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

by Ingrid Clayton

Some of my clients have been unable to achieve their goals despite their sheer brilliance. They don’t understand why they keep hitting a wall. But at either end of the spectrum lies the same issue: I don’t feel worthy. On one end, we don’t feel worthy, so we can’t stop succeeding. On the other, we don’t feel worthy, so we can’t achieve success. I now see our struggle for worth as two sides of a coin. Fawners are either seeking approval or escaping annihilation…and often the coin keeps flipping. We seek approval and then gain it! Yay! Mission accomplished! But right when we feel accepted, we start to fear it will end. Thus we start fawning and contorting ourselves to escape what feels like inevitable criticism or backlash. Back and forth, top to bottom, bottom to top, the coin flips. Because our worth, that tricky, slippery thing, exists outside of us. It is granted only by others, never held by ourselves.