The journey back to myself

Breaking free from fawning: keeping the peace at all costs, including self-abandonment

Photo by ERNEST TARASOV on Unsplash

A very dear friend of mine recently mentioned that we sometimes expect others to play a role.

I’ve been in that situation for the better part of 19 years.

In college, I had befriended someone who, from her own background of insecurity, displayed claiming and controlling behavior. She manipulated me, and I wasn’t onto her because the manipulation was very subtle and I was trapped in patterns of my own of which I was unaware at the time.

I know now that I was fawning. Fawning was my survival mechanism in a youth that was unpredictable. My father had a short temper. He was stern and larger than life. He could be kind one moment, and irritable and quick to anger the other. I have learned at an early age that the road to safety is to not assert myself, but to keep my head down, to remain unnoticed and, at all times, keep the peace.

What I liked didn’t matter. I was allowed to choose a sport in my childhood. I wanted to do karate. My father scared me away from my own choice by telling me that I would get my nose broken on day one, which I now know is not true or ill informed. Even in full contact karate that doesn’t happen. Other sports were suggested, but none of my own choice. I ended up not doing sports at all.

I once bought a Spider-Man comic from my pocket money and ran into my father outside the shopping mall. He noticed the paper bag in my hand. “What’s that?” I told him. “Return it.” No reason, no argument, just an order to be followed blindly. I remember how ashamed I was I had to go back to the bookstore and return the comic.

My tendency to keep the peace came at the cost of abandoning myself, which I have done time and again. I did not matter. My preferences did not matter. Keeping the peace did. I became good at that. I was praised for being so agreeable.

Until at some point, I reached a point at which I would no longer do that.

I had read up on fawning as a survival mechanism by reading the “Fawning” by Dr. Ingrid Clayton. That was quite the eye-opener. It made me realize where I come from and why I acted the way I did. I was trapped in patterns I didn’t even know were there. I thought they were part and parcel of my character; this was just the way I was. But a survival mechanism is something else. It is not a strategy you choose, but the way your nervous system reacts to threats, real or perceived, when fight or flight are not viable options.

Here’s the thing about survival mechanisms. They endure past the time when they serve a purpose. I am my own man. My father passed away when I was sixteen. Fawning was a legacy for which I knew no name.

Keeping the peace, maintaining harmony, keeping my head down, that’s what I was good at. I was a veritable chameleon. I always presumed someone else to be right, someone else to know better. I just had to follow suit. Adapt to survive. I did not matter.

When I first saw her in college, I was a bit afraid of her. She was very present. There was a level of assertiveness and directness to her that made me think it best to stay as far away from her as I could. In the second year, a group of students went to a seminar. She was there too. When we got to talk, she turned out to be friendly.

We visited a city in the North. We went to another city and we became friends as in “just good friends”. The friendship, such as it was, worked, because I constantly adapted to her wishes. I was always available. I changed my plans last minute just to meet up with her. I invested heavily: emotionally and financially. And I was always there to listen to her complaining about what not. I’ve always been a good listener. She gave me a nick name and rarely ever addressed me by my real name.

This year, that friendship ended. When I started to set healthy boundaries and doing things for myself, she reacted by manipulating me. She was acting from her own patterns: controlling and claiming. My setting healthy boundaries after years of adapting constantly was something she could not cope with. And when I playfully responded to a remark I didn’t like (“Do you ask this to all your friends or just me?”), she became infuriated and gaslighted me, telling me that “I was acting very differently lately” inquiring if I was “doing all right” but not from genuine concern. She wanted to make me doubt myself.

As I developed more autonomy and learned to respect my own boundaries, she tried to reclaim lost territory. I was stepping out of the role of being her constant emotional caretaker, the perpetual listener and supposed good friend. I told her I wanted to app less and would rather like to meet in person, because all this apping was wearing me out. When, in response, she declared via WhatsApp that she no longer wanted this and distanced herself from me, unambiguous and permanent, making herself sound like the victim, I waited for four days. Four full days, because I know that people can speak in haste. Nothing but silence.

If she had hoped that I would come crawling back, begging for forgiveness, snapping back into my old role, she was dead wrong. She had shut the door on her end. Four days later, I locked it from my side by blocking her. This was not done in anger but after careful consideration and making a conscious choice in the interest of my own peace of mind. This final act was one of many that had preceded it. Over the past year we had more struggles than we had in the years before. It had to end. And so it did. If this was her final attempt at manipulating me, it backfired. In her attempt to control me, she ultimately lost me. Not over a moment of conflict but after years of depleting myself. I had nothing left to give.

I do not wish to speak ill of her. In fact, I should be grateful, because being in this dynamic for 19 years has opened my eyes to patterns I didn’t even know were there. Some would say that our friendship ended because some “soul contract” had been fulfilled. I don’t know about that. All I know is that I stepped away from a friendship that had only been able to endure, thanks to a dynamic in which I did virtually all of the giving, emotionally and financially and in which she controlled and claimed and I adapted. I’m done with that. I’m done with abandoning myself.

Remarkably, around the time that old friendship started to break down, a new friendship was emerging. A genuine one, based on equality, reciprocity and mutual respect and appreciation. That has helped me realize what friendship, true friendship, is about. Isn’t it funny? As I came more into my own, as I became more authentic, an equally authentic connection started to take shape.

In recent times, I have become more attuned to my own needs, to my own boundaries. I listen more carefully to my own gut feeling — something I usually did not trust, ignored, all in the favor of keeping the peace. But no more.

I started to do things I hadn’t done before. I treated myself well. I treated myself even better. I had to return a comic book when I was a child, but as a grown man, I got myself some amazing deluxe hardcover editions of comics that interest me. I got myself the luxurious umbrella that I wanted, top of the line, with a maple wooden handle, not because it is expensive, but because it felt right to me.

When I felt like taking two days and going away for a short trip and an overnight stay at a hotel, I did so. I ate at a restaurant. Initially, I chose one that was familiar, one I had been to before, but it didn’t feel right anymore. I looked at the menu, and there was nothing there that made me look forward to eating there. So, I canceled my reservation and looked for a different restaurant that had a menu that appealed to me. I made a reservation there, I ate there, and I felt good — not because the meal was tasty, but because I had made a choice away from the familiar, a choice in tune with my gut feeling.

This is not merely about indulging myself, about seeking compensation, but it’s about being in a mindset in which I’m good to myself, in which I take better care of myself, and am more mindful of what it is that I want, what it is that I prefer. I started to become attuned to myself, someone I have neglected and even abandoned for years.

I’m not out of the woods yet. Fawning is something that is ingrained in me. I still tend to over-explain and worry when I think the harmony has been breached. Unfawning is not something that happens overnight. It needs work, a lot of it. But I’m getting there with every choice I make for myself, with every moment I refuse to over-apologize or over-explain myself, with every choice that grounds me as an authentic individual — someone who is worthy of being loved, of being respected.

And so, I am, like everyone else, a work in progress. And I’m curious what awaits me on the other side of that. I’m not yet there, but I’m no longer who I was. I’m not yet who I want to be, but I’m getting there.