Many of us pride ourselves on being polite. But trying to be a “pleasant” person can turn into excessive people pleasing. In fact, psychologists have a specific term for this, “fawning”, and believe this kind of embedded and excessive people pleasing is a result of something much more destructive from our past.

In psychology circles, fawning is highlighted as one of the “4Fs” of trauma, alongside flight, fight and freeze. It’s something we do as a response to a disturbing incident or damaging environment, usually in childhood.

Eve Menezes Cunningham, a British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy senior-accredited supervisor, trauma therapist and author of 365 Ways To Feel Better , says: “It’s an adaptive survival response. Consciously or unconsciously, there’s the fear, ‘If I

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