Care Too Much About Others' Opinions? | Dr. Ingrid Clayton

Key Takeaway

Learn to recognize when you're 'fawning'—appeasing or caretaking others to avoid relational threat. Start by checking in with yourself: put your hand on your heart and ask 'What am I noticing right now?' Practice with small boundaries like correcting a wrong order at a restaurant before tackling bigger relationships.

Episode Overview

Dr. Ingrid Clayton explores 'fawning'—the fourth trauma response where people appease or caretake others to maintain safety. She explains how chronic fawning develops from relational trauma and shares practical steps for 'unfawning' through inner work and gradual boundary-setting.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Care Too Much About Others' Opinions? | Dr. Ingrid Clayton from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hearing a voice can change everything. So AT&T wants everyone to gift their voice to loved ones this holiday season because that conversation is a chance to say something they'll hear forever. AT&T connecting changes everything. Dr. Ingred Clayton, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Uh I'm going to start with a ve very basic uh definitional question. What is phoning? Fawning is a relational trauma response where you either appease or caretake to lessen the relational threat. I'm just my mind goes right to Stockholm syndrome, you know, like where where somebody's held hostage and makes nice with the the their um whoever took them hostage.

Is is that in the right zone? I think that's a very extreme example, but essentially fawning is an extension of what we know about fight, flight or freeze. These are unconscious uh instincts. They are reflexive in nature designed to keep us safe. And the reality is the body will always prioritize safety and survival. And we are relational beings, right? We're hardwired for relationships. We're dependent on our caregivers for longer than any other species. And the fawn response is essentially connection as protection. It's leaning into these very relationships sometimes that are causing you harm because it's the it's sort of the last house on the block.

It's when a fight response might make things worse, when a flight response is not available to you. So fawning becomes this really genius adaptation to survive the environments that you're having to live in sort of breakfast to bedtime. So as you said being held hostage is an extreme uh example that most of us don't uh luckily find ourselves uh in that position although there are people in that position at this very moment we should be thinking of. However, we're all raised by somebody. And if those connections uh with if if our connection with our caregivers growing up uh if those connections are insecure or unsafe, one way that a young person might achieve uh safety is by making nice with the person who's actually doing them harm.

That's right. And it it also extends beyond the family system to include all of the systems of power that we're navigating on a daily basis. So if you think about patriarchy and racism and classism, sort of the body understands where it resides in the hierarchy. And again, this idea that, you know, we've talked about these behaviors of fawning for a long time, but kind of couch them in the language of people pleasing or even codependency. And these imply conscious choice. they uh imply a rational decision to do these things.

And yet the body will lean into the response that it believes will have the most success in any given moment. So if my body knows when I walk out of the house that I'm a woman, for instance, that I might not be as safe with a man who is perhaps twice my size, it's not going to lean into a fight response, right? Uh, fawning tends to be the one that you can smile and maybe even flirt and hopefully walk away unscathed. Can you give me some other examples where uh people might engage in fawning behaviors?

Yeah, I think we see it a lot in the workplace where you know the fawning person is the one who tends to take on more than their fair share. They're overdoing. They're overvolunteering and yet they're not asking for a raise or the appropriate title. They're sort of waiting to be validated and seen and hope that if they do enough and overextend themselves, maybe one day they'll arrive. And they find themselves hitting ceilings and feeling unseen and resentful. So, uh there's this sense that we're waiting for external validation uh in order to exist at all.

All of our safety resides in a chronic fawn response. All of our safety resides outside of our own body. So the basic idea is, do you validate me? Do you give me permission? Are you mad at me? We're constantly navigating from the outside in. And the sad consequence of that is ultimately self-abandonment, right? Because if I'm really preoccupied with you and hypervigilant, I'm not attuned to my own self. I don't have a sense of autonomy or agency. And yet, it's important to name that the person that's fawning doesn't feel the loss of self.

They're oriented towards the safety, towards the connection, towards the goal. In other words, you said something earlier about in a chronic fawning response, X or Y things happen. What's the difference between a chronic fawner and the rest of us who may engage in in fawning behavior in the right circumstances or the wrong circumstances? Yeah. So I think childhood trauma is a good example where like I said you're dependent on your caregivers fighting or even running away might not be possible. Uh, and so when you are having to sort of lean in and caretake an absent or neglectful caregiver or when there's more overt abuse, whether that's emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, and you're having to sort of appease your way through those things, when you're doing that all the time while your brain and body are developing, it becomes this feeling.

And I've seen this in my practice so many times. People just think it's their personality, right? They just go, I'm just being nice. It's all so deeply conditioned, right? We are taught to fawn. We are taught to prioritize and privilege other people's feelings. Just say you like the gift. Just say thank you. Just, you know, essentially in all these little micro moments day after day, abandon yourself, privilege somebody else, and that's the way to keep yourself safe. So this becomes chronic where the body is leaning into a fawn response whether it senses that there's a threat or not.

It's like 10 steps ahead going I'm never going to allow myself to be that vulnerable again. And I talk about it. It's like a shield or camouflage, right? But we don't know that it's operating as us. You said that that we're taught to fawn in all these little ways, but I'm I'm interpolating back through my life as a straight white dude. Uh I don't know that I was taught to fawn that much. I think I the message I picked up from the culture is go get yours.

Yes. Well, I think you named all of the reasons uh for that, right? Straight, white, male. And so, generally speaking, and and fawning is not just for women. It's not a gendered response at all, but generally speaking, I think most women see that they were taught to fawn, uh, caretake and smile and please. I mean, these are attributes that you could also just name as feminine. Whereas boys are like, you know, go get your hands dirty. Rough and tumble is allowed. You're allowed to have a healthy fight response.

Go have a voice. Go speak up for yourself. Right? So, there is some differentiation there. you have a lot of thoughts about how to how we can deal with this both as a somebody with a chronic fawn response and just those of us who in the right situation and for sure I can think of situations where I fond um so we'll get practical on both of these levels but let me just uh spend a few minutes on you and your experience there is a reason this issue is so salient for you can you tell us a little bit about your background yes well I start the book fawning from me being a 13-year-old girl growing up with a stepfather that I now know was grooming me, but I did not have that language for many decades.

I think like a lot of complex trauma survivors, we go, "Well, my experience wasn't that bad and these other people had it worse and I could point to all of the things in fact that I did have, whether it was a roof over my head and you know, vac family vacations and such." And so there's this sense that I'm just being ridiculous and I need to be over it already. Um, but at the same time, this patterning was woven so deeply into my body that long after I moved out of that house, moved hundreds and even thousands of miles away, I was still the same person, really stuck in this chronic fawn response.

And long before I had the language of fawning, I mean, there's a reason I have three degrees in psychology and I've been to all the retreats and I've sat on a million therapist couches. I was hungry to solve this equation, this feeling of being stuck. this feeling of not having the healthy reciprocal relationships that I saw so many others having. And the solutions that were offered in the end were more harmful than helpful because, you know, they sound like, "Well, Ingred, why would you care what someone thinks about you?

You know, you're just you're amazing." And on a conscious level, I go, "Well, yeah, why would I care what somebody thinks about me?" You know, and it sounds so obvious and so accessible, but my body, this more primitive part of me was still orienting towards safety and it did not care about my opinion or your opinion. The roots go deeper. And that's what I really love about looking at the physiology, you know, the nervous system because this is the primary mover, right? Not my opinion about the thing.

Um, and secondly, this this lens of complex trauma puts my experience back in context. So whereas things like codependency or people pleasing, we go, "Well, what's wrong with you? Why can't you just set a healthy boundary?" Right? Again, it seems so obvious and and like everyone has access. Uh, and then when I couldn't do it, I feel even more ashamed. There's this blame. there's this feeling of, oh, if it's that simple, you know, why can't I do it? In other words, we've taken what really is a systemic problem and we've put it in the individual's body and we're saying, you're dysfunctional.

Knock it off already. And what fawning allows us to do is say, "My body actually adapted in this really genius way to a dysfunctional environment." And this reduces the shame that I've been carrying my whole life. Right? So what's the barrier for healing in almost any area uh is very often shame. Shame is holding us hostage. So once we can reduce the shame and I can go I you mean I make sense? You mean I made sense from the very beginning? Now I can start to avail myself of more choices and the flexibility that I hope we can all have.

But ultimately for me it was not until then, right? That was the entry point. So after trying to unpack this for so many decades in my life and feeling like this was the piece to the puzzle, I absolutely feel like it's this calling to share this um this new language, right? Cuz fonding's always been around. It's just we haven't been having this conversation, right? Fight, flight, freeze have um have taken up all the all the air time. Can you just say a little bit more about you use the phrase healthy reciprocal relationships that you saw other people have them having them and you didn't what was going in those years when you were struggling to find a name for what was ailing you how was your chronic fawn response showing up in your life fawning looks different depending on the context and I can sort of map it out based on both my experience with my stepfather and my mom so my mom was more absent she was neglectful I was asking for help and she was saying, "Well, Ingred, I think you're making it all up." Right?

So, in this way, my fawn response leaned into her to almost caretake or endow her with resources that I hope she would have. Right? Fawners are really good at seeing the solution for other people's lives and then trying to make it happen in essence because if I can help you to stand, maybe one day you can also show up for me. Right? I needed my mom and she wasn't there. But on the other side of that coin was my stepfather who was moving in and coming for me and fawning there is like how do I hold on to a shred of self in the face of exploitation and abuse and being sexualized.

Okay. So this is what I was navigating day in day out again as my body is developing. So when I go out into the world now, my only sense of relational safety is in relation to neglect and exploitation. It's like those dynamics sort of turn on my body and the world and it goes, well, I know how to it's almost like that's my currency, right? That's my language. That's it's familiar to me. And so this is one reason that our trauma gets reenacted over and over and over.

It's because this was my only blueprint for how to relate in the world. I see that you have deficits and I go, "Oh, I know how to help you." Right? It's the other reason I became a therapist. Um, I'm going to help you and once I do, then you're going to be able to turn around and see my worth and my value and show up for me, too. The problem is, of course, that never happened. Um, I was waiting and hoping and helping a whole lot to my own detriment.

And did you find in the middle of all of that you were caring too much what other people thought about you? I guess that was in part the driver for the the caring and and nonrescrocal. Yes. Because I almost don't exist unless, you know, you tell me that I'm worthy or valuable or matter at all. Um, again, this isn't a conscious thing. I'm not aware that this is happening, but it's sort of the air that I'm breathing. It's just over and over and over again finding myself in this situation.

It wasn't just romantic relationships. It was friendships. It was mentorships. It was, you know, it it shows up in every relationship. You said that you got interested in the physiology and the nervous system explanations and ramifications of all of this. Can you say a little bit more about that? Yes, I think that working from a traumainformed lens allows me to see and understand the roots of these behaviors as unconscious and reflexive. That one we now know that fawning is a hybrid trauma response. So, uh if you think about one side of the fawn response has that fight-flight energy, that's the sympathetic nervous system.

That's the um adrenaline and the racing heartbeat. It's very mobilizing. This is the part that has us leaning into the relationships, but at the same time, we're experiencing this hypoarousal, right? The other end of the spectrum of trauma responses that collapse or submit. It's this downregulation or dissociation. It's where we're disconnecting from self. So, these are now happening at the same time. And just recognizing that I go, "Yes, of course that's what was happening. And of course, if I'm disconnected from me in order to prioritize you, it makes sense that I don't even understand that this is what I'm doing." Right?

Sometimes we're so disconnected from self. Maybe you have a sense that you're betraying your values or your needs. I think I certainly had that with my stepdad. I had a sense that I do not like you, but I need you to like me. But other times, we are so dissociated and disconnected, we start to really believe, and I've seen this with many clients in my practice. They go, "No, Ingred, this is my person, right? I love them. They love me more than I've ever been loved in my whole life.

they are so believing in that person's position in their life and and the love story that they've told that they cannot see that the abuse is even happening. Another thing you said that I wanted to follow up on is the pernitious role of shame for you and actually for all of us when it comes to just like dealing with our own [ __ ] Yeah. Well, the way that I see it is first of all, if you do have an experience of relational trauma, you're shamed in the sense of worth is the wound, right?

So, we go, ah, the people that are meant to love me and care for me, you know, they they threw me away essentially or they don't see me at all. I'm completely invalidated. So, boom, there's the first instance of shame. Then for a lot of us, and this was my experience too, you go and you try to assert yourself or you ask for help. you step into this trying to have a healthy voice and and people go, you know, we're toxically positive or we spiritually bypass or we tell people just let it go and forgive and accept.

And all these platitudes that sound maybe well-meaning, but they ultimately make the person go, "Ugh, now it's even worse because I tried to speak up and take care of myself and no help is there," right? So, boom, more shame. And then lastly, if you're engaging in fawning, like I said, there is a sense that I'm not showing up for my full sense of self with my needs and my values intact. Now, shame is even more entrenched. Right. We had a guest on within the last 18 months.

I'm forgetting his last name. Bruce is a therapist and he wrote a book called What Happened to You? Oh, yes. Yes. Perry. Bruce Perry. Awesome guy. Uh Bruce, if you're listening, you should come back on the show. I love you. Um and this is kind of reminding me of him in that like when you reframe you you had this question, it seems like what's the matter with me? And then when you got a diagnosis and it all kind of made sense, you're like no, that was the wrong question.

It was what happened to me? What what wired me for these behaviors? You know, AT&T believes hearing a voice can change everything. And if you love podcasts, you get that. The power of hearing somebody speak is unmatched. It's why we save those voicemails from our loved ones. They mean something for me. When I need a one-on-one holiday boost, I know who to call. My friend Joseph Goldstein, my meditation teacher. This is a guy who is just every time I got a problem, I can call him up and he talks me off the ledge and gives me practical and profound advice.

AT&T knows the holidays are the perfect time to do just that. Share your voice. If it's been a while since you've called somebody who matters, now is the time because it's more than just a conversation. It's a chance to say something they will hear forever. So, uh, spread a little love with a call this season. Happy holidays from AT&T. Connecting changes everything. I think that is such a profound shift that ultimately we need to make in the mental health field in general and I think trauma is a prime mover in changing that conversation.

So yes, this is definitely another aspect of that. I don't think anyone really can move into greater healing from anything when you're told, well, it's your fault. Knock it off already. You know, just stop doing that. It's like, well, if I could have stopped doing that, I would have stopped doing that. And I've tried everything else. So, um, it's a really important shift. And in fact, I think other shifts that felt important to me in the writing and research were even this idea of sort of broken or healed.

There's lots of these binary responses, right? Safe or unsafe. And the truth is, most of us are in the messy middle of all of that all the time. And yet we're we're made to believe that there's some magic finish line out there where I'm going to be all healed and all better and never be never have a trigger or a feeling of not being safe in the world. And um that's just not true. So I do not want to continue to perpetuate that lie ultimately, especially as a mental health professional.

I think that might be a great marketing tool, you know, like come to me and I'm going to help you figure it all out. But um I think what's more helpful is sitting beside someone and being like, "Wow, we both have these bodies and we're navigating all of these tricky things all the time. What's that like for you?" You know, that that genuine curiosity rather than pathizing lens. You Yeah. In the book you say healing is a process, not a finish line. um and that there's there's just layers of discovery and then grief and then more discovery and more grief and and or to put it in a more positive way.

Uh limitless opportunities for growth. And I I one of the things as somebody who like was most of my life pretty anti-selfhelp and definitely, you know, wary of spirituality. One of the things that I really like about the dharma world when I founded the Buddhist world is that the the teachers were not for the most part holding themselves up as avatars of perfection. And you know I knew and know many Buddhist teachers who've gone through divorces or business failures or um interpersonal conflict uh etc etc etc.

And you know I mean uh Jack Kfield the great one of the great living western masters wrote a book after the ecstasy the laundry the laundry. So you can you can have these incredible like sort of mountaintop experiences and yet there's always more work to do. Um, and I think I I just think that's a really healthy message to send. Likewise, it feels really important to me. And it also, you know, talking specifically about the fawn response, I think part of my job is that I have to acknowledge that with my credentials or with my career, I am in a position of power.

People are coming to me and asking for help. If I stay on that mountaintop and someone has a chronic fawn response, I'm absolutely asking them to continue to fawn for my benefit. So, I can feel like I'm being helpful and I can feel like a a good therapist. And so many of my clients have have shared with me like this feeling like I need the pat on the head, right? I want to feel like your favorite client. I know what this feels like too to be sitting in front of a therapist where like, you know, someone might suggest to me, you know, back in the day, okay, Ingred, can you try this thing and close your eyes?

And I'm like, yes, yes, I can do that. And I close my eyes and all I'm thinking is, how long do I have to sit here to let them know that I really tried, right? There was no ability to be like, I don't want to close my eyes. I have to prioritize what you think I should do. And there you go again. It's the fawn response. And it's happening throughout therapy. and now I'm performing my own personal therapy. So, I have to go first. I have to flatten that hierarchy and be like, I'm just a another person in the world.

Yes, I have some tools and some information, but um I don't have it all figured out. And I could never have all the answers for someone that I see for 50 minutes once a week. I barely have the answers for myself. It's not the point. It really does seem like power is at the center of all of this. I think that it is right because if you think even about the animal kingdom and that threat responses are animal defenses uh at at at the heart of it and you go well the lion the king of the jungle he's got a healthy fight response he can roar.

He can set boundaries like get off my territory. But we're looking at all of us human beings as though each of us are the lion. It's just not true. We have to look at these systems of power and hierarchies and where where we fit in. And um ultimately for me and my experience and so many of my clients, a fight response, it's as though it was snuffed out again. It made things worse. Why would my body lean into that again? And now you're telling me, well, just go do it one more time.

And my body's like essentially, [ __ ] you. Like I know what's going to happen there. So um the other the other piece if we look at it in terms of the context of fight flight and freeze I think why this conversation has gone missing for so long. One of the reasons is fawning is hiding in plain sight. If you look at a fight response it's sort of obvious that you don't want this thing to happen. You're engaging in conflict. You're fighting back. Similar with with running, right?

Running away. Fawning. you're literally leaning into the relationship that's causing you harm. And so, this is another area where we get shamed and blamed, but it's also why we haven't been having the conversation in this context of threat response because it seems so counterintuitive. And yet when you really unpack it and and you look at me as a 13-year-old girl in that hot tub, what was my other choice than to smile and go along to get along and then eventually peel myself out of there and go into the house where I could, you know, exhale for just a moment.

It's sometimes all you've got. I'm sorry that happened to you. That that sucks. You know, you kind of brought us back to shame again. Um and and how, you know, the a um a way to if not erase, at least mitigate shame as a pernitious force that blocks us from, you know, seeing things clearly and and being able to grow/heal or whatever. One of the interesting things about putting a diagnosis on something is that it not only reduce it can not only reduce your own shame, but it can reduce and this is where things get a little tricky.

It can reduce your anger toward other people because you know I I was actually having a long conversation over dinner with my wife last night who's very psychologically minded and we were talking about somebody close to her in her life who has hurt her a lot and recently got a diagnosis that actually explained a lot of that behavior. Um and my wife was saying as soon as I heard about the diagnosis my anger was reduced by 50%. Now, it doesn't excuse the behavior, but it does explain it and put it in context in a way that can be really clarifying.

So, I I wonder if you think I'm on to something here or I'm off track. No, what comes to mind is that maybe she wasn't validated by that person necessarily because they came back and they said, "Oh, I'm sorry. You know, I've been such a jerk." And but getting that information was a form of validation like, "Oh, this is real." Right? I think a lot of times when we're talking about, you know, essentially emotional rupture or abuse is it doesn't feel real. We continue to discount it like, well, if you don't have physical bruises or we have this like measuring stick of harm and we're like, well, is it really that bad?

And yet, for most of my clients, what they're coming in with are these unseen wounds and bruises that they're carrying around similar to your wife's. And what it's been lacking is someone to say like that was real. That happened and I'm so sorry. You know, interestingly, just moments ago when you heard that little snippet of my story, even you just pausing for a moment and being a real human being and saying, "I'm sorry that happened to you." Like, I can't it's not the point of being on podcast, but I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where that doesn't happen.

We are very accustomed to just moving along and on to the next and being seen is a salve, right? So I imagine that that was a piece of of what she was able to experience. Yeah, I want to come back to the being seen as a salve for in very quickly. Um, but I do want to say just on what I was trying to point out in part with with having these psychological models that allow you to understand uh the way we all work. Oh, that's borderline um personality disorder.

That's narcissism. Whatever. It can be weaponized. Actually, we have a podcast episode coming up about how these uh psycho psychological terms can be weaponized and misused. But but properly understood and properly deployed uh it can I think turn down the volume on this kind of mismatic nebulous rage that we feel with people on the world stage who are doing things we disagree with our neighbors who are saying stupid [ __ ] and you know community board meetings whatever if you if you see it through the lens of what happened to you instead of what's the matter with you it it really again this is not to excuse this is not to fun this is this is really just about your own inner management so that you can respond more effectively.

Yes. I think what's interesting to me is that you said it brought your wife's rage down 50%. And I go, that sounds about right because you're talking about an intellectual understanding, right? So I was just listening recently to your show with Dr. Peter Lavine, the founder of somatic experiencing and what his work tells us and a lot of work in trauma tells us is that that part of the brain is actually disconnected from speaks a different language from where trauma is stored right from the wisdom of the gut.

And so for those that really identify with the fawn response, what tends to be very common is that we're always looking for the reason. Oh, I know they did that because and then we pretend like that solves the rest of the 50% of the upset and it does not. So now we have to go to the next step and go, what does it look like for me to own my anger? In fact, it tends to be a really important part of this ongoing process. It's like we're tending this fire that's been dormant in our own body and yet that is our life force, right?

So that kindling, that reconnection to I'm allowed to be mad, right? That was bypassed over and over and over again. And listen, if we could just do the analysis and be done, I would have been healed a long time ago. I I can write a story for anyone about why they come by something honestly. And it did not help me heal. It kept me stuck. say a little bit more about um owning your anger because anger in a in a Buddhist sense in many spiritual and psychological circles is not something that's um venerated.

Well, you know, my experience with that is actually today as we're recording, I'm 30 years sober. So, I essentially grew up in a 12step program which is has a spiritual foundation and I received the same message. In fact, we were told like anger is a luxury, right? that resentment is the number one offender and it's going to lead me back to drinking more than anything. And I took that very seriously for a very long time, right? We only focus on my side of the street, not what anybody else did.

I I did that. I wrote a million inventories. And listen, let me be clear. I am so grateful for my sobriety. It's the foundation for everything else. I love that community. It has saved my life. And some of those principles as the founders, 99 men by the way, um as they sort of laid them out, kept me stuck in a chronic fawn response. This message that I'm meant to get out of myself and help other people. Well, that's all I'd been doing my whole life. I knew how to help other people.

I didn't know how to inhabit a self at all just to begin there, right? So, as much as of course I didn't want to go back to drinking, ultimately a part of my process was allowing myself to feel the anger. And listen, there's a difference. I'm not encouraging violence. We still have to be, you know, mindful about what we do with that anger, but to act as though that's not just a healthy vital part of the human condition and and process of feeling. It's like weather patterns coming in and moving through.

To say, "Oh, no. Here's one that's coming." and I'm not allowed to go there. Um, it's it's just not realistic quite frankly. Um, so I had to reconnect with this anger. You know, to go back to thinking about about Peter Lavine's work, you know, he has us sort of physicalized this feeling that if someone was coming for you and you weren't allowed to physically fight back, that bracing, that posture, that holding, that stuck place might very well be very entrenched in your body. And part of the healing then is reinhabiting it.

Maybe it means going up to a stationary wall and slowly just pushing, holding that energy in your body and letting essentially this threat response come to a to a to the top and finally go down to the other side. Otherwise, we're left hovering at this midpoint all the time. We can't release it. We can't shake it off. You know, you think about your dog at home. When they get spooked, they go and they shake it out of their body, right? We're sitting there holding it like, "Well, I'm not allowed to feel that and I can't ruffle anyone's feathers.

It's keeping us stuck." Okay. Can you just drill down on this a little bit more? Um uh for anybody wondering how to feel their anger uh and even express it in healthy ways, what do you recommend? Well, I would say, you know, basically again, if we're taking this focus to the external environment all the time, are you okay? Do I matter? How are you doing? And we're turning that lens back on oursel. This is the the essence of healing. We're saying, what do I notice in me right now?

What am I experiencing? And one simple but powerful way that I start this process is just by inviting people maybe put your hand on your own heart, right? This sort of stance of self-compassion and just get curious. You know, we say in every trauma training and therapy that I've ever been a part of, we don't say, "What do you think about that?" We say, "What are you noticing? What are you experiencing?" And so, we're starting to build a real relationship to self, an embodied relationship to self.

For some of us, maybe the first time. And if you start to notice, well, I feel this fire in my belly and I'm pissed. Basically, it's like, okay, can you linger there? What else do you notice? Is there a color? Is there a memory, another sensation? Is it your whole body, or is it really just in that one spot? And you might notice what needs or wants to happen. So, it's basically just being in relationship to ourselves. and and we can hold the space that maybe no one else has held for us to feel those feelings ever before.

You know, it it reminds me of for so long I was told, you know, well, just love yourself. Just sort of show up for yourself. And like a true relationship with myself felt like a awful consolation prize cuz I'm like, I'm with myself all day long. I want real relationship with other people. But in order for me to have the kind of relationship that I wanted to have with other people, I had to attend to this one first. And it sounds so simple, but I'm telling you, these small practices of attuning to yourself and even attuning to the environment with the senses, right?

Putting yourself in present tense and present present time, present location. um noticing what you see or what you hear and then reflecting how that impacts your somatic experience. These things are powerful. These small practices you're describing, what is there is there a name for for them? Well, I use my specific training uh in the book which is in somatic experiencing Peter Lavine's work internal family systems, Dick Schwarz's model, what's otherwise known as parts work and also EMDR which I believe Bruce Perry talks about. Um these are three very common and probably more accessible trauma therapies and you know there are books workbooks even for internal family systems or IFS that you can do on your own but there are so many beyond the scope of my practice right so what I basically say is if you feel drawn to something listen to your gut notice the nudge of like oh that modality seems interesting and then bring yourself along song and notice what you're experiencing it as you're engaging in whatever it is.

Trust that internal feedback more than someone else's idea of like you should go do X, Y, and Z. As you noted, we've I've talked to Peter Lavine before. I'll put a link to that in the show notes where we also have I've interviewed um Dick Schwarz a couple times. Internal family systems work is really interesting and we'll put some links to those episodes in the show notes. I want to get to your book. We we've all all of this stuff we've been discussing is discussed in the book but um specifically you have some very practical steps that you recommend in the book.

Um the first is is around uh the first area I want to talk about is around like how do you know if you're a fawner either a chronic one or like me like situationally you can get into a mode of appeasement or ass kissing as I have many times in my life usually with my boss. How do you know if this is you? Can you say a little bit about that? Well, I think there's a reason why I lead with personal experience and why I invited seven clients from very different backgrounds and experiences to participate in this book.

They have truly shared their whole story. These aren't just little vignettes. And I do that because if you look at fawning that at least one half of us is essentially offline, it can be really hard to identify yourself as a fawner just talking about the theory of it. But when you hear someone's story, you go, "Oh, I I know what they're talking about." Right? So it's why I'm really privileging lived experience. Um, but essentially a lot of the signs and symptoms sort of boil down to like if you know how to befriend the bully, right?

And that might be your your boss or whatever. Or if you find that you're always getting smaller in relationship, you shrink in the face of someone else's need. It's almost like relationships are a math problem and everyone else gets to take up 80% and you kind of figure out how to live in the 20 that's left. If you're chronically conflict avoidant, like the idea of conflict in my body for so long, it ignited just this terror. That's the word. It was true terror. Like, no, no, no, no, no.

I can't sort of, you know, have a difference of opinion even. So, these are some of the signs that that people might be able to see themselves in. I'll list a few of the others that you include in the book. Self-minimization, although you you just did kind of cover that. hypervigilance and anxiety, shame spirals, shapeshifting like sort of being the right person in various contexts. Uh resentment and caretaking, uh a deep need to be chosen and or liked, and even sexual fawning, like using sex as a way to uh as a form of currency to appease.

So the these are just some of the key signs and and manifestations. Any of the things that I just listed that you want to say more about? Well, I think most people's ears perk up around sexual fawning. So maybe I'll just speak to that for a moment. And one way to do it is again my personal experience that if I was sexualized when I was so young, which was the case, or if our body, you know, if you're so disempowered and yet the the some form of power that you are sort of um endowed with is is your ability to be attractive or to be sexy.

Of course, fawning is going to borrow from that. and use your sex your sex appeal in order to appease or right befriend the bully even and so this was one piece of my experience that I just felt for so long and talk about this feeling of self- betrayal and of trauma reenactment I was like how am I ending up in this situation again like do I have a sandwich board that says you know inappropriate married men users and abusers please apply here uh that's sort of what it felt like and now I know that just like our empathy or our generosity, sexuality can become sort of fused with this fawning where I'm not being sexual or empathic or generous out of conscious choice.

I'm doing it because I believe if I don't I will not be safe. We are complicated animals. That's real. Those are the signs and manifestations. Um, but there's a a huge emphasis in the book is how to, and this is the phrase you use, how to unfawn. What are the steps there? Well, primarily, we've talked about this a little bit, it's turning that external focus, that constant uh looking to the horizon to find our safety outside of our own bodies. It's starting to build a sense of internal safety from the ground up for the first time ever.

So, we don't start unfawning in relationships. I don't say, "Well, go out and set some healthy boundaries." Because if you do and it doesn't go well, the body is going to go, "See, I told you, right? That doesn't work. That feels horrible." Um, so really half of it is just being in relationship to self, which is why these models like SE and IFS are so important because essentially these are models for how do I connect with my whole being. Um, so that is a huge piece of it.

And then once you have a different sense of safety in the world, then we can start to practice well is this a safe enough environment or relationship where I can bring more of my full self. We start to practice and it might sound silly but in little ways of like when the waiter brings me the wrong thing, can I just say, "Hey, you brought me the wrong thing." Or um if a if a friend says, "Where do you want to go for dinner?" You don't just constantly defer.

In other words, you start making these little baby steps into being more of a whole person with opinions. Um, taking up space, right? Not just shrinking in the face of, "Oh, it's no big deal. I got it. Whatever you want." And now the body has experiential feedback, not theoretical. It goes, "Oh, that went better than I thought it would. Maybe I could take a risk in in another place." Now, all that to say, and I want to make sure that this is clear. If you have a body, you are always going to have access to fight, flight, freeze responses.

The goal is never to never fawn again. Okay? So, I've now written the book and I talk about this all day, every day, and I probably fawned yesterday. Okay? The goal is that we are not meant to live in survival mode like in a threat response. 24/7 that is acting as us whether there's a sense of uh feeling unsafe or not. Right? So this is where we start to discern in this work. Is this really dangerous? Right? This relationship, this situation, or is this just uncomfortable?

Right? Is this triggering it away because I'm leaning into having a voice and that sets off my alarm bells like don't do that. it's going to make it worse. But this is where we start to learn the difference, right? So that our bodies aren't in a constant sense of threat all the time. I'm going to ask some questions that that cover some of the things you just mentioned or just like kind of go dig deeper on a little bit. One of the things you've mentioned throughout this and this is seems to be like step number one in in unfawning is this paradigm shift, this kind of moving away from binary thinking.

You again you did mention this earlier but can you say specifically why it's so important in terms of recovering from fawning either as a chronic or a episodic fawner because basically I still have a body that's hardwired for relationships and for safety. The body just prioritizes that 100% of the time. And what's real is we live in an unsafe world, right? We don't live in this utopia where everyone has equal access and we can have all these, you know, friendly uh ruptures and repairs in relationship all day long.

That's just not true. That discounts the reality of the things. So that's why the removing that binary is so important because now I go, "Oh, first it just allows it to be the moving living organism that it actually is." Um, and we're not stigmatizing people for being human beings. You know, AT&T believes hearing a voice can change everything. It's why we love a good podcast or we save voicemails from loved ones because we appreciate the sound of a familiar voice. When I need a pickme up, I call my friend Willie.

Willie and I have known each other for nearly 25 years. He's just an incredibly close friend and I laugh my you know what off every time we talk. That's my guy. AT&T wants everyone to share their voice over the holidays. So send a voice note, leave a voicemail, call someone because that conversation is a chance to say something they will hear forever. Happy holidays from AT&T. Connecting changes everything. It's funny, I think about that in terms of um and I've talked openly on the show about my panic disorder specifically in like elevators and airplanes and I I think I've been hoping that there is an end of the rainbow.

Some people do, you know, get over it, but I'm not sure that's going to happen for me and it's I think it's just going to be good days, bad days. Uh sometimes I need to take a medication, sometimes I can get away with not doing it. Yeah, I think that's a really healthy approach. And then anytime that you don't have that panic, it kind of feels like gravy. It's like, oh, great, right? Like, I'm so glad that that worked out. But then you're not shamed for the times that you need more resource or support or it didn't go as well.

In this conversation and in the book, uh, when it as it pertains to unfawning, you you approach it on the two levels like it starts with inner work. It's not in relationship as you said, and then it moves to outer work. In terms of inner work, you've you've referenced things like SE, sematic experiencing, and IFS, uh, internal family systems. Uh, these are big subjects. Um, and we're not going to be able to cover all of it right here, but what can you say that would be like a simple practical takeaway for any of us, whether we have complex trauma or not, that would help us either regulate our nervous system or have a different relationship to these uh deeply wired responses that we that may be dominating our lives.

Yes, I think accessible approaches to everyone for regulating your nervous system is knowing that the senses are the language of the nervous system. That's why just looking around wherever you are right now and noticing what you see really deliberately coming out of this autopilot that we're in all the time, right? We're scrolling, we're multitasking, we're not in our body. But when I'm literally focused on what do I notice right now in my environment, I become more embodied. Even before I mentioned noticing what I hear my because I've done this enough, my body my body and my hearing was like, "Oh, I can hear that the air conditioner is on." And as I even hear ambient noise, my body goes, I'm coming back more online.

Right? You think about the threat responses again from the animal defenses. Um this is based on Peter's work. He's like, you know, animals should be deeply traumatized. I mean, they are prey. They are running for their lives. And yet they're not. There's this flexibility. They move in and out of these states. Like why don't we do that? Well, in part because we're we're so evolved that we're on this override all the time. So, finding a way to drop in. Sometimes I ask people to be curious.

Is there any time in your life where you really felt like you were safe and connected like the most you maybe you've ever felt before? And people feel these memories just emerge, maybe sometimes ones that they had forgotten. Um other times it's what are you drawn to? What do you what music do you like to listen to? Do you sing in the shower? Um these tend to be very simple things because you know regulating your nervous system isn't this magic wand where it's like aha it's these subtle movements towards connection and self from a place of flexibility.

And walking is my favorite. walking in nature, just walking in my neighborhood, which is very much in the city. I still orient to any natural objects that I see and I notice the color on the tree. I guarantee you every time I come back, my husband is very grateful that I went and I took a walk cuz I'm a different person when I come back, right? I'm more regulated. So, I hear two things there. One is is uh and they're related, but one is, you know, just tuning in mindfully to what's happening in your environment.

I I'm a fan of uh indie rock and or punk rock and there's a bunch of Australian bands right now I love. And there's one band I think I think this is the right band that the the Teenage Jones I think they're called. Anyway, they they have a song called Five Things I Can Taste, Touch, hear, and smell. Um it's quite a catchy song and that's what you're talking about. So sort of that's what I'm talking about. Touch getting embodied, being mindful, opening up to the senses.

And then there's another thing I heard you say or I think I heard you say about kind of imagining places where your nervous system feels safe. and and I went uh when I was on I I cajjol my therapist or one of my therapists uh shout out to Paul Green uh to into um coming on a couple of flights with me so that he could you know and I would I would take these flights as practice flights and um un unmedicated and um he would have me envision like where you know he was basically sending me in in the to use cliched language to my happy place to your safe place.

Yes. Yes. and that which I is the type of thing that you know normally I would like to mock but I did find it very helpful to imagine there's this picture that somebody took of me and my wife and my son on the night before I retired from ABC News after 21 years and I'm sitting in a chair and they're both hugging me and that is a very that my nervous system was really you can see it on my face and so I just would look at that picture when I was stuck on a plane I'll probably do it again when I have to fly in a couple of days.

There's something really powerful about that. It is so powerful. I'm so glad you're bringing it up that, you know, this is what Olympic athletes use in their training. Even before they do the race, they envision the race. And when you, you know, light up their brains to see what's going on, all the same places in their imagination are being lit up as when they're actually doing the thing, right? So, we can, in other words, induce these same feelings and experiences just by going there in our imagination.

And listen, I'm similar to you. I'm the first person to roll my eyes at something that's like really a safe place or inner child work, but I'm going to tell you right now, this stuff has absolutely saved my life. Like, give yourself the chance to experience it. And there's probably a million, you know, safe or calm or happy place meditations online. Look it up. Give it a try. If you hate the tone of voice and all of the prompts, well, find another one or make it up yourself.

There there really are so many tools that we can access just right now for free. You know, there's a lot to be said for social media that isn't so great, but I will say a lot of the free mental health content there is is pretty incredible. So, avail yourself of some of those tools. One of my favorite expressions that I did not coin is um if you can't be cheesy, you can't be free. I love that. Oh my god, that's so good. I'm going to take it, too.

You should take it because it's not mine. It's not even mine to give. But um so we've been talking about inner work and you also talk about outer work. you did cover earlier like um getting like more comfortable with your anger or fight response and then you know testing it in ways you know like in like with the waiter like in in polite and small ways but then you also talk in the book about learning how to set boundaries once you've done your inner work and practiced a little bit with your own anger how does one do that yeah I think one way that I liked in the beginning was thinking about a modified boundary again moving out of this binary like it's either a yes or a no or you know I can have you in my life or I have to cut you out of my life and sort of like what am I available for?

Is there any part of this thing that I'm available for? So you know to put it in a really simple example it might be like can you watch my child on Friday night? And maybe I go oh my gosh I know I'm going to be so exhausted. I'm not, you know, I really don't want to do it, but I do really want to be helpful and kind of foster some community. Really think about like what parts are you available for and what parts are you not are you not?

And see if you can communicate that, right? Like I would love to help you out on Friday. Could you be back by 9 because dot dot dot. So it starts to bring in a little more nuance to this idea of boundaries that made it more accessible. And I would say, you know, my clients often find the same. Another thing you re recommend is uh vulnerability with safe people. Can you say a little bit more about that? Yeah, I mean hopefully most of us have at least one safer person and I think practicing with them.

In fact, you might even use this language like, "Hey, I'm aware that I've been conflict avoidant my whole life, and yet you're someone that I really I really value our relationship or our friendship, whatever it is, and I would like to bring more of me to the table. And maybe I don't know if you would also like to do the same if you feel like there are parts of you that you're holding back. But my greatest hope is that we could be even closer." Right? That's the intention.

And that might mean that sometimes I disagree in ways that maybe you've never known me to disagree before or I have a different opinion and I'm wondering do you think our relationship could hold that? Right? So you're kind of building the scaffolding for an ongoing deeper relationship and inviting other people to do the same by saying I also am here to hold your difference of opinion or disappointment or whatever it is. Like it's amazing the the as I'm listening to you speak I'm thinking about how this fawn response and many of other are other hardwired or or or um you know just deeply wired responses can be a brier patch because we need other people.

We need authentic relationships in order to be healthy. To be a little cheesy myself here but if you've got this fawn response uh you're blocked from being authentic. So you're just you can be you can get stuck. I love the brier patch idea. It's it's literally what I say to people is that this work uh is maybe going to be some of the hardest that you've ever done for that reason because I'm inviting you to step into the places that ignited the most terror. Um it's also why you don't just jump head first.

You go like, "Oh, I'm going to feel that little brier patch under my baby toe and go, how did that feel?" Okay, I'm going to go back to the safety of the other side for a moment, right? Um, that's literally what we're doing. I'm like, okay, we're going to go walk through fire. Talk about reinhabiting a healthy fight response. Of course, this does not sound appealing. And yet, I would not be talking about this. I would not be recommending it if it wasn't the thing that restored me to a sense of a whole person.

if I didn't see it happen so many times in my practice and if everyone didn't say at the end of the day it's so worth it. It's so worth it because you also don't stay in that terror. Part of stepping into that discomfort and knowing, oh, maybe it isn't danger, maybe it is just discomfort, is that it can start to dissipate, right? You're not living in that heightened hypervigilant sense of it's happening again, it's going to happen again all the time. So the rewards, in other words, are profoundly worth whatever I'm inviting you into in terms of this this process that can be painful.

You mentioned it earlier. It's like grieve, maybe a little relief, grieve again. You know, you think about stepping into these relationships and maybe seeing them for what they are in reality, not what you dressed it up to be or what you were waiting for it to be. There's a lot of grieving that's involved in this process, too. you go, not only was this not the relationship I thought it was, but it's never going to be. Right? So, there can be a lot of heartbreak. Um, but I think what most people find because some relationships might have to end, right?

Some relationships might change, some relationships might get abundantly better. Um, but at the heart of it is I would rather have me in my own life than sacrifice that for a relationship with ultimately anybody else cuz it's not a real relationship if I'm not even there to have it. So, we've been talking about how to unfawn. I think a lot of the emphasis has been on people who are have the chronic fun response. But what about for the rest of us uh who again I don't think I have complex trauma in my life, but I can think of times when I've appeased or or um uh self-minimized um in a power relationship especially.

Are there ways to unfawn for me and for the people who I'm describing? It's a great question and there there might be another answer behind this but my first instinct is to say no. I think primarily what I would encourage you to do is know that your body did the one thing that it thought would you know be most helpful in the moment and it chose it in a nancond without your conscious consent because part of what I think even with an acute sort of fawn response is we go why did I do that?

I think what lingers in other words is the judgment and and the shame. And so just being able to understand what happened and why it happened. Um I think that's the message for people that have an acute fawn responses. You go, "Oh, that's why I did what I did." Okay. Well, that makes sense. Okay. But I can have I can think of times where I had acute fawn responses with a boss, for example. But if if those if people listening to this have a boss where they're finding themselves having acute fawn responses, but they're it's kind of adding up to a chronic situation whether or not there's complex trauma driving it.

It's just like a it's a situation. It's a situational issue, but it's ongoing. How can we uh deal with the, you know, the the mythical bad boss? Complex trauma is just relational trauma, relational threat. I think a lot of people don't like the word trauma because it still holds this old idea of what we think trauma is. It's a natural disaster. It's a car crash. But what we actually know is that feeling unsafe in relationship. And if you need a boss to give you a paycheck, I mean, financial security is pretty major on the list of a hierarchy of needs.

And you really feel like, you know, I have to show up in this particular way. I got to keep this guy on my side. And it's happening day in day out. you have to leave yourself at the door in order to secure financial security. That's an example of complex trauma, right? In my view, and we don't have to use that terminology if if it doesn't resonate with folks, but I think it's the same idea that you might start with asking yourself genuinely, what do I think would happen if I didn't fawn?

What are the consequences? In other words, and sometimes we have real time examples and evidence. Well, I know when I didn't, right? This is what happened. And and sometimes just that naming and understanding can allow us to be with ourselves, right? Not wholly self-abandon, but go, okay, I'm doing this for a reason, and actually it is keeping me safe. When I say I probably fawned yesterday, I'm saying it in the sense of I'm not mad about that, right? My body went into a fawn response and and got me through and got me to the other side.

And listen, that's the reality, like I said, of sometimes being in a world that's not designed for my happiness and well-being. Like, Ingred, what can we do today to make you a little more comfortable and in your own skin? I think it's similar, right? I think this work is available to you if you have a body. It's available to you because we all have a nervous system and we all live environment in environments that uh at times can feel threatening for lots of different reasons. So what you said there was complex and and had some nuance.

So I just want to see if I can say it back to you and make sure I understand it correctly. First, one thing you said that I think is very helpful and kind of undid a perhaps a misunderstanding between the two of us throughout the course of this conversation was that when you're referring to complex trauma, it a phrase in which I do not see myself. You're saying uh it's not just you were sexually abused or groomed as a child. Complex trauma could simply be you're in a long-term unhealthy relationship with a malignant boss.

100%. Yes, ongoing experiences of threat to varying degrees. And complex trauma is not even defined by the event itself. I think that's where most of us get hung up. It's defined by the overwhelm in your nervous system. It's right. It's defined by a lack of access to resources and and you know, helpful things that could help you move through. So, it's defined by the symptom. In other words, that's why I say, well, if you're telling me that you were in this prolonged experience with the boss where you're fawning, I go, well, there's the symptom, uh, there's your answer.

That's a really helpful clarification. And then to what you were saying further to that is that well, all the things we were I was talking about earlier, the inner work and the outer work and the um, uh, moving beyond the binary uh, healed or unhealed. Like, you can use all that [ __ ] whether whether or not you see yourself in the term complex trauma or not. If you're in a situation where you find yourself fawning over and over again, all the things we already discussed, you help yourself.

They apply. And I will just add to that. If you have to go back in the lion's den, I hope that you know that your body is going to lean into whatever response is going to keep you as safe as possible in the moment. In other words, you can do all of this work for the rest of your life like I intend to do. And I'm still going to fawn. I'm still going to lean into safety in whatever way I can access it. Let me ask the question from a different point of view.

While I'm sure that I have and fawned in in on many occasions, I I think more often than not, the way I see myself at least is that I am in a position where sometimes people will fond with me or and and I have there are three people very close to me who I've who I've written down on my notes here. I need to send this information to them because I see like it's unlocking a lot of understanding I think of some people very close to me and how they behave.

So I'm a boss, I'm a semi-public figure, I guess. I'm a dad. So I I'm in situations where I have disproportionate amounts of power. How can I take everything we've just discussed and weave it into how I move through the world? I am in love with this question. I think it's such a powerful one. Um, yes, when we notice it, when we're aware of our privilege and power, how can we even the playing field? It's sort of why I talked about being a therapist and having to go first, right?

I have to even the playing field and self-disclose or let people know very clearly, hey, it's okay if you disagree. I have to make it safe, in other words, for them to lean in. And so that's a powerful thing that I think people all of us have access to is being curious with the people in our lives. It's like, hey, if you notice it in the moment and you think someone's, you know, just kind of going along to get along and you kind of sense they're not really telling me what they actually feel, slow down and be curious and say, "Hey, I have a sense that you're holding something back, and I want you to know, I genuinely want to know what you're feeling and experiencing right now.

It's really important to me. I really value what you have to say." And maybe if you think that that's going to ruffle my feathers, I want you to know that that's just another opportunity for intimacy or real connection and I value that too. Right. So I think we have to go first and let people know that it's safe. I also think it's helpful like you said to take those names and give them this information or give them the book so that they can start to you know absorb this lens and language into their own life.

But um what a gift I think to give to people to say, "Hey, this is a safe place." Maybe you don't know that and and that's okay. You come by that honestly, but I want you to know that that's always my intention. the person who's producing this episode, Marissa, who's who I wouldn't describe as having a fun response, although I don't know, Marissa, I'm not trying to psycho analyze you, but she says something that is relevant to this conversation about me, which is that she says that I have a she doesn't use this term, but I think she said I have a scary face.

I would call it a resting [ __ ] face. Um, and I think it's true, and my wife has observed this, too. And so, I just I try to be cognizant of that. and to what I've tried to do I think maybe semisuccessfully is to reward people on my team for speaking up. Uh so to publicly demonstrate that not only is it safe to question me but also you will be rewarded for doing it. I'm not this is an effort. I'm sure I have a million blind spots but that's just one way I've tried to operationalize your advice.

I love it. And if you're not sure how it's working, I would ask your team. They're holding all the wisdom, right? Hey, how are we doing in terms of like reciprocal respectful relationships here? Where where are the gaps? What is missing? And I'll also give you props that when we logged on today, you you didn't say you have a resting [ __ ] face, but you did say, "Hey, I look down a lot, right?" And it's not because I'm not listening or paying attention. and it did create more of a sense of um safety even in this interview.

So, you're very trauma informed and leaning leaning in in a way that is helpful. Just to be clear to the listener, I said to Dr. Clayton that I look down at my notes. Not that I look down at people a lot. I look down at my notes. So, I don't break eye contact a lot while I'm interviewing. Not because I'm checking my email, but but this is a little speech I give before every interview, which you the listener never hear, which is I tell people, hey, just so you know, I look down, I'm checking my notes, I'm taking notes.

Please don't get discouraged if you see that. Um, so I guess that's trauma informed. Okay, last question for me. You said something earlier that I uh vowed to follow up on quickly, but I didn't follow up on quickly. I'm going to follow it on up on it now. uh which is um you said something like being seen as a salve and I thought about that a lot personally with my own experience. I've um you know I've been very public about having gone through some business turbulence in my life and in any way casting espersions here.

I would call it traumatic. Um not that there was a bad guy and I was the good guy, just that it was a traumatic and prolonged confrontation that produc produced a lot of anxiety and fear for me. And I've thought a lot about the fact that my wife has recommended I get some sort of trauma therapy. And at first, as is my want, I was completely dismissive of that, which is cuz I'm a [ __ ] sometimes. Um, but there was there's something I realized over time that I needed, which is just to have somebody say, "Dude, that sucked." And sometimes my friends will do it.

And it's just so it's such a relief to see that happen or to have that happen. And so what brings me to my question which is a phrase that you use a sentence you use in the book wounding happens in relationship and healing happens in relationship. Can you just say a little bit more about that? The example that came into my mind as I was listening to you know I identify as a chronic fer and when I went on social media as a therapist I did not just wear my therapist hat.

Hi I'm Dr. Ingred Clayton and I have some answers for you. I really knew that I had to lead with with being a childhood trauma survivor and also, you know, before I was a therapist, I was a singer songwriter. I have a performance background. I like to think I have a good sense of humor and can be irreverent and all these things. And I really felt called to have all of these parts of me in one place at the same time. But being seen in that way, I'm telling you 100% I was like, I'm going to tank my career.

whatever credibility I have at this point. If I go on Instagram and start singing about complex trauma, like that's it. It's over for me. But here's what actually happened. And and here's the other thing I said to myself. I was like, well, if that's true, because I felt so called to do this, if that's true, if I lose uh my career, I guess I'm not meant to be a clinical psychologist. You know, we'll see. We'll see where I'm meant to go next. But what actually happened is when I allowed my whole self to be seen and this could make me weep, my whole self was seen.

And it changed my life. It let me know experientially, I don't just have to be these parts of me that can be helpful to you, that can be packaged in a way that you would prefer. I really can be a whole person in the world. And it changed my life. And that was relational, right? Cuz people are commenting and they're reaching out and you know there's the algorithm, the craziness there too. But the reality is is I did create this sense of community around it. And the second thing that comes to mind is the power of seeing ourselves.

Right? So before I wrote this book on fawning, I wrote a memoir on complex trauma and it's called Believing Me. Because after a lifetime of waiting to be validated, oh yes, that did happen. It never it never came. And here's the truth for a lot of people, right? So when you say even your friends seeing this traumatic experience and going, "Yeah, that was horrible. That was real." A lot of us are never going to have that experience. The people that harmed us or the people that were around that are never going to cop to it.

But we can see it and own it and name it ourselves. And when we do, that is the access point into not being so held hostage by it. So I think it's like multidirectional, right? Being seen by others, but also truly truly being seen by ourselves is powerful. Yeah. It's crazy how much um we can do for ourselves that we're not taught about growing up. The two final questions I asked people, one is, is there something you were hoping to get to that we didn't? No, I think we covered a lot of ground.

Great. So, I'll get to my final question, which is, can you just remind everybody of the name of your new book you just told us about the preceding book um and also anything else that we should know about that you're making or doing? Thank you for that. The new book is called Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves and How to Find Our Way Back. It is available now in bookstores and on Audible and all the things. And I am accessible through my website ingridglayton.com uh through Instagram and Substack and all the places if you want to be in community there.

And I just tend to let people know I'm not taking new clients um just so that you know it takes a lot of courage to reach out and ask for help. And unfortunately I'm not seeing folks and I can't give referrals. But I hope you will find the right support that you deserve. Dr. Clayton, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.