Narcissist and People Pleaser: The Fawn Response Dynamic

Written by Roland Bal

A resolved emotion is an emotion that has been able to run its full course without the interference of thought, regardless of the outcome of the circumstances.

In other words — it means that you can endure a potentially traumatic situation and go through it unscathed.

Those that do are often people who have sufficient resilience, containment, a healthy emotional foundation and a support system that has given them an advantage, and hence can rebound quicker.

Starting with a Disadvantage: Narcissistic Abuse and Childhood Trauma

When life's adversities begin when young, this can turn the tables on you drastically.

A resolved emotion is an emotion that has been able to run its full course without the interference of thought, regardless of the outcome of the circumstances.

If your emotional foundation is shaky to start with because there never was any support or nurturing, it becomes tougher to face new challenges, and this often leads to retraumatization through recurring experiences.

What happens is that there will be emotional responses that are unfinished and that have become patterns.

It is with these emotional patterns that we deal with life, circumstances, and people, and thereby recreate some of our old situations that relate to our history.

Trauma and The Narcissist and People-Pleaser Dynamic

Projection and reenactment go hand in hand. It is a process that happens simultaneously, and there may be various layers of it at play.

Let us explore this through an example to clarify:

Anna grows up with a narcissistic mother who is more concerned about her ambitions than taking care of her children. Anna copes with her by fawning — appeasing as a means of getting some form of approval and a sense of identity. Her mother, however, has turned this against her, through using guilt, and oversteps Anna's boundaries on a regular basis.

Both identities, the people-pleaser, which is Anna, and the overbearing narcissistic mother who uses control as a fight response to cover her wounds and insecurity, keep each other in their place.

The narcissist is drawn to the people-pleaser because they sense the unmet need for validation. It is not a conscious choice — it is an unconscious recognition. One needs to control in order to feel validated; the other needs to please in order to feel loved. They fit together like a lock and a key.

Seeking any confrontation, for Anna, regarding setting healthy boundaries for having her needs met is overshadowed by crippling anxiety. Her mother plays on that by using guilt.

People-Pleasing and a Lack of Boundaries

Partly, that anxiety relates to her still wanting to be validated and the looming fear of rejection — not being good enough, and being a failure.

Anxiety, depression and an inability to move forward in life, are some of her symptomatic expressions.

From the above example, you can see that Anna has difficulty with setting boundaries and seeking validation, and that relates directly to wanting to avoid rejection and failure, which rests on her fundamental need of wanting to be loved, nourished and validated.

When the narcissist enters with love bombing — a pattern rooted in rejection and betrayal trauma — — with attention, praise, and the feeling of being truly seen — it lands with enormous force on the people-pleaser. The reason is simple: it mimics what was never given in childhood. The people-pleaser does not recognise it as a manipulation. They experience it as finally being enough.

Reenactment and the Trauma Bond Between Narcissist and People-Pleaser

Besides a complicated relationship with her mother, Anna has difficulties in other areas of her life.

At work, or in her relationships, she often gives too much of herself because of a need to feel validated. In turn, people either abuse or shun her because there is that undercurrent of wanting emotional compensation.

Anna moves between giving too much of herself, followed by feeling hurt and frustrated as a result of being used, or through not feeling validated, isolating and withdrawing into herself.

This is the nervous system pattern at the core of the trauma bond — the people-pleaser provides the validation the narcissist requires, while the narcissist provides the intense emotional highs and lows the dysregulated nervous system has come to expect as "love."

The people-pleaser keeps returning because they are still seeking the validation they never received. Unconsciously, they believe that if they can finally get it right — finally be enough — the wound will heal. But reenactment compounds and keeps them locked in the cycle.

How to Break the Narcissist and People-Pleaser Cycle

What Anna needs to address, is to learn to openly express her needs, boundaries, and possibly even anger.

While learning to express her boundaries, anxiety and guilt will present themselves — which relate directly to her more profound emotional hurt of wanting to be loved and validated, and the lack of which she has experienced.

Once she can allow herself to feel the hurt from childhood neglect and total lack of love — to not descend further into her usual default position of fawning — and steps up to assert her boundaries, feeling empowered by it, she will start to move in the right direction and heal her childhood complex trauma.

The full framework for doing this work is covered in the narcissistic abuse recovery article — including how the fight or fawn response forms, why you keep attracting narcissists, and what somatic healing actually requires.