A pattern I regularly see in the behaviour of fawners is the attempt to orchestrate events and other people. They can be past masters at managing, preparing and trying to second guess what’s going on around them.
This orchestration is particularly apparent if an individual is also a perfectionist. The two feed each other. The fawner approaches it from a need to please and meld themselves to the need of the situation. The perfectionist prepares exhaustively, analysing all potential outcomes so they can avoid mistakes.
But the paradox of all this industry is that whilst it seems like you are efficient and in charge of the situation, it’s actually a form of remaining trapped. Because your efforts are being directed in the wrong direction.
What orchestrating actually is
Orchestrating in the context of fawning is a survival response to relational issues. Your nervous system learned in your early years that if you could try to manage the environment carefully enough, you could stay safe. Over time this became automatic. An unconscious strategy laid down before adulthood in order to keep you safe.
Unlike those who rely on a fight response, fawners don’t seek to take charge by exerting their authority. Instead, their response in embedded in behaviours like shape shifting and people pleasing. They are orchestrating from a need to reduce tension by serving the needs of others.
Despite their years of practice, this is far from effortless. There is typically a labour-intensive process of planning, manoeuvring and assessment going on behind the scenes to try and keep everything around them on track.
How it shows up across relationships
Orchestrating shows up across every type of relationship – at work, at home, with family and friends, and even in the relationship you have with yourself.
In the workplace
At work, orchestrating can show up in some classic ways:
- Crafting emails and messages agonisingly carefully and reading them back multiple times before sending.
- Preparing extensively for meetings in order to ensure every eventuality is considered to pre-empt criticism and avoid conflict.
- Trying to influence colleagues’ opinions of each other to create harmony and taking on tasks outside their remit to prevent situations from escalating.
In intimate relationships
At home, there can be a constant adjustment to the mood of your loved one:
- Anticipating or responding to a partner’s mood and adjusting their own behaviour accordingly before a word has been spoken
- Engineering situations e.g. making plans or creating conditions to keep a partner happy
- Avoiding certain topics to prevent conflict or telling them what they want to hear rather than the truth
In family dynamics
The full extent of orchestration plays out as the family voice of reason:
- Managing the dynamics between family members by acting as a mediator, buffer or keeper of the peace
- Trying to influence outcomes of family gatherings in advance by speaking to people individually
In friendships
It can be hard to relax with friends when there’s a lot going on behind the scenes:
- Carefully editing what they share about themselves to control how they’re perceived.
- Saying yes to things they don’t want to do to manage the other person’s feelings
- Trying to manage the dynamics of social gatherings in advance
In relationship with yourself
The orchestration continues on the inside:
- Extensive mental rehearsal of conversations that haven’t happened yet (and may never)
- The replaying and analysis of conversations that have
- The constant assessment of how others are feeling in any given moment
- Second guessing what is going to happen in different scenarios and how to prepare for that
The disconnection
The reality is that if someone is orchestrating from a fawning or perfectionist response, they are likely to be doing so in most, if not all, areas of their life.
And this is an intense situation to be in because it takes up so much headspace trying to manage things across all these different scenarios. Often, the individual is on autopilot and not even consciously aware of why they are doing it.
I’ve seen the impact that it has had on some of my clients in terms of keeping them out of touch with reality. Whilst they remain locked in the urgency of orchestration, they remain disconnected from themselves and what they really want.
They rarely receive thanks for all the work they put into stage managing everything. In fact, many people in their lives don’t even notice it. This, of course, makes them push harder and can keep them locked in this illusion of agency for longer. And unfortunately, this intensity over time can lead them to burnout or issues with their health and wellbeing.
The impetus for change
Becoming aware of the negative impacts of orchestrating behaviour can subtly build up over time but it typically takes an event to create the impetus for change. A breaking point where the cost of continuing finally outweighs the perceived safety of the pattern. It might be burnout, a relationship you reach a limit with, or simply the accumulated exhaustion of managing everything, everywhere, all the time.
The dysfunction in relationships is rarely in one place. What shows up in the workplace can be echoed in personal relationships. The same patterns, the same dynamics, different people. And at some point, the need for a different approach or reality becomes stronger. It may not be clear initially what that might be or even why it is needed but the weight of all that effort which goes largely unnoticed finally causes a desire for change.
