The Self We Gave Away

Shall we try something together?

Think about what you actually want today. Not what needs doing, not what your children need, not what your partner has asked for, not what would make things easier for everyone else. What do you want to do?

If that question makes you blank out a little, or if you find yourself immediately translating it into what you should want, or what it would be reasonable to want, or what you’d want if you weren’t also thinking about seventy trillion other things, then you might want to keep reading.

We can often think that finding it hard to consider our own needs is a sort of curiosity. Maybe it is a sign that we’re easygoing, selfless, that we go with the flow, we’re a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants kinda gal. But for many people, it isn’t a personality quirk but a result of years of learning that it is easier not to have any needs. That other people’s needs are more important than our own. Maybe even that keeping the peace mattered more than telling our own truth. In essence, learning to give ourselves away to others.

There’s a word for this (there’s always a word for it in psychology). It’s called fawning. Not just people pleasing, and not just being a really nice person. But a stress response. This is the first post in a few (let’s see how many!) about what fawning is, why we do it and what we might want to do instead.