Eps 663: Moving through crisis without losing yourself

Joyful courage is keeping me afloat right now… it is being brave and continuing to point my compass towards the light. I know this time is a snapshot and I’m hopeful but geezzzzzzz!!!

Resources mentioned

• Ingrid Clayton, PhD — clinical psychologist and complex trauma expert whose work on fawning you reference. Her book is Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves and How to Find Our Way Back (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). She’s a regular contributor at Psychology Today and active on social media. Website: ingridclayton.com
• Pete Walker, MA, MFT — psychotherapist who named fawning as the fourth F of trauma responses. His book is Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Website: pete-walker.com. (Worth noting for your show notes: his professional name is Pete Walker, not Peter.)
• Positive Discipline and Adlerian psychology — the framework underneath the belonging and significance, private logic, and kind-and-firm ideas in the episode.
• Think Tree — your own embodiment and nervous system practice, taught in full during the show.

Transcription

[00:00:00] Welcome to Joyful Courage
[00:00:00] Casey O'Roarty: Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Joyful Courage Podcast. This is a place where parents of tweens and teens come to find inspiration, information, and encouragement in the messy terrain of adolescence. This season of parenting is no joke, and while the details of what we're all moving through might be slightly different, we are indeed having a very collective experience.
[00:00:30] This is a space where we center building relationship, nurturing life skills, and leaning into our own personal growth, and man, the opportunities abound, right? My name is Casey O'Rourty. I am a parent coach, Positive Discipline lead trainer, and captain of the adolescent ship over at Sproutable. I'm also a speaker and a published author.
[00:00:53] I've been working with parents and families for over 20 years and continue to navigate my own experience of being a mom with my two young adult kids. I'm so honored that you're here and listening. Please give back to the podcast by sharing it with friends or on social media. Rate and review us on Apple or Spotify.
[00:01:13] Word of mouth is how we grow. Thank you so, so much. Enjoy the show
[00:01:25] Solo Show Check In
[00:01:25] Casey O'Roarty: Hello. Hello. Hello, my friends It's a solo show today. It's been a while. It's been a while since it's been just you and me, and I'm glad to be back here with you in this shared space. I'm gonna start just by sharing something that I keep coming back to. What is alive in the individual is alive in the collective.
[00:01:52] So whatever is moving through me is probably likely, on some level, moving through you, too, in your own way, with your own details, and that's why I keep coming back. I recently had someone say, "Don't you run out of things to talk about?" No, I don't, because life keeps life-ing, and there's no finish line where you've arrived, and there's nothing left to learn or grow into or be challenged by.
[00:02:21] The invitation to stay curious, to soften towards yourself, to get brave and be honest about what you actually want, that invitation never expires. It just keeps knocking at the door, doesn't it?
[00:02:35] Crisis and Survival Patterns
[00:02:35] Casey O'Roarty: So I'm gonna be honest, as honest as I can be about where I am right now today. So like lots of you listening, I'm in my own season of crisis.
[00:02:47] The anxious belly, the tight jaw, the intrusive thoughts that show up without asking any kind of permission, those have been my daily companion lately, and it's a whole mix of things, right? There's determination and overwhelm sitting right next to real pain and sadness and, honestly, underneath all of it is this, like, deep, aching love.
[00:03:14] Really feeling the mantra of fiercely committed and lovingly detached, and here's what crisis has been showing me. We're really good at the fiercely committed part, right? So good. I'm good at that, and we can do it to a fault, right? Because that's the natural place to be, and crisis has a way of revealing exactly how we're wired if we're paying attention.
[00:03:40] It turns the volume all the way up on some of our oldest survival patterns that are so ingrained in us, so a part of who we are that we might not even realize that they are actually survival instincts showing up when we are feeling deep pain or panic. So I'm sure that you've heard of the fight, flight, freeze responses.
[00:04:07] We've talked about it on here, and there's a fourth one, and it gets talked about a little less often, which is to fawn as a survival instinct. And I'll tell you, I've been noticing myself, in my current situation, falling deep, deep, deep into fawning. Now, I don't need you to worry about me, okay? I'm going to therapy this afternoon.
[00:04:32] I get to keep unpacking this with her. But I'll be real with you, I don't think I would've named fawning as my survival style until recently. It wasn't on my radar, and wow, here it is, so strong, so real, so just at the tip of my fingers, right? I see myself in fawn mode. And where does it come from? Well, when I go looking, I can find it.
[00:04:58] Absolutely, there was some unpredictability in my childhood, and I learned as a young girl what to do to keep peace, to make sure the grownups around me were okay as best I could. That was my safety move, and it was how a younger version of myself created a sense of security when security wasn't always guaranteed And I'm gonna pause there, because this is where a little Adlerian theory helps me to be gentle with myself, and I think it'll help you be gentle with yourself, too, as you kind of consider and explore the ways that you move in your survival instinct.
[00:05:40] So in Adlerian psychology, and remember, Adlerian psychology is what positive discipline is based in, Adlerian psychology. In Adlerian psychology, nothing a child does is random. Every behavior is purposeful. A child is always working towards two things, belonging and significance. You've heard me talk about this before, a sense that they matter and that they have a place.
[00:06:08] So a little one growing up in an unpredictable environment is gonna get creative. They come up with their own private logic, which is a set of quiet rules about how to stay safe, how to stay connected. And for me, that logic became something like, "If people like me, if I'm showing up well for everyone else, then I'm safe.
[00:06:32] They can't hurt me." That's where the people-pleasing is born. That's where it lives. That's where the needing everyone to like me comes from. And honestly, you guys, it's real for me. It's real, and it's brilliant. Honestly, it worked well enough to get me here, and the thing about those childhood strategies is that they don't retire once we've grown up.
[00:06:55] They just keep running in the background until we notice them and choose something different.
[00:07:01] What Fawning Means
[00:07:01] Casey O'Roarty: This episode, I really wanna kind of focus in on what fawning actually is, 'cause I think a lot of us do it. I know a lot of us do it. I hear it from my clients, which I'm gonna talk about. But there is a psychologist whose book I just ordered off of Amazon named Ingrid Clayton, and she writes about this on Psychology Today.
[00:07:22] She's got tons of books and a whole social media that is based in helping people recognize their wiring around fawning and complex trauma and all these things. She points back to the work of Peter Walker, who's also a psychotherapist who specializes in complex trauma, the kind that comes out of long-term relational wounds.
[00:07:46] And Walker is the one who named fawning as the fourth F. So freeze, fight, flight, yes, we all know those, and fawn. And here's the idea. Fawning is when you respond to a threat by making yourself more appealing to it. You mirror what the other person wants. You merge with their expectations. You do it to smooth things over and to feel safe And the cost is steep because what you're doing is you're handing over your own boundaries in the process.
[00:08:20] You stop being able to say what you need, you become over-accommodating and appease and go along sometimes with the very people who are hurting you
[00:08:39] Clayton makes a point that really landed for me. Fawning is trying to keep yourself safe, and at the same time it teaches you to abandon yourself, which just deepens that original wound. So the thing that you're using to protect yourself ends up reinforcing the very injury it was protecting There's a lot of words, you guys, I know.
[00:09:03] So I'm gonna get even more specific here because I think a lot of you are gonna hear yourselves in this. Fawning can look like taking care of everyone else's needs while your own quietly go to the bottom of the list. It can look like walking on eggshells so you don't set someone off because you've learned that if you do, something bad might happen.
[00:09:27] It can look like trying to earn love from a person who's actively hurting you, telling yourself that if you can just get their approval, the hurt will stop. It can look like empathizing with the person who's harming you so thoroughly that you let the behavior keep going. It can look like being so consumed by what other people think of you that you feel like you're masking your real self most of the time, and it can look like making excuses for someone else, brushing it under the rug, forgiving fast even when you know deep down nothing has actually changed after all the chances that you've given.
[00:10:04] Mm. Does any of that sound familiar? Maybe not all of it, but maybe there's a piece here or there that you're like, "Oof, yeah, that lands for me," right?
[00:10:16] Fawning in Teen Parenting
[00:10:16] Casey O'Roarty: And listen, parenting a teen is fertile ground for fawning. That's why I'm bringing all of this to a podcast that's about parenting teens, right? Parenting during adolescence, especially if you've got a strong-willed or struggling kiddo, is fertile ground for the fawn response.
[00:10:34] And let's not forget that teen brain development can look like hyper-emotional, defiant, risk-taking. All of the natural tendencies of teen brain development can trigger these trauma responses in us. I have clients who tell me about walking on eggshells in their own homes, who tell me about how hard it is to be firm because they're terrified of damaging the relationship, or they just don't have, or they don't think they have the capacity or the bandwidth to be with the emotional overwhelm that is their teenager.
[00:11:15] And when I really listen and I really think about what they're saying, so much of it can fall under this response of fawning. And I'm listening and thinking about those of you who are parenting a teen who's perhaps leaning into risky behavior, mental health challenges, dancing with addiction, making choices that you're desperate for them to stop.
[00:11:39] And, you know, if you've got addiction in your family, you know this territory intimately, and you know how real the desperation gets. And this is the hardest part. Being on the edge of a relationship gives you this do or die opportunity to decide what you ultimately want. But what happens when what you want is out of your control, when it depends entirely on the choices and the decisions and the willingness of the other person to do their own work to heal and grow and evolve?
[00:12:13] We can get so lost in someone else's actions that we lose our own sense of self completely. But here's what I know about me and about you and about human experience. We can do hard things. We do have the capacity to be with someone else's choices and still choose ourself. Those two things can live in the body at the same time, and it's hard.
[00:12:40] We live and we were raised in a lot of either/or and a lot of black and white.
[00:12:45] Kind and Firm Boundaries
[00:12:45] Casey O'Roarty: We're not good at the gray, we're not good at the both, and... But we can get better Here's where the positive discipline piece comes in, and it's really the Adlerian heart of this whole conversation. The goal in a relationship is never for one person to disappear so that the other one can be comfortable.
[00:13:03] Adler talks about connection as a horizontal relationship. It's mutual. Two people who both matter, standing on equal ground, each in their own equally valid reality. When we fawn, we break that. When I abandon myself to keep the other person happy, I've stopped being their equal. I've made them the whole point, and I've erased my half of the relationship, and this is exactly what kind and firm can help us climb out of.
[00:13:38] Kind, being kind, kindness, that's about respecting you, respecting the other. Being firm, having firmness, a strong back, is my respect for myself and for what the situation actually needs. Fawning is all kindness and no firmness. It's leaning so far into, "I see you, I care about you, I love you, I want you to be okay," that I fall right over, and I lose myself.
[00:14:08] And I know that I talk here on the podcast a lot about validating our kids' experience, right? It makes sense that you feel that way. It makes sense that you're hurting because of your choices. And, you know, parents will ask me, "Well, can we validate a feeling without condoning their behavior? Aren't I just being like, 'Okay, and do whatever you want, I see that you're hurting?'"
[00:14:33] No, you can validate somebody else's experience while also saying, "And this behavior, this choice, this action is actively hurting me. This behavior, this choice, this action is not okay, is not going to be tolerated, is not healthy for you, for the relationship, for me." Right? We get to connect before we correct or redirect.
[00:15:03] We can hold someone else's experience with tenderness and still hold a line and still Have a boundary, both ands, right? Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Okay, listen, boundaries, people. Boundaries are one of the most misunderstood ideas, I feel like, in parenting. A boundary is not a rule. A boundary is not a punishment.
[00:15:27] A boundary is about us. It's not about what we want our kids to do. It's about what we're willing to handle, how we're willing to be treated, and what we will or won't tolerate in a relationship. It's about deciding what we will do and follow through. That's it. You decide, you follow through You decide.
[00:15:52] You make that declaration, and then when the time happens, you follow through with what you said you were gonna do. And I'm just gonna say this plainly, in a lot of households, the kids are running the show, and the parents feel defeated, and resentful, and frustrated, and ready to give up. And I get it. I do.
[00:16:14] I get it. But let's ask a harder question. In that situation, what is being modeled? What are we teaching about how relationships work? What are we excusing? Where are we excusing behaviors that we're actually feeding, even enabling because it feels safer in the moment than it is to hold steady? It feels safer to bend over backwards and be a doormat than it does to hold a line, and to hold a boundary, and follow through, and do what we said we were gonna do.
[00:16:45] Trellis Not a Cage
[00:16:45] Casey O'Roarty: Here's the thing our teenagers actually need. They need something solid to bump up against. They need to feel that container around them to know that there is a line in the sand and that the adults in the room are strong enough to hold it. God, even as I said that, I, like, pulled my shoulders back, and I opened my heart center, and I found strength in my spine, right?
[00:17:08] And it's about a trellis. It's not about a cage. It's not about rigidity. A trellis, right? A trellis is firm enough to hold the growing thing and open enough to give it space to grow. And when we fawn, we pull the trellis right out of the ground, and we call it love. Our kids need to trust that we can take good care of ourselves because that's how they learn to trust themselves to do the same.
[00:17:35] They need us to be kind and firm, and again, kind and firm is not fawning. It's not self-abandonment. It's not letting things go for the sake of peace and ease. It's the opposite of that. It's the opposite of that.
[00:17:50] Thinking Tree Practice
[00:17:50] Casey O'Roarty: So how do we get there? Especially for those of us maybe who are just kind of sitting inside of, "Oh, shit, yeah, I do fawn."
[00:17:58] Well, how do we do something different that's so wired from childhood? Well, what I've been doing, and I'm gonna share with you, and it's gonna be familiar 'cause I've talked about it, this practice, in different contexts here on the podcast, it's that embodiment practice, right? It's nervous system practice.
[00:18:16] What do we do with our bodies when we're activated and that old pattern is screaming for us to just appease, to give in to fawn, right? This is the practice. It's thinking tree.
[00:18:38] So as you listen to this, if you can, if you're not doing something where, you know, you need to be paying attention, like driving or something, make a note of the timing of the pod and come back to this and just listen. So if you can right now, I want you to stand up, and I want you to feel your feet on the floor.
[00:18:56] Imagine that your feet are rooting down into the earth like a mighty redwood tree, holding on to the power of the earth, gathering the strength of the earth, grounding in your values, grounding into your self-respect and your self-compassion and the love that you have for you. Feel all of that coming up through your feet and into your legs.
[00:19:27] This is where you stand for you. You stand for your needs, for the good life you deserve, the care that you deserve, the security that you deserve, the right to be seen and valued in your experience. Feel it. Feel it in your legs. Feel it in your legs. This is firmness, right? This is where self-respect lives.
[00:19:56] Lock it in. Root into that. Just feel it. Feel it in your hips. Feel it in your pelvis. And now let the top part of your body come to life, right? This is your torso, your arms. Find some sway, find some flow, some flexibility, because there's a lot of hard stuff we're moving through with our partners, with our kids, with the people in our life, okay?
[00:20:27] And we gotta be able to move through it, right? To let it move through us. The top of the tree rolls and moves with the challenges of the wind and the storms. The top of a tree, a mighty redwood, it bends, it has flexibility. It remembers that every single one of us is living in our own separate, equally valid reality.
[00:20:54] All of us just looking for safety, all of us coping the best we know how. This isn't about villainizing the other or blame. It's about coming back to ourselves. The top of the tree, the top of the body is where kindness and compassion live for the people that we love Rooted in our trunk, rooted in our firmness, rooted in our self-respect, flexible in our branches, flexible, eyes wide open to the experiences of others, remembering compassion, remembering kindness, kind and firm at the same time in one body.
[00:21:36] And the words that can go with it, "I see you in your pain, and I see myself in my pain. I care about you and what you're moving through, and I care deeply about myself and what I'm moving through. I love you, and I honor that you are having your own experience, and I love myself and my own experience. I honor my own experience as being real and valid, both and."
[00:22:05] And here's how this maps into everything that I've been talking about. Fawning is leaning so far into the branches and into the flexibility, into I see you, I care about you, I love you, that we forget that we have roots. We forget to respect ourselves. Healing starts by coming back down to our feet, noticing when our nervous system is lit up, noticing when we're having that feeling of safety.
[00:22:40] Where's the safety? Finding the safety. And instead of finding the safety in appeasing, energetically bowing down to the other, we find safety On the inside. We find safety in our own trunk, in our own values. We find safety in remembering our worth. And then from that really grounded place, we can open back up to flow, to flexibility, and to compassion, and we do it in that order.
[00:23:13] We start with ourselves. We start by generating, and activating, and bringing to life a sense of safety. We get to have our own back before we turn outward and show up for others. First, we get deeply invested in our own sense of safety and security, right? That's where we find it.
[00:23:39] Feet First This Week
[00:23:39] Casey O'Roarty: So here's what I want you to try this week, and it's small.
[00:23:42] That's the point. We're taking baby steps. The next time you catch yourself about to over-accommodate your teen, or your partner, or somebody at work, the next time you catch yourself there getting ready to smooth it over, to say yes when you wanna say no, I want you to pause. I want you to find your feet.
[00:24:02] Feel your feet, just for a breath. Feel your trunk, feel your values, feel your worth before you tend to those branches, and that flow, and that flexibility for others. You don't have to have the perfect words. You just have to come home to yourself, to your roots before you reach outward for safety. Feet first.
[00:24:28] Closing Reflections and Thanks
[00:24:28] Casey O'Roarty: And, you know, as I wrap up, I'm gonna be honest with you. I started by sharing that things are hard over here, really hard, and I'm in it, and this crisis isn't gonna be neat and tidy and wrapped up with a bow. I'm not gonna pretend that it is. Like I mentioned, I'm doing my own work, and going to therapy, and taking care of myself as best I can, and I'm curious, and I'm looking inward, and, you know, that's also self-care.
[00:25:00] I'm practicing feeling my feet. I'm starting to notice the fun and Letting her know that it's gonna be okay. She doesn't need to show up. I'm choosing something braver, right? I'm choosing something braver, and I'm gonna get it wrong sometimes, but I'm gonna keep coming back to this practice. And what I know is that I'm gonna be okay, that I'm deeply grateful for this stubborn, ongoing personal desire in me to keep growing, keep practicing, keep sharing, keep living the work out loud as best as I can.
[00:25:40] I'm so grateful for the work that I get to do because I could not show up here for you week after week if I weren't willing to walk the talk myself. That's part of why a solo show was calling me this week, was because it's real over here, and I wanna let you in on that. It's real, and I think there's, you know, such a special experience when the teacher, the mentor, the facilitator, the coach can say, "Yeah, the shit hits the fan over here, too."
[00:26:12] There's no answer to, like, "And now I have no bullshit in my life," right? The bullshit keeps showing up. How are we showing up to it? I'm really working to walk my talk and to keep showing up authentically for you. This work asks me to live the talk, and that's what's making it possible for me to carry through this latest hard thing.
[00:26:36] So find your feet, root down, stay open, take good care of yourself. That is not the opposite of loving your people. It's how you actually stay in the room with them. I'll see you next week
[00:26:55] Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to my Sproutable partners, Julietta and Alana. Thank you, Danielle, for supporting with the show notes, as well as Chris Mann and the team at Podshaper for all the support with getting the show out there and making it sound good. As I mentioned, sharing is caring.
[00:27:12] If you're willing to pass on this episode to others or take a few minutes to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it helps other parents find this useful content. Be sure to check out what we have going on for parents of kids of all ages, and sign up for our newsletter to stay connected at besproutable.com.
[00:27:32] I see you doing all the things. I believe in you. See you next time.