Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves – and How to Find our Way Back

 
　　我們大多熟悉面對威脅時的三種本能反應：戰鬥（fight）、逃跑（flight）或僵住（freeze）。但心理學家們還發現了第四種常見的反應模式：討好（fawning）。這種反應經常被誤認為是「共依附」或「討好型人格」，其實，它是一種創傷反應──當人們面對造成痛苦的人或情境時，不僅沒有逃離，反而更加接近對方。
 
你是否曾經：
　　-向傷害你的人道歉？
　　-試圖與霸凌你的人建立關係？
　　-為了獲得他人認可而改變自己，到了你也無法辨認出自己真實模樣的程度？
 
　　如果這些描述符合你的經歷，你可能是一位「討好型倖存者」。
 
　　「討好」的行為解釋了我們為什麼會留在不適合的工作、不健康的關係、或令人窒息的環境裡——即使旁人早就看出我們應該離開。儘管這種反應在危險環境中有自我保護的功能，但如果這成為不斷重複啟動的反射性反應，就會成為生活中的一大問題。
 
　　然而只要認清「討好」的本質是創傷反應，我們就有能力打破這個循環！擁有十多年實務經驗的臨床心理學家Ingrid Clayton 博士，在本書中深入探討人們啟動「討好」模式的原因、怎麼辨識這種反應、以及如何有效解除它，帶領每位曾經深深受傷的討好行倖存者，找回自己真實的樣貌。(文/博客來編譯)

From a clinical psychologist and expert in complex trauma recovery comes a powerful guide introducing fawning, an often-overlooked piece of the fight-flight-freeze reaction to trauma—explaining what it is, why it happens, and how to help survivors regain their voice and sense of self.

Most of us are familiar with the three F's of trauma—fight, flight, or freeze. But psychologists have identified a fourth, extremely common (yet little-understood) response: fawning. Often conflated with “codependency” or “people-pleasing,” fawning occurs when we inexplicably draw closer to a person or relationship that causes pain, rather than pulling away.

• Do you apologize to people who have hurt you?
Ignore their bad behavior?
• Befriend your bullies?
• Obsess about saying the right thing?
• Make yourself into someone you’re not . . . while seeking approval that may never come?

You might be a fawner.

Fawning explains why we stay in bad jobs, fall into unhealthy partnerships, and tolerate dysfunctional environments, even when it seems so obvious to others that we should go. And though fawning serves a purpose—it’s an ingenious protective strategy in unsafe situations—it’s a problem if it becomes a repetitive, compulsory reaction in our daily lives.

But here’s the good news: we can break the pattern of chronic fawning, once we see it for the trauma response it is. Drawing on twenty years of clinical psychology work—as well as a lifetime of experience as a recovering fawner herself—Dr. Ingrid Clayton demonstrates WHY we fawn, HOW to recognize the signs of fawning (including taking blame, conflict avoidance, hypervigilance, and caretaking at the expense of ourselves), and WHAT we can do to successfully “unfawn” and finally be ourselves, in all our imperfect perfection.

Dr. Ingrid Clayton is a licensed clinical psychologist with a master’s in transpersonal psychology and a PhD in clinical psychology. She has had a thriving private practice for more than sixteen years and is a regular contributor to Psychology Today, where her blog Emotional Sobriety has received more than one million views. She lives in Los Angeles, California.