THE FAWNING RESPONSE: What You Need to Know to Give It Up & STOP Abandoning Yourself

hello and welcome to save your sanity live stream i'm dr roberta schaeler and i'm so glad you're joining me this is an important conversation we're going to have tonight we're going to be talking about this phenomenon called the fawning response and you really need to know a few things about it so you can stop doing it and you can understand where it came from and what it is that you causes you to do it but is something that you really want to have a look at and really know that it's wise to give it up and you may not even know what it is but you will after our time together today so i hope that you have listened to save your sanity podcast and have returned or you've just found us and you are so welcome here it's very difficult to be in a relationship with a toxic people person whether that was your mother or your father an authority figure when you were growing up or you're married to one or you have a sibling that's one or your children have turned into one or they've married one it's really important to understand the whole world of hijackals which is my my term for people who hijack relationships for their own interests and purposes and then relentlessly scavenge them for power status and control but tonight i'm going to be talking about your part in this something that you may be doing that's not serving you very well in fact it's making things more difficult for you so it's very important to know what those things are to be able to name them and claim them and change them so tonight the fawning response is what we're going to be looking at and if you enjoy save your sanity podcast i really invite you to support it by going to saveyoursanitypodcast.com and finding all the great content there and then support it in another way with small contributions monthly go to patreon.com save your sanity patreon.com slash save your sanity i really appreciate you doing that because we're in 91 countries now we're always creating more reach and that really helps to defray the cost of doing things so let's get down to it let's talk about fawning what is it well it's people pleasing you might be familiar with that term but is people pleasing in a little more extreme way because your people pleasing to diffuse conflict and then make yourself feel more secure in a relationship which doesn't work but you're also trying to earn the approval of others all at the same time all wrapped in together does that make sense to you that you are really giving up a lot in order to stay in a relationship in fact you're giving up yourself and you know last week we did an episode or i did an episode and you engaged in the conversation about self-abandonment so we're going to take that further tonight by talking about this finding business very important to know because when you frown you fawn you abandon yourself automatically just boop there you go everybody's more important than you are and everybody takes the focus and you are lost you may even feel invisible and you know how important it is the must-haves of a healthy adult relationship equality inequity reciprocity and mutuality cannot exist when the fawning response is brought into play just can't exist because you've made other people more important than yourself you have deferred your own needs to somebody else all to keep the peace and hope that people will like you and you know their hijackal variety are not going to like you in fact they're going to disrespect you they may even make fun of you because they see that as a weakness so that's not good news we don't want to be doing that so the fighting response is an attempt to avoid conflict and trauma so that's a big thing to avoid conflict and further trauma or put the spotlight on yourself by appearing to appease other people and demonstrate their feign interest in other people so you will do those things too you know you give in to other people you will be that giver that over giver you will be the one who doesn't have any needs or doesn't have any preferences or doesn't state your interests or hold your position and it causes you to deny your rights it really does and deny your interests and deny your thoughts and deny your feelings and you can never have that right to balance which is equality and equity reciprocity and mutuality but here you are giving it away and until it becomes conscious to you that you're doing that you'll continue to do it so it's really important what we're going to talk about tonight because you won't be showing your authentic self so other people will misunderstand you and the very thing you're trying to do is to say hey i'm a good person over here they're misunderstanding you because you're so busy taking care of their needs so the fawning response kind of goes with the fight or flight or freeze or fawn so it has to do with your nervous system as well when you get into those arousal places where you're caught dear in the headlights or you're afraid of the conflict as i was saying and at those moments you go into a response then fawning is one of them i'm going to make nice i'm going to make it up to them i'm going to go the extra mile i'm going to appear like i have no needs and wants and they are everything everything should be given to them they should be the center of attention how do you like me so far and it's it's something that you may have learned as a child to do if you had a hijackal parent because you had to right and that was the only way you could get them to feed you or to like you or whatever they were withholding you thought you might get and so it may just become natural to you to do that and that's a shame it truly is a shame but i hope you're understanding what fawning is because it's it's when you overly praise somebody it's when you give them way more than you would give yourself when you're endeavoring to make nice when you're endeavoring to impress when you're endeavoring to appear selfless the fawning response will come up and it puts you in an imbalance immediately you can feel the lack of equity and equality in the relationship and then you create it further and of course you're not doing that on purpose it's the what you've learned to do over time which is why it's such an important topic to discuss because the more that we bring into our consciousness the more that we make it very right now very real and we look at our behaviors the more we can take charge of our behavior and when we take charge of our behavior we take charge of getting the results that we want in life so to pull back from the fawning response just like everything we do with hijackals we don't do it all at once we do it little by little we start withdrawing that response so that it's not abrupt but you know that you're extinguishing the fawning response so very important have you ever found yourself in the case where you're trying to ingratiate yourself to someone you really want them to like you and you're leaning in and you're giving yourself up at the same time you're abandoning yourself as we spoke of in the last episode so i want to talk about seven ways that you might be abandoning yourself that are examples of the fawning response so important to understand these so the first one that i want to talk about is you're showing up in a way that makes other people feel more important and then you end up feeling unseen now of course there's balance in all things but have you ever done that where you just give all the air time you give all the praise you give all the latitude you give all the choices to someone else in the hopes that there won't be any conflict but that they will finally like you and treat you as an equal human being and you can see the erroneous nature of that because here you are not behaving in a way that's requesting equality or equity and yet you're hoping that they're going to give it to you so it becomes kind of faulty thinking and you don't want to be engaging in that because it sets you up and shows you up that makes other people more important than yourself so you will never find equality and equity there it's just not possible and you're giving it away so you want to take that back now if you're with a hijackal don't take it back all at once as i said but if you find you're doing that in other circumstances maybe just a little bit or a little bit too frequently then that would be a good place to go cold turkey and stop doing that and recognize you might even say something like you know yes i have an opinion on that too and i think it's equally valid and people who are in the fawning response are oh you're right you're right i never thought of that um oh you're so clever you're so bright how did you figure that out and you start like ingratiating yourself to them and as you're doing that their stock is going way up and yours is going down and you're feeling that now is the time to bring them back to balance really important so you will start to feel unseen and yet it's something that you are giving them permission to do because you are taking a part in creating it so you abandon yourself by making other people far more important than you far too often and that's something you can fix that's something you can change because you can stand on your head and spit wooden nickels for a decade in the hopes that a hijackal is going to finally approve of you and they'll tell you that you don't do a headstand well you know that's just the way they are they're not going to give you anything that they don't absolutely have to you know i was working with a client today who is endeavoring to create a mediated settlement so that she can have a prelude to divorce and i told her quite clearly you have a raving hijack called husband don't go to mediation but she went to mediation so she's telling me what's going on there and what we see is a pattern that i pointed out to her as she told me the progress of the mediation she kept giving a little giving a little hoping to get what did he do every time she gave a little he asked for more so we had to have a really straight talk about stopping this fawning response thinking that if you give more a hijackal will then see the light and realize what a wonderful person you are and how giving you are and be grateful and finally see you no that's not what happens and you know that already because as i'm saying these things to you you know you know who you're dealing with and you know that if you keep giving they'll just keep taking that's the way that whole relationship is structured so if you start with the f funding response and you start taking up more space and you start feeling the right to breathe and take up that space then you will start looking for more equity and equality and that would be really healthy really healthy you know and if at any time you need help with that you know you can use my new client opportunity if you want to talk with me you can go to be a client.com and use that one-time opportunity and we can talk about this if it's an issue for you so we have that first one now the second one is that we have to stop the finding response by learning to say no no is a complete sentence i know you may think that you need to justify the no you maybe even want to apologize for the no because that's definitely a fawning response but if you are just my answer is no and that's all you say you are on your way to extinguishing some of this finding response no i wouldn't like to do that very simple [Music] uh yeah if you're in the fawning response world you're concerned what will they say what would they think of me if i just say no but you can't abandon yourself anymore you want to be able to say no you know people who are supreme extreme foreigners they say things like people ask something outrageous and they say things like oh no problem at all oh that wouldn't be any trouble at all sure i'll do that and inside they're just seething like i don't want to why am i doing this that's outrageous they shouldn't ask me but they don't say no because they want them to like them or at a minimum they don't want conflict and upset so they do it and i understand that completely when you're with the hijackal there's enough conflict and upset and you don't want more but we're talking right now about doing your own inner work to really realize that you are abandoning yourself at those moments when you give in to something that's really important to you may be very deep in your nature and you give in or you say you'll do something when you really don't want to do it and you do it frequently sure we all say yes we'll do things to very difficult things for people in difficult circumstances i'm not talking about that that's natural and healthy that's in the give and take a friendship i'm talking about when it's just something that you habitually do you just don't say no to anyone or as we say in canada you wouldn't say boo to a goose you know you just make nice all the time sure i'll do it yes you know i only have 10 minutes on my lunch break but i'll drive 30 minutes to get that for you no learn that it is fine to say no that wouldn't work for me no i don't have time for that no that's not what i want to do today and know that you have the right to do that so as you're clawing back and not abandoning yourself that's the second thing to remember that you were fawning when you never say no to people you always want to please them so the third one you're you find yourself in this situation with your closer relationships where you are not creating conflict and you're finding you're giving things to people you're not giving them the truth you're they're not experiencing your true feelings it all seems make nice it they're getting everything you're getting nothing what does that do it produces one of the things it produces and not always in this case is it is it this but many times you will maybe go on an airplane you know how they say that you just tell your life story to the person in the next seat well if you don't have a healthy relationship in your life where and you have taken up the farming so the person is way more important than you are when you meet somebody who treats you equally who is interested in you you start to think they're your new best friend you have strong feelings of attachment to them during the ride of two hours on an airplane and then you you feel inappropriately close to them have you had that experience and then maybe you give them insight into your emotions and you talk about really strong emotions or you get into a public situation where you're never allowed to explode you're never allowed to say things at home you don't allow yourself to do that and you get into some public venue or at work or something and all of a sudden you go off like a roman candle because you're all this pent up energy from doing all this fawning and then the exact wrong person in the wrong place gets it all and there's it's got to come out somewhere and it does so you want to stop self-abandoning by using this fawning response and one of the things to notice is if you start getting really close to strangers in strange places and talking about deep things that are important to you emotionally or you start over expressing in public or at work or somewhere and you realize that wow this is inappropriate and you abandon yourself because you're not being your authentic self anywhere it's very important also to notice so another one now you're not allowed to be upset so you're constantly apologizing for having real feelings oh i know it's silly but i felt a little sad oh i tried to be strong but you know me you know i i gave in and so you you not allowed to say i don't want to do that you haven't been allowing yourself to do that and so then you are constantly apologizing if you have feelings or if you have thoughts or you have needs and that's really sad you're apologizing for being human you're apologizing for being your authentic self you're apologizing for taking up space and drawing breath you know you're apologizing for having an idea or a need or a want or feeling that's all part of the funding response have you ever caught yourself doing that you're just apologizing all the time you're almost apologizing for being that is a big piece of the fawning response you're really important i have nothing your needs are really important mine don't matter that's basically what you're saying to yourself by that behavior now you know my big mantra abb always believe behavior well it applies to your behavior too if you see yourself tonight in what i'm talking about believe your behavior that you're you're participating in the fawning response and then you can say no i am going to make a shift i am going to change that and remember as i said you can go to be a client.com if you want to talk to me about it and that's really easy to remember be a client or big news our new emerging empowered community our membership program is now available for you at joinintoday.com only 19 a month to become a member safely off social media really good idea go to join in today.com also when you become a community member for only 19 a month it gives you access to two group ask me anything calls a month that's a great opportunity for you so as well as all the discussion groups and free things you also get a coupon for 10 at 10 off all of my products when you're a community member so if you're starting to hear things tonight where other podcasts say i'd like to work on that talk to me personally at peerclient.com or come and join in at joinintoday.com or do both very important things to do so if you're not allowed to have your feelings of course the other thing that you won't be allowed to do if you're fawning or in the fun refining response you won't be allowed to set boundaries you won't allow yourself to set boundaries because what if they don't like it well they won't like it i can guarantee they won't like it hijackals don't like other people's boundaries they don't but it's important that you have them and if you're giving yourself away bring yourself back and say hey i am not going to apologize for what i need and want in life i'm just not going to apologize for that and i'm not going to give it away i am not going to make it all right for me to not matter and other people that matter a whole lot that's extremely important okay what's another thing you you could recognize um you take responsibility for other people's feelings and reactions now that's a big fawning sign you know you tell someone maybe you make a recommendation oh i love that movie and then all the way home you're going what if they hate it what if they hate it oh maybe that wasn't fair maybe i shouldn't have said that i don't know if they'd like it or not what if they go in and they're really upset with me that's all part of the funding response you said you enjoyed a particular movie they're adults let them go and find out if they like it or not or go or not but if you're used to being in the funding response you're worried that they won't like it and somehow you failed to give them a good choice and and that's just you know when when i say that don't you feel a little sad that that that could happen but it does happen and you maybe feel responsible if people don't have a good time at something we fail to make sure to give other people the right to be adult humans not our job if they're not happy if they're not participating if they're not having a good time they can make a different choice but if we're so used to caretaking other people's feelings then we will get in there and say you know come on have fun are you doing well what do you need and we get overly solicitous overly trying to accommodate them and we don't need to be they're adults treat them like adults and be an adult yourself because if you take responsibility for other people's feelings or their reactions or their responses you're suggesting that they don't have the right to their own or the consequences of their choices so that falls into the enabling category remember when i gave you my definition of enabling the big caveat at the end of the definition was when you make the consequences for someone's poor choices go away if they decide to go to the movie that you said you enjoyed that's so they can decide whether they enjoy it it's not that you have to be the only the person who makes the choice that would make them happy if they went to the movies do you see how convoluted this becomes now if you had a hijackal parent you're used to bobbing and weaving and ducking and carrying on will they like me do you like me over here do you like me when i'm tall told you like me when i'm small i mean you just get into that way of being and then you will become an expert at the finding response the great joy of being an adult is you can look at all those things to learn what you need to release what you need to erase and what you need to replace in the way that you're acting the way that you're feeling the way that you're thinking that's what i help my clients to do that's what deep reflection helps you to do that's why i create the courses and everything so that you can have those deep reflective questions to journal with and really think deeply about some of these things and of course i add courses all the time so when you remember of course you get 10 off all of them so let's um do that deep work you can't do it any younger did you notice that so do it now you know if this is making sense to you and you find yourself yeah i do behave that way and i don't feel good about it make a pact with yourself to do something about it and change it so very important so what's another way this fawning shows up you override your values because you don't want to offend anybody or you don't want anybody to be uncomfortable so you actually override your own your values you do things like here's an example i'm gluten and dairy and soy free and i'm a vegan so when people say where would you like to eat i say anywhere that i can get gluten dairy and soy free food that is vegan and they'll say well we really wanted italian we really wanted italian right well we can go to italian and i can have a baked potato and a side salad yes but i'm not happy you know i don't expect everybody to accommodate me all the time however what's important to me is to be able to have access to good food and good company and so i don't always just go along and have the baked potato and the salad i say let's go to my favorite vegan restaurant now and you can live in my world for a little bit so we then create equality and equity and that's important to do and your values shouldn't be fluid you know i have an exercise i give my personal clients it's called the value shuffle that i created about 30 years ago really important and part of that is to know what your values are so that they are not fluid they are not shifting where every group you're in or wherever you are on the planet or in your mind but if you're participating in the fawning response you will make your values fluid and you won't be happy with yourself you just won't be and at that time you diminish yourself so we don't want to be doing that either so the last one i want to talk about is fawning really means shutting yourself down and making someone else more important so when you get into that seriously and you've been doing it for a long time sometimes your autonomic nervous system kind of kicks in and you space out or you blank things out it's kind of a trauma response like you you just feel injured and re-wounded and re-wounded and and you're not even present and the very thing that you wanted to be which is seen cannot happen for you because you're not really present and in extreme cases where the finding response has been going on for a long time and so has the emotional abuse you just kind of leave your body you dissociate it's all running over your head it's running over your body and you don't even realize it it's too much and if that happens to you please please get help because it's too painful and it's unhealthy to silence yourself and put down your emotions and push them down to stuff your emotions emotions have to go somewhere and if everybody's more important than you are in your world and you treat them in that way with the fawning response they're going to come out in your body aches and pains or particularly where they like to seem to go is to your autoimmune system you'll start getting inflammatory diseases or conditions and you don't want to do that to yourself if you have already done that to yourself know that you can you can move out of that you can change that so it's too painful and it's too unhealthy to be silencing yourself in that way to be pushing down your emotions to not be on an equal footing with other humans now hijackals never want you to be on equal footing with them so you know the work that has to be done in order to come back from that so very important because if you continue in the finding response you will be so exhausted you will start trying to anticipate people's needs or second guess what they're going to need and what they want and what they're feeling and what they're thinking about you and what they're not thinking about you you can get yourself in a total tizzy a tight whole tail spin about all these things and you could start making assumptions and presumptions and acting as though they're true and you could take yourself out and down really not good for you i know that you fond to cope everybody does you know whatever you had to do particularly as a child after you've been in a hijackal relationship for a while you really do have to pick your battles so sometimes you're fine and sometimes you try standing up but it's really important to be this really conscious so that you know what you are doing and if you need to use it strategically know that you're doing it but don't have it be unconsciously your lifestyle don't have it be unconsciously silencing yourself and pushing your emotions down because it's really a poor coping mechanism overall and you pay a really high price for it so get help really you need help for this one because it's quite involved in how you have created your self-concept really important and you know if you want my help go to be a client.com if you want to talk about it more go to joinintoday.com really important opportunities for you to start talking about these things with other people who have had experience of them or working on them or overcome them and that's all important and if you want my help to extinguish this behavior i'm happy to help you because you want to feel powerful you want to be constantly emerging empowered that's the name of my community emerging empowered community and you want to be doing that and when you go to join in today you'll find that there are threads for people who are raised by a hijackal people who are living with one people who are thinking of leaving or have left thinking of dating there are different threads that you can join in wherever you are on the journey so go to join in today.com and until we talk again really have a think about this finding response see if it's become a bit habitual in one or two relationships in your life or sadly in most of them and then make a decision to emerge empowered it's very very important so until we meet again take very good care of yourself because you're precious and you matter talk soon hello oh you've been busy you've been writing things great i'm so glad that you're here and we have this chance to talk again and remember you can ask a question on anything to do with toxic relationships it doesn't have to be about fawning if you have a question that's burning ask it but remember too that from when you press send to when i see it is 20 seconds so i will go through them one at a time ernesto says wonderful subject thank you i'm i hope you like it and i hope you noticed i got a new microphone um stomach has it says hello hi i'm glad to see you here i haven't seen you here before demetrius oh thank you so much for the super sticker demetrius that's a wonderful thing if you don't know about it on youtube if he sent a little money along to say this was important to him and i appreciate that thank you and then demetrius said this first time i caught the live stream thank you for your work and the time you put into these you're so welcome you know i really want people to become more and more conscious of what they're doing in life and how they're crafting their life what's okay with them and what's not and that really floats my boat and flips my skirt so that's what i do for demetrius but i'm glad that you're here and thank you for the super sticker hi exotic food and lifestyle wow hello i haven't seen you here before so welcome um stella says how are am i dr schaeler how are you dr jaylor i love it so true it's almost like being a people pleaser actually stella at the beginning you might not have heard me say this but i said uh you people-pleasing is mild compared to fawning and so people-pleasing is one thing but if you really have been a people-pleaser and you move into the fawning response it's more extreme you really have to notice that so you're right it's people pleasing but it's extreme people pleasing because it becomes a way that you also put yourself down so it's not just people pleasing other people but you are denying yourself hi deborah deborah says i had started to work on this on myself and now ex-hijackal partner was quite upset at how much less accommodating i was lol yes well when you stop being accommodating they don't like it one bit because their opinion is that you're here to make them happy you know you're not here to make anybody happy but you it's an inside job you're not here to live up to the expectations of others and you are not here to engage in drama and get addicted to it and that's just what a hijacker wants so deborah i am absolutely sure that if you were less accommodating a hijackal would be more unhappy for sure and then deborah said there can be quite a bit of guilt when stepping out of fawning yes any tips to avoid feeling that guilt as much well first of all who who's the conversation in your head that's suggesting that you should feel guilty and i don't mean that flippantly i mean whose voice is it that says you should feel guilty about not putting every other human on the continent ahead of yourself you know where did you learn that did you have a hydrical mother who suggested that who do you think you are you know you're here for other people so one of the tips for stopping this is to to be able to say whose voice is it that's really telling me to put myself down because it may have become habitual but if you're just realizing this and you've asked that question of yourself then ask yourself where did it start in what relationship did it start because the dynamic of that relationship would have happened you may have started school and started doing it because you wanted the big kids to like you or you didn't want to be bullied and you saw people being bullied so you thought if you just made nice all the time and you made other people more important and you and you made yourself small they would like you better i mean there are many many ways that we create this dynamic or have an understanding that this is what we need to do so if you want to avoid feeling the guilt ask yourself where did i take on the guilt who was wanting me to feel guilty if i put myself first sometimes or if there was equality in the relationship because every hijackal in your whole life does not want you to behave with equality they're incapable of it and they definitely don't want you to be capable of it and ask or demand it so it may have started with that and deborah says immediately a hijackal mother yes yes it's so important now we're at the end of the comments here so you know that if i don't hear a question or a comment within 30 seconds then we just end for tonight because i will know that all of your questions were answered or you got everything that you were hoping for so if you do have something to say or a question or a comment be sure to pop it in and hit send quickly because otherwise i have a tendency to cut it off and disappear and you may be lingering there with it well what about my question and it will go unanswered if it goes unasked so jump in there now one of the things with my hijackal mother was i never fond and oh boy did that annoy her i just thought she was a horrible human i really did from the time i was little and i wouldn't do that i wouldn't be who she wanted me to be and that was the source of our total conflict but i also know it was the source of my getting through things without totally losing myself and yes i had to learn all the things that i teach you i had to learn them all most of them i had to figure out myself because there wasn't any help but all of that was true that i happened to have the strength to stand up to this woman but if you were raised by one of them and you didn't have that internal strength heaven knows where it came from then just notice that you may have done that to cope you may have done that to survive oh thank you deborah you're so welcome deborah has given us an another um donation that's very nice and i see this um that just arrived so thank you so much um if you have had a habitual need in your family of origin to be in the fawning response do notice that that you that's the what you had to do to cope don't make yourself wrong for any of this please be gentle with yourself if these things seem familiar to you be gentle with yourself it just oh i recognize that now you shouldn't have been different all this time you couldn't have been different all this time because you didn't know so from this moment forward you have choice and just be very gentle with yourself about that deborah asks is it possible to switch between fight or fun i had many situations in my childhood dynamic that seemed less fun and more fight well yes absolutely you know that's what i did i would just fight with her i would just tell her tell her off um which she totally hated of course um and so yes it is very imp important you will go through all of those things many people will we'll fight we'll run away we'll have the flight response we'll be stunned we'll have the freeze response or we'll just start to be oh so solicitous and lovely and i'm so sorry i'm sorry i breathe i'm sorry i exist i know it was my mother's fault that i exist but i'm sorry for that too and we just get into those places so when we're taking ourselves back when we're reclaiming ourselves when we're finding our power our personal power again we just make different choices and so yes it is absolutely possible to switch between these things because you intuitively know what's going to work at which time you know can they handle the fight or do i have to fund should i get out of here you know if you have an alcoholic parent you quickly learn when you can be solicitous to them when you need to be afraid of them and hide under your bed you know you learn whether it's fight or flight or freeze or fun but if fawning has become a habitual way of responding to a hijackal oh that's too hard just wearing yourself down to a nub is too hard it's too exhausting so um it's important for us to understand this um all right so i don't see any more comments so i'm in my countdown now for 30 seconds if nothing pops up oh oren thank you i haven't seen you here before welcome he says thank you this was a great subject good i'm glad that you found value in it and i appreciate you saying so that's great um and it's important for us to have these talks and have a place to do it so i really hope you'll come and be part of the emerging empowered community because these are the tough things that we talk about i'm in there responding to people all the time but it gives you that opportunity to two members only calls so very important or is it how do you figure out what you want when you never practice hmm that's a big question you know you have to try a few things out you know you have to go for the taster menu you know what happens if i do something a little bit differently here with this person what happens if i just change my behavior right there and then or or in ads or you never had the chance to make a choice well that would be childhood thing or that would be getting involved with someone who was so overbearing that there was only one response that would keep you alive in the sense of being emotionally viable in the relationship or sometimes physically alive you know these people some of them are uh really physical threats to you so it's very important to understand this you know many times i'm working with clients and we have to get them somewhere that they're safe and they're thinking oh i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine now i think of one where i was a clan i was talking with her and and i think i mentioned this in another podcast and i she was recounting to me something that was going on in her relationship and she was out of town with this person and she told me the story of what had gone on and i said oh go and pack your bags and have them ready by the door she said why why i said because he's going to escalate to holding you against the wall and choking you and she said oh no he'll never do that she called me 12 hours later she said thank you for telling me to have my bags packed he did exactly that i was out the door in an instant in an uber and i'm on my way to the airport you know you are not safe when you're with many of these hijackals you just are not you're unsafe in so many ways so oran asks how do you help a child who won't make a choice well it depends if it's your child and if you're with them i i kind of think that you may be asking the question because when they're with the other parent they don't have a choice could you verify if i have that correct am i reading that into that orange because many times when we divorce a hijackal children have to become very flexible they behave one way at the hijackals house in another way at the non-hijackals house and it's a really big deal because when they're with the hijackal in order to survive in so many ways they have to appease the hijackal so they will get into the fawning response and they won't step up and so you have to model that not by being belligerent but by saying you know that's not all right with me oh lauren says my daughter never chooses with friends okay um well encourage her to choose at home encourage her to choose when she's with you and always i don't know how old she is but we always start with only two choices do you want this or that we don't we don't train children to make good choices by giving them unlimited ones we teach them to calibrate this or that very important you know do you want to wear this or that you know would you like this cookie or would you like ice cream not what would you like for dessert so we we start training children early about making good choices and their ability increases to make choices and then to let them know they have the right to choose that it's okay you could choose this or that or nothing those are your options what would make you happy and it's okay yes that's the last one that we have of those cookies and it's okay you can choose that and you you model for them and you teach them and you remind them and reinforce them that they have a choice and they can make it and if other people don't like it if her friends for instance don't like it then are they really your friend honey you know you're not there to make them happy you're not there to keep them happy or please them sometimes they're pleased sometimes they're not pleased it's not your job but it is your job to be able to stand up and say what you like say what you want say what you think what you feel what you need and then you will have a relationship that can have equality and that's so important so it's a great question oh she's 18. well get on that one right away otherwise she's going to have guys who are going to be overruling her all the time so she needs to stand up or get her some help that's another thing that you can do sometimes 18 year olds don't want to talk to their parents about these things so you know i i have worked with so many kids i spent 28 years in education as well as having my private practice so i was finally principal of schools and i worked with a whole lot of kids so i know stuff about that so get her some help if she won't take help from you but model really strongly making good choices okay so we're out of comments out of questions glad you asked those last questions oren very very important so until i talk with you again i hope you will treat yourself well stop the fawning response observe it if you use it and where you use it and then start calibrating away from it to not use it and in the meantime treat yourself very well because you're precious and you matter talk soon

Channel: Dr. Rhoberta Shaler - Help for Toxic Relationships

Views: 19,807

Keywords: self abandonment, self love codependency, childhood trauma, narcissistic abuse healing, fawn response to trauma, fawn response codependent, fawn response to narcissistic abuse, dr rhoberta shaler, what is the fawning response

Id: xUzpF2g_sYc

Length: 49min 42sec (2982 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 06 2021