An effect of trauma
Fawn response
When the nervous system learned that the way to survive threat was to appease it, some people learned to become whatever the threatening person needed them to be. Agreeable, helpful, self erasing, attuned to everyone else's emotional state at the expense of their own. This is not kindness. It is a survival strategy. The nervous system learned that if you could make the dangerous person happy, or calm, or satisfied, the threat would pass. The cost is yourself.
Shapeshifting kept the dangerous people calm, and you got so good at it that you may have misplaced the original shape. It is recoverable. Preferences, opinions, and edges come back when nobody in the room needs managing. Meetings where you can be unremarkable and unedited are a good laboratory for finding out who was under there.
It can sound like
If any of those sentences live in your head too, you are in good company here.
Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.
You do not have to carry this alone.
Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.