Are You Mad at Me?: How to Stop Focusing on What Others Think and Start Living for You

by Meg Josephson

People-pleasing is the behavior we engage in when we fear that we’re disappointing someone, that we’re in trouble, that we feel unsafe in some way. It’s the behavior that falsely soothes the queasy feeling that we’ve done something wrong. We

This is especially true for people who grew up in dysfunctional, high-tension, high-conflict, or emotionally neglectful home environments where Are they mad at me? was the exact internal question that made them feel safe.

What I now celebrate about sensitivity is also why it sucked when I was growing up: I could feel what others were feeling—or, rather, I could sense what others weren’t allowing themselves to feel.

The other three threat responses are a bit more recognized: the fight response is about being aggressive toward the threat to make it go away (e.g., yelling or beating it up). The flight response is about physically leaving the environment or relationship (e.g., running away or ghosting). The freeze response happens when we can’t physically leave, so we do the second-best thing by mentally departing and blocking out what’s going on (e.g., dissociating, numbing ourselves, constant daydreaming). But the fawn response? Oooooooh, the fawn response is about becoming more appealing to the threat, being liked by the threat, satisfying the threat, being helpful and agreeable to the threat—so that you can feel safe. Fawning is unconsciously moving toward, instead of away from, threatening relationships and situations.

Maybe if I’m happy and perfect and good, he’ll be happy, too. Maybe if I’m likable, he won’t get upset at me. None of this was conscious, deliberate thought—fawning is an unconscious response.

With fawning, we have to abandon ourselves in order to make the appeasing possible. We learn that the other person’s comfort is more important than our own, that we can’t feel okay until the other person is okay. We learn that, in order for us to feel safe, we need to keep the peace, whatever it takes. And as a result, we’re disconnected from questions such as What do I need? What do I think? What do I want?

But for chronic fawners, that feeling of alertness is a daily occurrence, and it’s exhausting. Anything and everything feels like a threat to the body. This hypervigilance carries over into emotional monitoring, which means we’re constantly scanning other people’s emotional states to gauge what they may be feeling so that we can adapt. Again, this occurs naturally through a part of our brains and is highly useful. But for those stuck in the fawn response, hypervigilance is on overdrive and happening when we’re actually safe, leading us to analyze, ruminate, and worry: Are you mad at me?

REFLECTION QUESTIONS 1. In what ways do you notice yourself being hypervigiliant in your everyday life? 2. In what ways is it genuinely protecting you? Is it happening in areas where you may not actually need that hypervigilance?

was an adult and I was still walking around with a constant feeling that I was about to get into trouble. I was an adult and I still assumed other people’s bad moods were automatically my fault, and that I was personally responsible for managing and “fixing” their emotions.

Most people pleasers were “parent pleasers” first. The

For families like Brianna’s, the family dynamic revolves around keeping the most dysregulated and dysfunctional person happy.

She constantly feels like a burden and downplays her issues out of fear of being considered too “dramatic” or “sensitive,” because that’s what she was told as a child whenever she expressed herself. She fears that she’s secretly a bad person and that if anyone loves her, it’s only because she’s “fooled” them.

She struggles with indecision as a result of not knowing what she truly wants and not wanting to piss anyone off.

Fawning is commonly birthed in environments like the one Brianna grew up in, where there was lots of conflict—in whatever form it took, whether screaming matches, silent treatment, or passive aggression—with little to no repair or acknowledgment after the fact. Conflict is inevitable

A child is left to make sense of the conflict on their own: I made Dad upset; I must have done something bad. When this happens again and again, the child’s explanation evolves from I cause bad things to happen to I am bad. Because of this, it’s normal for a fawner to carry a deep sense of shame and to fear that they’re secretly a bad person, a fear that’s held close, in silence. It’s so much safer to believe that we’re bad than to think that our parents can’t take care of themselves and therefore maybe can’t fully take care of us. We come to believe that something is truly, inherently wrong with us. This deep, chronic shame leaves us feeling unworthy, unlovable, and bad at the core.

I need to prove to other people that I’m good because I fear that I’m bad. When people are in a bad mood, it’s my fault. I shape-shift depending on what others are feeling.

A tense home is the birthplace of hypervigilance.

As a parentified child, she developed a harsh inner critic, which has served as a necessary stand-in to give her the parenting and guidance she wasn’t able to get while she was busy caring for everyone else.

When she was sick, her parents viewed the illness as an inconvenience, as if getting sick were her active choice to make their lives worse.

There aren’t physical markings, such as negative feedback or criticism—emotional neglect just creates a feeling of loneliness, of not being seen or heard.

Whether we’re coping with more anxious (e.g., seeking reassurance, ruminating, clinging) or more avoidant (e.g., self-sufficiency, hyperindependence) behavior, the underlying goal is the same: to prevent abandonment and rejection and to maximize feelings of safety and security in relationships.

Something shifted in Rachel. She wasn’t going to let the bullying persist. She adapted by playing the Chameleon. She started watching the shows that the cool crowd talked about, listening to the music they listened to, doing her hair the way they did theirs—not to be part of their crowd but so they wouldn’t have anything to make fun of her for. This marked the birth of Rachel’s fawn response, in order to avoid conflict and harm and maximize approval by morphing into someone the bullies wouldn’t target.

She struggles to speak up for herself and finds herself adjusting her opinions to match those of whomever she’s with, which leads to a large amount of self-loathing, thinking she’s an impostor faking her way through the world.

emotional abuse and neglect that often go unnoticed. For people who have experienced any form of abuse—whether sexual, physical, emotional, or narcissistic—at any point in life, fawning is a common, brilliant, and underrecognized strategy.

“BUT I DON’T REMEMBER MY CHILDHOOD” I don’t have many childhood memories, and the ones I do have are blurry, like flashes of movie scenes.

Constantly worrying what people think of you, if they like you, if they’re mad at you Overextending yourself, not setting boundaries (and then feeling resentful) Avoiding conflict at all costs Constantly fearing getting in trouble or being seen as “bad” Constantly fearing that you are bad and you’re just fooling everyone Constantly seeking external approval or validation Silencing your needs for the comfort and happiness of everyone else Feeling hypervigilant of people’s emotions and moods Overexplaining yourself as an attempt to feel heard or understood Feeling like everything is your fault, and then overapologizing Being indecisive because you don’t want to disappoint anyone or because you genuinely don’t know what you like or prefer Not trusting yourself to make decisions Having trouble identifying your needs and speaking up about them Never feeling good enough; feeling unworthy of your accomplishments Constantly feeling like you’re “performing” and trying to impress others and prove yourself to them Feeling like you’re a chameleon in relationships Fawning, at its core, is what we learn to do to avoid being abandoned or rejected and to maximize feelings of love and safety.