People pleasers aren’t born, they’re made. For many of us, it started as a safety strategy.Maybe we grew up in homes where keeping the peace meant avoiding conflict, or where being helpful, agreeable, perfect or “good” earned us love and approval. This instinct, known as the fawn response, is our nervous system’s way of protecting us from a threat, real or perceived. Whether there’s a lion in our path or a friend has sent a snippy text, we react by appeasing the source of danger, impressing it, and trying to be liked by it.

Over time, fawning can become our baseline. We smile when we’re hurting. We say yes when we mean no. We twist ourselves into shapes to make others comfortable. We overthink why they texted “k” instead of “okay!”. It’s a way to navigate systems that reward self-sacrific

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