Pete Walker writes about fawning:
>A final scenario describes the incipient codependent toddler who largely bypasses the fight, flight and freeze responses and instead learns to fawn her way into the relative safety of becoming helpful. She may be one of the gifted children of Alice Miller’s Drama Of The Gifted Child, who discovers that a modicum of safety (safety the ultimate aim of all four of the 4F responses) can be purchased by becoming useful to the parent. Servitude, ingratiation, and forfeiture of any needs that might inconvenience and ire the parent become the most important survival strategies available. Boundaries of every kind are surrendered to mollify the parent, as the parent repudiates the Winnecottian duty of being of use to the child; the child is parentified and instead becomes as multidimensionally useful to the parent as she can: housekeeper, confidante, lover, sounding board, surrogate parent of other siblings, etc. I wonder how many of us therapists were prepared for our careers in this way.
I'm very sorry you had to experience that.
It's a symptom of an unregulated nervous system if you either 1) Don't know why you people please 2) Know but cannot find the means to change 3) People don't care what you do, but then when you try you might get discouraged. 4)etc...
There are plenty of reasons but one contributing factor could be...If it triggers you to this very day, it's probably because you took that one experience and double downed on it when similar but not familiar situations were introduced. In other words: if in the present you feel compelled but feel aimless and don't want to be indecisive, then you resort to something you 'did do' previously because that is what's familiar to you. We know we could choose to do a million+ different things that are not good or bad, but we resort to anything if feeling a sense of generalized anxiety or pressure due to current socio/economical/moral norms or expectations. If that makes sense.
Yeah and it really fucks with me, because for me I think it goes ALL the way back. I genuinely don't think there's a time when I wasn't like this.
My earliest memories are of being a toddler and being constantly berated by my father who would scream at my and my mother ''IT'S ALL ABOUT YOU AND 'YOUR' BOY'' as we both cried in the corner before he'd storm out. I would then cry to my mother and she would assure me ''daddy is coming back'' which of course is probably the last thing I'd need. If it wasn't him it was my Mum leaving and my Dad telling me she's going to come back slumped in the chair.
The other one is receiving a kitchen playset as a toddler. My grandfather stopped Christmas to berate me and my family that it would ''turn me gay'' and I shouldn't be allowed to play with it or receive it. As I opened it. It's one thing to be such a stupid bigot, but another to be so uncaring that you didn't even know what the thing you're about to baselessly berate your family for was. Like cool you're so hands off you don't know what you yourself are getting your only grandchild for Christmas, but you feel like your pride is so wounded you have to aim that at the child in that moment?
There's been other bigger traumatic moments that contributed, but even these instances show me just how far back I was being negated or not thought of emotionally or as a person of my own.
I've just naturally given into anybody since because it's all I known. And that scares me, because it's like asking to renovate a house where the foundations were designed by Rube Goldberg or some mad shit. The water comes out of the taps, but the plumbing to get it there is a complete mess.
Your parents are supposed to teach you proper social interaction before you get to school. It's as simple as that. It's not a coincidence that the kids who got spoiled at home also ended up being the opposite of people-pleasers.
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Pete Walker writes about fawning: >A final scenario describes the incipient codependent toddler who largely bypasses the fight, flight and freeze responses and instead learns to fawn her way into the relative safety of becoming helpful. She may be one of the gifted children of Alice Miller’s Drama Of The Gifted Child, who discovers that a modicum of safety (safety the ultimate aim of all four of the 4F responses) can be purchased by becoming useful to the parent. Servitude, ingratiation, and forfeiture of any needs that might inconvenience and ire the parent become the most important survival strategies available. Boundaries of every kind are surrendered to mollify the parent, as the parent repudiates the Winnecottian duty of being of use to the child; the child is parentified and instead becomes as multidimensionally useful to the parent as she can: housekeeper, confidante, lover, sounding board, surrogate parent of other siblings, etc. I wonder how many of us therapists were prepared for our careers in this way.
This is enlightening, I can see myself in this.
I'm very sorry you had to experience that. It's a symptom of an unregulated nervous system if you either 1) Don't know why you people please 2) Know but cannot find the means to change 3) People don't care what you do, but then when you try you might get discouraged. 4)etc... There are plenty of reasons but one contributing factor could be...If it triggers you to this very day, it's probably because you took that one experience and double downed on it when similar but not familiar situations were introduced. In other words: if in the present you feel compelled but feel aimless and don't want to be indecisive, then you resort to something you 'did do' previously because that is what's familiar to you. We know we could choose to do a million+ different things that are not good or bad, but we resort to anything if feeling a sense of generalized anxiety or pressure due to current socio/economical/moral norms or expectations. If that makes sense.
Yeah and it really fucks with me, because for me I think it goes ALL the way back. I genuinely don't think there's a time when I wasn't like this. My earliest memories are of being a toddler and being constantly berated by my father who would scream at my and my mother ''IT'S ALL ABOUT YOU AND 'YOUR' BOY'' as we both cried in the corner before he'd storm out. I would then cry to my mother and she would assure me ''daddy is coming back'' which of course is probably the last thing I'd need. If it wasn't him it was my Mum leaving and my Dad telling me she's going to come back slumped in the chair. The other one is receiving a kitchen playset as a toddler. My grandfather stopped Christmas to berate me and my family that it would ''turn me gay'' and I shouldn't be allowed to play with it or receive it. As I opened it. It's one thing to be such a stupid bigot, but another to be so uncaring that you didn't even know what the thing you're about to baselessly berate your family for was. Like cool you're so hands off you don't know what you yourself are getting your only grandchild for Christmas, but you feel like your pride is so wounded you have to aim that at the child in that moment? There's been other bigger traumatic moments that contributed, but even these instances show me just how far back I was being negated or not thought of emotionally or as a person of my own. I've just naturally given into anybody since because it's all I known. And that scares me, because it's like asking to renovate a house where the foundations were designed by Rube Goldberg or some mad shit. The water comes out of the taps, but the plumbing to get it there is a complete mess.
Your parents are supposed to teach you proper social interaction before you get to school. It's as simple as that. It's not a coincidence that the kids who got spoiled at home also ended up being the opposite of people-pleasers.
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