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

by Meg Josephson

It was during these months of recovery that I was forced, whether by that guy’s rock-hard forehead or by the universe, to stop numbing myself, stop drinking, stop distracting myself. I had to stay with the emotions, memories, and wounds that I had ignored for so long,

We’re taught to be good girls, cool girls, to agree with everything and everyone,

We’re taught to not be too much or want too much, so we learn to get used to being unsatisfied with our lives. We’re taught to meet everyone else’s needs before our own, and along the way we lose the opportunity to get to know who we really are, what we need, what we like and prefer.

Because once we stop focusing so much on what others think, we can remember who we are.

I could sense what others weren’t allowing themselves to feel.

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.

a fawn response develops in chaotic home environments when a child learns that the fight response escalates the situation or abuse, the freeze response doesn’t offer much safety, and flight isn’t always a feasible option. So, as an alternative survival strategy, the child “learns to fawn [their] way into the relative safety of becoming helpful.”

For most of my life, I thought fawning was just my personality. I almost took pride in it, thinking I was simply a cool girl who didn’t have many preferences or opinions. I could be a chameleon in social circles that I didn’t even want to be a part of and adjust my personality to be palatable to whomever I was trying to please.

When am I fawning, and when am I just being a nice person?

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?

Nice is about how we’re being perceived—it’s doing something for the sake of being seen as good. Compassion is about authenticity, doing something because it feels good to be kind. It’s not compassionate if we’re constantly abandoning ourselves in our relationships.

Being nice is often easier and a way to avoid conflict, but it can create long-term resentment if we’re constantly sacrificing our needs to make someone else happy.

Am I saying yes because I want to or because I’m scared this person will...

hypervigilance, which is a state of heightened awareness in which the nervous system is extremely alert to potential danger or threat—whether

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.

It’s the wound that’s hurting inside of you because of what happened—like the feeling of abandonment, the belief that you’re unlovable, the fear of letting people in—and

When we’re often left to feel unsafe, unheard, unloved, or unseen by those who are supposed to make us feel safe, the effect is called complex trauma.

Since complex trauma often derives from prolonged exposure to these events, it can be confusing to process, because for so long it just felt “normal.” It was all you knew.

Complex trauma also involves what didn’t happen, the support and nurturing that you didn’t receive in the midst of the traumatic situation or in the aftermath. Did you receive the care that you needed, or were you left alone and told to “get over it”?

Fawning has been necessary for women to survive in a culture dominated by men.

women have been socialized to fawn. Feeling angry means you’re crazy. Disagreeing means you’re difficult. Being firm means you’re a bitch.

Fawning has been necessary for People of Color (POC) to survive in a society where white people have long been the gatekeepers determining whether and where POC can acquire property, attend schools, get jobs, be paid, get promoted, or merely exist.

This narrative involves assimilating and complying with the rules set by dominant white culture to such a degree that white gatekeepers don’t see the non-white person as a threat and may even view that person as an ‘honorary’ white person, so long as they reflect back to white gatekeepers their notion of a ‘good Black person,’ a ‘good Asian person,’ a ‘good Mexican person,’ a ‘good Native American,’ etc.”

we ever want, at any age, is to maximize our feelings of having others’ approval and minimize our feelings of being rejected.

Your race, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexuality, class, cultural background, religious upbringing, and/or disability may feed into a fundamental need to fawn in order to live and survive within oppressive systems.

When conflict is constantly brushed under the rug, though, the person who decides to lift up the rug and address the issues—the person who’s healing—is naturally going to have a harder time believing their own experiences

The point is to finally allow yourself to acknowledge the emotions that others didn’t. The point is to see that your parents’ actions and reactions weren’t your fault; they were reflections of your parents’ own unprocessed pain—their

I was good. And yet, there was a deep part of me that didn’t feel so good.

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.

your current experience of neglecting yourself as an unconscious way of trying to protect yourself.

My safety comes from pleasing you. I can’t feel safe until I know you like me.

screaming matches and silent treatment.

her moods set the tone for the rest of the family.

Hiding these things was just easier.

Which mom will I get now?

the family dynamic revolves around keeping the most dysregulated and dysf...

Stuck in the silence, Brianna felt confused and alone. She tried to make sense of her mom’s reaction by unconsciously concluding that it was entirely her fault, that she was personally responsible for her mom’s unhappiness, and that her mom’s needs mattered more than her own.

silence felt like abandonment.

When someone isn’t responding to me, it’s because I’ve done something terribly wrong. When someone is mad at me, I need to immediately apologize in order for things to get better.

Peace...

She learned that the best ways to prevent conflict are to go along with what everyone else wants and to overapologize when conflict does arise.

She keeps the peace by staying out of things, remaining neutral, and seeing what others think before she decides what she thinks.

she really just never got the opportunity to explore her own opinions and preferences.

She’s terrified of conflict—scared a disagreement will ruin the whole relationship because when she was growing up, conflict was such a big deal. 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—wi...

a crucial component of conflict is the repair ...

And when they did want to talk about it, they were shut down, made to feel like they were making a big deal out of nothing, or were countered with responses that closed off any opportunity for conversation.

To the child, this is wildly confusing. When repair isn’t made, accountability isn’t taken, or conflict isn’t acknowledged, self-blame—in which we believe we are responsible for the stressor’s occurrence—becomes a natural coping mechanism.1

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.

The Peacekeeper believes: It’s easier to shove my emotions down than to risk upsetting the other person. 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.