Podcast Summary

Podcast: This Is Woman’s Work with Nicole Kalil

Episode: The Fourth Trauma Response You’ve Never Heard Of (And How It’s Running Your Life)
Guest: Dr. Ingrid Clayton, Clinical Psychologist and Author
Date: September 8, 2025

Main Theme

This episode explores the lesser-known trauma response, fawning—the practice of appeasing or pleasing others at the expense of oneself. Host Nicole Kalil and guest Dr. Ingrid Clayton unpack what fawning is, how it differs from other trauma responses, its roots in relational trauma, and crucially, how to move beyond it. The conversation is grounded in the lived experiences of women, and aims to destigmatize and empower listeners to recognize, understand, and heal these patterns.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Defining Fawning and Its Place in Trauma Responses

• Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn:
  • Nicole opens with the commonly known trauma responses and introduces "fawning" as a fourth, often overlooked response.
  • "Fawning is when we try to stay safe by staying small, by appeasing, pleasing and shape-shifting ourselves into the version of us that will be most liked or least threatening or most useful to the people around us." — Nicole (02:09)
• Fawning Explained:
  • Dr. Clayton describes fawning as a “relational trauma response” that is activated especially in hierarchical or unsafe relationships.
  • "Sometimes it’s appeasement... Sometimes it’s overdoing, it’s compulsive caretaking, it’s leaning in and sort of loaning people your own resources in order to help them stand upright.”—Dr. Clayton (03:57)

2. Healthy vs. Unhealthy Caretaking

• Key Difference:
  • Healthy nurturing involves conscious choice and reciprocity. Fawning is marked by compulsion and absence of agency.
  • "The distinction is there was no conscious Agency... It’s where we see that people are stuck. They are hitting ceilings, they're repeating relationship patterns that do not serve and they cannot say stop."—Dr. Clayton (05:23)

3. Fawning and the Nervous System

• How It Works:
  • "Fawning is this hybrid trauma response where it’s one part fight, flight... and one part parasympathetic activation in the nervous system. So the part that’s active is... leaning into relationships to manage the mood. The part that is downregulated... is a disconnection from ourselves—we cut off from our opinions, our values, our feelings." — Dr. Clayton (07:32)
• Context-Dependence:
  • Trauma responses are not fixed—people can default to different responses in different settings, but chronic invalidation can lead to fawning becoming a personality trait.

4. Gender, Power, and Social Conditioning

• Fawning as a Feminized Response:
  • Nicole asks about gender’s role; Dr. Clayton affirms that women are more conditioned to default to fawning, being taught from a young age to "please and appease."
  • "Another name for the fawning trauma response is the please and appease response." — Dr. Clayton (10:32)
  • She also introduces "sexual fawning"—using one’s appearance or sexuality as a perceived source of power when other avenues are blocked.

5. Internal Experience and Identification

• Personal Recognition:
  • Nicole shares personal reflections: “I was tucking so many pieces of myself into corners...” (12:02)
  • Dr. Clayton says, “Fawning is essentially an override. I'm grateful for it, it's kept me safe a lot of times. But I don't want to live in override…I don't want to live in survival mode all the time.” (27:42)

6. Pathway to Healing: Awareness and Internal Safety

• Noticing and Naming:
  • The first step is naming the behavior and recognizing patterns retrospectively, as it can be difficult to catch fawning in the moment.
• Practices for Rebuilding Internal Safety:
  • Grounding through body awareness: "We start to go, okay, I have a body. I'm here right now. What do I notice in me?" — Dr. Clayton (15:12)
  • Using self-compassion postures (hand on heart, etc.) to self-soothe and begin rebuilding trust with oneself.
  • The importance of orienting and using the senses to ground oneself in the present moment (inspired by Peter Levine’s work)—Dr. Clayton suggests, “Look around slowly, notice what you see…letting your senses put you in present time and place.” (24:08)
  • Noticing where in life you feel like your most authentic self and growing those moments.

7. Curiosity Over Judgment

• Replacing Judgment with Curiosity:
  • Nicole notes, “especially as women, we have a tendency to replace noticing with judging”—and Dr. Clayton reframes judgment as an internal protector: “My judgment is actually still trying to steer me away from these tucked away pieces because they're not safe in the world.” (31:12)
  • She encourages listeners to gently thank their judgment and still proceed with curiosity.

8. Fawning vs. Codependency

• Core Differences:
  • "They really see fawning as the gas for the codependency motor… But codependency has been so stigmatized and pathologized… For me, fawning places the origins of this behavior in necessity, in a system. When you just look at codependency, you feel dysfunctional. When you look at the roots of fawning… this was an adaptive response to a dysfunctional environment." — Dr. Clayton (33:47)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On naming fawning:

  • “We can’t maybe see it in the moment, but we can see it in hindsight. We can start to see the patterns.” — Dr. Clayton (14:47)

• On healing:

  • “You’re picking up all the pieces for all the people in our lives. We often feel resentful…Our worth, our power, our safety have all resided outside of our own body.” — Dr. Clayton (15:28)

• On the body’s wisdom:

  • “The body doesn’t lie.” — Dr. Clayton (29:53)
  • Nicole riffs on this: “Your body doesn’t lie, but your brain is a filthy liar.” (30:09)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Fight, Flight, Freeze vs. Fawn — What is Fawning? (03:33 – 07:20)
• How Fawning Develops, Gender & Power (09:52 – 12:49)
• Personal Experiences & Internalized Messaging (12:00 – 14:09)
• Recognizing Fawning in Our Lives (14:09 – 15:57)
• Somatic Practices & Healing Tools (22:09 – 26:42)
• Curiosity vs. Judgment (30:10 – 33:17)
• Fawning vs. Codependency (33:33 – 35:37)
• Closing Reflections from Nicole (35:41 – 36:43)

Conclusion & Takeaways

• Fawning is a trauma response rooted in self-abandonment, often internalized by women through both socialization and lived experience.
• Healing begins with naming, noticing, and cultivating internal safety—especially through somatic, body-based awareness and practices.
• Curiosity and self-compassion are foundational in shifting away from chronic fawning patterns.
• Codependency is often an outward symptom of chronic fawning; understanding the roots allows for more compassionate and effective healing.
• Ultimately, the "woman's work" of today may be to unapologetically take up space and honor one’s own needs and authenticity.

"Your needs matter just as much as anyone else's. Your voice matters even when it shakes. You don't need to earn your place. You already have one. This. All of this is woman's work." — Nicole Kalil (36:20)