It took clinical psychologist, trauma therapist and complex trauma survivor Dr Ingrid Clayton years to understand how she had reacted to abuse within her home as a young person. But what she later understood to be a relational-trauma response known as “fawning” also helped her to make sense of her behaviour and relationships in the years that followed. And now that work informs her book, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves.

Jen chats to Ingrid about why we sometimes lean into situations that make us feel unsafe, the long-term impacts of this behaviour, and why we should revisit the narrative around trauma responses.

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