354. Letting Go of Fawning

New year, new courage. We’re stepping across the threshold with two clarifying questions—what is mine to hold and what is mine to let go—and using them to untangle people-pleasing, set clearer boundaries, and build a steadier inner life. A surprising health scare pressed pause and brought sharp focus to the survival patterns that once kept me safe, especially fawning: the reflex to merge, appease, and smooth over to protect connection.

I share how I discovered fawning, what it looks like in everyday moments at work, home, and church, and why it’s not manipulation but a nervous system strategy. We unpack detachment as compassionate clarity, not distance, and explore how small practices—breath, body awareness, short honest statements—help us move from automatic yes to thoughtful choice. You’ll hear how trauma and memory shape quick reactions in the amygdala, and how unfawning invites a slow rewiring toward psychological flexibility, agency, and peace.

Listen to E67, Autonomy

Listen to E149, Reimagining Our Personal Sense of Agency

Read more from Dr. Ingrid Clayton: Fawning

Chapters

• 0:05 Welcome And Why We’re Here
• 2:30 Community And Ways To Connect
• 4:10 Two Questions For A New Year
• 6:03 Practicing Detachment For Freedom
• 9:11 A Health Scare Sparks Reflection
• 10:55 Discovering Fawning As Survival
• 14:10 How Fawning Shows Up In Life
• 18:00 Dependence, Safety, And Self-Abandonment
• 21:00 Trauma, The Brain, And Implicit Patterns
• 24:10 Unfawning As A Nervous System Shift
• 27:00 What To Let Go And What To Hold
• 30:00 Faith, Family, And Daily Practices
• 32:30 The “Woke Up Different” Prompt

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Hello and Happy New Year, Heartlifter! Welcome to today's Heartlift with Janelle. I'm Janelle, your host for this very first episode of 2026. If you're new here, I thought we would take a minute to review why we're here. Out of all the millions of podcasts in the world, you have found your way here. And I am so glad you did. Today's Heartlift started way back at the end of 2018 as a beautiful place for my coaching clients to spend some time in between their sessions. I wanted to bridge the gap between faith and mental health with a very strong emphasis on emotional and relational health. The bridge has expanded through the years, and we've invited to the show thought leaders, luminaries, authors, and storytellers to share their heart with us so that we can grow together. As a community, we meet over at Heartlift Central on Substack, and I am on Instagram at JanelleRarden. Please connect. Take time right now. Just hit that pause button and connect so that we can continue the conversation throughout the week. That's been our primary goal from day one. We also have a private Facebook group at today's Heartlift with Chanel. So three central meeting places. Will you take a moment? Right now, like I said, hit the pause button and subscribe to at Heartlift Central on Substack. There is a free subscription and a paid subscription. Your support keeps this podcast reaching to the ends of the earth. And we do. It's so phenomenal that we have this tool. Last week, on our very last episode of 2025, we stood on the threshold of a brand new year. I don't know about you, but I love that feeling of leaving the past behind and looking forward to the future. I don't know. There's just something magical, something powerful that just takes me to a deep place where I reflect and I consider. We ask two invitational questions. What is mine to hold? And what is mine to let go? I thought it would be fun today if I shared my thoughts on how I answered those questions, and then maybe you can share yours by meeting over at Heartlift Central or on Instagram. DM me or email me any way that you want. If you need it to be anonymous, I will keep it anonymous. But I'd love to hear your thoughts. We're a community and this is a dialogue. I don't want to be the one doing all the talking. Dr. Ingrid Clayton in her book Fawning writes this. True connection requires two full people in the room. When we disappear to make others comfortable, we rob both sides of authenticity and reality. True connection requires two full people in the room. Heartlifter, I want you in the room, I want you at the table. We are here to dialogue and to grow, and we do that best in community. So I can't wait to see our connection grow this new year. Okay, on with the show. So we had two invitational questions last week. One, what is mine to hold? And two, what is mine to let go? In her brilliant book, Let Go Now, Embrace Detachment as a path to freedom, author Karen Casey writes, When we practice detachment, we serve as great teachers to others. We are reminded in the words of many spiritual guides that we are in the role of either teacher or student in every moment of time. And we switch rather quietly between one and the other. It's probable that we aren't even certain which role we are in at a particular time. The difference between the two is subtle. But also we don't necessarily know what our companion has been sent to learn. Modeling detachment, however, is one of the most important tools we can pass on to others, regardless of who our companions are. It's not that we should be unaffected or uninfluenced by those around us, particularly when acts of love and gratitude are being expressed. But allowing behavior of any kind to determine how we feel makes us constantly dependent on others. I repeat. But allowing behavior of any kind to determine how we feel makes us constantly dependent on others. As I've already said, we do share a path with people we need to learn from. But the path we share is a two-way street. We are both giving and receiving from one another constantly. The idea of practicing detachment is such a gentle one, isn't it? It allows us to be imperfect. Because we don't detach perfectly, even for a few hours at a time. We can begin again the next day. No harm has been done really. We can forgive ourselves for going where we didn't need to go, and then take each new experience as it presents itself and practice detachment again. One experience and one person at a time. The freedom we are promised when we practice detachment is unfathomable to most. We must experience it in order to believe it. Perhaps today is a good day to begin making the changes that will really matter in our lives tomorrow. Perhaps today is a good day to begin making the changes that will really matter in our lives tomorrow.

unknown: 8:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 8:03

I've been thinking a whole lot about that thought. What changes can I make in my life today that will affect affect tomorrow? You know, sometimes we don't even know what changes are needed in our lives. That's where 2025 took me. I knew something needed to change, but I couldn't wrap my words around it. Have you ever been in that situation? Maybe you keep tripping over the same route. Maybe you keep hitting your head against a wall. I don't know. Choose the language there. But you know something needs to change, but you're not quite sure how to go about making the change. Now I study change for a living. It's what I do. And yet I found myself just crying out to God, will you please help me? Well, I did not expect the help to look like a ride in the back of an ambulance to an ER to receive a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation, uh rhythmia. I didn't expect that. Nowhere on my radar did I ever see a cardiac problem happening in my life. It came as quite the shock, pun intended. And it got my attention. And these months of introspection truly led me to those two invitational questions: what is mine to hold and what is mine to let go? And so one of the things that I have discovered during this time, as I always say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. A book came across my path, and the book is entitled Fawing by Dr. Ingrid Clayton. I have her permission to read from her book. It's a new book and it's brilliant. And she does a complete deep dive into understanding this survival mechanism. Fawning goes along with fight, flight, freeze, and then fawning. Fawning is rather new to that conversation, but so much has been studied. And Pete Walker, a psychotherapist and author of Complex PTSD from surviving to thriving, coined the term fawning after working with countless survivors of trauma and abuse. He defined fawning as are you ready? A response to a threat by becoming more appealing to the threat. I'm gonna read it again. Fawning is a response to a threat by becoming more appealing to the threat. Fawners mirror or merge. Make note of that. Mirror or merge with someone else's desires or expectations to diffuse conflict rather than confront it directly, because it's their best chance to stay safe, at least for now. In the book, I write this T H I S period. When you're being hit on by an aggressive or unwanted suitor and you smile and giggle, that's fawning. If you don't stand up for your values in a toxic work environment to keep your job, that's fawning too. When you continually dismiss a parent's abusive behavior to maintain the connection, you guessed it. Fawning. F-A-W-N-I-N-G. In other words, she writes, fawning as a trauma response puts our behaviors in the context of disempowerment or maltreatment. It's not about brown nosing for an A or sucking up to people in power. Fawning isn't conscious manipulation. Rather, this is it, lean in. It's a way we seek safety in the face of exploitation, shame, neglect, abuse, or other harm.

unknown: 13:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 13:08

When I read those words, I felt so seen and heard and known and loved, and I found a sense of belonging on that page in her book. You know, heartlifter, our core need as a human being, a child of God, is to receive those big five, right? To be seen, heard, known, loved, and to feel a felt sense of belonging. That's called it's a quiz. Secure attachment. If you haven't received that as a child, I was born into an alcoholic home, did not get it. You will spend the rest of your life trying to get it, trying to find a sense of safety somewhere. Some of us will fight, some of us will flight, some of us will freeze, and some of us will fawn. Well, I'm a fauner. Hello, my name is Chanelle, and I am a classic fauner. I finally got the name, and you know, when we can name something, then we have the first ground of victory in our lives. And being able to understand, I'm not just codependent, I'm not just a people pleaser, I'm not just a perfectionist. There is a root survival mechanism in my beingness that has been keeping me from experiencing true eudaimonia, you know, that sense of meaning in life. She continues, in other words, interestingly, fawning can be likened to a core principle found in the Japanese martial art of Aikaido, A-I-K-I-D-O, which means way of harmonizing. Rather than attack or retreat, the goal in Aikido is to move with one's opponent, mirroring their energy and their intentions. Connecting with an adversary allows you to sense their next move to keep both parties safe while orienting towards a peaceful resolution. This is what happens when we fawn in the face of danger. Let me turn this page. When we feel unsafe, we sink with our aggressors or abusers with the hope of emerging unscathed. We strive to stay connected because we are dependent on the person who is hurting us. All right, that's just a lot to take in. I get it. I've been meditating, rereading, writing in my journal for three and a half months now, going on four, and it's just starting to sink in. So we'll be patient here while we learn about this new survival mechanism and how it might be playing out in our lives. It might not be in your life, and glory be, I am so happy. But you might know someone, or maybe you're in a small group or a Bible study, or you are on a staff at a church, or in your workplace where you might meet someone who is fawning, and maybe, just maybe, you'll be able to help. It's not your responsibility, but you might be able to. Because our goal here as heartlifters is to be educated and empowered with these beautiful mental, emotional, relational practices that help us to move through our spheres of influence in a beautiful, meaningful way. So she continues, we strive to stay, I'm repeating, we strive to stay connected because we are dependent on the person who is hurting us. So if you're a child and you have no autonomy, typically, that is what you're going to do. You are gonna find a survival mechanism, fight, flight, freeze, fawning, coping mechanisms, defense strategies that are going to help you stay in their care. If it's a boss, we are dependent on a paycheck, right? Or career advancement. If it's a partner, we're dependent on their income, the ability to see our children, the status that marriage affords. With fawning, connection means protection. While fawning is meant to neutralize danger, and it does, it has an invisible downside. Merging with others' desires means surrendering our own. Underline, repeat, write it down. When we fawn, we forgo assertiveness and become overly accommodating. We shapeshift to stay safe. There's that word. When we've studied and talked about the Enneagram here on the show, you can revisit those episodes. I am an Enneagram two. There are nine different types in the Enneagram. I am a two, and twos are famous for shape shifting. We submit to the very person or people who have harmed us. Essentially, we abandon ourselves when we fawn our needs, our values, our opinions, and this reinforces our vulnerability. Vulnerability. Sorry about that. So, you know, fawning is often equated, like I just said, with people pleasing or codependency. However, this is our last deep thought about fawning. Both of those terms imply that we have some personal agency in our actions. This is what's key. This is the secret to understanding and unlocking freedom right here. Fawning is not a conscious choice. It is a survival mechanism. So we've talked here, these are my words. When you have experienced childhood trauma or trauma, any form, little T, middle T, big T, when you become a fauner, you're doing it to survive, to stay in the care, to stay cared for by the one who perhaps is causing your trauma, little T, middle T, big T. Fawning is not, I repeat, a conscious choice. It's implicit. It's in your implicit memory. It's how you survived, how you coped. In a nanosecond, the reptilian brain selects the response that offers the greatest chance for survival. That's your amygdala, those two little almond shapes deep in your limbic system where we have fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Remembering we don't want to live our lives from that space. We want to consolidate any trauma, little T, middle T, big T, that has occurred in our lives. Want to consolidate it, make peace with it, make meaning of it so that we can then allow it to hop over into that hippocampus, our memory bank, and be filed away in our cabinet. No negative charge on it at all. Dr. Clayton continues, afterward, the body remembers what was successful the first time and repeats it in the future. The fauner's intentions then were never to please or compulsively caretake. We were looking for power in situations where we were powerless. Another way of saying that is we were looking for autonomy. I have a beautiful episode on autonomy. Please review that if you if you're not familiar with that. But autonomy is just our capacity, our God-given privilege to think for ourselves, to act for ourselves, and to do for ourselves. I give a lot more information about that in my second book, Overcoming Hurtful Words, where I lay down my own story about how I developed autonomy and agency in my life through some very difficult waters. So for the sake of time today, and I will be adding more and more information about fawning in future episodes because I will be continuing to detach and let go. And as Dr. Clayton says, unfawning throughout 2026, it is a practice I am implementing. She gives so many beautiful helps in her book on fawning. Chapter six is all about blinders off, how to do the inner work of unfawning. Just wanted to give you just this small tidbit of what spoke to me. The process of unfawning is a paradigm shift. We're rewiring our nervous system. We're good at that here. That's what we do here, artlifters. We reprocess, we consolidate, and we rewire. It's not about never fawning. We are moving out of a binary black or white orientation to life. We learned, well, we picked up fawning as a survival mechanism, but that does not mean that I have to do it the rest of my life. Because once I know better, I do better, right? Once you know better, you do better. The focus is no longer simply safe or unsafe, me or you, healed or unhealed. Unfawning is an expansion. I love this. We are broadening our vision to see more choices and have greater flexibility. There's that psychological flexibility that we talked about last week. When we expand our bandwidth, we can finally break free of the old narratives and patterns that once defined our lives. Heartlifter, here we are again. What change do you want to begin right now, today, so that your tomorrow and everyone's tomorrow in your sphere of influence will be better. If you don't know, like I didn't know, what what else can I do? Help me, God. That's the prayer. Help me, God. Open my eyes. Bring me teachers. Show me books, podcast. Send teachers to my path today. That's my prayer for you today, heartlifter. Ingrid continues we don't have to tell stories that erase aspects of ourselves or of our reality. We instead learn to write new ones that include all of who we are and the truth about everyone else as well. Just love that. Love that so much. So that is one thing I'm letting go of. It's actually the biggest thing I'm letting go of in 2026. And then what is mine to hold? The process of unfawning is mine to hold. I'm committing to making it a practice, just like all of the other skills that we are learning about here, to possess and practice them in our lives so that we can live into a beautiful, meaningful, happy, joyful, secure life where we practice healthy sense of self, healthy behavior patterns, and healthy communication skills. So one of the things that I know that I am called to hold is this podcast. My work with Heartlift Central. Vocationally, that is mine to hold. Authoring is mine to hold. So what is mine to hold in twenty twenty-six? Unfawning rest vocationally, my work here, my writing, my speaking, my teaching, and my family. I am to hold my family. First and foremost. My marriage, my children, and my grandchildren. Hold them with both hands. That is first and foremost. And the most beautiful way that I can hold them is to continue to do the work that is necessary in my life to become that healthy woman in the center of my spheres of influence. And I do that, you know, three ways. I continue to develop a healthy sense of self, healthy behavior patterns, and healthy communication skills. And that all begins at the feet of my father in heaven. So one of the things I know that I will be holding even more dearly this year is the Bible, because the Bible is my compass and it teaches me, it guides me, it speaks to me, it encourages me, it leads me. And without it, I am like a boat without a rudder. So I am implementing more time spent with my reading and studying and being with my Heavenly Father. That's what I do. I follow the example and the teachings of Jesus. And when he needed alignment, when he needed to get away from it all, he went and spent time with his father. I want to close with a beautiful piece of prose that I found on a card. I collect cards. I'm always searching for cards to use in my heart journal. And this one I found in the most exquisite letterpress store in St. Louis when Brooke and I were having just a lot of fun last Christmas. Here are the words on the first page of my journal 2026. One morning, she woke up different. Done with trying to figure out who was with her, against her, or walking down the middle because they didn't have the guts to pick a side. She was done with anything that didn't bring her peace. She realized that opinions were a dime a dozen. Validation was for parking, and loyalty wasn't a word, but a lifestyle. It was this day that her life changed. And not because of a man or a job, but because she realized that life is way too short to leave the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket. She realized that life is way too short to leave the key to her happiness, your happiness, my happiness, in someone else's pocket. I wrote, I pray that one morning in 2026 I wake up different. Wholly embodying my spiritual inheritance as written to me in the book of Ephesians, chapter one. This first line, one morning, she woke up different. What? A sentence. It resonates deeply. Can I live into it? So I'm leaving you today with this sentence. And I would love for you to use it as this week's prompt. You don't have to keep a journal, it's not for everyone. Although, I highly recommend it. How would you write dot dot dot after one morning? I woke up different. What would that look like in your life? What would that mean? I really would love for you to just take that time and think through that. One morning, I woke up different. Happy New Year, Heartlifter. Until next time. Thanks for listening today, Heartlifter. Be sure to hop over to Substack at Heartlift Central, Instagram at JanelleRarden, and if you would be so kind, make a tax-deductible donation to keep this podcast ad-free and spreading its influence all over the world. You can make that donation on my website, JanelleRarden.com, Heartlift International. Everything you need to know is right there. Remember, Heartlifter, you have value, worth, and dignity