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Ep. 489 Why Women Lose Their Voice – The Shocking Link Between Perimenopause & People-Pleasing with Meg Josephson

  • Team Cynthia
  • 5 days ago
  • 34 min read

Updated: 2 days ago


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I am honored to connect with Meg Josephson today. She is a psychotherapist holding a Master of Social Work degree from Columbia University, with a concentration in clinical practice. She is also a meditation teacher. 


In our conversation, we discuss Meg's new book, Are You Mad at Me?, exploring fawning as a survival mechanism and why women are more likely to be conditioned into people-pleasing. We unpack the archetypes she refers to in her book, examining complex PTSD, and why fawners need to redefine their boundaries and acknowledge their grief and anger. Our discussion also touches on finding your voice during perimenopause and menopause, and why awareness is essential for healing.


This conversation with Meg Josephson is truly invaluable, and her book is a vital resource for those who have experienced complex trauma in childhood or spent their lives people-pleasing and fawning.


IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • What fawning is, and why it becomes problematic if we keep on doing it when we are safe

  • Why women and those in minority groups are more susceptible to fawning experiences 

  • The six archetypes of people pleasers that Meg describes in her book

  • Finding a voice to describe the experiences you grew up with

  • Rewiring your beliefs to allow the weaknesses of your parents to become your strengths

  • Why grief and anger are so significant for fawners

  • Relating to your emotions rather than trying to erase them

  • Why is it so hard for fawners to maintain their boundaries?

  • How perimenopause and menopause provide an opportunity for women to think more introspectively

  • How healing begins with awareness

  • Understanding that we cannot control the perceptions of others

“Trauma is not necessarily about one big event. It can be an accumulation of many micro-moments.”


– Meg Josephson

Connect with Cynthia Thurlow  


Connect with Meg Josephson


Transcript:

.Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness Podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower, and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.


[00:00:29] Today, I had the honor of connecting with Meg Josephson. She is a psychotherapist who holds a Master of Social Work from Columbia University with a concentration in clinical practice. She's also a meditation teacher. 


[00:00:44] Today, we dove into her new book, Are You Mad at Me? Discussing the significance of fawning, especially as a survival mechanism, why women are more likely to be conditioned to people pleasing? Specific archetypes that she discusses in her new book, as well as complex PTSD, why the acknowledgement of grief and anger are so important for fawners? The importance of redefining boundaries, the impact of perimenopause and menopause, and finding our voice and last but not least, awareness and healing. 


[00:01:14] This is one of those books that I think for so many of us that have experienced complex trauma as children and have been people pleasers or have been fawning throughout most of our young adulthood into middle adulthood, this will be an invaluable resource, a really important and vital conversation with Meg, one that I know you will enjoy listening to and reading her book. 


[00:01:40] Meg, such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Loved your book. I know it'll be relevant to many, many people in my community.


Meg Josephson: [00:01:48] Thank you. Thank you for having me.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:50] Absolutely. We were talking before we started recording about how many of us were fawners or fawned throughout our childhood and young adulthood. Let's initiate the conversation by talking about what exactly is fawning?


Meg Josephson: [00:02:03] Yeah.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:02:05] And helping listeners understand it's part of this trauma response. Some people behave very differently, but those of us that were fawners to navigate the environment in which we grew up in-


Meg Josephson: [00:02:16] Absolutely. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:02:17] -still to this day, maybe until you get to the stage of life I'm in, where hormonally you are, “I don't want to be a people pleaser anymore.”


[laughter]


Meg Josephson: [00:02:24] Yes. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:02:25] Let's talk about fawning.


Meg Josephson: [00:02:27] Well, the book is called Are You Mad at Me? because I view that question as a manifestation of fawning when we've been stuck in the fawn response. This question really speaks to a feeling that a lot of us have. This is a question I said to my first therapist when I was 20 years old, sitting in her office, “Why do I always think people are mad at me?” And I grew up in a home that was quite volatile. My dad struggled with addiction and there was a lot going on. 


[00:02:55] And worrying, “Are you mad at me? Is he mad at me?" was so protective. When I left home, when I was moving out on my own, I realized that hypervigilance, worrying, managing people's moods, overthinking things, overextending myself, making sure people are happy with me and liked me, that was still happening, just in a different way. 


[00:03:16] I was at work and my boss would say, "Can we chat?" and I would be like, "Oh, I'm getting fired. Yep, I'm in trouble." Or a friend would not respond to me or they'd put a period and I would think they hated me because that same hypervigilance was in my body. It was just manifesting in a different way. 


[00:03:33] So, the fawn response is-- We have four threat responses in our body, fight or flight, which I think a lot of us are familiar with, freeze and the fourth one is fawn. And it's a pretty underrecognized threat response, in part because it's quite new. It was just coined in 2013 by the psychologist, Pete Walker. The fawn response is about appeasing the threat. What's important to understand is the threat can be real or perceived. So, it can be a boss being a little cold or standoffish, or a partner or friend being a little cold and your immediate instinct is to compliment them or your immediate instinct is to think, "Huh oh oh, they're mad at me. How do I fix this? How do I make sure that we're okay? I can't feel okay until I know you're okay." And so, the fawn response is about appeasing that threat, satisfying it, impressing it, trying to be liked by it.


[00:04:26] And it really says, "My safety comes from pleasing you, and I can't be regulated until I know you're regulated." The fawn response is not a bad thing. It's an unconscious, brilliant protective mechanism that has kept us safe and will keep us safe, we need it. But when we're doing it all the time, when we're doing it when we are actually safe, that's when it leads to burnout. It's exhausting to do. Exhaustion, chronic people pleasing, overextending ourselves, overthinking, being hypervigilant and we're only supposed to be in it for a few minutes at a time because it's a threat response.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:05:04] Yeah. It's so interesting because I very transparently didn't even understand the concept as a clinician until a few years ago. It's almost like the more I unpack about my childhood, the more I understand the nuances. And I think that-- You say it best in the book, “We abandon ourselves in order to make appeasing possible.” Yet how many of us end up in service industries- 


Meg Josephson: [00:05:30] Yeah. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:05:31]-whether it's teaching, whether it’s being a psychologist, whether it’s working in healthcare, how many of us are in service to others because so much of our development has been attuned to figuring out is everyone else-- What's the litmus test in the room?


Meg Josephson: [00:05:47] Yeah.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:05:47] And, you know, the irony is, I would be the first person to say, like, I'm so grateful that I'm an incredibly empathetic person, but it has probably taken me until middle age to find my voice as a human being and care a whole lot less. I think certainly when I was in my 20s and 30s, it was all about like whether I was working in the ER. As a nurse practitioner, I spent 16 years working in clinical cardiology, a very volatile environment with many volatile personalities. And the irony is I was so well liked by the physicians I worked with and I think it has a lot to do with. I would just-- like everything would be crumbling and I would be the one that was fawning like crazy to make sure everyone was happy. And now I retrospectively look back and I'm like, that was exhausting. 


Meg Josephson: [00:06:36] Oh no. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:06:37] 100% full appreciation for how emotionally and spiritually, psychologically exhausting that was. Do you find that a lot of your-- your patients when they come to you, they're just at a point where they're like, “I can't do this anymore. It no longer serves me.” 


Meg Josephson: [00:06:52] Yes. And you're speaking to something really important, which is sometimes we need to. With we fawning-- The fawn response is a survival mechanism, and we need to survive, whether it's in a toxic or abusive environment, whether it's to survive in oppressive capitalistic systems that we're trying to survive in. We sometimes need to. And it's not about turning that off, but rather becoming aware of it so that we can recognize when we're fawning, when we don't need to be. 


[00:07:24] And I think a lot of people, by the time they're talking about it in therapy-- Well, actually, I think it's maybe a little split. I think some people are doing it and they don't realize it. So, putting language to it is the step that they're in. And then other people might be aware of it, and they're at a point of such burnout and such exhaustion and such disconnection from the self, because the fawn response, like I say in the book, requires us to abandon ourselves. And this is because we're so hypervigilant of how people are perceiving us. Are they mad at me? Do they like me? We're so hypervigilant of what's happening externally, where we don't have the opportunity to look in and think, “What do I need? What am I feeling right now? What do I think of this?” And we're disconnected from those questions. And so, I think when we're doing this for a lifetime, people might end up in therapy. 


[00:08:17] And what I definitely talk about in the book, as well as my experience, is “Who the hell am I? Who am I when I'm not people pleasing?” And you're speaking to an important point, that it works and that this is what keeps-- I think this is why it's the most common yet least recognized trauma response, is because it creates and gives us external validation. And it becomes this external validation cycle of we feel a threat, we fawn, we get external validation for it, and we crave more of that because external validation, it feels good. It feels good to be liked, it feels good to be seen as easy and perfect and the question just becomes, at what cost? 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:08:54] Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It's funny, I think for many years I kept saying “I'm a reformed people pleaser,” but what I really was speaking to is I'm a continuously trying to reform fawner. 


Meg Josephson: [00:09:05] Yes. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:09:06] Because that has been such a large part of my personality. And so, are women more susceptible to these fawning experiences than men? I'm curious to know, like, what has been your clinical experience and what does the research suggest? 


Meg Josephson: [00:09:19] Absolutely. Well, I tend to first look at it through a psychodynamic lens of what happened in your childhood that created this belief that in order for me to be loved, I need to be perfect. In order for me to be loved, I need to be good and helpful. And there are a lot of ways in which that can manifest if you grew up in a home where it was tense or volatile, or you had a critical caregiver or a caregiver that was emotionally neglectful. Across the board, you learn, and I need to do more. I need to be always trying harder. So, there's certainly that learned element. 


[00:09:50] There's such a socialized, a socialization element to this behavior as well where speaking of external validation, women are-- We receive negative feedback when we are difficult. We receive validation when we're easy, helpful, “Oh, you're such a good girl.” And even from early days we hear that. And so, I certainly think there's a socialized element of it's expected. We receive validation through it. And also, it's interesting to expand it out and look into other groups of people as well of, if you're a person of color. 


[00:10:25] I read about this, they quoted this writer who wrote about the fawn response for people of color of being sort of the model minority and being this “Token good black person or good Asian person,” so that you can be approved of and accepted into a white dominant majority society. And I read about a client who was a closeted gay man growing up and growing up in a really strictly religious home and community and needing to change himself to keep the peace. 


[00:10:56] If you're neurodivergent, masking yourself in social settings to fit in, like there's so many ways that it manifests based on your different identities. And so, I invite listeners to reflect like which identities have required me to be so hyper attuned to external approval and change myself and more of myself and try harder in order to feel safe. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:11:17] Yeah, I think it's just so profound because, you know, I reflect back on a conversation I had with Gabor Maté, and he was saying, “Cynthia, your experience in childhood is completely different than the experience your brother had.” 


Meg Josephson: [00:11:30] Yes. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:11:31] And how you can have the same parents, the same environment and two children or an entire group of children living under that roof may have a completely different experience. Now I'll give you an example. My brother and I are four and a half years apart. I'm four and a half years older. And so, my parents got divorced when I was seven. My brother was much, much younger. So, my brother, in many ways, like if I were to ask him, “Do you remember what things were like when mom and dad first got divorced?” He doesn't remember because he was so little. And so, I think my brother had a very different relationship with my father and my mother than I did. As a true byproduct of life experiences, birth order, gender, all these things that have a--


[00:12:12] And my brother, to his credit, is wonderful, but he's the jokester. Everything is funny. And that's his way of adapting to the environment that we grew up in. Like, I'm the serious one. This is what we heard from our parents, “You're the serious one. He's the funny one.” And it was like that is borne out of our own life experiences, our perception. 


Meg Josephson: [00:12:31] Absolutely. And how brilliant that each of you found your own ways to adapt. And in the book, I have six different sort of archetypes of people pleasers. One of them being the performer, which finds safety through being the jokester and relentless positivity and just keeping things upbeat. And we have the peacekeeper and the caretaker and the perfectionist. Lone wolf and chameleon are the other ones. So, it is a different experience because we each have our own bodies and nervous systems. 


[00:13:01] And actually, you're speaking to a really important point, which is there's a misconception about trauma. Trauma isn't necessarily about the event. And it doesn't have to be this one big event. It can be an accumulation of many micro moments of not feeling seen, not feeling safe, not feeling heard. And when we don't have that sense of safety to return to, that is called complex trauma. But trauma is not about the event. It's about how we perceive the event, how we process, how our body processes the event. And that's two siblings can have totally different experiences because their nervous system and their brains and bodies are processing different things and taking in different things. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:13:40] Yeah, I think you bring up such a good point. And you know, for people that are listening, obviously we've got a wide listenership. And I was one of those people, like where I trained Inner City Baltimore, and I saw a lot of ‘big T’ trauma. And 25 years ago, we weren't talking about ‘little t’ trauma, so I was like, you know, I had some quirky stuff happening growing up, but I did pretty well for myself, so you minimize. How many of us minimize our experiences because we're like, “I'm dealing with people that are dealing with horrific things.” 


Meg Josephson: [00:14:10] Yes 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:14:11] You know some of my patients. And I think we tend to minimize the kind of chronic, unrelenting little micro traumas day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month that so many of us experienced. And it's also not-- I think now talking about trauma is much more accepted. The research around trauma or experts like yourself and others that are helping people find a voice to describe what it is that they grew up within or experienced. And I think it's giving people permission to start talking about things that “I was told don't talk about outside this home- 


Meg Josephson: [00:14:45] Absolutely.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:14:46] -you don't talk about to anybody. This is private, this is family stuff.” Do you find that a lot of your patients have been conditioned not to talk about their stuff? 


Meg Josephson: Yes, absolutely. And I think you're absolutely right that we now have more language for it. It's hard to talk about things when we don't have language for it. So that is certainly a generational element for sure. For client, I think for a lot of people that are drawn and resonate with this question of “Are you mad at me?” Probably grew up in homes where conflict was brushed under the rug. It was dealt with in really big extremes, whether it was screaming, yelling or silent treatment and it wasn't acknowledged after the fact. 


[00:15:27] Parents are going to yell. Conflict is going to happen. But for there to be repair, that's the healing for a parent to say, “Hey, honey, I yelled at you, and I'm not proud of that and I'm really sorry and that wasn't your fault. And I want you to know that I'm really working on regulating my emotions.” Who was told that, who heard that growing up? Well, it couldn't be me. [Laughter]


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:15:47] Not in my house 


Meg Josephson: [00:15:49] My dad had quite the temper and after a rage fit that you would have, I'd tiptoe downstairs and see if he was in a good mood. And oftentimes it was “So what should we do for dinner?” And we just never talk about it again, but it would happen so frequently. And to a child, that's so confusing because we cope with self-blame. When a parent is not repairing or acknowledging something after the fact, the child makes sense of it by believing they caused it to happen. So, they'll go from “I did something bad to make dad upset.” And over time that forms “I am bad,” which creates shame and feeling like you're secretly a bad person and things like that. 


[00:16:29] So, to answer your question, yes, many people who are drawn to this question of “Are you mad at me?” They don't know how to deal with conflict. They fear that if I'm in conflict with someone, the relationship is over, there's no going back, so I can't be in conflict with anyone or else I'll be abandoned. Instead, we overthink, we ruminate, we deal with it internally and we blame ourselves because our parents weren’t taught how to handle conflict. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:16:59] Yeah, my parents got divorced when I was seven, so my dad lived in another state and I grew up with my mom. I didn’t realize until I went off to college that the silent treatment was not normal. That’s absolutely not normal. That explosiveness is not per se normal. I’m like the antithesis. Jokingly people will say to me like I’m always calm, cool and collected and I said that’s the only way my autonomic nervous system is happy. Can I get upset? Absolutely, but to me I’m more about, if I get upset about something, let’s talk about it, let’s make sure everyone’s okay and let’s move forward, but I think in many ways, for a very long time I was so fearful of conflict in my interpersonal relationships, either in romantic partnerships or even in friendships because that whole fear of abandonment- 


Meg Josephson: [00:17:50] Yeah. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:17:51] -that shame issue would bubble up for me and I can understand it better now than I did then. But I think for many individuals, if you grew up in an emotionally well-regulated household, I get the sense that that is not the norm per se. I think that-- And certainly you would know better than I would. When I talk to friends, I feel like my generation, I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, most of our parents’ friends or friends’ parents were like Krakatoa. That’s what I used to call it, Krakatoa. There’d be this explosive yelling, screaming, throwing things, people getting beaten until they’re teenagers or later and that was the norm. Whereas, now it seems like we’re doing a better job talking about these things, educating people, making them more aware of their behaviors and how maladaptive they are.

Meg Josephson: [00:18:41] Absolutely. I like to believe that our parents' weaknesses become the child's strength in that we’re each just choosing something to break ideally and we’re not going to be perfect. That would be damaging to be perfect because then we probably wouldn’t show any challenging emotions. 


[00:18:59] We’re not expecting ourselves to be perfect in any of our relationships, but rather to practice repair, practice having a conversation and understanding each other, knowing that we won’t always see eye to eye. And I actually think rewiring our belief that a little bit of friction in a healthy relationship is such a positive thing. I’m not talking about toxic cycles of conflict, but a little bit of friction occasionally, all that means is there’s enough safety and space in the relationship for differing opinions to exist and that means both people can truly be themselves and that to me is the ultimate healing, that we can be truly connected to ourselves in an authentic way, so, that’s a beautiful thing.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:19:45] Yeah, absolutely. I think having a safe space where someone’s going to love you regardless of if you’ve had a bad day, and maybe you jumped to a conclusion, or maybe you were just irritable, which sometimes happens even to the best of us. 


Meg Josephson: [00:19:57] Of course. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:19:58] Talk to me about why grief and anger are so important for the fawners. For those of us who tend to be fawners or reform fawners or ongoingly trying to be reformed fawners, why is that acknowledgement so important?


Meg Josephson: [00:20:14] I have a whole chapter on it because it’s that important. It deserves 30, 40 pages, brief. Anger is part of the grieving process for sure. Let’s start with anger, then I’ll move to grief. And for many of us, as we talked about, we witnessed anger in dysregulated ways. Our caregivers probably didn’t know how to handle it within themselves, so they handled it in yelling, silent treatment, however it may look. But when we felt anger as children, a lot of us were told go to your room, you’re being dramatic, you’re overreacting-


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:20:47] Too sensitive. 


Meg Josephson: [00:20:48] -too sensitive. And so, we learn, okay, what does a child care about safety and love. We learn “Let me shut this off, let me shove this down and be good and be easy and be perfect to keep the peace.” The thing is anger doesn’t go anywhere. It just goes in our bodies, which we can certainly talk about and manifest in different ways. 


[00:21:09] To acknowledge anger as a messenger, as a piece of information that is simply telling us something here isn’t right. Something is unjust, a need of mine isn’t getting met. That’s what anger is telling us. And so, to change our relationship to anger, not to get rid of it, but to change our relationship to it, is so important for fawners because we’re saying to that younger part of ourselves, “You’re allowed to feel this, you’re allowed to be angry.” 


[00:21:37] Grief is part of this and is a really important part of this. What I think a lot of us might be like, “Okay, how do I jump to compassion? How do I jump to acceptance?” Grief and anger-- Well, first of all, I think they come in waves forever, they’re emotions, they come and go. But I think there’s a period of grief and anger that’s so necessary to process. Grief isn’t just about losing someone when they pass. It’s also grieving what you didn’t have. It’s grieving a parental relationship that you didn’t have and may never have. It’s longing. It’s like seeing another mother-daughter relationship, another parental relationship and wishing you could have that with your parent. 


[00:22:17] I write and I remember this feeling so viscerally of being home at Christmas and just feeling like “While in my home, I want to go home.” I just didn’t. I remember saying to my now husband when we just started dating 10 years ago, I said, “I feel like I’m a family-oriented person, I just don’t have the family to do that with.” It’s a craving, it’s a longing, it’s a gap for nurturing and connection that you don’t have but want. Acknowledging that and grieving the hope that it could change if only you try harder, if only you do more if you’re more perfect, than it’ll change, that is so important in the fawner’s healing process because that is fawning, “If I just try harder, then I’ll be loved.” And so, to grieve that hope that it could change is so hard and so important.


Cynthia Thurlow [00:23:10]: I think for myself, if I reflect very transparently, I have had-- Because I have been doing therapy to some degree for 30 years. I always jokingly say, “I’ll be doing therapy until I die,” because I feel like-- just when I think I’m going to peel back another layer and I’m going to be at that point where I’m like “Nope. I’ve got more work to do.” But I think as I reflect back on my childhood, and I always say “God didn’t give me the parents I wanted. I got the parents I needed to break the cycle.” 


[00:23:38] And so, I remember when I got married and we chose to start trying to conceive and when I got pregnant with my older son, I was terrified that-- I was like “Have I done enough work to make sure this little guy is going to grow up totally differently?” And the beautiful thing is my son, who will be 20 in August which is like hard to believe because it goes by way too fast. We were on vacation recently and he looked at me and said, “Mom, stop making excuses for your parents.” He said, “You have shitty parents,” but he’s like “You know what? You have not been a shitty mom, like you broke the cycle.” It was so validating to hear. Like I didn’t need him to say that but it meant so much to hear that, because my greatest fear was have I learned enough not to have my children grow up in that same environment?


[00:24:28] Obviously, I married a great man. There was no way that he would have allow that to be the case, but when we look at our children now, my husband, who grew up very differently that I did will say like, “Our kids have had a great childhood.” And I think for anyone listening that had the same concerns I certainly had and this may be the first time I say this out loud publicly, that was my greatest concern was that I would recreate what I grew up in and I refused, which is why in my 20s I was like “I may never get married, I may never be a parent,” because I was so-- Like I knew enough to know that I didn’t want to recreate that. I didn’t want someone else to grow up like that. So, I think just even acknowledging-- And it your right, the grief and anger come and goes. My dad passed away last year and even though we were in-- It wasn’t in a good place with our relationship, every once in a while, something will come up for me and I’m like-


Meg Josephson: [00:25:21] Oh yeah. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:25:22] -“All right I have to talk about this in therapy.” I’m like it’s like a wave. You know the wave comes in and you’re like “Okay, I’m [crosstalk] also waiting.” The wave goes out and you’re like, “Oh, maybe I’m not good today.”


Meg Josephson: [00:25:30] Yes. And in the same way happiness comes in waves because we naturally cling to pleasurable emotions and we naturally have aversion to uncomfortable ones. We have this false expectation or fantasy that happiness will last forever and we’ll never feel anger or grief again, but they’re all just these neutral emotions that are coming in and out. So, thank you for sharing that. It’s such a human concern because even the concern itself is proof of your healing. Even at that age and at that stage of your life to have concern about another person that’s such a beautiful testament to your healing journey.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:26:14] Yeah, I think it's one of the things that I reflect on a lot, especially now. And as I say again, because I'm middle-aged I have the sandwich generation I have, you know parents that have gotten older and kids that are fairly independent right now as teenagers. And I feel fortunate because I think a lot of individuals, maybe if they haven't acknowledged that they have work they need to do, or maybe they're not aware of their maladaptive patterns, I just think it makes things so much more challenging, but then again, I would reflect on what a guest said one time is, “There are people out there that are just completely unaware,” and he’s like whether you call it, they’re cognitively not intact or they’re just dumb or they go through life just blissfully unaware of what’s going on, and I said, “I just think that this growing awareness as you, yourself are chronologically getting older, you’re like, ‘When I reflect back on my life, do I want to be proud about the work that I have done personally, professionally?’” But I find it fascinating how the woven-ness of our experiences as children and young adults continues to kind of evolve throughout our lifetime. It’s not like you hit 28 and you’re like a grown up and then everything kind of gets slid to the side, I think it’s always there, are we willing to acknowledge our experiences? Meg Josephson: [00:27:32] Absolutely. And knowing that different waves of emotions are going to arise, I think it's really just how we're relating to those emotions versus trying to erase them or erasing anger or shame. It's, “How can I actually just greet this emotion a little differently today and a little more compassionately?” But you're speaking to something and you said this a little earlier and I see this a lot within my private practice of the hurdle with starting this processing work, which is the invalidation of our experiences, "But I turned out--"


[00:28:06] And I remember, this was my narrative too, "I turned out fine. It wasn't that bad,” and there were nice moments, so maybe it wasn't that bad and people had it worse. I think that is so protective because if we don’t have to acknowledge our experiences, we don’t have to feel the pain that goes along with those experiences.


[00:28:26] And I know for me, and for so many protecting-- As children, we have this sort of fantasy of who we want our parents to be. And it feels a little scary to look at our experiences and process what happened, because it kind of pops that fantasy a little bit. But it’s also about holding some nuance where there can--


[00:28:48] I grew up in a home where there was addiction and there was a lot going on. And there were also a lot of loving moments. My dad had a lot of rage, but we also went to Blockbuster and picked out a movie. We sang the Dreamgirls soundtrack in the car. We had moments mixed in with a lot of the chaos. And so, there can be both. You don’t need to decide was it good or was it bad? It can just be everything. And the point of this work is not to stay stuck in the stories of “This happened to me because my parents did this.” The point is to acknowledge it. Objectively, understand its impact, so that we can move forward, so that we can live a life that’s more spacious. But in order to do that, I believe we first need to acknowledge what’s bubbling beneath the surface.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:29:42] Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think probably over the past two years, we've explored these kinds of topics in greater depth and detail because I feel like so much of-- When I define success, primarily I say that from the perspective of having a happy, healthy marriage and happy, healthy kids, and then everything else is secondary to that. But I feel like it's an evolution for each one of us. And for some of my girlfriends, they've been doing therapy right along with me and intermittently throughout their 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond. And then I have other friends that that are like-- It’s not until their kids are going off to college and they're like, “Wow, okay, I'm in a really unhappy, toxic marriage and I need to make some changes,” that they start to kind of unwind things that are ongoing. So, there's no right or wrong. I 100% agree with you. I think for each one of us, it's--We may have-- all have differing goals, we may all have differing journeys and it's not that one way of dealing with things is right or wrong. I think that for each one of us, we have to decide for ourselves how much we want to do?

[00:30:44] I want to pivot in there's a really eloquent quote in the book that, for me, typifies-- For many of us that have grown up in situations like both you and I have, you mentioned “The family dynamic revolves around keeping the most dysregulated and most dysfunctional person happy.” And when I read that, I stopped. I read it to my husband, I read it to my 19-year-old, and we were all in agreement. We're like, “Oh my gosh, this is so accurate.” And I think I reflected on a wider level. For everyone listening, you probably have someone in your life that you feel like you kind of tiptoe around them. We call it poking the bear in my house. Let's not poke the bear. We don't want to poke the bear. Let's kind of dance around making sure that person is totally happy because every decision we make about what restaurant we go to? If we take a vacation? Is all made around making this person happy because no one wants to poke the bear. Talk to me about this. 


Meg Josephson: [00:31:38] I mean, it's so protective and needed. And this is where it's so important. The fawn response comes in of being the peacekeeper, the caretaker, or the perfectionist, however, it's showing up for you, whatever pattern has been helpful for you. When there's a person in your intimate life that has big emotions, they don't know how to regulate, they naturally center themselves in any room, in any space they enter into.


[00:32:07] I mean, via hypervigilance or being a sensitive person, whatever it is, you can feel it. You can feel the energy shift in the room when that happens or when it's about to happen. And so, the fawn response it's two elements, I think it's the hypervigilance. It's being hyper aware of “Are they happy? Do they like the restaurant we just chose? Will they be too hot if we go to this vacation spot? We need to go somewhere-- The waiter messed up their order, we need to fix this before they notice.” Just so hyper attuned. It is exhausting. 


[00:32:39] And so our body kicks into “Yeah, what can I do? What can I do to make sure that they're happy?” And we can only do it for so long. Rather, that's-- I don't mean to say that, but how do I want to say that? It's exhausting.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:32:53] It is very exhausting. We made a decision, the four of us, so my boys, my husband, and I, we had an opportunity to do a big family, extended family vacation a couple years ago. And the thought of being around that super toxic person it was like, “I can't spend two weeks with that person. I just can't.” 


Meg Josephson: [00:33:11] Yeah. Yeah. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:33:12] It wouldn't be emotionally healthy for me because I'll bear the brunt of it and so we made a decision. And I think for many of us, it's perhaps creating boundaries around that person, like I will still see this person. However, we have to create boundaries. And maybe that's the time to start talking about some of the things that I'm sure in the work that you do with your patients is, how do they navigate creating boundaries? Because I think so much of what I struggled with for so many years, and it wasn't that I was toxic, no boundaries, but specific people, I just really didn’t want to disappoint them. Therefore, I put up with essentially unacceptable behavior in an effort to continue to have a relationship with them.


Meg Josephson: [00:33:55] Right. I'm adjusting my seat because my butt's falling asleep. [Laughter] I think the reason why boundaries are so hard for fawners is because there's not a distinction between our inner and outer world. We're so hyper attuned to what's happening externally. So, there's no boundary because it's all the same thing. If you're good, I'm good. And that's the top priority.


[00:34:15] I am really interested in the conversation of redefining what boundaries are which is, for relationships that we have in our lives, it's saying to the other person, “This is how I can be in relationship to you.” And so, for your example for this family member that you knew in your body that two weeks would not end well. You knew that it would not be the compassionate thing to do. Because maybe you would lose your shit a little bit, you would be snappy or you would be reactive. [crosstalk] You'd be triggered. It wouldn't be the compassionate thing to do to push through that gut feeling. So, if you were to say, “You know what? The five-day mark is when I really start to feel the itch to go home,” to know that about yourself and to say, “This is going to be a five-day trip because that will allow it to be what we want it to be,” that is such a compassionate thing to do because you're telling the other person, “I want to see you and this is how I can, in a way that will be good for both of us.”


[00:35:22] And so, what's so important about beginning the boundary-setting process, we can't set a boundary until we know what we need. And because the fawn response disconnects us from questions like “What do I want? What do I need? What do I prefer?” Because we're so hyper attuned to what other people want and need and prefer to look inward and first ask ourselves, “What is the need here that is trying to be met,” that is such an important and necessary step one. 


[00:35:49] And to then communicate that, to put that into action. But understanding that boundaries are for the relationships that we want in our lives, they are an opening into understanding each other's needs. Because I think for many fawners, we feel the need to be perfect. We feel the need to push through and perform in our relationships and only show people the best parts of ourselves. 


[00:36:12] To set a boundary with someone, to tell someone what we need, is such a form of emotional intimacy because we're saying, “I'm not perfect, I’m not perfectly regulated all the time. I can only do five days here and then I need to go home.” And of course, I want to say, for relationships that are abusive and harsher boundaries are necessary. And so, I'm speaking here about relationships that we have in our lives that we want to maintain and whether it's out of necessity or whether it's out of desire. That's how I think of boundaries.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:36:47] Yeah, I think boundaries are underrated in many ways. I think that maybe we're talking more about them. But it's interesting, I have a friend who's a clinical psychologist, and I've known her almost seven years. And she has said to me, “I've just kind of watched your desire to be very clear about where your boundaries fall.” She's like, “you've gotten clearer and clearer the longer I've known you.” And I don't know if it's in alignment with the whole going into menopause and physiologically what's changing about hormones in our bodies and that loss of estrogen. Even with HRT, that's a people-pleasing hormone in and of itself. 


Meg Josephson: [00:37:25] Yes. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:37:26] It's a bonding hormone. It's a hormone-- it all about connection. And so, I think for many women, certainly the women that I talk to, they feel like maybe they find their voice in middle age. Maybe they struggled to find it when they were younger. But now they're a little older, they have a little more ability to be introspective, to think about what they want. Maybe their responsibilities to children and spouses are lessened and so they have a little bit more ability. 


[00:37:54] I was saying to someone the other day, the first five years I was a parent, and my boys are two years apart, I don't think I read for pleasure for five years of my life and I'm a big reader. And it has everything to do with the fact that there are times in our lives where we appropriately are focused externally on the people, externally in our lives. And I think perimenopause and menopause gives women an opportunity to think more introspectively. And I'm curious if that has been what you have seen with your own patients?


Meg Josephson: [00:38:23] That is fascinating. That is so, so fascinating. And certainly-- yes, I think there is one million percent of hormonal element. I think there's-- I wonder if it's also-- There's an element of just, “I'm too tired.” I'm too tired to people-please now.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:38:40] There’s that too. 


Meg Josephson: [00:38:41] I've been doing this for 40, 50, 60, 70 years and I can't do it. But you're speaking to something really, really important, which is based on the season of life we're in, there will be different demands. My mom has early-onset Alzheimer's. She started showing symptoms when I was 19. She was 59. She's now 70 and at the end of her life. I would drop everything when something would happen. That was a necessary time in my life. So the crisis will test our boundaries. This isn't healing the fawn response to say we're saying, “okay, screw everyone, we're neglecting our responsibilities.” It's rather saying, “when am I abandoning myself when I don't need to be? When am I abandoning myself in situations where there's an option to not?” And that's, to me, where the work is.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:39:39] Yeah, it's so interesting. I think that as we navigate different stages in our lives, we need different things. And this is where I really see a lot of women finding their voices for a variety of different reasons. Maybe it's just the right time for them. Maybe they're finally able to have the bandwidth to think about someone other than themselves. How do you go about teaching your patients? How do you help them address trauma? Fawning? You have an acronym in the book called “Nicer.” How do you help them understand and appreciate how to kind of find themselves through this process?


Meg Josephson: [00:40:16] I think healing starts with awareness, awareness of we can't really heal anything until we've become aware of it. And what I mean by that is, fawning is an unconscious pattern that has been so protective for us. And awareness is bringing it into the conscious mind. And what that can mean for us is just pausing. Pausing before we immediately say, “Are you mad at me?” Pausing before we say “yes,” and actually think, “Do I want to go to this?” Or like, “Okay, I think I'm scared that they're mad at me. Can I put the phone down and be with that emotion for a second? What am I feeling? What triggered this?” The ‘nicer’ acronym really speaks to having awareness, having curiosity about our emotions, soothing ourselves, accessing internal safety. So having awareness of the pattern is certainly the first step.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:41:11] I think curiosity is something I certainly appreciate. It's probably very normal to start questioning things as you navigate the aging process and just growing awareness. Like I mentioned, we weren’t talking about trauma like this 25 years ago- 


Meg Josephson: [00:41:28] Yeah. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:41:29] - 20 year ago, even 15 years ago. And so, I think that there’s burgeoning information superhighway that’s been created. And when I have conversations with friends, just the acknowledgment as we're speaking, they're like, “Oh my gosh, I had no idea.” And I was like, what we thought was normal might not have been, “normal,” but it was our human experience.


Meg Josephson: [00:41:49] Absolutely. Acknowledgement-- internal acknowledgement, and external in that, acknowledging our inner experiences, acknowledging our emotions, “What am I feeling right now?” And even when we're in conflict with someone or there's some friction, sometimes all we want is an acknowledgement. I feel like I just want to acknowledge that I'm feeling distant from you. I'm wanting some quality time with you. And maybe the fawning response to that would be, “Are you mad at me?” But underneath that is an emotion, acknowledging the emotion beneath it. I'm feeling distant, I want to check in with us, and so I want to see if you're feeling that too. So, acknowledging the emotion beneath it is just so important.


[00:42:26] In my practice with clients, I work through a very mindfulness-based lens that's so important to me because when we are stuck in this trauma response, our body thinks we're in the past. Our body is lit, frozen in time in whether were six or 10 or 20 or 45 whenever, that was the most protective for us, our body thinks that is still happening and is reacting from that place. So, to be able to shift our awareness to what's happening right now in this moment, whether it's our breath, whether it's noticing everything in the room that's green, noticing any sounds. By having awareness of the present, we're communicating to our bodies, “We're not there anymore,” because those things were not happening then, the things we're witnessing right now weren't happening then. And so, to me, it's the most simple thing yet so hard to remember, easy to forget. Sometimes I think the most healing things are the most simple practices.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:43:25] Yeah, absolutely. There's one other Buddhist teaching in the book that you talk about, “Nothing is personal, nothing is permanent, and nothing is perfect.” And I was kind of ruminating over that. And it's something that brings you tremendous peace. Like it's something that I now have a little sticky note on my computer.

Meg Josephson: [00:43:42] Oh.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:43:43] Just the kind of understanding that if you view the world from that perspective, it's much more peaceful.


Meg Josephson: [00:43:49] Absolutely. And I think there's often a misconception in mindfulness that nothing is per-- If I'm not taking things personally, that means I'm never taking feedback or I'm never open to improving myself. And what it really means is acknowledging the fact that we are all experiencing the world through the lens of our own inner world, which is made up of our fears and perceptions and beliefs. 


[00:44:12] Nothing is personal really just means we're being selective about who we're taking feedback from. And the question in the fawn response might be, “Do they like me?” And we're shifting it, “Do you like them?” And it might be “What should I do to make them like me?” And we're shifting it to “How can I soothe myself through the discomfort of them not liking me,” knowing that-- It's really just leaning back so that we can see it clearly, so we're not being passive, we're not letting life happen and la di da, we're perfect and we don't have any work to do. It's actually leaning back so we can see it clearly and acknowledge what's in my control and what's not. And a lot of what people pleasing is trying to control, we can't. We can't control people's perceptions. We can't control what people think of us. And it's exhausting to try to.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:44:57] Yeah, I think that's the kind of biggest takeaway is you just get to a point that fawning that was this adaptive mechanism at earlier stages in your life just becomes not only something that doesn't feel like it's in alignment with you as an individual, but it's emotionally physically exhausting and over time suppression of your true desires, your emotions will take a hold at you and I think about this autonomic nervous system and we talk a lot about the hypothalamus pituitary, adrenal access and sympathetic dominance and all these things. I think for so many people, it's almost like you just get to a point where you're like, “I'm just ready to just-- I'm surrendering.” And that's not necessarily a bad thing.


Meg Josephson: [00:45:41] Absolutely. I think it's honestly, when we're fawning for so long, we're either surrendering or we're moving into freeze from burnout. We have no energy left, so, our body's like, “Let me preserve energy,” and that will either happen through surrender or just complete freeze response.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:46:02] Yeah, and just to kind of tie that up, how is freeze different than fawn in case someone is not as familiarized with those terms?


Meg Josephson: [00:46:10] Yeah, the freeze response is about-- It's what society might conflate with being lazy. The freeze response is when our body's trying to preserve energy. So, it's often seen through dissociation. It's seen through numbing. It's seen through feeling like you want to do something, but you just can't. Like, you want to move forward, but you just can't and that's your body trying to preserve energy because it's so overwhelmed with information or emotions or stimulation, where freezing is the best response that the body can do. It's actually quite a common trauma response in childhood as well for people, often through maladaptive daydreaming, dissociation. It's like when we can't physically leave the environment, we'll do the second-best thing by mentally leaving through a freeze response.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:46:58] Yeah, it's interesting when I have conversations with friends of mine, especially those that are clinicians will acknowledge, like, “Oh, I spent a good portion of my childhood dissociated.” I think people think of it as being incredibly dramatic. And I think just like fawning is a way to kind of address uncomfortable feelings or things you can't control. I think dissociation is a way to-- You're in the experience, but you're kind of subconsciously not in the experience.


Meg Josephson: [00:47:26] Yeah. What I find interesting, not to get too complicated, but I think there's also a little bit of freeze happening in the fawn response because we are leaving ourselves to appease the other person. And so, in some ways, although it's quite an active approach, the fawn response, we are leaving ourselves. So, I think there's a little bit of freeze happening there as well.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:47:49] Yeah, it makes so much sense. Well, Meg, this is a truly invaluable conversation. Please let listeners know how to get access to your new book which by the time this is published will be out. Are You Mad at Me? or I don't know if you're taking new patients and clients but how to work with you directly if they would like to get additional support.


Meg Josephson: [00:48:06] Thank you. I'm grateful that my practice is full and I'm not currently taking on clients, but Are You Mad at Me? Comes out August 5th and you can find me on social media. I’m @megjosephson. I have a Substack called Peace of Mind. And I'm also really releasing a workshop to accompany the book so that we can take what we're reading about and practice it and integrate it together. So, I'm excited for that.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:48:31] Awesome. Such a great book and such a great conversation. Thanks again.


Meg Josephson: [00:48:34] Thank you. Thanks for having me.


Cynthia Thurlow: If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating and review. Subscribe and tell a friend.



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