People Pleasing in Relationships: How The Fawn Response and Religious Trauma Turn Love Into Obligation

Author: Ashley Kirkpatrick LAC

“I don’t know what love is without fear attached to it.”

That’s what Evan said in our session as he stared at his hands, struggling to explain why he felt so anxious in his relationship.

He said he loved his partner.
He said he wanted closeness.
But he also admitted something quieter, more painful:

“I don’t really know how to be myself around her. I’m always trying to guess what she needs so she won’t leave.”

Evan grew up in a high-demand religious system where “love” meant obedience, sacrifice, and silence. His parents praised him for being “easy,” “spiritual,” and “selfless.” He learned that good men:

• don’t complain
• don’t burden others
• don’t ask for anything they can do without
• put their emotions aside for the greater good

By adulthood, his nervous system had been trained to associate connection with performance, not presence. Approval, not authenticity. Compliance, not closeness.

So, when his partner said, “Tell me what you need,” he froze, not because he didn’t have needs, but because he’d been conditioned to believe:

“Needing anything makes me less lovable.”

This is one way people pleasing in relationships can show up in real life.

Note: “Evan” is a fictional composite created to protect confidentiality. His story reflects common patterns seen in individuals healing from religious trauma but does not represent any specific client.

---

The Fawn Trauma Response and Why People Pleasing Isn’t A Personality Trait

The behaviors Evan described, over-apologizing, anticipating others’ emotions, softening his truth, absorbing blame, weren’t random.

They were the fawn response, a concept first described by therapist Pete Walker as a trauma adaptation where people “learn to seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs, and demands of others” (Walker, 2013).

Fawning is common among individuals raised in environments like high-control religions where conflict feels unsafe, emotions are suppressed, authority is absolute, love is conditional, and needs are framed as selfish.

Research shows that chronic invalidation, authoritarian systems, and attachment disruptions significantly increase the likelihood of developing appeasement-based survival strategies (Linehan, 1993; Herman, 2015).

These systems don’t just shape beliefs, they shape how the nervous system responds.

---

How Religious Trauma Creates People Pleasing in Relationships

High-control religions, particularly those rooted in shame and obedience, inadvertently teach children and adults that love is something you earn through self-reduction.

1. Love = Obedience

Many religious teachings present love as demonstrated through compliance.
Attachment research shows that children who associate affection with obedience often develop anxious-preoccupied attachment as adults (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016).

2. Needs = Burdens

Messages like “serve others” or “your needs come after your calling” can internalize the belief that having needs makes you less righteous.

Studies link repeated self-suppression to depression, anxiety, and identity disturbance (Kashdan et al., 2011).

3. Emotions = Danger

Many clients report being told that anger, fear, or sadness were signs of spiritual weakness.
Emotional suppression is strongly correlated with trauma symptoms and lower relational satisfaction (Gross & John, 2003).

4. Conflict = Sin

Teachings such as “contention is of the devil” lead many post-religious adults to fear conflict as inherently destructive.

But research shows healthy conflict is essential for intimacy (Gottman & Gottman, 2015).

For many adults, this turns into a lasting fear of conflict in relationships, where honesty feels dangerous even when the relationship itself is not.

---

How The Fawn Response Shows Up in Adult Relationships

Many men raised in religious environments describe these patterns:

1. Confusing People-Pleasing With Love

They equate sacrifice with devotion and compliance with connection.

2. Shutting Down Their Own Needs

They “go with the flow” not because they’re flexible, but because saying what they want feels unsafe.

3. Avoiding Hard Conversations

They dread disappointing someone, even when honesty would create closeness.

4. Becoming Overly Responsible

They track others’ moods, anticipate needs, and fix problems before they happen, an attempt to maintain safety, not intimacy.

5. Feeling Resentment Underneath Their Niceness

Self-erasure eventually becomes emotional exhaustion.
These patterns often look virtuous on the surface, “selfless,” “kind,” “steady”, but internally they are often tied to emotional shutdown in relationships.

---

Why Fawning Feels Like Love, But Isn’t

Fawning mimics connection but prevents real intimacy because:

• you can’t be loved for who you are if no one sees who you are
• your needs stay invisible
• resentment builds
• love feels fragile or conditional
• you live in chronic self-surveillance

Trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk notes that trauma survivors often confuse “submission” with “safety” because it was the only strategy their nervous system had access to in childhood (Van der Kolk, 2014).

But submission is not connection.

---

Healing: Relearning Love Without Self-Abandonment

Healing involves slowly disentangling love from fear.

1. Reclaiming Needs

Healthy relationships want your preferences, emotions, and boundaries

2. Practicing Micro-Truths

Small honest statements (“I actually prefer __”) begin to retrain the nervous system.

3. Building Tolerance for Healthy Conflict

Disagreement isn’t danger, it’s communication.

4. Somatic and Trauma Work

Approaches like EMDR and parts work help resolve the fear attached to voicing needs.

5. Rebuilding Identity

Leaving high-demand religion often requires reconstructing a self that wasn’t allowed to exist before.

---

If You Recognize Yourself in This, You’re Not Alone

Fawning isn’t a flaw.

It’s a survival strategy that once kept you safe.

But you’re not in that environment anymore.

And you deserve to experience love that doesn’t require disappearing.

You deserve connection built on equality, not obedience, on authenticity, not approval, on presence, not performance.
Healing is not about becoming someone new.
It’s about recovering who you were before fear taught you to shrink.

---

Working With These Patterns In Therapy

If people pleasing in relationships has shaped how you show up with your partner, you are not imagining how exhausting that can be. Constantly monitoring someone else’s needs, shrinking your reactions, and avoiding honest conversations takes a real toll over time.

Therapy can be a space to understand where these patterns came from and how to begin changing them in ways that feel steady and realistic. Ashley works with individuals and men navigating people-pleasing, shame, and the impact of religious trauma on their adult relationships.

If you would like to schedule a session, you can book through the Inner Compass scheduling link here – Book A Session

If you would like to explore these patterns further first, you may also find this past blog helpful: Intuition vs. Nervous System Response in Religious Trauma: How to Tell The Difference.

---

References

• Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
• Gottman, J. & Gottman, J. (2015). 10 Principles for Doing Effective Couples Therapy.
• Herman, J. L. (2015). Trauma and Recovery.
• Kashdan, T., Barrios, V., Forsyth, J., & Steger, M. (2011). Experiential avoidance as a generalized psychological vulnerability. Journal of Anxiety Disorders.
• Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder.
• Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. (2016). Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change.
• Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score.
• Walker, P. (2013). Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving.