Are You Mad at Me?: How to Stop Focusing on What Others Think and Start Living for You

“There are lots of books out there about people-pleasing and codependency, but what’s often missing is the true root of these behaviors, what precedes the need to be a people pleaser and abandon ourselves in the first place, and the context of why we do it. People-pleasing is the behavior we engage in when we fear that we’re disappointing someone, that we’re in trouble, that we feel unsafe in some way. It’s the behavior that falsely soothes the queasy feeling that we’ve done something wrong.”

Josephson distinguishes her approach by focusing on underlying fear rather than just surface behaviors. This connects to the takeaway Recognize Fawning as a Survival Response, Not a Character Flaw, emphasizing that people-pleasing isn’t a personality defect but a protective mechanism developed in response to feeling unsafe. Understanding this root cause allows for self-compassion rather than self-criticism when noticing people-pleasing patterns.

“With fawning, we have to abandon ourselves in order to make the appeasing possible. We learn that the other person’s comfort is more important than our own, that we can’t feel okay until the other person is okay. We learn that, in order for us to feel safe, we need to keep the peace, whatever it takes. And as a result, we’re disconnected from questions such as What do I need? What do I think? What do I want?”

This quote captures the core cost of fawning: The loss of connection to one’s authentic self. When someone spends years prioritizing others’ emotional states, they become strangers to their own preferences and desires. Someone recovering from fawning might notice they genuinely don’t know what restaurant they prefer or what activities they enjoy, having spent so long deferring to others’ choices as a way to maintain safety and approval.

“Your race, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexuality, class, cultural background, religious upbringing, and/or disability may feed into a fundamental need to fawn in order to live and survive within oppressive systems. Consider how the intersectionality of your various identities relates to your need to be seen as good, your fear of getting into trouble, your hypervigilance.”

Josephson acknowledges that fawning operates differently depending on one’s social position and access to safety. For marginalized individuals, people-pleasing isn’t always an outdated childhood pattern but sometimes a genuine survival strategy in systems that punish nonconformity. This context is crucial for understanding when healing means learning to set boundaries in safe spaces versus when fawning remains a necessary protective mechanism.

“Fawning, at its core, is what we learn to do to avoid being abandoned or rejected and to maximize feelings of love and safety. The irony is that, in an unconscious attempt to avoid abandonment, we end up abandoning ourselves.”

This paradox lies at the heart of the takeaway Recognize Fawning as a Survival Response, Not a Character Flaw. Children who fawn sacrifice their authentic selves to maintain connection with caregivers, but this strategy ultimately creates the very disconnection they fear by preventing genuine intimacy. The person becomes so focused on managing others’ perceptions that they lose touch with who they actually are, creating a different kind of abandonment—self-abandonment.

“If there’s one thing from this chapter that I want you to remember, it’s this: What feels familiar to the body is going to feel safe. What feels unfamiliar to the body is going to feel dangerous (even if it’s not).”

This principle explains why healing can feel threatening even when it’s beneficial. Someone accustomed to chaotic relationships might feel anxious in a stable partnership, or someone used to overworking might feel guilty when resting, simply because these healthier patterns are unfamiliar. Recognizing this dynamic helps people understand that discomfort during change doesn’t necessarily mean they’re doing something wrong—it might just mean they’re doing something new.

“Grief isn’t just about losing someone when they pass; it’s also about what you didn’t have. It’s wanting to be nurtured but not having a parent who can nurture you. It’s watching other families be with one another on holidays in a way you’ve only dreamed of. It’s wanting to call your parent just to talk but knowing that they won’t listen.”

This reframes grief to include absences of what was desired or needed but never received, validating the pain of unmet childhood needs. This connects directly to the advice to Practice Self-Validation Rather than Waiting for External Acknowledgment, as it recognizes that healing requires mourning the emotional attunement, safety, and acceptance one deserved but never received. Someone might grieve never having had a parent they could confide in, even if that parent is still alive and their relationship appears functional on the surface.

“Fawning keeps us from being vulnerable, honest. It lets people in on the surface but emotionally keeps people at a distance. Fawning pushes away authentic connection for the sake of short-term harmony. How close we can get to other people is a direct reflection of how close we are to ourselves.”

Josephson explains why fawning paradoxically prevents the very connection people-pleasers seek. When someone constantly performs to gain approval, they create relationships based on this performance rather than their authentic self, resulting in a lonely experience of being surrounded by people, yet feeling unknown. True intimacy requires the vulnerability that fawning specifically avoids, creating a cycle where people-pleasers remain isolated despite social engagement.

“I used to think that being mindful meant that I had to be a boring being without personality, whereas really, mindfulness leads us to being deeply and authentically connected to ourselves, to our internal world, and to the world around us. Being present doesn’t mean feeling good all the time. I repeat: Being present doesn’t always equal feeling good.”

This clarifies a common misconception about mindfulness practices in healing work. Being present means experiencing whatever arises—including discomfort, anger, or sadness—without immediately trying to fix or escape it. For someone recovering from fawning, this means learning to sit with the uncomfortable feeling of potentially disappointing someone rather than reflexively appeasing them, recognizing that presence allows for authentic response rather than conditioned reaction.

“When you notice yourself fawning in a situation in which you don’t need to be, ask yourself: What emotion am I trying to protect myself from? Usually, it’s an uncomfortable one.”

This question helps identify the underlying fear driving people-pleasing behavior in any given moment. Someone might realize they’re over-apologizing to avoid feeling guilty, or agreeing to plans they don’t want to avoid feeling selfish, or performing competence to avoid feeling inadequate. Naming the specific emotion being avoided creates space to address the actual feeling rather than engaging in the protective behavior.

“If there’s one emotion I want you to get to know most when healing the fawn response, it’s resentment. Resentment is what happens when we’ve ignored anger again and again, and so it builds up, festers, and gnaws at our bodies. Resentment is the magical little messenger that can support us in determining whether we’re fawning (resentment is present) or just genuinely being kind (there’s no resentment).”

This connects directly to the takeaway to Use Resentment as a Boundary-Setting Compass, framing resentment as valuable data rather than a character flaw. When someone notices themselves having imaginary arguments with a friend or feeling drained after helping a family member, that resentment signals that boundaries are needed. The distinction between genuine kindness and fawning becomes clear through this emotional check: Authentic generosity feels energizing or neutral, while fawning creates accumulating resentment.

“While genetic and hormonal factors certainly play a major role in autoimmune diseases, we must also consider the psychosocial and emotional factors and the toll that silencing both our needs and our emotions takes on the body. A 2015 study published in Frontiers in Immunology highlights that chronic stress and suppressed emotions, particularly anger, can contribute to immune system dysfunction and increase the risk of autoimmune disorders because of elevated levels of stress hormones. Not surprisingly, this stress-induced immune dysregulation is especially significant in women, and even more significant for women of color.”

Josephson connects chronic fawning to measurable physical health impacts, particularly for women of color who face compounded pressures to suppress their needs. This explains why someone might experience unexplained physical symptoms—digestive issues, chronic pain, fatigue—that improve once they begin setting boundaries and expressing emotions. The body keeps score of unprocessed stress and suppressed anger, manifesting them as physical ailments when emotions remain chronically unexpressed.

“When we focus on slowing down, we actually have a greater ability and a higher capacity to get things done, because our bodies feel safe enough to focus. We need to slow down to speed up. There’s simplicity in cutting out the noise of what you’re ‘supposed to do’ and focusing first on slowing down and listening for what you need.”

This counterintuitive principle challenges productivity-focused culture by suggesting that rest enables better functioning. For someone stuck in fawning patterns of constant overextension, this means recognizing that saying no to some commitments actually increases capacity for meaningful engagement with what remains. Slowing down allows the nervous system to exit survival mode, creating space for genuine presence and effectiveness rather than frantic, scattered energy.

“The things we tend to take personally aren’t things to shame ourselves for but are windows into our deepest wounds and fears. They provide a peek into some really rich information about a part of ourselves that’s wanting to be soothed and held.”

This reframes emotional triggers as opportunities for self-understanding rather than evidence of weakness. This connects to the takeaway to Redirect Energy from Managing Others’ Perceptions to Soothing Your Own Wounds, suggesting that when someone’s casual comment sends you spiraling, the intensity of your reaction points to an unhealed wound rather than objective truth about your worth. Instead of ruminating about what the person meant, the invitation is to explore what core fear their comment activated.

“The greatest result of realizing that nothing is personal is that it frees us from the belief that we’re unworthy of love because someone isn’t able to give it to us.”

This principle liberates people-pleasers from the exhausting task of earning universal approval. When someone understands that another person’s capacity to love, validate, or appreciate them reflects that person’s own limitations rather than one’s inherent lovability, they stop taking rejection as evidence of fundamental unworthiness.

“Running from conflict and hard conversations reinforces the belief that these are things we should be scared of. As we continue to show the scared, protective parts of ourselves that we can have an uncomfortable conversation and still be safe, conflict will start to feel safer.”

This passage explains how avoidance perpetuates fear while gradual exposure builds confidence. This supports the takeaway to Engage in Repair After Conflict Rather than Seeking Perfection, emphasizing that repeatedly facing small conflicts and surviving them intact teaches the nervous system that disagreement doesn’t equal abandonment. Someone might start by expressing a minor preference with a trusted friend, building evidence that honesty strengthens rather than destroys relationships.

“Receiving validation is having your feelings and experiences acknowledged and getting confirmation that what you’re feeling is legitimate. It’s integral to repair. Unlike looking for reassurance, which is to alleviate anxiety, the goal of seeking validation is to be heard, to feel understood and accepted, and to know that your emotions are recognized.”

Josephson distinguishes between reassurance-seeking (urgently asking others to extinguish anxiety) and validation (having feelings acknowledged and understood). Reassurance creates dependency cycles where someone constantly needs others to confirm they’re not in trouble, while validation builds genuine connection through mutual understanding. In practice, seeking validation sounds like sharing how you felt during a conflict, while reassurance-seeking sounds like repeatedly asking if someone is mad at you.

“True intimacy means never having to wonder if someone is mad at you, because the standard for the relationship is honesty.”

This vision of healthy relationships contrasts sharply with the hypervigilant monitoring that is characteristic of fawning. In genuinely intimate relationships, both people communicate directly about their feelings rather than leaving the other to anxiously interpret signals.

“Boundaries are bridges, not walls, and they create space for sustainable connections to thrive. Boundaries aren’t attempts to change the other person but ways to feel rooted in yourself while being in relationship to others.”

This passage reframes boundaries as connection-enabling rather than connection-threatening, directly supporting the takeaway to Use Resentment as a Boundary-Setting Compass. Boundaries focus on one’s own actions and needs rather than attempting to control the other person’s behavior.

“When we fawn but call it empathy, it becomes a fast track to resenting any and all relationships that ask something of us. Empathy without boundaries can easily become self-betrayal.”

Josephson distinguishes genuine empathy from fawning disguised as compassion. True empathy involves feeling with someone while maintaining one’s own emotional center, whereas fawning abandons one’s needs entirely to absorb another’s distress.

“The more you heal, the less external validation you’ll seek, because you’ll no longer need others to tell you that your existence is good enough: you’ll feel it yourself.”

This describes the ultimate outcome of healing work: Internalized self-worth that doesn’t require constant external confirmation. This insight embodies the takeaway to Practice Self-Validation Rather than Waiting for External Acknowledgment, in which someone gradually shifts from compulsively checking others’ reactions to feeling grounded in their inherent value. Progress looks like being able to make decisions without polling everyone, or handling criticism without spiraling into self-doubt.

“With fawning, we unconsciously believe in two extremes: either we need to abandon ourselves to feel at home in the world or we need to abandon the world to feel at home within ourselves.”

This false dichotomy explains why some people-pleasers swing into hyper-independence—pushing everyone away rather than risking vulnerability. Josephson challenges both extremes, suggesting that healing means developing the capacity to remain connected to oneself while also maintaining genuine relationships. Someone recovering from fawning learns they don’t have to choose between authenticity and connection; they can have both by being selectively vulnerable with safe people.

“Practice not asking everyone for their opinion when making decisions. Practice asking, What do I think of this? before asking someone else what they think. Practice taking a moment to access the stillness within you before immediately seeking reassurance from someone else.”

This practical guidance supports the takeaway to Distinguish Between Anxiety and Intuition to Reclaim Your Inner Voice. The instruction to pause before seeking external input rebuilds trust in one’s own judgment, which chronic fawning erodes.

“How can we speak up for the needs of others when we can’t speak up for our own? How can we advocate for someone else if we can’t advocate for ourselves? How can we support someone else’s liberation if we can’t support our own? Any work we do to liberate ourselves is also for others.”

Josephson frames personal healing as inherently collective, arguing that individual transformation creates ripples that benefit broader communities. This challenges the false dichotomy between self-care and social justice, suggesting that learning to honor one’s own needs actually increases capacity for authentic advocacy. For example, someone might realize that their inability to set boundaries at work mirrors their difficulty speaking up about injustice, and that practicing self-advocacy builds skills transferable to collective action.