Photo by Adrian Lange on Unsplash
Fawning…
an internal posture
that “leans all the way over”
to center another person
at the expense of our own personhood
in an attempt to survive relational encounters of
disempowerment or maltreatment.
Last week we explored how initiative fawning can develop when Complex PTSD turns chronic fawning into initiative behaviors that schedule the terror of trauma in order to contain its symptoms.
In this post, the fifth in a ten-part series on the fawn response, we’ll jump into chapter two of Ingrid Clayton’s book Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes us Lose Ourselves and How to Find our Way Back where she explores why fawning flourishes.
As I read this chapter the metaphor of a petri dish stayed at the forefront of my mind. I like to geek out on science occasionally, so let me mention a few things about petri dishes before we dive in. Petri dishes are…
shallow
designed to allow gas exchange
made of reusable glass that can withstand high temperatures
All of the societal elements that Clayton names are dangerous because they dehumanize people (treat them as shallow beings), share the same air and thus growing faster together and are difficult to eliminate because they interweave to withstand heat and pressure.