A fourth, less discussed, response to trauma is called fawning, or people-pleasing. The fawn response is a coping mechanism in which individuals develop people-pleasing behaviors to avoid conflict, pacify their abusers, and create a sense of safety.
In most cases, people-pleasing behavior is motivated by insecurity and low self-esteem caused by trauma bonds in childhood. People who were neglected, mistreated, or abused by their caregivers tried to please them in the hope of receiving attention and better treatment.
The tendency to please is related to Dependent Personality Disorder. While the people-pleaser may not need others to do things for them, they do have a need for others, regardless. The pleasing personality is also related to the Masochistic Personality type, which also corresponds with Dependent Personality.
Anxiety: Some people may attempt to please others because they feel anxious about fitting in, rejection, or causing offense. For example, a person with social anxiety may feel they must do whatever their friends want in order for people to like them. It can be a subtle attempt to control others' perceptions.
Fawning or people-pleasing can often be traced back to an event or series of events that caused a person to experience PTSD, more specifically Complex PTSD, or C-PTSD. Fortunately, C-PTSD can be approached and treated through comprehensive therapy.
ADHD and Emotions
They can hyper-focus on strong feelings. However, when you combine strong emotions with feelings of being disempowered throughout life, the mind can hyperfocus on the fears of letting others down (enter people pleasing).
INFP: People-pleasing
The biggest turn-off for INFPs is people-pleasing. INFPs are independent and individualistic in their beliefs and values. They want people to be authentic and true to themselves, even if they risk offending others.
People pleasing isn't a mental illness, but it can be an issue that adversely affects how many people, with or without mental illness, relate to others. Most of all, people pleasers try to nourish other people without adequately nourishing themselves.
A people pleaser is typically someone everyone considers helpful and kind. When you need help with a project or someone to help you study for an exam, they're more than willing to step up. If you recognize yourself in the above description, you may be a people pleaser.
It is a natural human instinct to want to please others and to present oneself at one's best. It is, in fact, a very positive quality to consider others' feelings and be emotionally intelligent.
Narcissists disregard your rights and only want to obtain certain benefits from you. People-pleasers put aside their own needs and aspire solely to satisfy you and give you what you want at all times.
Intrusive memories
Recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of the traumatic event. Reliving the traumatic event as if it were happening again (flashbacks) Upsetting dreams or nightmares about the traumatic event. Severe emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds you of the traumatic event.
When empaths are exposed to early trauma or abuse their young nervous system may develop without healing making them hypervigilant. They can become exquisitely attuned to their environment to ward off threats and ensure they are safe or enter a state of hyperarousal.
Trauma response is the way we cope with traumatic experiences. We cope with traumatic experiences in many ways, and each one of us selects the way that fits best with our needs. The four types of mechanisms we use to cope with traumatic experiences are fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
If you find yourself doing to this to the point of exhaustion then you may be a people-pleaser. This usually means that you are taking care of others around you before you take care of yourself. Our clients who present as people-pleasers usually find themselves feeling anxious, drained, and overwhelmed.
Quiet borderline personality disorder, or quiet BPD, is a classification some psychologists use to describe a subtype of borderline personality disorder (BPD). While many symptoms of BPD can manifest outward (such as aggression toward others), individuals with quiet BPD may direct symptoms like aggression inward.
Being a people pleaser is not an inherently wrong trait. On the contrary, some degree of pleasing others is necessary to function globally and in a team environment like at work.
People-pleasers and attachment
Of the three types of attachment (secure, anxious, and avoidant), people-pleasers who try to earn love through self-sacrifice often tend to have an anxious or avoidant (insecure) attachment style.
INTP: Pushes Anger Away
“The Architect” type, INTP, will avoid talking to others when they're angry. These personality types will suppress their emotions. Because INTPs aren't great at handling their feelings or the emotions of others, it's easier for them to forget about it, push it away, and move on.
Whatever the specific cause of their behavior, people pleasers tend to have similar characteristics, which include: Fear of abandonment or rejection. Preoccupation with what others might be thinking or feeling.
Another key component of OCD is the mistrust one has of themselves and who one is at their core. This is why people with OCD tend to engage in “people pleasing”: they may value other people's opinions above their own, and trust other people's opinions more.
A recent review of findings on ADHD and FFM personality suggests that, in general, ADHD has associations with the FFM traits of Neuroticism (positive), Agreeableness (negative) and Conscientiousness (negative).
These may include hyperfocus, resilience, creativity, conversational skills, spontaneity, and abundant energy. Many people view these benefits as “superpowers” because those with ADHD can hone them to their advantage.