notes on fawning

I told a dear comrade today: I have deep reservoirs of forgiveness for the both of us. Tears streaming down my face, my voice cracking, feeling love for that person and for the process that has brought us into both comfort and conflict. Feeling tender for myself and my fear. I sit here, moments later, wondering what it means for me to really let myself be scared enough, vulnerable enough, available enough to imagine building a radically different future beyond imposed hierarchies and the myth of scarcity.

I have long believed that in order to change the world, we must be wiling to change ourselves. I think I first encountered the idea in my late teens. Back then, “changing my world” meant finding a way out of the culture of shame and blame that pervaded much of my childhood. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to state that I was “gifted with a difficult childhood.” Today, I state that I was intimately forced to confront domination in my daily life, and that has influenced pretty much every choice I’ve made since.

My early liberatory praxis was escape. It involved taking refuge in fantasy fiction, in video games. It led to a habituated use of pornography that still continues to haunt me¹. It led to a strategy of “running away” when things got too complex (aka when my nervous system was flooded) so that I could find the “next great thing”.

It cost me many growth opportunities, and opened many other doors to growth.

Later in life, “changing my world” meant getting sober. Making more space for my anger, my grief, my disappointment. Learning what it meant to disappoint loved ones. Learning what it meant to step up to how they saw me and be accountable. Discovering that my emotional world was its own psychedelic experience, and usually it led me towards more intimacy and trust, not shame and discouragement.

Being an addict, one becomes very close to the concept of forgiveness. We engage with what it means to forgive those who have hurt us, and the stimulus that has pushed us closer to our addiction. With what it means to forgive ourselves. With what it means to accept that we will not receive all the forgiveness we long for from others.

The first time you said “I forgive you” to me, I had forgotten that it was something I was longing for. Turns out, the process of accountability is its own reward. We don’t need to search for forgiveness from each other; we earn our own forgiveness by turning towards the transformation that comes alive when we fuck up.

Boy, have I fucked up in this lifetime.

Conflict only feels easier with time. Two things make this possible for me, I think:

One, my capacity is ever-growing. Doing a hard thing makes that thing easier next time. Doing a hard thing repeatedly helps my nervous system know that vulnerability and defenselessness² is safe. Facing my own emotions keeps me from projecting that I am unsafe when in actuality, I am very safe.

Two, I am not masking as much as I used to. I let people see me, as I really am. When I am angry, I say “I am angry.” When I feel desire, I say “I feel desire.” When I need space, I say “I need space.” Maybe this comes across as obvious. But it has taken me years of active self-inquiry to even notice when these things are happening.

Today, I am aware of how much unmasking I still have left to do.

Today, “changing myself to change the world” feels like letting someone I love witness me, even when it means excavating the deeper shadow stuff that makes it so easy for me to mask. Putting away the part of me that wants everything to “be harmonious” so we can build a different kind of relationship.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how easy it has been for me fawn. You know, “fight flight freeze (fawn)!” It’s something I learned at an incredibly young age. One of the well-known dictionaries says that to fawn is “to court favor by a cringing or flattering manner”. I say that to fawn is “to manipulate by hiding information, whether knowingly or otherwise”.

Sure, this is not the most generous framing for what is a highly pervasive survival strategy. But I really mean to talk about my own fawning without shame. It’s just something that happens. And when it happens, I’m not just manipulating another, I’m deceiving myself. Fawning might mean I don’t exactly exactly know how I truly feel! It takes me days, weeks, months to realize “oh shit, I was so focused on that other person feeling good that I didn’t see my own anger”

It’s not fair to you. It’s not fair to me.

Growing up, I learned that if I could “manage information” such that authority figures were happy, I could keep myself from feeling hurt, or shame, or sadness. I fawned with all kinds of authority figures: my parents, with teachers, bullies. With my college roommate, with romantic partners, with managers at work. Anyone who I felt sufficiently close to could be made into an authority figure.

I don’t fawn like I used to - in fact, I have a reputation for saying “far out” shit. But oh yeah, I still do this! I want people to feel good around me. I want to be a “good boy³.” I want to be in control, and my ego knows that managing others’s feelings is a way to get there.

I’m starting to see how our need for validation from external sources is one of the ways that we reinforce systems of domination. My ancestors fawned with the British in order to receive concessions and benefits under the colonial rule, and to avoid being killed or imprisoned⁴. Many of us fawn with police in order to feel safe during everyday encounters. I fawned to get jobs. I fawned to get laid. I fawned to get grades.

It’s sad to me how much that shit works. And… maybe it’s a sort of necessary coping strategy under conditions of domination, too.

There is a deep intimacy to being in uncertainty together. There is a difference between fawning to keep myself alive and fawning because I am scared of showing you who I am. What’s really sad is the way my body clings to the memory of fawning as a way of avoiding being hit, being screamed at, being punished.

Today, I am really working so hard to let my truer self be seen. When you asked me to gift you with my honest feedback, I said: “sure, let me sit with it first.” And I woke up with a frog in my throat and knew that if I didn’t share with you, it’d be with me all day. But in order to do so I had to excavate all the pain that lives inside me for the ways I was mistreated as a young person. My gift to you wasn’t the feedback, it was the excavation of my own pain, and instead of the frog in my throat all day I sat with the fear of retribution for not being good enough, obedient enough, accommodating enough.

I walked into the ocean, praying for the courage to be truly defenseless, and as the waves rose, at times above my head, I knew that I could hold myself enough through the experience of terror so that we could sit together across the still waters again.

Truly, none of this has to do with you, with any of you. You couldn’t strip me of my dignity - I’m an adult now, and I have agreed to guardianship of my own self-worth. But in order to show you more of myself, I needed to face the fear and pain that is inherent to taking risks. The risk that allows me to gift you my authenticity, truth, clarity, intimacy, my heart.

The space left from my shadow excavation was instead filled with courage. I can see the big, big risk it takes to break a deep-seated pattern over and over and over, again. I can see what it takes to love myself and love you and say “this is worth it for us, because the impact of this is going to reach far further than us.” And to not feel like it’s too small, too insignificant, or too mediocre to champion and fight for.

When I was really, really ready to get sober, my coach encouraged me to say goodbye to the part of me that drinks with a thank you letter. This morning, I wrote a thank you letter to the part of me that fawns.

Thanks for taking good care of me for so much of my life. You helped me feel connection when I was terrified of the world. You helped find access to resources. You helped me from getting beaten when I was younger. I really owe you for how you kept me in the world.

I am ready to try something different now. I wanna feel more safe to be true to myself. I want to be brave to share my authentic experiences with more people in my world. I wan to be witnessed and loved for exactly who I am, and not because I make other people “feel good.”

Will you give me the chance to try this?

As I continue to unmask, I learn more and more about the gifts of forgiveness. I see how much we are wounded, hiding from each other, scared to be really seen. I see how much our systems of domination tell us to pretend we have our shit together as a way to feel “worthy.” And as someone who used to feel safe by running away, today I all I want is to feel the safety - in myself and in us - to stay, stay stay through the excavations.

There is such a deep need for forgiveness. I will choose to forgive myself. I will choose to forgive you. I will choose to forgive the hurt I endured in my developmental years. I will choose to forgive.

1. I have wanted to talk about porn and it’s effects on me and other internet-native men for the longest time, and it still brings up so much shame to talk about it in a semi-public way here

2. A teacher of mine says “your power lies in your defenselessness.” If you retain nothing else from this, take this one line home

3. I don’t really identify with the word “boy” but I’m using it here to illustrate a particular young-ness that this concept evokes for me.

4. It’s also worth noting that as a Brahmin, some of my ancestors also received a lot of special privileges and status through this fawning towards the British, often at the expense of other groups on the subcontinent. The Brahmins were (in many areas) poised to take control and perpetuate the culture of domination as soon as the British departed India. It’s not as simple as “they were seeking survival!” And it’s not as simple as “they were seeking power.”