Unfawning in Real Time

With Dr. Ingrid Clayton

Extended Learning Workshop · Recorded session · Roughly 2 hours with reflections and participant questions

Dr. Ingrid Clayton, clinical psychologist and author of Fawning, leads an honest, deeply personal exploration of what it means to unfawn in real time. Drawing from her own experience preparing for this very workshop, Ingrid shows how the fawn response operates like a first language. It's so deeply learned that we don't even know we're speaking it.

This isn't about stopping fawning overnight. It's about building a relationship with yourself that's strong enough to hold the discomfort of not performing, not people-pleasing, and not abandoning yourself at the first sign of tension.

What we explore together

  • Why unfawning can't happen on command, and what actually helps
  • The many faces of fawning: curating, performing, disappearing
  • Self-abandonment versus self-protection
  • Sexual fawning and intimacy
  • Navigating family crises without losing yourself
  • Trauma reenactment in romantic relationships
  • Working with the terror that can come when old patterns fall away
  • Reconnecting with anger as part of coming home to yourself

Inside the workshop

  • 01 Unfawning in Real Time, Presentation

    Ingrid shares, in real time, how fawning showed up as she prepared to give this very talk, and introduces the metaphor of language acquisition to explain why unfawning is a practice, not a switch.

  • 02 Recognizing the Fawn Response

    Ingrid responds to questions on the many faces of fawning, IFS and parts work, self-abandonment versus self-protection, and "compare and despair" as a safety strategy.

  • 03 The Messy Middle, Relationships, and Finding Your Way

    Ingrid responds to questions on the deeper layers of unfawning: intimacy and sexual fawning, power and family dynamics, working with terror, and finding your way through relationships and reenactment.

  • 04 Closing reflections

    Ingrid offers a few final words to carry with you.


A glimpse inside the workshop. 


Watch all four parts at your own pace.

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Dr. Ingrid Clayton

Dr. Ingrid Clayton is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and complex trauma survivor. With over sixteen years in private practice and a PhD in clinical psychology, she is one of the leading voices on the fawning trauma response. Her book Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves—and How to Find Our Way Back draws on twenty years of clinical work, along with her own lived experience as a recovering fawner, to explore this often-overlooked trauma response. Most of us know the three F's: fight, flight, or freeze. Fawning is the fourth, and it's far more common than most people realize.

This recording is provided for educational and recovery-supportive purposes. It is intended to complement, not replace, professional mental health care, therapy, treatment, or your existing recovery program. Viewing this workshop does not create a therapeutic or clinical relationship with Recovery Reimagined or the presenter.