Let’s Talk Love Podcast Episode 118 with Dr. Ingrid Clayton | Transcript
12.11.25
This transcript is from the Let’s Talk Love Podcast, available in our Podcast Feed.
Welcome to Let's Talk Love. Today, we're joined by Dr. Ingrid Clayton, a clinical psychologist, writer and trauma expert. She is the author of Fawning, a groundbreaking book exploring the trauma response that leads many of us to people please, appease or lose ourselves in order to stay safe. Fawning often shows up in our relationships and shapes how we show up in the world, sometimes without us even realizing it. Today, Dr. Ingrid will help us understand why we fawn, how to recognize it, and how to reclaim our voice and our freedom. I learned so much from Dr. Ingrid this week. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Robin Ducharme | Hello, everyone. Welcome friends. I'm so excited about today's episode. Today we have Dr Ingrid Clayton with us today from Los Angeles to talk to us about fawning. Ingrid. Thank you for being with us today.
Dr. Ingrid Clayton | Thank you so much for having me.
Robin Ducharme | You know, you think you know who's what kind of crazy person would be excited about talking about fawning. But I am Ingrid. I'm very
Dr. Ingrid Clayton | You and me both. I'm in that camp.
Robin Ducharme | I'm gonna put I'm gonna put your book up
Dr. Ingrid Clayton | Awww thank you
Robin | Because this was so every, every week, I have the joy and privilege of speaking with a new relationship expert about their work. And yeah, so I listen to the book, I read the book, and then my best friend Kirsten and I, we do this work together for the podcast. So we both listen and read, and then we get on Zoom. She's in Scotland. I live here in Victoria, and we talk about our learnings. And you know what? We are both like, what a tremendous book, right. We're both like, did you what did you think would you because we're both fawners, and we both fawn
Dr. Ingrid | I love this, your own personal book club, too, right. And to unpack it with someone who knows you so well that just feels really meaningful.
Robin | And we know the examples we like, we're like, oh, remember this like we've known each other since grade six. So we have grown up together through marriages, through parent like being, being children together, and how our parents were, and how we were as kids, and how it's like, do you remember we used to do that? And this is why, and you it's amazing to actually, it is like a little bit of psychology, you know, you're your own counselors, right.
Dr. Ingrid | Yes
Robin | When you can actually walk through your change and growth together and be like, okay, but we're different now, right?
Dr. Ingrid | That's amazing.
Robin | Do please tell us Dr Ingrid Clayton, I want to hear about, tell us your story of how you actually came into specializing, really studying fawning, and you're a little bit of your journey on even just becoming clinical psychologist and and really studying fawning.
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah. Thank you. Well, there's a reason that I start the book with my own story at 13 years old, because that's how long I've been trying to unpack this thing. You know, I grew up in an actively alcoholic home. What I later came to understand was a narcissistic family system. What was grooming by my stepfather, who, you know, wanted me to be his girlfriend, and I, and I sort of gas lit myself after he was gaslighting me my whole life, like you're just ridiculous and being too sensitive. And, you know, like a lot of therapists, I think I went into the field as that sort of wounded healer looking for answers, and although I found many and certainly decades later, I was not the same person that I was when I went into the field, it still felt like there, there was something missing, right. And it was not because I hadn't tried, like, after three degrees in psychology and sitting on a million therapist couches. Robin, I went to the retreats, I read the books, I did all the things,
Robin | Yeah.
Dr. Ingrid | And, you know, long story short, what happened is my stepfather died, and in that moment, I felt safer in the world than I maybe felt my entire life. And I felt called, literally called, like, woken in the middle of the night, night after night to write my story, like, like, scenes from my childhood and even from my adulthood were just dropping in my lap, and I had to get them down on paper or on my computer, as it were. And it was five years of this process of writing and unpacking, and I wasn't even seeing a therapist at the time. But what came, you know, to pass, was that now I was a licensed clinical psychologist long time in private practice, I was a trauma therapist, and when my own story was on the page and I could get enough distance from it, I could finally see it through a trauma therapist eyes and go, this is complex trauma. This is complex PTSD. That's what this is. And it led me to understand Pete Walker's work, who's the psychotherapist who coined the term the fawn response. And I thought, this is the missing puzzle piece, right. And fawning is a trauma response. It's an extension of fight, flight and freeze. We've talked about those, known about those for a long time, but fawning is when you appease or caretake in order to lessen the relational harm, right. So if you like me, if I can take care of you, maybe you won't hurt me or leave me. And although we've talked about these types of behaviors through, you know, words like codependent or people pleasing, all of that literature, for me, anyway, it did a couple of things. One is it, it was pretty judgmental, right. Pretty shaming, like you just love to control and it was, you know, particularly codependency came about in the disease model as a counterpoint to addiction. You know, in essence, there's something wrong with you. Just stop it already. And trauma is in the body. It's in the nervous system. And so a trauma response framework allowed me to see how my fawning was not conscious. It was not about control, it was not about pleasing, it was about safety. And it came online reflexively, in other words, without my expressed consent or permission. And of course, when you think about childhood trauma, and your trauma response is sort of in the driver's seat, 24/7, and that's happening as your body and brain are developing. It becomes this sort of, where do I end and where does fawning begin? So talking to me like, well, Ingrid just set a healthy boundary, or why would you care what people think about you? These things make sense cognitively. I go, well, of course, I don't want to care what people think about me. My body had different operating instructions, and the body will always prioritize safety and survival, which is what I was living in. And so again, it just it freed me. It freed me to such a degree both writing my memoir, but bringing this information into my practice like my clients
Robin | Yes
Dr. Ingrid | Lives were changing so radically and and fawning is new to the scene. There's not much out there about it, right. And so I wanted to write a book where not only could I see myself reflected, but so many of my clients could not just see themselves reflected, they participated in the book. They gifted me with their stories, as you know, like the depth and breadth of their real life experience, because I'm tired of shaming people who were just their body was doing the best that it could do to survive the environments that they were in. That was,
Robin | Yes of course
Dr. Ingrid | Long answer to your very simple question. But that's what brought me here.
Robin | You know, you said so many, so many things, and first that I'm writing a book right now, and I could see how you it was like this it was like, your learning, your understanding,
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah
Robin | Came through, through your writing. Because, yeah, it's like the process that I'm sure you went through with. I've been going through too. It's like the un it's like, you write down the words that you to your understanding, but then you go back and you're like, no, that's not it. It's deeper than that. It's deeper than that. That's not exactly it, yet. That's not your editing. You're editing and you're actually going deeper, deeper, deeper into your knowing. And you probably had a light bulb. You did. You had a light bulb moment. You're like, actually, this is it, and you learned about it in school, in practice. But it's not until you actually put words and understanding to the experience that you had. Like, that's that's profound, that's amazing, that was, that was very healing for you, amazing.
Dr. Ingrid | My biggest teacher, and I love writing for that reason. I would say I had a million different light bulb moments. Every sentence becomes an opportunity to go, wait just exactly how you named it. It's like, I'm not quite articulating the thing that lives in my body, that lives in my experience, and how to do it in a way that's going to actually reach people, right, not be too technical or theoretical and kind of make you go, oh, okay, I love that about the writing process. And both with my memoir and this book Fawning. It was like, even when I sold the book Fawning to my publisher, I was like, I you can say I'm the expert now, but I know that I will be more of an expert after I write this book, right. Like, I'm telling you what I'm gonna do, but I don't yet know what I'm going to discover in the process. And that. Was the best part for me.
Robin | And so you talk about you share so vulnerably Ingrid, and I think like that, like, thank you for that. Like, it's through our vulnerability that we can actually connect with each other and heal together. You say, you know you're wounded to relationship, and we heal in relationship. And I think when I read your book, I was you, and I'm hearing and reading the stories of your clients, it was like that I could resonate with a lot of it. And
Dr. Ingrid | I'm so glad
Robin | So it's so, so good. And so let's walk through what fawning is. Because the way,
Dr. Ingrid | Yes
Robin | The way yes the way I understand it, is like there's fight, flight, freeze and fawn, which is, like you said, this is our safety response. We're not thinking about it. This is like our survival. This is a survival thing.
Dr. Ingrid | That's right.
Robin | You share the story of when you were 13 years old in the hot tub with your stepdad, and you had been moved with your mom and and this new husband to another town in the woods somewhere. I picture it being like the forest and oh my god, where the hell am I? I'm a little girl without community, without my family, without my friends,
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah
Robin | And with this man who actually dismisses me most of the time. It's just like, you know the story, we can all kind of see it, right.
Dr. Ingrid | Yes
Robin | Worst case scenario, really, for a 13 year old girl.
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah.
Robin | Do you want to tell the story Ingrid? Like just and what the fawn response looked like? Because I could see that happening to a lot of girls like this would happen this, this would be a natural response.
Dr. Ingrid | That's right. That's right. So, yes, so you sort of pointed to the fact that most of the time it's not like I liked this man. I was afraid of him. I didn't like the way he treated my mom, but I was very much aware that he held all the power in the house sort of the minute that he moved in. It's like I saw my mom kind of disappear, like she fell into his shadow. She wouldn't even say something unless she had literally heard him say it before. It's like she lost her own voice, right. So, quite frankly, she went into her own fawn response, which is she was
Robin | This is something talked about this morning, Kirsten and I, we were like, Yeah, Ingrid's mom was fawning
Dr. Ingrid | That's right.
Robin | She was showing you too. Like, it was like
Dr. Ingrid | 24/7 yeah
Robin | Right. So you grew up with that model of fawning,
Dr. Ingrid | Yes.
Robin | Like, the natural response that's going to be your go to your your mode, too
Dr. Ingrid | That's right. So there's the intergenerational trauma piece, which is also big. There's also the patriarchal piece, which you're pointing to when you say, a lot of girls can you know what a position to be in, that our bodies also know, not just in our family system, but out in the world, that we're not at the top of the pecking order, right. And so it's like, you hold more power than me. I have to sort of be kind and please and appease in order to, you know, have you like me so I can stay safe and so, so, yes. So here I was in this hot tub, and it was an odd moment, and that he wasn't yelling or raging or putting me down, he wasn't grounding me, he wasn't giving me the silent treatment. Wasn't coming home drunk, and sort of, you know, he was seemingly kind and interested, and I really felt like, oh my gosh, he's extending an olive branch. It's like, I literally felt my body relax, and I was like, oh, maybe we can be friends
Robin | Yes. Finally, he's showing me like, oh, he's actually, he wants a connection with me, because, well, my mom loves him, and he's my stepdad. All the things you're like, you want that connection with person you're living with him, for God's sakes
Dr. Ingrid | That's right. That's right. Again, to your point, what felt like in the middle of nowhere, right. Going from the city of Denver just outside to mountain town in Colorado, and I'm trying to remember the exact sequence, but, but in essence, he sort of invited me over to his side of the hot tub again. It felt fatherly. I was sort of like, okay, like, yes, I'll sit on your lap. And then he said, I'm so glad that we can be this close and that you don't seem to mind. And there was something about the tone of voice and what he said in that moment, I knew that I probably should mind and that he was, he was kind of telling on himself, and my body felt it right and and then I feel sort of the hands on my hips. And, you know, for the listener, nothing happened beyond that. But what did happen is my body absolutely clocked. I am not safe, but it did not forget that this man holds my entire life in his hands. I'm in the middle of nowhere. And when you think about trauma, responses specifically, fawn tends to happen when the others are either not available or would make things worse. So this guy is at least twice my size. I've seen my mom's bruises. I never saw physical violence, but I saw her bruises. Fighting back was not safe. Okay, not available to me, running. Again, I don't even know our neighbors. Where am I going to go? This is so true for most children, they're going to be brought right back to the scene of the crime. Only now you ran away, so now you're really in trouble, right. Just you wait until they leave, and then you know. So flight is not available. Freeze there is an aspect of the freeze energy in the fawn response, except you're not just a deer in headlights, where you're sort of adrenalized, but can't move right. Fawning goes I have to live with this person continue to get out of bed every morning walk through my day. I cannot be that frozen. I need to be animated. I need to go along to get along. How can I survive this? And so I just remember my my whole body was terrified, but my tone of voice was even, even sweet and sort of like, why would you say that? What would you mean, right. I knew that I actually couldn't just get up and leave, because that might anger him, and so I lingered. I pretended there's a real performative aspect to fawning. I pretended that I was still comfortable and I could hang out there a little bit longer until I got okay maybe I've been here long enough I could sort of exit again in this very like, kind sweet, appeasing, sort of a way. And you you can really see the incongruence between what I was feeling on the inside and how my body responded on the outside. None of this was a conscious choice. I mean, even going back and writing this scene, it's like I was kind of this out of body, witness to what I was experiencing. And again, this this moment, and then a million moments afterward shaped this constant now need to be on guard. I'm hyper vigilant. What's his mood? How can I prolong the good mood, how can I shorten the bad mood? Right. And my whole life starts to revolve around, how does my body start to shape shift, to become, you know, this thing that sort of tries to keep the peace, even though it's an impossible task, the truth is, it is effective. It's fawning, and
Robin | Yup
Dr. Ingrid | Sometimes we do keep the peace and prolong the good moments and shorten the bad. And again, that's it's survival in the sense that we are hardwired for relationships, right. We need one another to survive. Children need their caregivers longer than any other species. We don't even have a prefrontal cortex that's developed until our mid 20's. And again, think about all these other systems of power that hold your life, whether it's your job and a toxic boss, or, you know, if you're a marginalized person, a person of color or neurodivergent or, you know all of these different systems that we reside in our body knows I don't hold the power here, and these notions of like, well, just speak up and set a boundary. We're literally asking people to walk into the fire to make it worse, at least with my clients, to walk towards the very thing that did annihilate them, right. And because you read my story, you know that years later, after this hot tub incident, after a lot more happened that I won't go into necessarily here, but I did organize an intervention with the school counselor, right.
Robin | Yes, you did.
Dr. Ingrid | I brought in the social services, you know, social workers and I, I really felt like, okay, I'm asking for help. I'm doing the right thing, quote, unquote, that, you know, really embodies what all of us are told to do. And here's the reality, Robin, it made it so much worse. Okay.
Robin | So heartbreaking.
Dr. Ingrid | So my body goes, I will never do that again, right. And we've learned this time and time again, when you try to speak up and someone goes, well, I didn't say that, or you're being ridiculous, or, you know, like I said, we're gas lit, we're manipulated. We're told that we're, you know, whatever, and and no help is coming, essentially, right like,
Robin | So you are literally alone Ingrid,
Dr. Ingrid | That's right
Robin | And that is and, you know, and you talk about this in your life, right, where your mom, the person who gave birth to you, who married this man who is hurting you,
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah
Robin | Is choosing to turn a blind eye and actually call you a liar, like,
Dr. Ingrid | That's right
Robin | And believe him
Dr. Ingrid | That's right.
Robin | And so her fawb she's in it,
Dr. Ingrid | She's in it. She can't
Robin | She is lost in it. She can't see the truth
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah
Robin | So that is so painful, like I, I don't think you'd ever get over that, right? It's that's your mother.
Dr. Ingrid | That's right. That's right Yeah
Robin | People get lost in these kind of situations where if you speak up and when you go against this is this is wrong. This is how I need to protect myself. You're not you are not given that support.
Dr. Ingrid | That's right. So it's not just that our bodies are turning to the response that sort of feels like it's going to help us survive in the moment. But again, what I didn't always love about the language of codependency or people pleasing is that it just put the origins of these behaviors just in our body
Robin | Right
Dr. Ingrid | And not in the context that you're actually living in, right. So I did not turn to fawn because I have a self esteem problem, right. I turned to fawn because, God, this makes me emotional
Robin | Survival.
Dr. Ingrid | I think about it, I loved myself so much that my body said I'm going to do whatever I need to do to hold on to a shred of myself in this situation, right. And so to shame us for that, and quite frankly, even to shame my mother, like I've come to this point now where I can really, truly see right if, if I understand that why we lose ourselves when we fawn is because our entire sense of safety lies outside of our own body. We're just oriented to other people in the environment. Do you like me? Am I okay? Do you give me permission? Can you validate me? There is no self, right. So part of this unfawning process is restoring our relationship to self, taking that perpetual focus that's looking to the outside and going, what do I feel? What am I experiencing? What do I know right? And my mom was not afforded that opportunity, that lens, that language, that doesn't mean, by the way, that I don't get to set a healthy boundary in relationship to her behavior or anyone else's right, but it means that I understand, I understand where she's coming from. And here's the truth, I always did not with language. I couldn't articulate it. I knew she was stuck. I knew she was lost. I knew she was trapped, but what I always thought is that she's gonna come out of it one day, right. And so when he died decades later, and she didn't, I had to face, oh my god. She not only did not take care of me then, but she's not even willing to have a real conversation about it even now. And that's where I have to say, then, you know what we can't have this kind of relationship where you still see me remotely as the bad guy. Because
Robin | No that's not gonna work.
Dr. Ingrid | That's right, that's right
Robin | Because in our adult I was talking this real long conversation, Kirsten and I had a long conversation about this Ingrid, because we're like, can you, can you imagine that happening? Right your mom, not like, and you hear these stories time and time again, and you live down it's just, I can't imagine the pain of that. But there are people that are not willing or able to
Dr. Ingrid | That's right
Robin | Go deep inside. It's actually take the accountability that's necessary to be like, I played a part in in this horrific pain that was caused to my like, I was part of that, right.
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah
Robin | And then to meet you in that place of like, you know, coming to have a relationship with somebody, they have to be they have to meet you. It's maybe not 50/50, but at a place where, okay, we can actually start building a healthy connection here.
Dr. Ingrid | That's right
Robin | Yeah
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah.
Robin | So can we just go through, like, what fawning like, what fawning is that like, people understand the definition of it, I think, like you said, it's because it's not people it's not coming from a place of awareness, of people pleasing and codependency. I think that's where those behaviors I could see, yes, it is that's putting all the onus on the person that's that's fawning, not the perpetrator, not the person that's actually and how it's like, there's survival, right,
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah
Robin | But then, as we're so, please describe it, because you're the expert in this. I'm trying to talk it out in my understanding, but you're way better.
Dr. Ingrid | No I love that. No, I love you putting it in your own words. And the second thing you were, you know, leaning on was we're not putting it in the context of these systems of power. And I feel like that's really important to name also that fawning is encouraged. It's celebrated, right. As opposed to some of the other trauma responses. This is one where we go, yeah, good job. I'm glad you just pretended to smile and hugged your creepy uncle and stayed late at work and didn't ask for any sort of credit. Or, you know what I mean, it's
Robin | Oh right
Dr. Ingrid | Like that we go, okay, fantastic. You're you're going to carry all of the shame for the whole system. Fantastic. I don't have to look at my part. Great, you know. So there's a lot of other context, contextual reasons why fawning is so entrenched and supported. Because it goes well beyond our body. But I think some of the signs and sort of symptoms that we see where people go, oh, yeah, I can relate to that. Like, if looking at what we've already just covered, you can see why we're very conflict avoidant. Because conflict is not, it's not honored, like you couldn't have a difference of opinion. It's, it's like I said when I sort of stepped up and said, hey, there's something wrong here. I was the scapegoat, right. I was thrown under the bus, and so my body goes, oh, got it there. You cannot disagree. So disagreement or setting boundaries, I mean, it literally does feel like life or death. It feels like terror in the body. And knowing that really helped me unlock sort of decades of shame. Because, like I said, these things are talked about like it's so obvious and and intellectually, I could go, yes it it does sound obvious, but these were not available to me when my body is screaming terror, and then I go, well, why is my body screaming terror? I'm just filled with shame. There must be something wrong with me. I double down on this idea that I'm broken and now I'm stuck even more, right. So letting people understand, well, yes, of course, your body is filled with terror. You make all the sense in the world. That's actually an indicator that you're probably moving in the right direction. You don't need to steamroll past it. That's not the goal, right. The goal is to be with yourself in the terror. If you talk, if you think about my mom, in this case, not being there with me in the terror, a lot of trauma healing is finding other witnesses that can be but also growing our own capacity as adults to be with the terror now, not to try to talk ourselves out of it, or be like, what's wrong with you? You're being ridiculous, but to honor like, if my body's feeling terror, there must be a reason. And I'm not going to, you know second guess that I'm gonna go, okay, who this is really scary. Can I slow down? Can I be present to myself, like for the people that can't see I'm putting my hands on my heart, just like literally holding my own body. So we're conflict avoidant. It's hard to set boundaries. We apologize to the people that have hurt us, right.
Robin | Yes it's like you're apologizing to someone when they've hurt you. It's just,
Dr. Ingrid | Yes
Robin | I have done that so many times Ingrid. I mean, as an adult with like, family members,
Dr. Ingrid | Yes, yes
Robin | It's like they treat me like absolute garbage. And then the next day, it's like, oh, I'm the one that said in the wrong absolutely not. But then I'm like, okay, Robin, you got to fix this. I just instantly like, my, my, my fawn response is like, yeah, what what are the words I can use here? Like, what, what love Can I pour on this situation?
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah.
Robin | How can I speak in a way that they're gonna or, and then it's like, that is so it's like, I'm going to the person that hurt me, and being like, you know, let's, let's fix this God
Dr. Ingrid | Well, and doing it with this voice that, to me, embodies both toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing, which, again, we get this information from every direction. It's like, well, Robin, if you were more spiritual, you could just let it go right, if you could just accept and forgive. And we sort of offer these platitudes to people as though they're a salve, as though they and all it does again is it shames us even more, because we go, well, great. Now I'm filled with terror and I'm a loser because I can't sort of immediately forgive you for something that, in this moment still feels unforgivable to me
Robin | But the gaslighting actually is so like, I it's so convincing.
Dr. Ingrid | It's so convinc, it's so convincing, and then we gaslight ourselves.
Robin | I was wrong. I actually did something wrong. I definitely am in the wrong, and I didn't I have to own my part
Dr. Ingrid | Yes, my part, my part. Well, what fawners tend to do is we never ask people to own their part too, right.
Robin | Right
Dr. Ingrid | That's we just sort of whoop okay, I'm going to own my part, and that's going to make you feel better, and now the whole system can sort of move forward, but we never have people take accountability for how they impacted things, right. It's like, we just do it and we go, okay, now it's done. So that's
Robin | So Losing our voice, like
Dr. Ingrid | Losing our voice
Robin | And, like you said, like, I know in the example, like, I just think about, for instance, like my second marriage, like, what a disaster it was. Like, fawning, fawning, fawning for the whole relationship. And, yeah, it's like, you do lose your sense of self. I lost my voice, I lost my like, and I had such low self esteem. Like, is it self esteem, or is it like and you said you lose trust in yourself.
Dr. Ingrid | That's right.
Robin | You're not. Using your intuition, you're looking, it's like somehow you're you're trusting outside, you're looking for the trust and the safety outside of yourself. And you've lost, you've lost touch with who you are. You know, like so many ways.
Dr. Ingrid | That's right. And your gut and your cues and this other information, where the red flags are, where the signals are that tell you I'm mad, right. We override our anger. It's like, well, I can't be angry, and it has nowhere to go. And so we either turn it back on ourselves and go, well, it must be me, let me look at my part. Or this is where we might turn to gossip or sort of, it's like we can't deal with our anger directly, in other words, right. So it's not that we're not mad. We just can't tell you that we're mad. And this thing that you're saying where we lose access to ourselves, to me, it's the most painful symptom of all. And you said something earlier that made me think of this. We don't set out to lose ourselves. We don't set out to self abandon right. Nobody does.
Robin | No
Dr. Ingrid | You're not even looking at what you're losing. You're looking at what you're gaining or what you're hoping to gain, which is the safety and the connection out here and so often in our relationships, I mean, I did this forever in my first marriage and million relationships before it. You know, I'm like helping. I'm I'm seeing what help they need and trying to offer it. I'm waiting for them to sort of see me back, or get better, or get sober or get a job or stop, you know, cheating or being an asshole, it's like there's this perpetual waiting, like they're gonna show up and see me back and reciprocate, right. Like I'm giving and I'm overextending and I'm caretaking and I'm doing all the things, and there's just the sense in all of our relationships that there's no reciprocity. But even though we might know that, we go, what's gonna happen any minute now. Like, I know, I know they mean well and and we figure out why they're not showing up, and we go, well, they come by it honestly. And maybe if I'm just a little more patient, or maybe if they go to therapy, and we stay stuck in this like, oh, we're never going to get out of that trap until we move the needle right there. There the likelihood that the other person is going to move the needle. Why would they all their needs are being met, because we're running circles around them, doing all this caretaking and being so helpful and loving
Robin | This makes this makes perfect sense though Ingrid, because I think you know you're saying this, and I'm like, oh, that the light bulb moment just went off. Because it's like,
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah
Robin | We repeat stuff in our adulthood that we haven't we have not healed from our childhood. And so your your home environment, my home environment I was fawning all the time. That was my safety. That was the way that I behaved in order to keep my connection with
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah
Robin | With my family, right.
Dr. Ingrid | That's right, yeah.
Robin | And then, and then I naturally, I guess, fell into that exact pattern in my, in my intimate partnerships, I had, it was like that cycle was continuing,
Dr. Ingrid | Yes, and there's several reasons for that. One is for everyone, no matter where you come from, our blueprint, right is, is in terms of what you grew up in, it's like, it's what's familiar. So when we see and feel familiar in the world, even though you might be screaming, I would never choose my upbringing, and I want to do it differently, your chemistry feels very tied to like, oh, oh, I know what that is. But on top of that, when you're talking about a trauma response like fawning, okay, I I was so disempowered. The one sense of power I had was when I was fawning. Okay. So I actually also felt like this is my currency. This is what I have to offer in relationship. This is like the best of me, how I can be helpful and appeasing and caretaking and all these things.
And so loving.
Yeah
Robin | Yes, and yes, I am an amazing caretaker, caregiver.
Dr. Ingrid | Yes. Why did I become a therapist? I mean, let's be real. And so then when I feel a combination of a couple different things, because I fawned differently with my stepdad, which was that more sort of like performance appeasing, kind of, you know, don't be mad at me or hurt me, kind of a fawn response, than I did with my mom, right when it comes to neglect or abandonment, that's really where the caretaking comes in. It's almost like I'm going to help you stand so you can finally sort of be with me, and it looks different. But when I felt either of those in my adult life, particularly in my dating life, it turned on my only sense of power in the world. Of course, I leaned into those relationships. My body goes, you want to exploit me? Well, I can. I know how to handle that, and it feels powerful. Does that make sense? Because it's not that we're going, oh, I feel so less than and you're exploiting me, and I don't have a sense of self esteem. That's not what it feels like in my body. It feels like I've got this right, like,
Robin | You know, it's funny you say that, because, yeah, I have a friend of mine who's also a nurse that helps me take care of my son, and she started helping us in my home before I was separated and divorced, so she saw the dynamic with my ex and my family and and now she sees me, who I am. You know, it's been a almost two years since, since we haven't been together
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah
Robin | And, well, longer than that, actually, two and a half. Anyways, she's like, Robin, I just you were a different person, like I was. And it's funny, because I'm like, I was holding things up. I mean, you know, you're very capable.
Dr. Ingrid | That's right.
Robin | And like, I got this like I did, but in the meantime, I'm going to bed thinking I like, what is going on? Like, my I've lost, like, you just feel so defeated and and just a shell of yourself,
Dr. Ingrid | That's right
Robin | But, you know, but you're capable and you're willing, and you're like, you know, this is, I can fix this. I would just in complete fixer mode, which is not,
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah
Robin | That's not thriving, that's still, that's surviving.
Dr. Ingrid | Well, that image that you just gave of you holding everything up, it's like, I see you under the house, under the foundation, like, holding it all on your back, and I go, that is so effing strong. Like, let's be real. But where are you in that? Right. Like,
Robin | She said, she said, Robin, you weren't you weren't using your voice. She said, You were so quiet, you weren't joyful, you weren't yourself. And I was like, and for her to see that, I mean, I didn't, I mean, I think I saw but I was like, oh, that's an interesting you saw that perspective, right. Well, she saw me now, then and now. So
Dr. Ingrid | The contrast, yeah, you can really see it in the contrast
Robin | So how do we un-fawn? I because I know I my process, and I feel like I've definitely un-fanwed but I still fawn because that's my nature, that's my that's my go to, like, my right. So that's like, not to, not to shame ourselves. It's like, that's my survival mechanism. That is my kind of my but that's good, because we have, we have to have our survival instincts. But how do we unfawn when we are aware that we are actually in those patterns that aren't good?
Dr. Ingrid | So you're making such a good point. So we would never actually turn to someone and be like, don't ever fight and stand up for yourself, right. You would never say that. But there is this sense with fawning that we're supposed to just completely stop, right. And I go, nope, fawning is hardwired. It's appropriate in certain contexts. I probably did it this week, and I'm not mad about right. But the difference is, and it is a big difference. We are not meant to live in survival mode, 24/7,
Robin | No
Dr. Ingrid | Right. And so part of, I think, how we un-fawn is, first of all, honestly, just just this lens and language of trauma and the nervous system and why we make sense, I think, allows people almost to drop into their body, maybe for the first time, that it's not all filled with like self hatred and what's wrong with me and I'm broken, and everyone else has it figured out, and if I could just set a boundary, maybe I'd be okay, right. It's like just this understanding that there was nothing, God, this makes me emotional every time, but there was nothing ever wrong with you? Ever, um, it changes our relationship to ourselves. And that's the whole point, right. So just that starting point, to me, is so foundational, and I get really excited about it. But yes, beyond that, how do we then pay attention to, like, what we're experiencing. And we've spoken to some of this stuff already, but part of it is bringing our curiosity back to self. And this is embodied work. It's not theoretical, right. It's experiential. You have to feel it. And so in every trauma training I've ever been to, we don't use the language of like so what do you think about that?
Robin | We've been doing too much thinking. We're doing too much thinking we're not in the body where it's actually
Dr. Ingrid | We're not in the body. And so we say, what do you notice right now? What are you experiencing right now? Where do you feel that these types of prompts are great for all of us to know the distinction between when we're over analyzing and figuring something out and giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, and I'm not in my own body at all and going but what am I experiencing right now? And I often do it with my hand on my heart, which is sort of a stance of self compassion and it makes me take a spontaneous deep breath, which means I'm more regulated. And this one pivot into, what am I noticing? Even if it's for half a second, oh my gosh, the body's going to feel the difference. And here's the thing, it's going to appreciate your own attention.
Robin | Oh yeah
Dr. Ingrid | So even if we can't do it for long, it's going to want to continue to build on that, and to build on that and to build on that. So I say find, and there are a million different ways. There's no wrong way to do it, but find ways and tools that you can be in your body, in as regulated or on the way to regulated state as possible, and that tends to involve the senses. The senses are the language of the nervous system. So what kind of music do you love? When was the last time you lit the fancy scented candle that you bought but don't want to waste it so you never light it like go light the darn thing and enjoy that smell. Can you feel your feet on the ground? When was the last time you connected to nature? Peter Levine's work, he's the founder of somatic experiencing. He has something called orienting, and everyone can do it, no matter where you are. And it's free, and it goes with you everywhere you go. And it's just literally pausing, look around the room and notice what you see, just orienting visually we are so in auto pilot, most of the time, scrolling and multitasking. We're not in our own bodies, right. So this is a way to not only practice mindfulness, but to use the senses, which, again, the language of the nervous system. My body knows if I'm scanning the environment and I'm looking around and I'm literally noticing that I'm not under threat, my body can start to relax. I'm not telling myself, Ingrid, you're not under threat. There's no threat. My body goes. I don't care what you're saying. I feel tense and hyper vigilant when I look around and I notice what I see and I orient to nature. For me, I love orienting to nature. I see the color of the leaf outside my window. My body goes, and I'm more present, right. So you can see which sensory channel you're drawn to. You can try them all, but notice what tends to happen when I when I show almost every client this exercise, I visibly watch them come into their body. I see them take a deeper, spontaneous breath. It's not efforting. It's not like I need to take a deeper breath. They just go right. So there's I love walking
Robin | Me too
Dr. Ingrid | Act of being out in the world and moving my body right left rhythmic movements. This is also foundational in another trauma modality called EMDR. It helps you process memories, move them from right hemisphere to left hemisphere. You don't need to know all that. But the point is, these simple things make a huge difference, right.
Robin | Yeah
Dr. Ingrid | So it's these practices of being with ourselves and creating an internal sense of safety, maybe for the first time ever. And here's what I'll say about that. The reason I talk about this first, you know, when you say, how do we un-fawn, I don't go, well, you march into that relationship, and you tell them what you've been thinking.
Robin | No
Dr. Ingrid | We do not make it relational. First. We make it relational with ourselves.
Robin | With it with ourselves. We lost ourselves,
Dr. Ingrid | Yes, so we have to build
Robin | Connection to ourselves. We're looking outside of ourselves. And that is, that's the focus cannot like. That's this is where we need to be focused.
Dr. Ingrid | That's right, and it's so key. And so we grow this relationship to self first, it's foundational, and then what we start to tend to notice is that terror that I was talking about, or the fear, or the overwhelm or the dissociation, all these different ways where our body goes up, it's not safe. I'm out right. And we start to practice well, can I be with that feeling even just a moment longer, and notice what I notice? Can I be with me? Or can I ask someone to be with me? A safe person doesn't have to be a therapist. It could be your best friend on the phone. Like I'm feeling overwhelmed. Can I don't want you to try to fix it, but can you just like, be with me in the feeling for a minute? You know. And here's what happens when we start to grow our capacity to feel the tough feelings we really do get the sense that often it is like a weather pattern, right. It's going to come in and it's going to move out, and we don't have to try to, like, outrun it, you know. And so many clients that have complex trauma, which is relational trauma, right. Ongoing sense relational threat, they go Ingrid how do I know if I'm just triggered from something in my past, or if something real is happening right now that is actually dangerous? This is how we start to discern is by feeling the feelings in the moment when they come now, I have the capacity to go, oh, you know what this is really uncomfortable, like that I don't like this feeling, but I know that I'm not in danger in this moment, right,
Robin | Right.
Dr. Ingrid | And it's, it's not a it's not a light switch. It doesn't happen overnight. These are practices that start to change your relationship to yourself and your conscious awareness of things. We're moving from this, like reflexive reactivity to mindful presence in my body. And over time, you start to know this isn't dangerous, right. It feels scary, but I am here. I can be with myself in the sphere. And sometimes we go, this is scary, because this is scary. I'm walking into the lion's den. I'm not going to go in and be super vulnerable and, you know, give them my full self. And so maybe I do need a little defending or a little guarding. And how do I want to do that? You might even look like a fawn response, but where it's more conscious or you go, this person is not safe. I'm going to go in, I'm going to smile, I'm going to get my paycheck, I'm going to get out and go home. But it feels different, because you're not overriding that fear and overwhelm. You're honoring it first. Oh, my God, this is terrifying. Okay, I get it. I'm here. I'm gonna walk in, I'm gonna be with myself when I walk out. Do you know what I mean, it feels so different in the body.
Robin | Absolutely and because of your awareness and because of your deeper connection to yourself,
Dr. Ingrid | Yeah
Robin | You're able to go through the emotion, experience it, and not carry that. I mean, that's been my experience since I've, you know, my un-fawning and my deeper love and connection to myself. I'm feeling my emotions like way, like, just real. You know, before I I was like, I was numbing, you know, that was, that was absolutely my experience. Because it's like, yes, that was my natural go to, like, it's been a heck of a day. I'm just gonna have some wine right now that'll help. It doesn't like, I'm not doing that anymore. Of course it is. I could see why. Like, the why is clear to me. That wasn't the solution. It's like, going into and I think about what, when you when you're when you're talking about this, my response like I'm dealing with my co parenting, with my ex, and it's not easy, but my response is different. Where I used to fawn now it's like it's whatever, whatever is warranted in the in that experience. It's not like I'm co I'm not thinking about these things how am I going to deal with this in the moment? It's like, if this is a survival response, sometimes I'm like, I am fighting. It's with a little bit of, you know, more strength, more like, this is the response that actually I'm coming to right now, and then I'm able to feel the emotion like, holy shit. That wasn't easy, that was hard, and then let it go. So I'm not holding on to stuff anymore either. That's a different that's a different, different way to be.
Dr. Ingrid | You just pointed to like 10 different really important things in that example. So one is that if you're in a chronic fawn response, you tend to lose a healthy fight response. A healthy fight response is having a voice, setting boundaries, being able to speak up for yourself, right. So a big part of this process, then, tends to be learning to tolerate both the anger too. It's not just the fear and the terror, but like I'm mad or this doesn't work for me, and finding a way to voice it, right. So that you can go, Well, that doesn't work for me, right. We'll have to find another solution. And to your point, yes, then when we say it and own it and feel it, we know, oh, my God, I didn't die. It worked out okay. My needs were met to whatever degree. And the body goes, oh, oh, you mean it's safer now to feel our anger and that we don't have to stop it, we can actually make different choices around it. And again, that's why it's experiential. You can't just tell someone like, well, go get a healthy fight response. It's like, oh my gosh, in the moment, I have to go can I say this thing that I never could have said before? But I'm gonna it feels like I should, and I can do it now, and I have the resources, so I'm gonna go ahead. But the other thing that I feel like I always need to call attention to again, for people that have really complex trauma, the idea of just being with yourself and tolerating the feelings and sort of bringing your attention inward tends not to be enough, because you might have unmetabolized historical trauma that's still in the driver's seat. You might not even know what it is, and so often and in the most ideal scenario, people would find a trauma therapist. And trauma therapy tends to be very different than traditional talk therapy. There are so many modalities I mentioned just a few in the book, because they're my personal experience, either as a therapist or as a client working with trauma therapist. But you should be able to ask a potential therapist, do you work with complex trauma? What modalities do you use? And they should be able to tell you, so it's different to be trauma trained than to be trauma informed. Trauma Informed could just mean like, oh yes, I've heard of trauma, right. And so I say ask the hard questions you're allowed. A therapist should absolutely be able to say, I work with exactly what you're talking about. Here's why I think this modality could be useful. And even then, when you show up, boy do fawners fawn with our therapists, we go, I don't want them to know that what they're doing isn't helpful at all. Right
Robin | Oh yes, fawning with your therapist.
Dr. Ingrid | So then we have to be willing to kind of check in, and hopefully a therapist is also checking in, like, well, how is this working for you? What are you noticing? And then I want to encourage you to tell them the truth.
Robin | Yeah
Dr. Ingrid | You're not doing anything wrong if you go, I feel nothing. This doesn't feel helpful. This feels like I feel worse. This is the feedback that this therapist needs in order to help you, first of all, and second of all, if, if they can't meet you there, if they can't offer other supports or other ways in that actually do feel helpful, this is the information that lets you know this is not the right working relationship. Don't stay there for five years and go, well, I don't know. I've just been with them for so long, right
Robin | I've had, I've had experience in in my life with quite a few different therapists, and your book points back to over and over again Ingrid, is that we, we have the answers inside of ourselves.
Dr. Ingrid | That is the
Robin | Wisdom
Dr. Ingrid | Connection
Robin | We have. And that's when I've done so like, a lot of work on myself, to to and it's not work on myself. It's like I'm loving, yeah, which is loving myself. And that takes work. And what does that? It takes a lot of introspection. It takes a lot of space giving, giving myself the love that I was looking outside of myself for re parenting myself, like you talk about in your book, and like you said, going out in nature, I don't do a lot of meditation, per say, but I do spend a lot of time just there's prayer time and silence, all these things, using the sauna, whatever you can do in your life, to actually just spend time with yourself, getting to know yourself on these deep, deep, deep levels. And let's just say that you you come in, you're working with a therapist, and you're like something inside you is going, this isn't quite fitting, or I'm not. You can intellectualize that all day long, but something in you might be telling you no, not good fit. And it's like listening to yourself honoring the honoring the wisdom that you already have inside yourself, like this. This is probably not the person to help me. That's okay.
Dr. Ingrid | Right. And sometimes what can also happen is you go, this doesn't feel like a good fit. And the therapist goes, oh, wow. Tell me about that. What are you experiencing? What are you noticing? And then they see this whole thing they couldn't see before they and it's not that they're not a good fit or the modality isn't a good fit, but there's just this whole other piece that they're able to bring in, but they can't do that unless we sort of speak up.
We have to use our voice. It is hard.
Oh gosh, it's so hard
Robin | All the things.Oh my gosh. Dr. Ingrid Clayton, I'm so grateful you came on today and I learned so much from you. I really, and I'm, I'm gonna be recommending your book. I'm passing it on because it's fantastic Fawning. It is. It's so good. Yeah.
Dr. Ingrid | Thank you for taking the time to read it, to discuss it with your best friend, to listen to it. It's really, it creates such a meaningful conversation when I'm able to connect with folks that really spent time with you know, you're a writer with what we took hours and hours and hours trying to articulate and put on the page. And not everybody does that, right? So I feel very honored by you taking the time to do it, to run it through your own body, because that's the most interesting thing. I go, well, maybe we could talk about these ideas, but I want to know, what does it mean in your life and in your body? And that's the stuff that's going to help other people see how it relates to their life and their body. So thank you for for all of that
We're doing this for healing and for having better relationships. And this is this one. This one was a huge marker. for me. So thank you. I'm gonna, I'm gonna close with a blessing with your my learnings through you this week, this week. So
Okay
Robin | May we understand that the process of un-fawning is a paradigm shift. Un-fawning is an expansion of ourselves. May we remember, we can break the pattern of chronic fawning. We can start by honoring ourselves and our needs, reconnecting with our inner guidance and feeling our feelings. May we maintain our relationship with ourselves by directing our empathy, patience and goodwill and wisdom we've given to others back to ourselves, and I just want to thank you Dr. Ingrid, so blessings to you.
Dr. Ingrid | I loved every word of that blessing. Thank you for sharing it, and thanks again for having me.
Robin | Thank you.
Thank you so much for being here with us. Let's Talk Love is brought to you by Real Love Ready and hosted by Robin Ducharme, if you'd like to keep learning with us, visit realloveready.com for more resources and tools to boost your relational skills and get better at love. If this podcast has resonated with you, it would mean the world to us if you could take just 30 seconds to do these three things, follow or subscribe. Never miss an episode by hitting the follow or subscribe button wherever you listen to your podcasts, whether it's Apple podcasts Spotify or your favorite app, this makes sure new episodes show up automatically for you, and it helps us get more visibility so more people can find our show. Leave a rating and review. Your feedback means everything to us. By leaving a five star rating and a thoughtful review, you're not only showing your support, but also helping others discover the podcast. Share an episode that really spoke to you with someone in your life, whether it's a friend, partner or family member, your recommendation could just be what they need to hear. We at Real Love Ready acknowledge and express gratitude for the Co Salish people, the stewards of the land on which we work and play. And encourage you to take a moment to acknowledge and express gratitude for those that have stewarded it and continue to steward the land that you live on as well many blessings and much love.