There’s a quiet kind of grief that comes from always being the one who gives. The one who fixes, smooths things over, anticipates needs before they’re spoken. It often sounds like love. It looks like kindness. But for many, it’s a trauma response wrapped in emotional logic.
If I meet your needs, you’ll stay.
If I keep you happy, I’ll be safe.
If I don’t ask for too much, maybe I won’t be left behind.
This isn’t just people-pleasing — it’s survival. For those of us who grew up in emotionally unpredictable or unsafe environments, being attuned to others wasn’t a choice. It was the way we stayed connected. And connection meant safety. But here’s the deeper wound: childhood, which should have been a time to develop a sense of self — to explore, express, and discover who you are — instead became a landscape of survival. When you’re focused on keeping the peace, reading the room, and minimising your needs to stay safe, you don’t get the chance to ask: What do I want? What do I feel? Who am I, really?
So it makes perfect sense that as an adult, when you finally begin unlearning those old patterns, you might feel lost. Disconnected. Like you’re trying to build a relationship with a self you never really got to meet. But that’s not a flaw — that’s the work. That’s the whole point of healing: to give yourself now what you didn’t get back then. The safety, the space, and the compassion to slowly, gently discover who you are beneath the survival strategies — and to honor that self fully.
Where It Starts: Conditional Love and the Loss of Self
When a child is met with love only when they’re quiet, helpful, or agreeable, they learn to shape-shift to stay connected. If love felt conditional — based on performance, compliance, or emotional caretaking — then love also felt unsafe to lose.
This often happens in homes where:
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A parent was emotionally immature, unavailable, or unpredictable
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The child became the emotional support system
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Conflict or distress was met with withdrawal, criticism, or silence
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There was trauma, addiction, mental health issues, or neglect
In these environments, kids don’t get to be. They have to do in order to feel wanted. And so begins the belief:
“If I can just be who they need me to be, I’ll be OK.”
The Fawn Response: A Trauma Pattern, Not a Personality Trait
Most people are familiar with fight, flight, or freeze — but there’s another trauma response that often gets mistaken for kindness: fawning.
Fawning is the instinct to appease, please, and over-accommodate in order to avoid conflict, rejection, or abandonment. It’s deeply embedded in the nervous system — a conditioned reflex to stay safe by staying agreeable, selfless, and emotionally attuned to others.
You might notice yourself:
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Struggling to say no or set boundaries
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Feeling responsible for other people’s feelings
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Avoiding conflict at all costs
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Becoming what others need, even when it hurts
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Feeling uncomfortable when the attention is on you
This isn’t because you’re “too nice.” It’s because your nervous system learned that staying safe meant staying needed.
The Emotional Cost: Anxiety, Depression & Disconnection
Over time, this pattern can take a massive toll on your mental and emotional wellbeing. And this is where trauma doesn’t just shape your past — it hijacks your present.
Anxiety: Living in Fear of Disconnection
When your worth is tied to meeting others’ needs, relationships can feel like tightropes. You live in fear of getting it wrong, being too much, not being enough. Small moments — a tone shift, a delayed reply — can spiral into panic. Your body stays on alert, even in seemingly “safe” situations.
Depression: The Cost of Chronic Self-Abandonment
If you’re always attuned to others, you’re rarely attuned to yourself. Over time, you may stop recognizing your own voice, your own desires. That deep emptiness, the numbness, the sense that you’ve lost yourself — that’s not just burnout. That’s the grief of having lived in someone else’s orbit for too long.
Identity Confusion: Who Am I Without This Role?
When your entire identity was built around being what others needed, letting go of that pattern can be terrifying. Who are you if you’re not the caretaker, the fixer, the strong one? This is why healing feels disorienting — because for the first time, you’re no longer surviving. You’re being asked to exist as yourself.
It Shows Up in Relationships — And It Affects Everything
This trauma pattern doesn’t just stay buried in the past — it recreates itself in your current relationships. And not just in subtle ways. It shapes your dynamics, your choices, and your sense of safety with others.
You might find yourself:
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Attracting emotionally unavailable, avoidant, or narcissistic partners
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Playing the role of the fixer, caretaker, or emotional anchor
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Avoiding expressing your own needs out of fear of being rejected or “too much”
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Saying yes when you want to say no, then feeling resentment
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Feeling like you’re doing all the emotional labor, all the time
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Struggling to trust that someone could love the real, imperfect you
These dynamics aren’t just exhausting — they’re damaging. When one person is constantly giving and the other is always receiving, the relationship becomes imbalanced, and over time, unsafe.
The tragedy is, many people stuck in this pattern don’t even realize how depleted they’ve become until they hit a breaking point. Their nervous systems are in a constant loop of effort → overextension → burnout → disconnection.
But here’s something that often gets overlooked:
The quality of your relationships directly impacts your mental, emotional, and even physical health.
Research shows that chronic relational stress — whether from emotional neglect, codependency, or unhealthy power dynamics — is linked to anxiety, depression, sleep issues, immune system suppression, and even heart disease. On the flip side, relationships that are secure, balanced, and nourishing act as a protective factor for health, resilience, and overall well-being.
So this isn’t just about boundaries or communication. It’s about breaking the cycle of self-abandonment that quietly erodes your health and sense of worth — and beginning to build relationships where you matter, too.
5 Tips to START Healing — But Let’s Get Real, You Need Deeper Therapy for Lasting Change
Healing from trauma, particularly when it comes to the fawning response / people-pleasing, over-accommodating survival mechanism, isn’t something you can fix with a few simple steps. While the following tips can help you begin shifting this pattern, real healing requires deeper, ongoing work — work that goes beyond mindset changes. But let’s start with some practical steps to help you move in the right direction.
A. Practice Setting Small Boundaries
Start small. Practice setting boundaries with people you feel comfortable with. Experiment with saying no, taking space, or putting your needs first. It might feel awkward at first, but it’s part of the process. Notice what uncomfortable sensations you are getting when you try to behave differently. Do you feel guilty? Is there a self critical voice that appears? Are you scared of others judgment? You are slowly starting to build your awareness.
B. Create Space Before Committing
Instead of automatically saying yes, create space. When someone asks something of you, try saying, “I’ll let you know.”This gives you time to check in with yourself — What do I actually want to do? Pay attention to any anxiety or fear of letting people down. That’s a sign of survival trauma trying to control the situation. Do you dare to choose your needs or is this too difficult? (This is great insight to report to a psychologist when you start therapy!)
C. Practice ASKING for Your Needs
It’s hard, but practice asking for your needs to be met. Start with people you trust, and notice how it feels to express what you need. Over time, you’ll get more comfortable with the idea of receiving without guilt or fear.
D. Try a New Hobby Just for You
Find something you’re genuinely curious about and try it out — just for yourself. Do it alone. This is about rediscovering who you are outside of your role as the caretaker, fixer, or people-pleaser. It’s time to focus on what you want, not what others need.
Healing Isn’t a Quick Fix — It’s Deep Work
By now, you may recognize that this isn’t a pattern you can simply mindset your way out of. And that’s because it’s not just psychological — it’s physiological. These beliefs and behaviors are wired into your nervous system. They were formed before you had the language or capacity to understand them. They aren’t flaws — they’re adaptations.
Unlearning them takes time, safety, and therapeutic support. One of the most effective therapies for deep-rooted trauma like this is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). EMDR helps reprocess past trauma, clear stuck emotional responses, and allow your nervous system to find balance again.
For someone who’s carried the belief “I have to earn love to be safe”, EMDR can help:
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Access the emotional roots of that belief
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Reprocess past experiences that created it
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Desensitize the fear response around asking for what you need
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Replace internalised messages with new, empowering truths
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Create more space in your nervous system for rest, connection, and authenticity
This work doesn’t just change how you think — it changes how you feel. How you show up. What you allow. What you believe you deserve. If this resonates with you, I want you to know: this pattern makes perfect sense. It’s not weakness. It’s survival. But survival is not the same as living — and you deserve more than just getting by.
About the Author
Dr. Pauline Chiarizia is a Counselling Psychologist specialising in trauma and eating disorders. She provides online talk therapy and EMDR for individuals who are ready to explore and understand themselves more deeply, break free from unhelpful patterns that affect their self-esteem and relationships, and overcome burnout. Dr. Chiarizia focuses on helping clients build resilience, develop self-trust, and gain the confidence to navigate life’s challenges. Her approach empowers clients to cope with adversity while being fully present for moments of joy, love, and connection.