[00:00:00] That's what you say about them. They don't complain. They anticipate what you need. They clean up before you ask. They notice when you're stressed and they quietly disappear or quietly help. And you always thought that meant you were doing something right. But I wanna ask you something and I want you to sit with it rather than answer it too quickly.
Are they easy or are they careful? Because there's a difference. Easy means their resource and secure and genuinely at rest. Careful means their nervous system has learned that the safest way to stay close to you is to never need anything. Those two things can look identical from the outside. Only one of them is okay.
Welcome to the Raw Regulation on the Regulated Life. I'm Erica Carter folk. And I wanna say upfront that today's episode is one that I hold the lot of care, because the pattern we're talking about today is subtle. It doesn't announce [00:01:00] itself. And the people who are most prone to it are also often the people who love most fiercely.
We're talking about the fond response and specifically how high achieving over-functioning, deeply devoted adults can inadvertently wire the people closest to them toward fawning.
Not through cruelty, but through the chronic visibility of their own unmet needs. This is a tender conversation and I'm gonna ask you to stay open, and I promise I'm gonna give you something real to do with it.
Let me build the science of this carefully because I think it's important that we understand what we're actually talking about when we say fawn.
The fall response is a nervous system survival adaptation. It was first named in trauma research to describe the fourth response alongside fight, flight, and freeze. That a nervous system can default to when direct confrontation or escape [00:02:00] is not perceived as safe.
In fawning, the nervous system learns to manage the emotional environment, to read the room with extraordinary precision, to anticipate the needs and moods of others, and adjust yourself accordingly. Becoming agreeable, helpful, self-effacing, low maintenance, in order to maintain connection and avoid threat.
In adult relationships, we often see fawning described in context of high conflict or overtly controlling dynamics. But I wanna be very clear today, fawning can develop in response to a parent who is simply struggling. A parent who is chronically stressed, who is visibly overwhelmed, who loves their child, but whose love coexist with a nervous system that's running too hot, too numb, or too unpredictable for the child to feel consistently safe around.
Dr. Bessel VanDerKolk's foundational work on trauma and the body showed us that [00:03:00] trauma does not require dramatic events. The chronic ambient stress of living with a dysregulated caregiver, even a loving one, is enough to wire a nervous system towards survival adaptation.
And Dr. Jane Ocker. Research on emotional suppression adds another layer. When adults suppress and mask their emotional states, that suppression doesn't disappear. It continues to generate a physiological signal. Children are reading that signal, not the mask, but what's underneath it.
So the child who lives with a parent who is chronically exhausted, who visibly carries enormous weight, who loves them, but doesn't have much left, at the end of the day, that child often learns quietly and without being told that their needs are an imposition. That needing things makes them a burden.
That the safest kind of love is the kind that cost the other person as little as possible, and they grew up like that. This one requires [00:04:00] me to speak to two different people at once because we've all been on both sides of this dynamic. If you grew up with a parent who was overworked, overwhelmed, emotionally unavailable, or simply caring too much, you may recognize yourself and the child I described. The one who learned to ask for less, who became the easy one, who got very good at reading the room, who still even now feels a reflexive guilt at having needs of your own. That is fond wiring, and it's not a personality trait. It's a learned nervous system response, and it can change.
But I also wanna speak to you. If you're the parent in this picture, maybe you know that you're overwhelmed. Maybe you've been running on empty for longer than you wanna admit. Maybe your children or the people close to you, seem to manage around you in ways that are honestly a relief because you just don't have the bandwidth to navigate anyone else's big feelings right now.[00:05:00]
I'm not here to make you feel like a bad parent. I'm here to offer you a question. What are they learning about love from watching you? Are they learning that they're allowed to have needs? That their full, messy, complicated selves are welcome in the space. That asking for things is safe? Or are they learning to make themselves smaller so there's more room for you?
That question doesn't have to land as an indictment. It can land as an invitation, an invitation to get some support, to do some of your own nervous system work. To let yourself be helped so you can stop unintentionally teaching the people you love. That helping is the only safe currency.
Today's practice is called the permission reset. It has two parts, one for you and one that you can, if this feels right, eventually share with the people in your life.
Find a comfortable position. Feet on the floor. [00:06:00] Hands resting easy.
Take a breath.
This first part is just for you. Place one hand on your heart. Feel the warmth of your hand.
Take a breath in slowly and out.
Now, either out loud or silently say, I am allowed to need things.
I am allowed to not be okay.
My needs are not in the imposition on the people who love me.
I do not have to earn my place in this relationship by being endlessly useful, [00:07:00] endlessly capable, or endlessly fine.
Take a breath,
notice what comes up. There might be resistance. There might be a voice that says, but I have to be strong. I have to hold it together. I can't let them see me struggle. Just notice that voice. You don't have to argue with it. Just let it be there while you keep breathing.
One more breath in out.
Now the second part, think of someone in your life who may have learned to make themselves smaller around you, a child, a close friend, someone who seems to manage around your emotions rather than share their own. [00:08:00] And say again, out loud or silently,
they are allowed to need things.
Their needs are not an inconvenience.
I wanna be someone whose presence makes them feel safe to be full sized.
Take a breath.
And then, if there's an opportunity today. Ask them something real, not how was your day in the way that expects a short answer. Ask something that creates genuine space. What do you actually need right now? And then wait. And stay. And let whatever they say be welcome. [00:09:00] That act, that genuine, regulated, open presence is the antidote to the fawn response. It's how you begin to unwire it.
Use the permission reset when you catch yourself in the performance of fine, when you notice the familiar contraction, the swallowing of your own needs because it doesn't feel safe or convenient to have them. When you are in a relational moment and you realize you have been managing the other person's feelings, rather than actually being with them. And use it when you suspect the people around you are fawning when the room feels too agreeable, too quiet, too carefully managed. When someone seems to be anticipating your every need in a way that looks like devotion, but feels more like vigilance.
You don't fix the farm response. By demanding that people stop, people pleasing. You fix it by becoming a nervous system that is safe [00:10:00] enough to not need managing that work starts here.
If today opens something significant for you, the stop the spiral workshop is where I would send you next.
It's a 60 minute live somatic experience where we go deep into these patterns. The fawn response, the over-functioning, the performance of fine, and we began to rewire them from the inside out. It's $37 and is worth every cent. Link is in the show notes at mind fusion.com/workshop.
Tomorrow is our closing episode of the week, and it's one of the most rounding ones. I offer the generational reset. I'll see you then.
