We often hear about the “fight – flight” response, that instinctive reaction to a fear-inducing situation. In fact, you’ve likely witnessed or responded to an actual or perceived threat with protective aggression or a fearful escape. Yet two other hardwired responses–freezing and fawning–are also part of our instinctual repertoire. And while such responses are intended to keep us safe and alive when in danger, they can actually hamper self-esteem, self-worth, and interpersonal relationships when they become our default. Today, we’ll take a look at how an overactive fawn response–that tendency to appease and please–can make you lose your identity as you sacrifice yourself–your core identity–to make others happy and keep the peace. Join Dr. Carla Manly and renowned psychologist and trauma expert Dr. Ingrid Clayton for an empowering journey into healing from fawning–and reclaiming your voice and your life.

Topics discussed include fawning, appeasing, fight-flight response, trauma, relational trauma, complex trauma, abuse, domestic violence, gaslighting, self-gaslighting, intergenerational trauma, intergenerational patterns, support groups, people-pleasing, self-compassion, healthy love, external validation, support groups, boundaries, healthy boundaries, flexible boundaries, healthy relationships, self-love, and self-growth.

Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised. Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). Support/informational links are in the show notes.

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy from Fear: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Fear-Carla-Marie-Manly/dp/1641701218

Date Smart: https://www.amazon.com/Date-Smart-Transform-Relationships-Fearlessly/dp/1641704675

Aging Joyfully: https://www.amazon.com/Aging-Joyfully-Optimal-Relationships-Fulfillment/dp/1641701412

The Joy of Imperfect Love: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Imperfect-Love-Creating-Relationships/dp/1641709057

Oracle decks by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1757477615/imperfect-love-reflection-oracle-cards

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Imperfect-Love-Reflection-Oracle-Cards/dp/B0D1Z5M4YK

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Stop People-Pleasing, Self-Gaslighting, and Fawning with Expert Dr. Ingrid Clayton

How to Stop Self-Gaslighting, People-Pleasing, and Fawning! Embrace Your Inner Truth!

We often hear about the fight or flight response, that instinctive reaction to a fear-inducing situation. In fact, you’ve likely witnessed or responded to an actual or perceived threat with protective aggression or a fearful escape. Yet, two other hardwired responses, freezing and fawning, are also part of our instinctual repertoire. While such responses are intended to keep us safe and alive when in danger, they can hamper self-esteem, self-worth, and interpersonal relationships when they become our default.

In this episode, we’ll take a look at how an overactive fawn response, that tendency to appease and please, can make you lose your identity as you sacrifice yourself, your core identity, to make others happy and keep the peace. Join me and a renowned psychologist and trauma expert for an empowering journey into healing from fawning and reclaiming your voice and your life.

We’ll focus on this reader’s real-life question. “My mom is getting older and needs more care. My sisters and brother are fighting a lot more than usual, and it’s making things worse for my mom. I moved away from them 5 years ago and have set up a new life with my husband and 2 kids a few hundred miles away.

My mom is asking me to come back because I was always the kind peacekeeper. I’m full of dread and don’t think I can afford to go back there, not because of money, but because the toll on my mental health is way too high. My husband is willing to relocate if I want. I’m conflicted because I feel like I should do right by my mother. Am I selfish if I don’t move back there?” With that issue as the focus of this episode, this is the show. Please note that as this episode contains sensitive information, reader discretion is advised.

I’m joined by a tremendous guest, Dr. Ingrid Clayton. Dr. Clayton is a psychologist and the author of Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves – and How to Find Our Way Back. Welcome to the show, Dr. Clayton. It’s a joy to have you with us.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited about our conversation.

Psychologist And Trauma Expert Dr. Ingrid Clayton

It’s going to be a good one. This is a jam-packed episode because there is so much here. To set the stage for the reader’s question and then to move through and process that, I’m glad you are here with me to help unravel this one. Before we launch into the heart of this reader’s concern, could you tell our audience a little bit about what makes you you?

At the heart of everything is curiosity. I’ve been a seeker ever since I was little. I wanted to know what was hiding in all of the little corners and secret spaces, and I’ve carried that into pretty much every area of my life.

I have to ask. When you were a kid, what kind of corners and secret spaces were you looking into?

You’re opening up a can of worms. I was looking for the answers as to what was going on. I even then called it a dysfunctional family. I found the drugs. I found the secrets. I found that it was mostly my parents. I was like, “What’s going on here? I can’t quite figure it out.” Each little clue would lead me to another piece of information that I cobbled together to understand that I was living in an alcoholic family system.

How old were you when that type of curiosity started?

I can’t remember exact ages, but I know very young, I would climb onto the counter above the refrigerator to those little cupboards above the fridge. I knew that there would be something there tucked behind the beds. I was looking for clues, and I found them.

Here, you and I are very different. I was climbing on top of cabinets in order to find the hidden treats, the sweets that were stowed away.

I’m sure that I was doing the same on other days, 100%, but it all started with looking for the answers that weren’t being given.

That makes a lot of sense. I know as kiddos, when we venture into the larger world and see other people’s families and see what “normal” might look like, it can cause us to start foraging more in our own minds, hearts, and family environment to make sense of, “What is this place I’m in? I’m a stranger in this odd environment.”

Eventually, that gaze turned inward. It was not just the external environment and what was happening, but what I was doing, how I was responding, what I had control over, and what I didn’t. It led to this lifelong question of not, “What’s happening? What happened to me? What has it done to me, and why can’t I feel more free?”

I am in my 50s. I struggled with that question for most of my adult life, even. I went from climbing on the cupboards to reading another self-help book, going to grad school, and getting another degree, another CEU, training, and certification. It largely remained as this unmet, unsatiated drive that I when I finally learned more about trauma, relational trauma in particular, I finally started to get some real answers that allowed me to make sense to myself.

It’s the greatest joy to be like, “Look what I have found. Maybe this can make sense for you, too.” I got a lot of wrong answers along the way, or at least ones that didn’t necessarily fit for me in terms of the lens and the language of how I saw myself and the systems that I came from. It has been an interesting journey. That one question unlocks a lot, doesn’t it?

It does. In psychotherapy, you’re aware, as I am, of what we call the wounded healer. Sometimes, those of us who have been through such difficult childhood and life situations come from a place of very deep knowing. There are the books and all of the studying and certifications we’ve accrued, but there is also that deep inner knowing of what that experience is like, as well as all of the healing that is required so that you can be present for other people. Thank you for sharing that. That’s a beautiful place to start.

Moving Forward From Fawning Response

You are the fawning expert. I’m so excited about this episode because we talk so much about fight or flight. We often don’t pause to realize that the other part of that spectrum, the freeze or fawn, can be so debilitating and very hardwired, especially given how society likes women in particular. This is not a gendered issue necessarily, but women in particular can easily lapse into fawn.

Men can easily lapse into fight because they’re programmed. It’s okay for a man to be tough and to fight. A good man should fight, and a good woman should appease and please. Would you please, for us, set the stage on the fawning response, and anything you want to add to give us a nice foundation so we have the vocabulary to move forward?

To your point, we’ve talked a lot about fight or flight. Freeze, even, has been given a lot more attention. These originate from the trauma literature that originally focused on single incidents or acute events. Fawning stems more from what we call complex trauma, which is relational trauma. It’s an ongoing trauma. It’s not like a car crash or a natural disaster. It’s the water in which you’re swimming all the time.

First of all, it took us a while to understand complex trauma as separate from trauma generally. We have different responses as a result. The trauma itself is a different animal. Fawning is a hybrid trauma response. If you look at the fight or flight energy, it’s mobilization. It’s energetic. It’s this thing that happens in a nanosecond when you feel threatened. There’s an elevated heart rate, adrenaline, and all of these things running through your system.

If you look at freeze, freeze has all of that energy, but it’s trapped. It’s like a deer in the headlights. You have that elevated heart rate, but you can’t move. With fawning, this pleasing, appeasing, and caretaking is an aspect of fight or flight in terms of our hyper arousal. It’s very active. There’s a lot of doing, even this reader who’s asking, “Should I move across the country to go manage someone else’s life?”

No one else is minding the story. It’s an active aspect of the trauma response. What the reader is also saying is, “I sense that there’s a disconnect from me here.” The other half of fawning is a hypoarousal, a disconnect from self. It’s where the self-abandonment lies. Both of these things are happening at the same time.

This reader is like, “Should I go? I’m filled with dread.” To me, the fact that they can even use that language is so powerful because there is some attunement to what they’re experiencing. In my work, that’s the beginning of what I call the unfawning process. It’s almost like you’re Pinocchio, going, “I’m a real-life boy. I matter. I exist.” Start to pay attention to that because that contains the seeds of the ability to genuinely show up for someone when we have the capacity and interest, and when we’re doing it at the expense of ourselves. Unfortunately, that, in a long-term situation, is what happens with chronic fawning.

As a trauma response, even for me personally, did the fawn response save me? Yes, it did. Am I grateful for this genius shape shifting, life-giving instinct? 100%, but like all the rest of our trauma responses, we are not meant to live there 24/7. That’s called survival mode. It’s not an embodied present experience of oneself in the world. A lot of my work then is about discernment, like, “Am I in danger, or is it   uncomfortable for me to say no?” Historically, a healthy fight response made things worse. That’s common for a lot of folks.

To your point, it’s not a gendered response, but women have been conditioned to fawn, and men have often been conditioned to a fight response. The reality is that there’s a pecking order in our lives. A relational trauma response means we’re always in context with a person, our family, our jobs, or our friends. That context may change, but the question is, “Can I relate with a little more autonomy or more sense of myself now than maybe I was allowed as a child, or if I’m coming out of an abusive relationship?”

Most of us didn’t know safety previously, so it becomes reflexive all the time. Fawning, as a protector, in case. We don’t want to test those waters. That’s the other thing we know to be true about trauma. It’s like the body goes, “I am never going to let that happen again.” We become whatever the situation calls for. It’s not always sweet and nice. It’s whatever the situation calls for. That’s what we become.

That’s the part that you are talking about when we do whatever’s called for. At a big level, we can see that as switching in people. In one case, somebody might be very appeasing-oriented, like, “Yes, sure,” and then the next moment, they can become the biggest, most aggressive bully. It’s that back and forth.

I have also seen, especially for women, that the fawn response or the appease response becomes so much a part of who they are. Unless perhaps they were being attacked in a subway, they can’t imagine standing up for what they might want. Oftentimes, they don’t even know what they want because they’re afraid to go there.

They’ve never even asked the question.

That’s so hard. I have such compassion when I’m working with people, and they’re like, “I can’t even imagine what I would want here.” From our reader’s question, I am not sure how she moved hundreds of miles away, but I have the sense that there was something in her that allowed that, that life over there seemed better. I’m assuming it’s a her, but it might not be.

Finding An Internal Sense Of What You Deserve

There’s a part of this individual who is saying, “I’m rooted here. I’m safe here. Life is good here, but I feel obligated to care for Mom.” She’s not saying she has a bad relationship with her mom. It sounds like she doesn’t want to be around the infighting with the siblings. For readers who were thinking, “This resonates with me on some level. I can see this with my boss, my family, or my friend group,” how can they find an internal sense of what is right for them? Not an all-or-nothing, “I should stay. I should go,” but ferret it out on a case-by-case basis. How does that happen?

You used the keyword, which is an internal sense of what is right or wrong for each person. The fawner does not tend to look inward. We seek safety externally. It needs to be validated. It needs to be endorsed. We need permission from somebody else. That’s the thing that has made our nervous system safe. We go, “I’m meeting your needs or your expectations.”

This is tricky, because often, to your other point, we don’t even know that we’re fawning. We don’t even know that our needs aren’t being met. A lot of times, fawning looks like meeting expectations. It looks like success. It is turning our gaze from strictly an external point of view to going, “How do I feel?” Here’s the tricky part. This is the rub. Often, what we feel is dread, shame, and overwhelm. It’s the stuff nobody wants to feel. We’re quick to fix that feeling by leaning into the should, like, “If I go, I won’t have to wrestle with this.”

A lot of my work is saying we have to be willing to wrestle. What that looks like is, can we be present to the complicated feeling in ourselves and have our own back? Be with it.  Ask yourself that question, perhaps, like, “Is it dangerous if I don’t move, fix it, and do it quickly, or is it uncomfortable for me to sit with this feeling?” We can start to discern, like, “Do I need a reflexive trauma response here, or is there room for me to build more capacity?”

As I’m talking to you, I’m instinctively putting my hand on my heart, which is a stance of self-compassion. I have my clients do it. I do it myself all the time. I physically feel that I have my own back as I do this. I feel like I’m starting to take deeper breaths. I become a little bit more regulated as I’m feeling into this uncomfortable feeling that I don’t want to feel.

It’s a stance of self-compassion, which fawners give so freely to everybody else in our lives. We go, “Let me hold space for you. You’re allowed to feel whatever you need to feel.” Often, we’re not offering that same stance back to ourselves. This, to me, is key. It’s slowing down. This is a huge life-changing question, so slowing it down, noticing what you’re experiencing in your own body, and then seeing if you can tolerate it, and I use that word on purpose, a little bit longer or a little bit more.

Maybe the next question is, “What would help me to be present to this feeling?” It might be inviting her husband, who seems to be a loving, resourceful person, who is like, “Whatever you need to do, I’m going to support you.” Maybe invite him in to, “Can you support me sitting next to me as I’m wrestling with all of this discomfort?” Maybe it’s envisioning a grandmother who has passed away that gets to come, sit next to you, and put their hand on your back. It doesn’t matter what it is. Trust your own instinct and nudge to build your resources as you’re feeling more of these tricky feelings.

I so appreciate this beautiful pause to help on a somatic level, the body level, where we often are so in the head. Ground with your hand to your heart, your heart chakra, for those who do chakra work. It’s like, “Ground here.” The beautiful part about you doing that is it also allows you to not only feel your heart space, but feel if you’re breathing a bit and you’re slowing down. It is helping you feel reassured in a way that the fawners, the people pleasers, have been there, done that. It helps you reclaim the home, that fledgling sense of, “I matter. My heart matters. My inner truth matters.”

I love that piece because no matter where we are, whether it be an airplane, bus, living room, or office space, we can put our hands to our hearts. Someone might think it’s odd. Who cares if they think it? I don’t care. We learn, like, “Wait a second. If I am in a quandary here and my instinct, that gut response or that keep-me-safe response, is telling me I should.” I’m a big believer that if it’s saying you should, that’s an important time to use the should word as, “Wait a minute. I’m not tuning into what is right for me.”

Dealing With Guilt And Anxiety

I have another question for you. As you were talking, I was thinking about what often comes up with clients on my end. They’ll say, “Part of me knows what’s right for me. What I want to do is either leave or stay, whatever the situation is. What I want to do is this, but I feel so guilty.” I don’t want to bypass this part because guilt is telling us something. In this case, I could imagine perhaps that this individual is feeling guilty, like, “Mom was good to me,” or, “I love my mom. I should go. I feel guilty for abandoning her to the forces of this antagonistic crew of adult children.” What would you say? What can we do with those feelings of guilt that so often arise?

I want to highlight what you said before I answer that. You said you move into the body, the somatic experience. Trauma responses are body-based responses, but what a lot of us try to do is go back to our head where the should lives and go, “What would so-and-so do if they were in my situation?” They try to pencil it out cognitively, and it keeps us on this merry-go-round that we can never get off of. Dropping into the body is where it’s at.

My next inclination, and yours mirrors this, is that I often ask, “What are you afraid is going to happen if you take care of yourself?” What you’re saying is that a lot of the time, the answer is, “I’m going to feel so guilty.” It is very common. Then, the question becomes, “Can I be with myself with that guilty feeling?” I get it. We all want a quick fix. We want something that’s going to make everybody not mad at us and make us feel good about ourselves. When it comes to a lot of these questions, there’s no silver bullet. I haven’t found one. If you have found one, let me know.

No, I don’t have the silver bullet.

Here’s the thing that has been helpful for me. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Dr. Resmaa Menakem’s work. He works a lot with racialized trauma in the United States. He has these phrases that I love. There’s going to be pain either way, but there’s dirty pain and clean pain. Dirty pain is the pain that most of us know. It’s staying small. It’s staying stuck and living in the obligation. It’s the reflexive, “I don’t matter. I don’t exist.” That’s a horrifying place to live. For most of us, it leads to all kinds of other behaviors where we’re checking out, we’re overeating, we’re addicted, or we’re abandoning ourselves in a host of other ways to tolerate the dirty pain.

Clean pain is, does it hurt? Yes, but is it moving you through to greater freedom? Clean pain is the growing pains. It’s going to the gym and doing the reps kind of pain. I also don’t want us to mistake discomfort or a hard feeling for, “I’m moving in the wrong direction,” because there’s no silver bullet. We’ve got to feel whatever is coming up. It’s about how we are going to respond to those big feelings differently.

I love the concept of dirty pain and clean pain. It reminds me of my first book, Joy from Fear, where I talk about constructive fear and destructive fear. There is a time when fear or anxiety comes up in us, and it’s saying, “Run. You’re being chased by a lion or a rabid dog.” That is healthy. We want to respond that way.

Other times, we’re anxious because of old, hardwired messages, and this often comes up in highly abusive situations. It’s the perpetrator saying, “No one will love you if you. If you leave, no one else will love you.” Maybe it is the person saying it to themselves, like, “Nobody will love me.” They’re staying out of destructive fear. It is this fear that they are not healthy, not enough, or not worthy.

We learn to ask ourselves, “Is there a growth opportunity here?” By staying and getting abused, there’s no growth opportunity. By staying and letting a rabid dog bite you, there is no growth opportunity. It is having a difficult conversation, being with anxiety, and not letting it take over your entire being, but moving through that anxiety and knowing, “I did that.”

I agree with you. We feel that pain of that anxiety that we’re used to running from, but when we stay with it, we go, “I could have that difficult conversation. I can call Mom.” We’re imagining that perhaps the person who wrote in has decided not to return. It is having that conversation with mom and saying, “Mom, I’ve decided not to come back. This is what I can do.”

It is realizing that that’s going to bring up some anxiety, some guilt, sadness, and all these feelings, but acknowledging them and moving through to the other side. This is one of your specialties. What happens when we move through that anxiety, all those difficult feelings, and that clean pain to the other side?

You also used a phrase that I love, which is, “This is what I can do.” For a lot of fawners, it’s very black and white thinking. This is true with complex trauma, generally. We tend to fall into this black or white. It’s a yes or it’s a no, and it’s a very hard line in between. Even bringing in this notion of a modified boundary. Maybe asking ourselves, “What does feel like a hard no, but what am I available for? “ can also open up more nuance, which can help the conversation no matter which side you fall on. You can say, “I can’t do X, Y, and Z, but I’m hearing that you need more support. This is what I’m able to offer. I’m going to call you every Sunday. Let’s connect,” or whatever the thing is at the end of the day. I got off track with the larger question that you were asking. Can you say it again?

Standing Up For Yourself

No worries. We can pivot back to the part when we are working through that feeling. We understand clean pain. When we are pushing through it and we’re on the other side, what does that do to the self who is so accustomed to getting small and doing to keep the peace and make other people happy at the expense of the self?

When we start moving through that difficult place, people can get mad. I know this from personal experience. As you start changing and creating strong boundaries when people are used to making you fold or you are used to allowing yourself to apologize and morph into this and morph into that, you start saying, “Wait a second. This isn’t healthy for me. I can’t do this anymore. It’s not good for my health.” To me, even beyond that is, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

What is on the other side? What can all of our readers and this person in particular expect when they learn to stand in their truth? They’re willing to put up with other people’s disapproval, anger, or whatever’s happening. We don’t want to discount that. It can be intense, especially if there’s active abuse. This is something you should be very careful with. We’re not saying just to stand up to a physically abusive or highly emotionally abusive person. That’s another conversation altogether. In a more moderate situation, what would someone expect on the other side of standing up for themselves?

I wouldn’t advocate for this work if there weren’t a huge upside. I am all about the, “What am I getting at the end of this thing?” I get me in my own life. For myself personally, and also a lot of my clients, they get themselves in their own lives often for the first time ever. As we’re lessening what somebody else thinks as the priority, what automatically happens is our body and all of our parts are recognizing, “I must matter because you are showing up for me.” You, in this case, being your higher self or however you want to language it.

It changes us physiologically. It can have an immediate impact. To your other point, when you stop people-pleasing, people will not be pleased. That’s true. I’ve experienced it in my own way a million times. At the same moment, when I go, “I’m not meeting their needs, but I am meeting mine,” it changes how I feel about myself.

There’s no mistake that when you have a history of getting smaller, shrinking, and not having a voice, we suffer with things like low self-esteem and difficulty setting boundaries. For a lot of folks, that’s where the conversation stopped, as though we could go raise ourselves, like, “Say affirmations and feel better about yourself. Get it together. Why would you care what people think about you?”Those are cognitive solutions for a body-based problem.

Standing up for ourselves is an experiential, embodied way of being with ourselves, and it changes how we feel about ourselves. It might not be 0 to 60, but I guarantee you that that needle is moving. It’s that, “I’m a real-life person. I matter.” Since that feels so good on some level, what I’ve seen is that when people start to get a taste of it, they want to grow it more. It gets to a place where you can look back and you marvel at what you were willing to do, like, “I’m not going to fight for myself. I’m  going to roll over and be steamrolled.” We can’t believe that we did it to the extent that we did because showing up for ourselves feels so good and so right.

It changes your friendships. It changes your professional track. It’s like those ceilings that we used to hit, where we were like, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Everyone else is finding X, Y, and Z.” It’s like we suddenly have a path because we can show up. You’ve grown legs. The ground underneath is supporting you. You feel your sense of presence on the actual earth. It transforms every area of your life. I know that sounds too big and woo-woo, but it’s not.

I agree with you 100%. It’s a lived experience. Not only have I seen it with clients, but I’ve seen it in my own life. I started a little late, but better late than never. When I finally started on that path of healthy boundaries and tuning into the self, doors opened and windows opened in ways that somebody would think that I had had a magic wand.

The magic wand was not selfishness because a lot of people get confused and think, “I’m being selfish if I stand up for myself or if I tune into myself.” I call it self-fullness. It is being aware of what is in the self and being aware of what that is. When we teach self-fullness, it’s very different from, “Me, me, me.” It’s like, “Let me tune in. Let me factor in other people. Let me go back and tune into myself. Let me factor in.” In that beautiful dance, we become self-full. I’ve never heard anyone else use that term. I love it because it’s about becoming more of a whole human being, which is a dance. It shifts depending on situations.

That is what most of us are seeking, which is reciprocal relationships. We’re very quick to see how this person’s not available or how they’re not showing up, but we don’t recognize that we’re not even available to ourselves. How could we have these reciprocal, healthy relationships that we’re longing for if we’re not full of our own selves to bring to that very table?

The other piece here in terms of the selfishness piece, it’s more selfish in the end to leave aspects of ourselves out to show up out of obligation. What’s going to breed almost instantaneously is resentment. What we’re bringing to the table is our resentment. We’re showing up and saying, “I’m going to do it because I should, and it’s the right thing,” but what we’re feeling is bitterness and resentment. It’s going to come out somehow and some way, and often, it can blindside the other person. It’s like, “I thought you wanted to move back. I thought you X, Y, and Z.” It ends up biting us back in the long run.

I agree with you. I also enjoy looking at the part where when we appease and fawn, we’re a model for our partners, our friends, and any kiddos in the picture. We are passing on these patterns of subservience from one generation to another. That’s another downside. The other downside is we’re not asking others. We’re not holding others accountable. We’re not asking them. We’re caving, as we cave, other people, especially the bullies, only get bigger. We are not being a force of accountability to ourselves and to other people. When we say no, someone else has to step up.

That’s right.

Find The Right Support System

It’s a beautiful way of looking and letting all of our readers see that it’s okay. In fact, it’s important for you to tune into yourself to learn when you’re in the fawn response. See that as a model for yourself and for everyone else in your world, that it’s okay and maybe truly, deeply necessary to step up and claim these parts of yourself. You paint such a beautiful journey. Speaking to all of our readers, as well as the question of the day, what are some other core pieces that you might want our readers to take away to help them on this recovery of the self journey?

I would be remiss not to say that what we’re talking about is trauma. What we’re talking about is a trauma response likely born of long-term, pervasive, multiple cuts to one’s psyche. Although we’re able to articulate this process in a pretty accessible way, most people need some help and support with it. The body is holding stuff that we don’t even know it’s holding, which is going to say, “No way. I’m not going to let you experience that again. I don’t care if we have to appease and please until the day we die.”

It’s also my bias. I’m a trauma therapist, so I tend to think that if it’s available to you, getting help from not just a trauma-informed therapist, which is good, but trauma-trained is better. They have real tools in their tool belt to help you with these somatic practices and trauma reprocessing experiences. That tends to be a big part of the equation for folks.

Also, the community. We’re talking about relational trauma. There’s this saying that wounding happens in relationships, and healing happens in relationships. It could also be survivors coming together to experience. Even with the reader with their husband, it sounds like they have found a healthy, supportive relationship. We tend to need that as we’re breaking these old patterns. Avail yourself of help to the degree that you can. It feels very important to me.

I agree with you. As the brain is being rewired and as the body is learning different response patterns, it’s so easy for us to lapse into old ways of being. Having a good therapist, somebody who is a trauma specialist, makes a huge difference. Self-help books, as much as I love books, are wonderful support. They are great to go with when you have a good therapist. Your book is a phenomenal book on how to heal in this way.

We also have support, whether it be friends, family, a domestic violence support group, a trauma support group, or something that fits your needs, where you can watch not only your journey unfold, but also watch as other people’s journeys unfold. That can be incredibly healing because sometimes, we don’t see the healing in our own selves. Yet, for other people, we’re watching theirs and then they can reflect back to us, “You’re getting stronger. You’re changing.” When you give up people-pleasing, people will not be pleased. They will consciously and unconsciously do anything they can, such as guilt tripping you, gaslighting you, or whatever they can do, to get you to revert to what they want you to do.

It’s so true. You speak about witnessing other people’s process. For a lot of us, we haven’t seen people step into this unfawning. What does that even mean? In this book, I have 7 clients, some I’ve seen up to 16 years, who have given me their entire story. We mined it for every piece of gold that we could possibly find to share it with the reader, so that they can see the arc not only like what it’s like now, but what they’re coming out of and what it looks like to come out of it, and to travel that whole journey. I’m so grateful to my clients who trusted me enough and who wanted to share their experience because they said, “What I wouldn’t give for someone to give this to me.” Books can be helpful.

How Gaslighting Impact Trauma

Hugely. They go so well with psychotherapy. For someone who can’t afford psychotherapy, a great self-help book is gold. Sometimes, you can also augment that with a free support group. The support is so critical. You can have a friend read a book with you and talk about the book. It’s a book club. Create a book club. Get the support. I do have a question for you, so we can wrap it up with this piece. I know this is a deep question, so I’m tucking it in at the end. How does self-gaslighting fit into this whole scenario?

If you go back to the definition of complex trauma, it is this ongoing situation that most of us go, “This is my family. This is the way that it is.” A lot of us are told off when we may have asked for help or tried to say, “This doesn’t seem right.” A lot of fawners are experienced as scapegoats. People are like, “You are being ridiculous. You are being selfish. Stop being so sensitive.” We then take those messages in and believe them because they’re coming from the people that are meant to show us who we are and meant to show us what it means to be loved.

I lived in this place for many decades. I’m a trauma therapist who didn’t know that I had complex trauma because I was so steeped in self-gaslighting. I was like, “I didn’t experience that experience.” We have this internal measuring stick that says, “It was trauma or it wasn’t.” We’re focusing on the wrong thing because we’re focusing on the content or the story. We’re not focusing on what it did to us as human beings.

The fact that I was sitting there with a measuring stick was more indicative of the fact that I had complex trauma than any of the things that happened in my childhood. It’s me sitting there going, “Do I matter? Is it okay?” There were all these questions, and they sat right next to all of this self-gaslighting, which was, “Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe if I do X, Y, and Z, then I’ll get over it.”

We fall into all the other traps, which are all the answers of telling us what to do and how to be. It’s like, “If you forgive. If you accept.” There are all these cognitive notions of finish lines that we’re suddenly going to arrive at, and it’s all going to magically be okay. What you and I tend to deal with is, at the end of the day, we’re moving out of this binary approach to healed or unhealed. We’re moving out of this idea that there’s a quick fix, and something’s going to allow me to overcome and override.

We’re being with ourselves in this messy but beautiful human condition, this body that both keeps us safe and is engaging in these patterns that might be keeping me stuck. We’re embracing the whole messy truth of all of it. That meant looking at this self-gaslighting piece of, “Ingrid, what if it was that bad? What if you’re not selfish? What if you didn’t make it all up? What if you trusted yourself?” as an exercise. Think of it like a science experiment. Ask yourself, “What would that feel like? What did it feel like in my body to ask myself those things?” It awakened pieces in me that became so vital to what needed to come next.

In a way, we’re ending right where we started, which is curiosity and being a seeker. Don’t allow yourself to say, “I already know the answer to that question because they told me the answer twenty years ago.” Be curious now. Open the cupboards now. What do you find as an adult that maybe you couldn’t see when you were little? Bring that lens, that little flashlight, into all the nooks and crannies. Do it if possible and where possible from a place of, “I believe me. I trust me. I have my own back.” To the degree that I don’t, I’m going to fight to have it more every single day.”

I love that you brought us full circle. I’m going to go with the cupboard analogy. It’s like opening that cupboard door. You and I clearly are on the same page. It’s why Imperfect Love is the show. It’s all about life’s messiness because it’s not one-and-done. If anyone reading thinks that they will ever be completely evolved, I know I’ll never be completely evolved. I will never be perfect. I don’t want to be perfect. That would be so boring.

I’m a kid again. I’m crawling up on top of the dryer, and I’m going into the cupboard. Maybe there’s something scary in there. Maybe there’s a mouse, but mice aren’t that scary. Who knows what’s up there that could scare me? Maybe, readers, you can open that door and find a wonderful, luscious sweet. It is a forgotten part of yourself, a part of yourself you never knew.

Opening that door is scary. Maybe digging around in the cupboard is scary, but the rewards of finding all of these wonderful parts of yourself. Some are messy and some are a little bit eh, but overarchingly, they’re pretty phenomenal. When we learn to make friends with all of these goofy, wonderful, different, extraordinary parts of ourselves, it’s like finding all of these sweets over and over again.

Get In Touch With Dr. Ingrid

I’m not talking sugar sweet, but the sweetness of life. It is our imperfections and polishing them if we want to, and making friends with them. It makes the journey not only a lot less scary but a lot more fun. Thank you so much for joining us. I feel such delight having talked with you. You offered your wisdom to our audience. Where can our readers find you and your work?

First of all, likewise. This was such a rich conversation. I feel like we could talk all day. You can find me at all the usual places. IngridClayton.com is my website. It has all the links to all the social stuff and everything in between. Come find me on Instagram, Substack, and all the places. That is another place for a free community that is so vital and helpful for folks. Come join the ride.

Thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, and your warmth. To our audience, thank you so much from my heart for joining us and for being with us on this beautiful, messy journey of love and life. This is the show.

Important Links

• Dr. Ingrid Clayton
• Fawning: Why the Need To Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves – and How to Find Our Way Back
• Joy from Fear
• Dr. Ingrid Clayton on Instagram
• Dr. Ingrid Clayton on Substack
• Dr. Ingrid Clayton on YouTube
• Dr. Ingrid Clayton on Facebook
• Dr. Ingrid Clayton on TikTok
• NAME HelpLine
• Mental Health and Relationships – MyHealthfinder
• Carla Marie Manly, PhD
•  Dr. Carla Marie Manly on Instagram
•  Dr. Carla Marie Manly on Twitter
•  Dr. Carla Marie Manly on Facebook
•  Dr. Carla Marie Manly on LinkedIn
•  Dr. Carla Marie Manly on YouTube
•  Dr. Carla Marie Manly on TikTok

About Dr. Ingrid Clayton

Ingrid Clayton, PhD is a writer and clinical psychologist in private practice in Los Angeles, California. With a masters in transpersonal psychology and a PhD in clinical psychology, Ingrid has a holistic approach to psychotherapy, incorporating trauma-informed modalities like Somatic Experiencing, EMDR and other experiential ways of working with the nervous system. Based on the belief that a therapist can’t take her clients further than she is willing to go, Ingrid has been using a relational approach to therapy since 2004, bringing her whole self to the work including her personal experience, intuition and education. This enables her to be in real connection and collaboration with her clients.

Dr. Clayton is the author of “Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves–and How to Find Our Way Back.” She has also authored the memoir “Believing Me: Healing from Narcissistic Abuse and Complex Trauma,” where she uncovers her personal experience of childhood trauma from a psychologist’s perspective, and Recovering Spirituality: Achieving Emotional Sobriety in Your Spiritual Practice. Dr. Clayton a regular contributor to Psychology Today where her article, “What is Self-Gaslighting?” is considered an Essential Read.