Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Fawning: A Misunderstood Feminine Strength
In today's podcast, we get to understand the fawning response—a survival mechanism often masked as people-pleasing. We explore why this response is particularly widespread among women, influenced by historical and cultural pressures, and how it's a very important defense mechanism in threatening situations.
There are real life examples illustrating the critical role of this often-misunderstood reflex.
We also tackle the fine line between people-pleasing and genuine respect, and uncover how distress intolerance fuels people-pleasing behaviors. Learn the importance of developing the ability to tolerate discomfort for setting healthy boundaries.
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Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful. Now your host, dr Kamal Asar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:When you think about trauma responses, most of you are familiar with the fight, flight or freeze response, but there's another response that's less talked about. That's the appease response, also known as fawning. Initially, appease might sound like people-pleasing, and in many ways it is, but there's so much more to it. But there is so much more to it. Fawning is a response to an outside threat that saves your life, just like fighting, fleeing or freezing does. Freezing is an animalistic response equivalent to playing dead. When humans don't actually play dead, they disengage completely, and this is an automatic, built-in mechanism of safety. Fighting is getting ready to disarm the threat by physical engagement. Flight is exiting the situation as soon as possible. All life-saving responses to threat, just like fawning. Fawning initially was not described as a threat response until recently, probably because it's mostly a feminine response to threat. Fawning is an appeasement response. It's a type of a submission to ensure your safety. It's a type of a reflexive compliance.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let me start by giving you a Google definition first, and then I'll expand on it to create real-time change that's applicable to you. Google says Fawning, a trauma response that involves people pleasing to avoid conflict and criticism. It's also known as please and appease response. People who fawn may have a hard time setting boundaries, over-apologize and be hyper-aware of what others think. They may also struggle to say no to unreasonable requests. There's lack of self-trust of what they think to be an unreasonable request but suppress it in an indication to avoid hurting others, even if it goes against their own feelings or values. Fonding can be a response to childhood trauma, relational trauma or complex trauma. So a really long definition, but very applicable, partially cringe. A lot of it also sounds cliche, but I want depth, I want understanding and I want to use it in a way that's going to be beneficial in my life, that's going to improve my life. I don't want just the bare basics. So that's why this podcast is here, alhamdulillah. So that's why this podcast is here.
Speaker 1:So, while fawning is more common in women, it's because of mostly cultural expectations that are placed on them. In patriarchal societies with unequal physical and social power, men have a ton of freedom to be aggressors and I understand. Not every man does that, but I'm talking about how this has evolutionarily helped women and how it's still a great survival tactic. So historically, women have had no choice but to engage in a fond response to disarm the aggressive male figures, because fighting was not an option, because they're not physically strong to face the threat. Escaping is not an option because they're not physically strong to face the threat. Escaping is not an option because of lack of resources outside of the current relationship, lack of access to basic rights, voting employment, women being treated as property or unable to own property outside of marriage, unfair compensation for the same amount of work, also known as the wage gap.
Speaker 1:All of this has made flight or escaping the situation an unavailable response to women when they're facing a threatening situation. Also, historically, they've had to take care of children. They might not want to flee the situation if they have children involved that they love. Same thing with shutting down or disengaging or the freezing response. If you are taking care of other young people in your life as a woman, then freezing or shutting down or disengaging completely might not be an appropriate response for you. So in this case, for a woman, when fight, flight or freeze are not available defense mechanisms.
Speaker 1:Then she turns to fawning, being nice to the perpetrator, even engaging in flattery to disarm the aggressor, to help shift their intentions, to help herself in the situation. This is a super effective defense mechanism, a built-in compliance reflex, to keep you alive. But again, like anything else, it will turn into a habitual response if you don't keep it in check. Just like people get stuck in their fight response and are quick to get angry at any situation even if there's no threat, just like people are always escaping uncomfortable situations, that's their memorized response to an actual threat where their flight might have saved their life Fawning in this way also turns into a habitual response and this is called people-pleasing. So using fawning and people-pleasing interchangeably, that the Google definition might have given you is very short-sighted. It paints fawning to be a bad, unhelpful, unnecessary response, when in fact it's very necessary and very much needed by women.
Speaker 1:So I recently watched a video of a girl sitting eating lunch on a bench outside of her work From what it seemed, it was a relatively quiet area away from the public eye and a guy comes up to her and says oh, you're so beautiful, can I give you a hug? Well, my immediate reaction I was like oh no, and to run. But I think in that case she knew she couldn't outrun him. And can you imagine sitting and enjoying a break from work and having to deal with that? So instead, what you notice in the video is the girl laughs, she gets up, gathers her things calmly and thanks him for his compliments. But if you're really attuned you can sense the discomfort in her laughter. But there's absolutely no hint of aggressive behavior, no hint of her trying to rush and get out of there, just her nicely saying things, things like oh, my lunch break is over and it's time for me to go back, but it was nice to meet you.
Speaker 1:Her fawning response in this situation probably saved her life, because you and I don't know what the situation could have turned into. This compliance reflex, this fawning, this surrender for survival, was the best defense mechanism she could have used in that situation and it paid off. Now, let's say the guy follows you and you have to shift in the flight response and run Again. Whatever helps you, you can mix and match. Just because I'm dedicating an entire podcast to fawning does not mean that's the only threat response for you. But the point I'm trying to make here is that you can choose fawning intentionally if it saves your life and you don't have to beat yourself up for having chosen that response because it saved your life. I do not admire the general narrative of this not being the right response, the underlying meaning that it's an inferior response because it's mostly a response of women. But you'll be surprised to hear that men engage in it too, especially if there's a physical or social hierarchy power differential at play. And children Children engage in it all the time. This is what kids do when they can't run or they can't fight back.
Speaker 1:So just to clear up the confusion, people-pleasing is a type of fawning. To clear up the confusion, people-pleasing is a type of fawning. People-pleasing is an ongoing behavior without an immediate threat. Fawning is activated by a direct threat to your safety, dignity or values. Fawning kicks in when you perceive a danger in the moment, while people pleasing is often a general, chronic pattern of behavior when there's no actual threat in the situation. So think about a situation, for example, where your mother-in-law invites her entire family to your eat party. If you find yourself agreeing to her plans out of a deep-seated fear of conflict or disapproval, that's people-pleasing. It's not actually fawning because there's no direct threat to your safety If she's upset at you, saying no, there is a perceived threat to your peace and comfort. And this is the misdirected extension of your fawning instinct. This, of course, comes from your lower brain, taking something beautifully necessary and creating a mess out of it. Brain taking something beautifully necessary and creating a mess out of it. It perpetuates the cycle of codependency and this is what you will need coaching on.
Speaker 1:And another major life changing distinction I want to make, which shows up very commonly for Muslim women, is that the difference between fawning and showing respect. Fawning, people-pleasing, will disguise itself as respect if you don't pause to recognize it. People-pleasing is a response of inner discomfort because of a perceived threat. People-pleasing is continuing to act amicably in a situation because of repercussions of your resistance. That's not fawning, it's the overextension, overuse of fawning. On the other hand, respect is what you want to give to another person the benefit of the doubt, the love, the care, the empathy, because that's your true value in a relationship, because you want to nurture a long-term bond, and in that case you have no inner discord, there's no incohesiveness, a non-congruence within you. When you're showing respect, you know why you're doing it and that's exactly what you want to do. You're congruently respecting somebody when what you believe about the situation is exactly how you're acting towards it.
Speaker 1:People-pleasing, on the other hand, will appear as respect to you because you're too uncomfortable to acknowledge the discord, the conflict within you. The biggest reason you'll be confusing people pleasing with respect in your life is if you're too detached from your body to detect the discomfort of the perceived threat. You have conditioned to suppress yourself so much that you don't recognize what's happening in your body. First out of necessity, because threat in the body feels really bad, and then out of ongoing programming. This ongoing suppression of discomfort is going to keep you from realizing that the mother-in-law's behavior is actually not a threat to your existence, that the mother-in-law's behavior is actually not a threat to your existence. There's no physical harm or danger there.
Speaker 1:The funny thing is that outward actions of both respect and people-pleasing will look the same being polite, allowing others to express themselves, allowing them to hold their opinion, you continuing to act nice towards them. But the inward experience will be completely different, because inward experience of people-pleasing will be of resentment. If you don't agree with what's happening around you and you don't speak your mind, you're not in alignment with yourself. You're believing something else but acting from a different belief. This is people-ple pleasing.
Speaker 1:The extension of fawning, the misuse of fawning Initially an ongoing fawning behavior, might be difficult for you to admit to yourself Because up until now that might have been the only thing that seemed to have saved your life and sanity. But it's also being portrayed as a weakness, and when it's believed to be a weakness by you, you wouldn't want to acknowledge its presence. You will tell yourself that you're doing it out of respect for the other person. This is where most Muslim women are. Most of you are unknowingly fawning and calling it respect to keep the bonds of kinship. Fawning is a strength. It's an escape mechanism. It's not a continuous way to engage with life.
Speaker 1:Fawning is an acute, life-saving threat response. It stems from your feminine harmonizing instinct, but it causes immense emotional turmoil and pain in your life if you're engaging in it with constant people-pleasing. The biggest challenge you face as a people-pleaser or someone who fawns isn't just mustering up the courage to say no or difficulty setting clear boundaries. I know you might think that if you could just get better at those things, everything would fall into place. But the issue is that these inabilities of saying no and creating boundaries is just a symptom of a deeper issue. The real root of the problem is distress intolerance. The problem is the internal freak out that happens when you even think about saying no or standing up for yourself. Because that freak out is what sends you into the fawning response, because your body starts to imagine creating boundaries as a threat.
Speaker 1:To truly get better at setting boundaries, you need to develop a skill of distress tolerance, that's, your ability to sit with the discomfort that comes with standing up for yourself, to feel the waves of unease that rise up in your body when you're about to rock the boat, so to say, and to stay steady instead of panicking and diving overboard. So distress itself is not a joke. It is a visceral experience, meaning it has the potential of hitting you right in the gut or the chest or however your body decides to broadcast these distress signals. Trauma in itself has a sneaky way of blocking your access to feeling these signals. This is what creates a vicious cycle where you can't address the very thing that's causing your fawning behavior.
Speaker 1:What you need to do is you need to work through that discomfort rather than suppress it. Imagine you're in a really awkward situation and your body is telling you just to smile, nod and agree to anything so you can get out of there. Instead, I want you to picture yourself doing the emotional equivalent of putting noise cancelling headphones on, Just sitting with the discomfort and saying okay, I hear you. What is it that we need to do in this situation? And let's do it. If me asking you to sit with your discomfort sounds about just as much fun as hugging a cactus, just trust me, you're not doing it correctly in that case. Where the magic happens is when you're able to sit with the discomfort just long enough so it doesn't run your life and it's not really a very long time. You will develop a built-in resilience at that point, and that will be your ticket to being able to say no without feeling that the world's about to end.
Speaker 1:Another situation that I get asked questions about is how can I assume that another person means harm when they're actually being nice to me? I don't want to always assume the worst in people, and I get it. You're standing there and someone's showering you with compliments. You're thinking how could this possibly be bad? And maybe you're right. Most people that you're having conversations with probably aren't out to get you. But this is the thing.
Speaker 1:Just because someone's being nice doesn't mean you will ignore that little nudge in your gut, the one that says hold up, there's something off here. You know the voice that I'm talking about. That's your intuition. That's a very subtle, quiet whisper and a very gentle nudge, almost indetectable, that will say, hey, this guy has no business approaching me like this, because intuition does not yell at you like a drill sergeant. It will talk to you like a friend who gives you an inner knowing, the friend that looks at you from across the room when there's something fishy and you know just by that look that there's something off. So the next time if you feel the tiny whisper of unease, just pause to listen to it. It's not going to be as loud as your inner monologue of trying to rationalize everything. He's just being nice, it's not that big of a deal. I don't see anything wrong here. You might not see anything wrong with your logical mind, but your intuition will be telling you, because that's there for a reason. Your intuition isn't always telling you to just assume the worst in people. It's just reminding you to stay alert, to check in with yourself, because, after all, if you've got the whisper for a reason. Don't be afraid to trust it.
Speaker 1:And a lot of times you might happen to be thinking about a situation and you don't know why you were engaging in fawning at that moment. It might be because your subconscious intuition was detecting a threat, but it remained unaware to you and you engaged in fawning. A lot of times to other people it comes off as flirting and you might tend to believe it too. You might think to yourself oh, I must really like that guy. But in all reality it was just a revved up fawning response, hidden, showing up as people, pleasing and portraying you as the easygoing girl. This awareness is for you to find comfort in the knowing that your survival programming probably saved you from something dangerous in that situation, something that was hidden from your conscious mind. And just be curious if that's the case. And if you do find yourself fawning out of discomfort, don't confuse it for falling for the guy. There are completely different feelings behind these. Women are like I don't know something's off, but I really like this guy. Well, now you know. Don't know something's off, but I really like this guy. Well, now you know you might have been fawning conflict, avoiding, placating and confusing it with love, and all you need to do is understand this difference and just be vigilant.
Speaker 1:Fawning is a strength. Do not feel bad about it. Just because it's more of a feminine way of dissolving a threat does not mean it's any less respectable of a feminine way of dissolving a threat does not mean it's any less respectable. Okay, so let's talk about when you might find appropriate to fawn. When you're alone away from a public place, the guy that wants to give you the unwanted hug, maybe you're unsure about the level of aggression that this guy is capable of and you awkwardly accept the hug because you don't know how the guy would have reacted to your. This does not mean that you're a bad Muslimah for hugging a guy. That guilt-invoking, patriarchal response that assumes you could have done something else to avoid the hug. Trust me, if you could have done something else, you would have no need to ruminate in guilt over it. It most likely saved your life or, at the very least, kept the situation from escalating. This is where you might have used the fawning response appropriately. Another situation might be when you're dealing with a bully or when you're facing a hostile situation and a fight is breaking out. Another situation where you might want to intentionally choose.
Speaker 1:Fawning is confrontation with authority. When there's a threat to your livelihood with authority. When there's a threat to your livelihood, your job, your paycheck, these are all threats to your safety as well. Fawning is an option until you find a way to deal with the power differential and there's no other use of it. If someone has too much power in their position, in their relationship with you, if someone can cause you social, financial or spiritual harm, if someone can cause you social, financial or spiritual harm, that might be a good place to fawn. But all the while trying to fill this gap, working to close the power differential, do not consider fawning or people-pleasing in this situation as a final solution.
Speaker 1:Let me also clarify this, and this is probably the most important point of this podcast Most of the time you are not as helpless as you believe yourself to be. Most of the time it is the hyperbole of the mind about the dangers of the situation and the dangers of you standing up for yourself. Current society is much more accepting of women's independence. Fawning is only a strength when it's used intentionally for protection. But do not use this reframing as an excuse to avoid doing the inner work. Do not use this definition to avoid doing the people-pleasing work. Chances are you're people-pleasing and might be justifying it as fawning.
Speaker 1:Fawning is always a deliberate choice in situations where it truly serves your safety, not a default pattern that keeps you from developing your inner strengths and boundaries and standing up for injustices. It is not an excuse for you to avoid character building for yourself. Reframing is only used to stop beating yourself up if you've fawned in the past or up until now, or if you still do it in the future correctly. This is an invitation for you to do the inner work on your discomfort when you fear you have caused other people's discomfort. This is an invite for you to learn to speak up for yourself. Believe yourself to be strong, believe in your capabilities and to continue to develop your capabilities as a strong, independent woman.
Speaker 1:Fawning is a mechanism that keeps you alive. It keeps your dignity intact. It deserves just as much respect and space at the table as fight, flight or freeze responses. Do responses do? Just because you're not able to punch someone in the face to protect yourself does not mean that flattering yourself out of danger is any less important. Let's just release the patriarchy around a basic survival mechanism, shall we? I hope you guys learned to capitalize on this strong feminine survival instinct.
Speaker 1:Fawning isn't just about people pleasing or keeping the peace. It's about using your natural instincts to navigate tricky situations and protect yourself when odds aren't really stacked in your favor. So next time you find yourself fawning, don't just brush it off. Recognize it for the powerful protective move that it is and then move into your actual power, the kind of power that allows you to walk away from situations that don't serve you, to speak up when something doesn't feel right and to trust that your voice actually matters. And that's the strength to choose when and how to engage.
Speaker 1:To know that just because you used fawning to navigate a moment does not mean you're stuck there. You're not just being agreeable when fawning. You're not just weak. You're using a centuries-old, tried-and-true method of staying safe and sane in a world that doesn't always play fair. You have the power gifted to you by Allah SWT and that, my friend, is something worth celebrating. With that, I pray to Allah SWT. O Allah, grant me the wisdom to recognize when I'm in danger and the strength to choose the best response for my safety. Help me trust my intuition and protect me from a harm in a moment, especially when I feel vulnerable, guide my action so I may honor my dignity in this world and the next. Let me not confuse my strength with weakness, and help me to embrace the instinct you have given me for survival. Ameen ya Rabbul, ameen, please keep me in your du'as. I will talk to you guys next time.