Fawning

Author: Ingrid Clayton

ISBN-13: 978-1785123023

Publisher: Leap

Guideline Price: £20

This isn’t a self-help book; it’s a hard-hitting recovery manual for those of us who have learned to survive in this world by being overly agreeable, overly accommodating and people-pleasing.

In Fawning, Ingrid Clayton, a clinical psychologist, makes a recently identified psychological phenomenon called “fawning” known to a non-specialist audience; she does this in a disarmingly honest, accessible and pragmatic way.

Many of us will have heard of the “flight, fright, freeze” response when we are confronted with a threatening situation. In the psychology business, we call those three Fs a “trauma response”. They are unconscious responses that seek to ensure our survival in the face of threats.

According to Clayton, we have overlooked the fourth F: fawning. Fawning describes our overly agreeable, overly accommodating and excessively people-pleasing behaviour. Clayton claims fawning might actually be the most common trauma response and one that has received very little attention in the research and clinical worlds.

Fawning, according to Clayton, is by its very nature difficult to grasp and describe because fawning is about psychological shape-shifting in order to accommodate other people. This shape-shifting results from “constantly assessing people’s moods, scanning surroundings for potential threats. We notice subtle cues and facial expressions. We see things coming from a mile away.”

There is a depth of common humanity and a tenderness embedded in Clayton’s writing, one that emerges out of her personal and professional life. With inherent forgiveness, she writes: “Without the safety of our fawn response, we are convinced something terrible is certain to happen and we have no protection against it. Thus we fawn again.”

Despite the elusive, shape-shifting nature of fawning, Clayton makes a persuasive case for fawning as making up an essential piece of the trauma puzzle and for rigorous research to advance our understanding of this nascent psychological phenomenon.

Clayton, a self-confessed fawner, does not mince her words. Her self-disclosures are disarming and, at times, startling and will likely linger long after the book is closed.

Paul D’Alton is an academic clinical psychologist