“We are so used to pretending to others that we end up being pretended to be ourselves.” ~Francois de la Rochefoucauld
“So, in your relationship, do your partner’s needs always dictate how things go?”
My therapist looked at me quizzically when I shared with her that our dinner plans had suddenly changed the night before because my partner was tired from a long day at work, and I took what he needed.
He started a night out, I got dressed and got ready for a restaurant meal and by the time I got to his place, he was exhausted and decided he wanted to stay in and defrost something instead. At the moment I said,I don’t mind—you’re happy to do whatever you want.” And I meant it. I really, totally meant it.
Except later, as I sat in the therapy chair recounting the story and on the other side of my therapist’s questions, I noticed myself defending her and defending my position. Being a therapist myself, I know that when I defend something, something goes wrong.
As I sat down with myself, I realized that the last thing I wanted that night was a defrosted meal.
I’ve been a fanner most of my life, though I haven’t always had that word for it. I just thought I was easy-going, flexible, accommodating, and deeply attuned to the people around me.
I’ve always thought my flexibility was a virtue and my sensitivity to others a gift, and in many ways that’s true. They make great skills as therapists.
What I had yet to see was that beneath these qualities, woven so deeply into my personality that they became almost indistinguishable from who I believed myself to be, patterns of self-sacrifice over decades had been so subtle and so refined that they no longer felt like patterns. They just felt like me.
This is partly why fawning can be so difficult to detect. It doesn’t feel like trauma. It feels like being thoughtful, empathetic, emotionally intelligent and deeply connected to the people around you.
You are appreciated for it. You become a simple, loving person who keeps everything harmonious and connected.
That way it can feel really good when needed, and when you also get external validation for it, it becomes a reinforcing loop that loves you externally. But eventually the body and your relationship personality begin to take a toll on everything you learn not to feel.
Larger and more visible expressions of the pattern become easier to grasp over time. You build awareness, feel them appearing in your body before they take over, and learn to react differently.
But subtle… they very stealthily become part of your identity. Built into the way you see yourself and the way you live. Very simple, totally convincing way I’d say,”I don’t mind, you choose.“And I believed it and admired myself for it. After all, I was flexible.
Which makes sense really, because fawning is ultimately about one thing, the terror of disconnection.
Especially in close relationships, where the connection is your anchor of security, a rupture can be felt as a real terror.
The fear is that if I’m too much, not enough, or inconvenience myself… you’ll be gone, and I’ll be alone. So I lean in, read your temperature, and adjust myself accordingly, giving you what you need, because until I do, the connection lasts.
From the outside, fawning looks like consent. But the body always says no.
As a Fauner, my sense of security resides entirely outside of my own body, in your temperature. As a result, I became remarkably good at reading that temperature. I know, before you say a word, whether you are right or not, present or absent, open or closed, and I structure myself accordingly. We are master shapeshifters.
Who should I be so that I can keep it safe?
This question hums beneath the surface of so many interactions, so subtly and for so long, that I stop listening to it and become what I want to be.
And to bring all that attention to you, I have to leave myself. I have to override my own body, my own feelings, instincts and needs, and I do it so automatically and completely that after a long time it no longer registers as a choice. This is just me.
Until, of course, a life event comes along and rattles the cage.
To be clear, fawning is not a pattern I want to demonize. This is an incredibly smart security strategy; This is when the nervous system finds a way to safety through attachment and accommodation when it doesn’t feel like fighting, leaving, or shutting down.
The problem isn’t the reaction itself, but when it becomes so chronic and so embedded that we lose touch with who’s really underneath it.
This disconnect always comes at a cost. Often with a disconnection with the body. We cannot be unconsciously agile and at the same time connected to our physiology.
It also comes with a sense of resentment building up in the background, without a clear place to pin it because you weren’t allowed to have it in the first place.
Maybe with a relationship that feels close but not the same, because you’re performing inside it rather than living inside it. Maybe it comes as the constant feeling that people don’t really know you, understand you, or appreciate you. Feeling unseen, unheard and unappreciated is common. Maybe cost your health. After decades of repressing who you are, the body starts screaming with symptoms you can no longer ignore.
Beneath all dwelling, there is a part of you that is always waiting.
Maybe if I work hard enough, you’ll finally see me.
If I can give you what you need, you will be what I need.
Maybe if I’m very, very good, you’ll be good to me.
Eventually someone will see you, eventually reciprocate, eventually show up the way you keep showing up for them, that’s what keeps the pattern alive and breathing.
Hope, for a Fauna, keeps you waiting and waiting for something to finally change. It keeps the loop open.
And the moment the connection falters or breaks, when silence or distance appears or uncertainty settles between two people’s conflict, we can find ourselves suddenly adrift. I’ve felt it many times, the feeling of swimming in open water with no ground beneath me, reaching for what I’m feeling, where I am, or what’s coming next, something, anything, to hold me in place.
At that moment, the mind becomes very, very busy. If the thing that anchored me – the warmth of connection, the feeling of being right in your eyes – was suddenly gone, the mind would grasp, grasp and reach for anything and everything.
Sometimes it goes fixing. Sometimes a fantasy of a different life, a different future, a different partner. Sometimes to find fault, to make a very convincing case for why I’m better off without them. And when you look closely at all of these, you begin to see that the same tendency runs through each one—the nervous system reaching for any lever that can restore a sense of control or safety.
It’s a beautiful, exhausting illusion. A cognitive loop that keeps you active and stressed and away from yourself.
What we really need to feel in those moments is groundlessness. This is the gateway.
Unsettled ground is the transition to our own inner ground. To feel the loss of connection, the emptiness and loneliness that comes with its absence as something that can be lived with, something that doesn’t have to be immediately fixed or run away from or explained away. And to discover that in this groundlessness and this loneliness, you are not only here, you are actually at home. There is something inside you that holds strong even when the external anchor is gone.
From here anything real is possible. Including things that scare most people more than isolation.
talking
When we try to talk, the panic can be really visible. Some of the body shrinks and closes, the voice becomes hoarse or disappears completely, the mouth becomes dry and the body may shake. All because the nervous system has learned over a very long time that conflict, rejection, and criticism are all deeply unsafe. And it won’t let you forget, no matter how many times you tell yourself that things were different then and now.
The body continues to protect you in ways it has never known.
Breaking this pattern is ultimately about learning to feel again.
Beneath the performance and all the years of building yourself up to the needs of others, a whole emotional world awaits.
As I work with many people, we come across a well of fear that was never allowed to be felt, a reservoir of anger that had nowhere to go and was stuffed up, a depth of sadness for what was lost or never possible, and a tenderness towards yourself that perhaps no one modeled for you.
Coming back to yourself means increasing your ability to feel everything—slowly and at a pace that feels safe, in the body and in the presence of someone safe enough to hold it.
We hurt in relationships, and we heal in relationships.
If you are someone who blows, please don’t be too hard on yourself. This pattern is woven into your identity, your relationships, and the way you move through the world. The threat your nervous system feels when you consider speaking up, letting someone down, or risking harm is very real.
It is a deeply embodied survival response, shaped by everything – culture, gender, religion, family system – and it demands patience and empathy, not self-criticism. Regardless of the origin of your particular scent, it makes enormous sense given the world you’re navigating. It keeps you safe.
So be kind to yourself. Be genuinely, tenderly kind.
The way out is not kept tight. Learning to live with open water. To cultivate, slowly and with great patience, an inner ground so rooted and so truly yours that outer uncertainty loses its power to undo you.
It took me years, a deeply embodied practice, lots of time in my own company, therapeutic relationships where I was held safe enough to try something different, and an intimate relationship where we both named our patterns and agreed to hold space for each other. Where I can practice saying the thing I once would have swallowed whole and be met with understanding rather than reaction.
What makes all this possible is security. Inside myself, inside the therapy room and inside my intimate relationships.
And what I know to be true is that when you create enough inner ground, when you’re not really afraid of being alone, not afraid of conflict or separation or someone’s disappointment, something profound changes. Life begins to realign itself around your truth. What has to go goes. What is really meant for you. And you finally land in yourself.
There will almost certainly be a loss. Those who needed your smallness and silence will struggle with your change, but that isolation is pattern breaking. And what becomes possible on the other side—relationships, life, and the version of yourself that is actually, truly, fully you—is worth every uncomfortable moment of getting there.
about Maria Rodostianos
Maraya is an Integrative Somatic Therapist offering private sessions online in Melbourne and worldwide. Blending modern neuroscience on trauma and the nervous system with psychotherapeutic tools and ancient wisdom traditions, she takes a holistic approach that integrates mind, body, spirit and nervous system. She works at the intersection of trauma, authenticity, embodied spirituality and wellness, guiding clients to overcome blocks from living as their most authentic, whole and embodied selves. You can find him http://marayarae.com. Facebook / substack / Instagram
