners, my name is Andrea. |
| 1:09.4 | I am a total incomplete shit show i'm an adult child |
| 1:12.3 | of a dysfunctional family and the chances are that you are as well if you've somehow found yourself |
| 1:18.6 | here if you've somehow stumbled on in and this is where we talk about what the hell to do about that |
| 1:24.9 | we curse here you've been warned today, we're diving deep with |
| 1:29.5 | returning guests, therapist, fanfave, someone who I have deemed the queen of fawning, |
| 1:34.8 | Miss Ingrid Clayton. So she's got a new book out. It came out about a month ago. It is called |
| 1:40.6 | Fawning, how the need to please makes us lose ourselves and how to find our way back. |
| 1:47.2 | I know many of y'all in the shit show have already read this. I've heard nothing but raving reviews. |
| 1:51.5 | I've read it myself. It's a banger. And so is this interview. So for anyone who may not be |
| 1:58.5 | familiar with fawning, fawning is what CBTSD expert, Pete Walker, |
| 2:03.8 | calls the fourth F. So we have fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. And this is what happens when |
| 2:10.7 | neither fighting or flighting, fleeing, or options. So your body learns to survive by appeasing the threat instead. |
... |
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