If "I don't want to be a burden" lives... | Georgia Telehealth Therapy

What if the reason you uh you just can't say no to people isn't because you're just, you know, too nice, right? But because your nervous system literally thinks you're gonna die if you disagree with them. It's a huge shift in perspective. It really is. Welcome to today's deep dives, everyone. Today, we're exploring some incredible insights from a document provided by Coping and Healing Counseling or CHC. It's called the Fawn Response: Survival Strategies and Paths to Healing. And uh it's such a vital topic. Seriously, the mission today is to completely reframe a behavior that almost everyone listening has either, you know, experienced or witnessed. We're talking about people pleasing. We usually view this as just a

like a personality quirk, right? Oh, absolutely. But what's fascinating here is that when you really get into the biology and the psychology of what we casually call being a pushover, you realize it has well very little to do with your actual personality. Wow. Yeah. It is deeply fundamentally rooted in your nervous system's threat detection architecture. And uh by the end of this deep dive, you'll understand not just the what of people pleasing, but the crucial nervous system why behind it. Okay, let's unpack this because if we rewind a bit, I mean, most of us are pretty familiar with the classic trauma responses, right? The big ones everyone knows. Exactly. You encounter a threatike, let's use

the classic example of a bear in the woods and your body just takes over. You have fight, flight, or freeze. You either punch the bear, run away, or play dead. Right? But the source material introduces a fourth response here. The fourth fawn, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. And clinically speaking, the fawn response is uh arguably the most common trauma response we see in high functioning adults today. Wait, really? The most common? Yes. Especially in adults who appear to be doing great on the outside, yet it receives just a fraction of the attention. When a person is fawning, they are employing a highly adaptive nervous system strategy. So, it's not just being nice. No, not at

all. It's a learned protective pattern. The brain basically decides that the only way to survive a threat is to completely appease the source of that threat. So, uh, how does that actually work in the brain? I mean, I get running from a bear. That makes sense. Sure. But how does the nervous system equate like making sure my boss isn't annoyed with literal biological survival? Is fawning basically emotional camouflage? That's a great way to put it. Like a chameleon changing colors, not to look pretty, but to, you know, avoid getting eaten. Exactly. It comes down to how your amygdala, which is the brain's alarm center, evaluates a situation where the traditional responses just won't work. Okay,

walk me through that. Imagine you're in a volatile environment. Fighting back is impossible because the threat is bigger or uh more powerful than you, right? Running away isn't an option because maybe you depend on this person for shelter or care and freezing just leaves you as a sitting duck. You're trapped completely. So your brain calculates a brilliant alternative. Yeah. Camouflage through appeasement. If I can anticipate exactly what this unpredictable person wants, if I can soothe them, agree with them, and make myself completely lowmaintenance, the threat is neutralized. Wow. Because they won't attack you if you just become an extension of their own needs. Precisely. Your brain secures your physical or emotional safety through total self-abandonment.

That is wild. But here's where it gets really interesting for me. If this is a learned survival strategy, we have to ask, what exactly were we surviving? Right? Because we aren't born doing this. The text points out that this pattern is learned very young. It is the origin of the fawn response almost universally traces back to childhood environments. We're looking at kids raised in households that were chronically critical, emotionally volatile, or highly unpredictable. Right. Where safety was conditional. Exactly. When a child's environment feels unsafe, maybe a parent has explosive anger or addiction issues or even just impossibly high standards, the child's nervous system is constantly scanning the room. Hypervigilance. Yes. Severe hypervigilance. And the source

notes this is especially prevalent among eldest siblings or uh parentified children. Well, the kids who ended up acting like the adults of the house. Exactly. In those environments, being good meant being easy, agreeable, and lowmaintenance. Needs were met more reliably if the child anticipated everyone else's needs first. It's a tragic irony. Honestly, the text says it perfectly. You didn't pick this. You learned it. But I want to push back on something here. Go for it. Doesn't society constantly reward children for being lowmaintenance? I mean, we praise kids for being quiet, for not throwing tantrums. How does a child ever realize that being good is actually a trauma response because being themselves wasn't safe? That is

such an important point. If we connect this to the bigger picture, society absolutely rewards compliance and convenience, right? Teachers love the quiet kid. They do. But the brilliant adaptive mind of the child did exactly what it needed to do to survive a household where safety was conditional. The child learns that their inherent worth is entirely transactional. Meaning they only matter if they are useful to someone else. Precisely. If I am not fixing the situation or perfectly anticipating the tension in the room, I'm at risk. The brain physically wires itself to believe that hyperfocusing on others is the only way to stay alive. Man, that's heavy. But let's fast forward a bit. We've talked about the

childhood origins. What happens when you uh when you run this childhood survival software on your adult hardware? The adult cost is immense. It leads to profound systemic exhaustion because you're constantly on alert. Yes. You're dealing with chronic burnout, interpersonal exhaustion, and identity loss. The strategy that kept you perfectly safe as a kid is now the very thing destroying your adult well-being. The symptoms described in the text are just so relatable. Resenting people you just said yes to. Living in absolute terror of being seen as difficult. Ah, the terror is real. And apologizing for things that aren't even yours to apologize for. Plus overgiving just to feel safe. And they know this is heavily seen in

helping professions. Right. Absolutely. Clinicians, teachers, social workers, if your nervous system is built around fixing others, you gravitate toward environments that require exactly that. You mistake your trauma response for a career calling. That's a powerful way to frame it. You feel responsible for everyone's mood and it eventually just depletes your relationships. You know, the text says you get exhausted from tracking everyone else's emotions. It makes me think of an analogy. Let's hear it. It sounds like having a hundred tabs open on a web browser, but every single tab is someone else's feelings. That is a perfect analogy. One tab is your boss's tone in an email. Another is your partner's mood. Another is worrying if

the barista thought you were rude. And meanwhile, you don't actually know what you want anymore. The main window is frozen. Yes, the neurological drain of hypervigilance is massive. Your brain is expending so much metabolic energy trying to control other people's feelings and you completely lose your own identity in the process. So, what does this all mean for actually getting better? Now that we understand the exhaustion and the burnout, how do we stop this cycle? We have to figure out how to turn off the alarm, right? And the source explicitly notes something crucial here. The goal isn't to become rude. Thank goodness, cuz that sounds terrifying to a people pleaser. It does. The actual goal is

to stop running a survival strategy when your life isn't actually in danger. Healing involves three key steps. Okay, what are they? First, recognizing the protective intent of the pattern. Second, building tolerance for the discomfort of disappointing others. And third, reclaiming the right to have needs and limits. So basically, does healing mean you have to practice sitting with the guilt of saying no and you know disappointing people until it stops feeling dangerous? That is a big part of it. Yes, you build tolerance for that discomfort. But before you even do that, recognizing the protective intent means actually having compassion for the part of yourself that fawns. Oh, I see. Rather than being angry at yourself for

being a quote unquote push. Exactly. Highly effective clinical modalities like internal family systems or IFS and CBT are great for this. You learn to thank that protective part of your brain instead of shaming it. That makes a lot of sense. It's trauma-informed therapy, but knowing how to heal is one thing. Where do you actually go to do this work? You need practical resources and that's where coping and healing counseling comes in, right? CHC. Let's talk about them because the details in the source material are amazing. They actively work with fawn response patterns across all the modalities we just discussed. They do. They have a really robust setup. They are a teleaalth practice serving all 159

Georgia counties, which is huge for accessibility. It's 100% teleaalth and taipa compliant. So, you don't even have to leave your house. Exactly. And they have a diverse, culturally competent team of over 15 licensed therapists. We're talking LCSWS, LPC's, and LMFTs. And they cover pretty much everything, right? individual, couples, family, and teen therapy for ages 13 and up. Yes. Plus life coaching. They specialize in the exact fallout we've been talking about. Anxiety, depression, trauma, PTSD, grief, relationships, and stress. Now, I want to highlight the insurance specifics because cost is such a barrier. They accept Etna, Sigma, BCBS, UHC, and Humanana, usually with just a $30 to $40 co-pay. That's very standard and accessible. But the thing

I specifically marveled at in the text is the Medicaid option, a Z co-ay that is life-changing for so many people. Seriously, it completely removes those massive financial barriers for people who are already dealing with chronic burnout. So if you're listening and you need this, you can call them at 44832102 or visit their website. Yep. To theapy.com or you can email them at supportayotherapy.com. It's all incredibly seamless. Having accessible help is so vital. Acknowledging this pattern is really the first step toward reclaiming your own identity. It really is. Yeah. So, just to briefly recap our journey today, we've completely re-evaluated people pleasing. It's not a flaw. Not at all. It's a brilliant childhood survival strategy that

has just well outlived its usefulness. So, to everyone listening, your exhaustion makes sense and you absolutely have the right to reclaim your limits. This raises an important question for anyone listening really. You have to ask yourself if you're ready to let go of that old survival gear. Exactly. And I want to leave you with a final lingering question to mle over on your own. I love this part. Think about this. If your nervous system is powerful enough to constantly track and anticipate the emotions of everyone in the room just to survive, which takes an incredible amount of energy, by the way, right? So imagine what incredible things you could accomplish if you finally felt safe

enough to redirect all that high functioning energy toward discovering what you actually want.