You walk into a room and immediately feel it – the tightness in your chest, the weight in your stomach. You tell yourself to be calm, to just be yourself. But instead, you slip into the familiar habit of fawning – over-agreeing, over-apologizing, shaping yourself into whatever version feels safest to others. You want to connect. You want to belong. But underneath it all is fear.
For professionals who hold themselves to high standards, social situations often trigger a deep, automatic need to smooth things over, to avoid conflict, to be a “fixer.” Not because you lack strength, but because somewhere along the line, you learned that staying agreeable was the safest way to be accepted. You learned that connection had to be earned through agreeability, not trust.
The more you fawn, the further you drift from yourself. You leave conversations wondering, Did I say too much? Not enough? Did they really like me or just tolerate me? And the cost builds: you feel disconnected, resentful, and exhausted. You want to be authentic, but fear still holds the steering wheel.
This week in a therapy session, a client shared: “I know I’m a good man. I want to be kind, generous, real. But sometimes I’m so afraid of disappointing someone or being judged that I lose myself in the conversation. I end up agreeing just to survive it.”
They described how social fear wasn’t about weakness, it was about protection. How for years, they shaped themselves to match the room instead of standing in their own truth. Through therapy, we worked on strengthening their ability to stay in their own body instead of focusing on others, learning how to notice when fear was driving the response, and practicing small steps of truth-telling even when it felt risky.
We built tools for anchoring to self-respect before entering a room, and debriefing afterward with kindness and non-judgemental self-talk, not criticism. They also learned that saying less but staying true felt better than saying everything perfectly and feeling invisible. Over time, they started feeling less like they had to earn their place and more like they simply belonged.
If social situations leave you feeling like you have to shrink or perform just to be accepted, then I’m talking directly to you. In my 1:1 therapy sessions, we work together to build real confidence: the kind rooted in who you are, not in who you think you have to be.
