Fawning Without People-Pleasing: A Subtype of Self-Abandonment

This version of fawning isn’t about likability. It’s about disorientation.

I used to think I didn’t fawn.

I don’t flatter. I don’t sugarcoat. I am allergic to pretending.

So for years, I assumed the fawn response (at trauma-informed survival mode where people become extra pleasant, accommodating, conflict-avoidant) just didn’t apply to me.

But lately I’ve been questioning it.

A few weeks ago, I was on a call with a woman I’d hired to design my website. She asked totally normal questions: “What colors do you like?” “Do you want clean lines or a more eclectic vibe?” “Do you want to start with the About page or the Home page?”

And I just… didn’t know.

Anxiety, which had previously been dictating the onslaught of thoughts, suddenly gave way to no insight whatsoever.

Internally, I felt like my previous self (with a million questions) was deep in a well, yelling to be heard. I suppose a part of myself was aware enough to register this. But the person in the moment just had to keep moving. So she faced the audience, she replied something back. Because who else was going to?

I heard myself give an answer that resembled a preference, but wavering. It landed in a question mark. She sounded okay, she wasn’t betraying the girl in the well, but she wasn’t “me,” either.

It wasn’t that I was trying to be easygoing or minimize my needs. I just couldn’t locate them. It felt like opening the fridge you expect to be full – that you know should be full – and seeing nothing inside.

I border on believing this is just anxiety. It is, to a degree – the overwhelm that comes from too many choices and thoughts and opinions, so they freeze instead.

But this wasn’t just anxiety, because it only happens in front of someone else. Left to my own devices, I manufacture the energy to stay on top of all of the thoughts, to corral them into order.

In front of someone, though, the horses run right through the fences and I’m left standing with the dust settling around me to wonder if anything was ever really there.

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Could this be fawning?

I was confused because classic fawning has a certain look to it.

For example: let’s say someone is on a Zoom meeting at work. Their manager credits their colleague for a project they led, a project they stayed up late perfecting. But instead of correcting the inaccuracy, they smile and say nothing. Maybe even chime in to compliment the colleague’s contribution. They might feel the heat rise up, but they override it. They don’t want to seem difficult. They don’t want to make it awkward.

That’s fawning.

What I experience isn’t that.

I don’t override myself — I just can’t locate myself.

I’m not nodding or agreeing with you because I want to make you feel good. I’m nodding and agreeing with you because I’ve gone blank. Because I can’t find my preferences. Because something has gone a little dim, and going along is the only available move.

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Another scene:

I’m meeting a new mom at my kid’s soccer game. She’s got the big energy — confident, put-together, talking fluently about school board decisions like “doesn’t everybody know this?” She was the girl in high school who caught onto trends before they started. She poses an opinion, and I can feel that this is the moment when normal people take the baton.

So I go to take it, but somewhere between my brain and my mouth, I short-circuit. I don’t disagree. I don’t agree. I just drift slightly outside of myself and let the interaction run on autopilot. I say something vague like “Yeah, exactly,” because what else am I supposed to do when I suddenly can’t remember what I think?

That’s not fawning, that’s disconnection. And that difference matters.

It’s not “I’ll say yes to keep you happy.” It’s “I have no idea if I mean yes or no, because I can’t remember myself right now.”

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I don’t find virtue in being accommodating. I actually don’t want to be seen as too easygoing. I admittedly become irritated by performative fawning when I see it in others.

For example, there’s a woman at the salon who washes my hair. Every five minutes it’s:

“Is the water okay?”
“Is the towel too tight?”
“Can I get you tea?”
“Are you sure you’re comfortable?”

It’s overdone. It’s incessant. It makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

It bothers me because she seems to believe this behavior is virtuous. She identifies with it. She fawns out loud, with pride. I imagine she would describe herself as “nurturing” and “nice.”

But I don’t like exaggerated caretaking – it sets up an inequitable relationship. It interrupts equality and connection. It makes me feel burdened with the assignment of verbalizing gratitude for things I don't even want, and it feels like I have to do it to make her feel better. The gestures don't actually feel about me at all.

When I fawn, I’m not offering a nicety. I’m not being thoughtful. I’m not choosing to keep the peace. I’m just less accessible to myself.

I don’t agree with it. It happens despite me.

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So maybe this is a form of fawning. A subtype. One that doesn’t aim to appease but still lands in outsourcing myself.

And this pattern doesn’t stay confined to conversations. It bleeds into how we eat.

For people who identify more traditionally with fawning — the classic, people-pleasing, conflict-avoidant types — food can become another place to disappear. To defer. To eat what others are eating.

Traditional fawning loses touch with desire to let food choices become just another extension of keeping things safe.

But others of us do “fawning and food” differently.

I didn’t use food to disappear, I used it to find myself again.

Binge eating didn’t feel like a collapse. It felt like taking back. Like grounding. Like a physical way to say, 'I am here!'

Bingeing was a way to reinhabit my body in one big, undeniable moment. It was my way of shocking myself into the confrontation of myself. Of coming back into contact with something real, even if it was messy and uncomfortable.

It was the opposite of fawning. It was a hard stop. A grounding. A way of saying: You don’t get to disappear entirely.

So when people say bingeing is about losing control, or emotional eating, or self-sabotage — sometimes that’s true. But sometimes it’s the opposite. Sometimes, the binge is the place we use our voice, clear as day. The first time our body says: We exist.

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I think that’s why this type of fawning is harder to recognize for those of us who don’t identify as people-pleasers. We pride ourselves on being blunt and assume fawning is something other people do — people who are afraid to rock the boat, who want to be liked. This version of fawning isn’t about likability. It’s about disorientation.

So maybe the work is to notice when the lights dim. To catch ourselves in the freeze and say, Oh — this is the moment I forget myself. And then, if possible, to pause. We buy some time, we regain consciousness, and maybe even circle back. We say, “Actually…” - even if it’s hours later.

And maybe we recognize that thing like bingeing, changing our minds, or delayed responses — the things we’ve been told to pathologize — are not signs of regression, but signs of return.