Welcome to The Return - a place to learn deep rest, unravel old patterns, trust your intuition, and connect authentically with a community of women also treading the path home to themselves. Reflect on something new every Friday and be in the know about my upcoming offerings, including women's circles, workshop series and retreats.
"Can I be annoying and ask..."
Published 12 days ago • 3 min read
Dear Reader,
Over the recent school holidays, my family and I went away to Tasmania.
It was a beautiful trip, but something caught me completely off guard—not just the landscapes, but my own mouth.
I found myself repeatedly shrinking. In cafes, museums and shops, whenever I needed to ask for basic, rational things I had every right to ask for, I prefaced almost every request with an apology.
"Can I be annoying and ask for an extra plate?"
"Sorry to be a pain, could we please have some water?"
What caught my attention was noticing that I was suddenly doing it now that I was in a different state, and particularly when I was interacting with men.
Why was I preemptively making myself small before I had even stated a mundane request? Was it an unconscious desire to appear harmless, agreeable, or cooperative in unfamiliar spaces?
It happened so automatically, so habitually, that I was surprised every single time the words left my mouth. Here I am—a clinical psychologist who writes, speaks, and teaches about boundaries and nervous system regulation—instinctively softening my presence so as not to appear demanding, disruptive, or inconvenient.
And then the deeper sting hit: What am I teaching my children when they hear me speak like this?
Exploring the coast with one pair of observing ears
What unconscious script am I modelling for them when they watch their mum qualify her basic existence, apologise for taking up space, and frame reasonable needs as an imposition?
What I was experiencing in real time was a micro-expression of the fawn response.
Most of us are familiar with the standard survival responses our autonomic nervous system deploys when it perceives stress, unfamiliarity, or a potential threat:
Fight: mobilising to confront, push back, or defend.
Flight: mobilising to escape, avoid, or run away.
Freeze: immobilising, bracing, or going numb when movement feels impossible.
And then there is Fawn: appeasing, accommodating, pacifying, and preemptively softening ourselves to prevent friction, disarm the other person, and maintain relational safety.
In modern wellness culture, fawning is often pathologised as "people-pleasing"—treated like an personal flaw or a lack of self-worth that you just need to meditate away or snap out of.
That framing misses the entire point.
The fawn response is deeply intelligent. Historically and evolutionarily, it is a brilliant survival mechanism. For centuries under patriarchal structures, women had very little explicit power, institutional protection, or overt social leverage. In an environment where asserting yourself directly could carry genuine social, relational, or physical consequences, appeasement, charm, and subtle social influence were how women navigated their world safely to get what they needed and, at times, wanted.
Shrinking wasn’t a character flaw; it was a learned and adaptive strategy.
The dilemma is: what does that automatic shrinking perpetuate today?
When we routinely qualify our basic presence with "sorry to be annoying," what message does that quietly reinforce inside our own mind and nervous system? It reinforces the belief that taking up space, having needs, or simply asking for a side plate is inherently an imposition and potentially unsafe.
And outwardly, it continues to communicate to the culture around us—and to the little eyes watching us—that a woman's right to exist, speak, and ask should always come wrapped in an apology, or appeasing others' needs first.
Catching yourself fawning isn’t evidence that you "haven’t healed." It isn't a failure of self-worth. It is the dynamic, complex outcome of the interaction between deep-seated blueprints within us and the societal conditioning we still live in every single day. The body remembers what kept us safe long before the conscious mind catches up.
Healing isn't about never having these reflexes. It’s about noticing them without self-judgement when they slip out, taking a breath, and gently reminding your nervous system:
I am allowed to take up space. I don't need to apologise for being here.
Notice where you catch yourself softening your edges in the coming week. What would it feel like to ask for what you need—plainly, directly, and without the disclaimer?
P.S. One of the primary ways we perpetuate shrinking ourselves and our needs is by constantly putting everyone else first to the point of complete exhaustion.
If your system is craving space to step out of that automatic pattern, join me for three Wednesday evenings starting 28th October for our workshop series:
Reclaiming Rest
We’ll be carving out dedicated, uninterrupted time for you, unlearning the guilt around having needs, and anchoring back into your authentic capacity.
Reflect, Restore & Realign: A Women's Circle to Reflect on 2026 and Step into 2027 with Intention
Late November is when demands tend to ramp up, personal bandwidth thins, and the collective rush takes over. Designed as an antidote to the busy festive season, this series offers women an unhurried, gentle, and restorative space to exhale before the holiday whirlwind begins, rather than waiting until January to recover.
The offering will blend evidence-based reflection, somatic movement, and honest discussion in a supportive group of like-minded women. Participants will compassionately audit the year that was, reframe rest as an essential biological buffer for December, and anchor into core values to shape their intentions for 2027.
Welcome to The Return - a place to learn deep rest, unravel old patterns, trust your intuition, and connect authentically with a community of women also treading the path home to themselves. Reflect on something new every Friday and be in the know about my upcoming offerings, including women's circles, workshop series and retreats.