heartbreak

Constant Striving, the hidden fawn behind 'not enough'

So many of my clients arrive with heavy hearts masked by impressive resumes. They're driven, capable, endlessly striving. And quietly, they carry a question they rarely say aloud: ‘Why do I still feel like I’m not enough?

Often what brings them to me is they desperately want something in their life and the way they currently orient in the world is not helping them get there. So whether it is a healthy conscious relationship where they can be their true selves, or wanting to overcome burnout, or to find more meaning or purpose in their life; what sits underneath all of this is a body in desperate need of rest and a new way of showing up in the world. They are so used to pushing their way through life and they have will power in spades, that fuels that constant striving toward their goals. They are so wired for productivity and to keep on going, that it does not feel safe in their nervous system to slow down.

Striving can be a survival strategy. It looks like lots of ambition but underneath it is actually an adaptation, as the nervous system has wired itself to fawn, seeking safety through performance, achievement, pleasing and perfecting. So it is just not about saying yes to others, it is about proving your worth to stay connected to them.

Where does this strategy arise from?

It often comes from having caregivers who were conditional in giving us their attuned presence, where love or safety and connection were conditional. Often we received the love we needed when we did something brilliant, or we were easy to deal with, ‘good kids’. This is not a flaw we have but actually a rather brilliant adaptive response by the body to keep us safe. The belief system that is created is “If I can just be good enough, useful enough, impressive enough—maybe then I’ll be safe, loved, or chosen”.

It’s survival through self-erasure. And it’s so deeply ingrained in many of us that it can feel like “who we are,” when it’s actually a brilliant adaptation.

How does culture reinforce the need to strive?

This isn’t just personal it can also be cultural. I also believe that productivity culture has been a major influence on this response in many adults. It’s not just personal history that shapes the fawn-strive pattern—it’s cultural, systemic, and reinforced daily in many workplaces. Productivity becomes a proxy for worth. And in that system, rest feels risky.

Productivity culture has institutionalised the fawn response. It rewards over-functioning and punishes rest. In many workplaces, people have internalised the belief: “My value is in what I produce.” “If I slow down, I’ll fall behind, or be seen as lazy, dispensable, or weak.”

So even outside of trauma histories, entire cultural systems are designed to keep nervous systems in a low-grade state of doing to survive. Especially in organisations where performance is tied to identity, job security, or belonging.

How does this striving response show up in adults?

Striving isn’t just a fawning response that is about people-pleasing in obvious ways—it can look like:

  • Overachieving to be seen as valuable or loveable,

  • Taking on too much to avoid being abandoned or criticised,

  • Hustling for worth, because rest feels dangerous or "lazy",

  • Always being the one who fixes, leads, or holds it all together,

  • Adapting your identity to meet what others need or expect,

  • Over functioning in relationships.

In essence, striving is a fawning nervous system response. It says: If I can just be good enough, useful enough, impressive enough—maybe then I’ll be safe, loved, or chosen.

Cant Stop, won’t stop

We joke about ‘can’t stop, won’t stop,’ but for many, it’s not a quirky motto—it’s a trauma response. It’s the body never having felt safe enough to slow down and rest. We wear it as a a badge of honour, or even an odd personality trait—but underneath it, for so many, it’s the body saying:
“If I stop, it might all fall apart.” “If I rest, who will I be?” “If I slow down, will the pain catch up with me?”

It’s not hustle culture—it’s hypervigilance dressed in productivity. It’s a nervous system that has never known true safety, only safety-through-doing. This is so deeply woven into high-functioning, heart-centred people who’ve built their worth through care-taking, fixing, over-responsibility, and striving to be irreplaceable.

The laugh we attach to “can’t stop, won’t stop” is often a nervous system trying to normalise its own exhaustion, because admitting we’re tired or scared feels too vulnerable.

Striving is often the voice of a nervous system that never felt safe to simply be.

What are the costs of constant striving?

The costs are high for many people. They include: Transactional relationships that are based on performance not presence and this leaves many people feeling lonely and disconnected from their peers at work, feeling like they are misunderstood or that they don’t fit into the organisation they work for. This sense of belonging is not there. It is also the body never getting to rest, and after many years, we see that manifest in burnout, health issues, anxiety and disconnection from the self.

What are we really longing for?

Contentment and belonging are the deep yearning we are searching for when we are striving, So often, we think we’re chasing success, or mastery, or healing—but underneath it all, we’re chasing that feeling:
That feeling can be: The deep exhale of contentment; the relief of being with people who see us, know us, and don’t need us to be any different, the safety of not having to perform, strive, or explain ourselves, the belonging that whispers: “You are enough, just as you are, and you always have been.”

It’s the nervous system’s longing to come out of hypervigilance and into co-regulation. To be met, not managed. Held, not judged. Loved, not evaluated.

And it’s not a small thing. That kind of contentment rewires us. It gives us a new blueprint for what’s possible in connection—with ourselves and with others. It helps us to feel safe enough to slow down

Where do we start with healing?

Striving may have kept us safe, but it’s not the same as being truly seen. Slowly, we begin to rebuild safety in being, not just in doing. We need to titrate our experience of slowing down because it will feel unsafe for the nervous system to just stop. So our path is to move from fawning to feel comfortable just being. This is somatic work working deeply with the autonomic nervous system because we are dealing with unconscious trauma imprints.

Imagine your body as a riverbed that has been carved deeply by years of rushing water—this water is your striving. It’s fast, focused, and relentless, always moving toward the next bend. The river believes if it can just keep flowing fast enough, it will reach some final place where it can finally rest.

But the riverbed is tired. It longs for a gentle stream. For stillness. For the moss to grow again on its rocks. It longs for a pause so life can return to its banks.

Some things you could try on your own:

The micro pause

This is a micro-practice to do anytime you feel the drive to prove, do, or fix surging up. You can try it right now if you like.

  1. Settle – Let your body arrive where it is. Feel the weight of gravity. Feel the support of the earth or chair beneath you.

  2. Place a hand on your heart or belly – Choose what feels most tender or accessible.

  3. Say softly, either out loud or silently:
    “Right now, in this moment, I am enough.”
    (Even if part of you doesn’t believe it—just let it land and see what happens.)

  4. Notice what shifts – Is there any softening, resistance, warmth, tears, numbness? All responses are welcome.

  5. Stay with the sensation for 30 seconds or so. No need to fix or change it. Just witness your being—not your doing.

When your body is giving you signs to slow down, know that you are not broken. Trust the innate wisdom and intelligence of your body and what it is trying to say to you. You have adapted brilliantly but now your body is ready for something new. If you would like to explore your pathway to slowing down, to being more present, to stop being everything to everyone, to stop hustling, come talk to me about somatic experiencing or coaching.

How emotional neglect and abandonment in childhood fosters a fawning response in us

If in childhood we experienced our caregivers not supporting our emotional lives, abandoning supporting us when we were feeling big feelings, it created a big and deep primal response of being isolated and separated. To a child this feels like death.

We will begin to seek any feeling that will block or override feeling that isolation, that feeling of death in our body.

We need our caregivers to co-regulate us when we are young because we don't have the capacity in our nervous system to regulate ourselves AND we don't have the emotional maturity to contextualise our experience. We just know we are overwhelmed and flooded with feelings.

We are hardwired for connection and being with others. It is in community that we most often feel safe and have a greater chance of survival. We enjoy that feeling of togetherness.

When we are in this pattern of avoiding our big emotions and feelings, of overriding feeling the isolation we experienced as little ones, we disconnect from from our bodies. This brings with it anxiety, auto immune issues and chronic illness.

Many of us also develop a nervous system strategy of fawn, also known as appeasement or people pleasing. We disconnect from our emotions because we are afraid that if we express them, we will be abandoned. That old story of death if we are abandoned is wired into our nervous system.
When we are under threat, the old story is playing out in the present all the time. Like a broken record that keeps returning to the scratch.

Healing happens in the presence of a compassionate witness that can hold space for you to connect with your body somatically.

Trauma happens in the absence of a compassionate witness or community so it makes sense that healing happens with a compassionate witness and within community.

image stockcake.com - mother embracing child, AI generated.


Getting over heartbreak

When we have our heart broken the pain can be so great that we feel it physically.

Heart break is big because there are so many emotions mixed in there; despair, grief, shame, feeling worthless. We can also feel betrayal and anger depending on the circumstances. Our wounded heart is so hurt, there is such a rawness to the pain we experience. We can also feel great stress and may be disorientated and not surprisingly, really dysregulated in our nervous system.

It is no wonder that people shutdown from their hearts in an act of self-protection. The raw pain can be more than our poor heart can bare because the intensity of our emotions, of the sensations we feel is so great.

Our heart feels shredded to bits sometimes.

When we shutdown and disconnect from our heart this gets in the way of connecting with new people and finding new love. It stops us from being able to feel close to another person. It blocks us from feeling our emotions and feelings in our own heart space.

When we disconnect from one emotion we disconnect from all of them. Our bodymind is amazing but it is not clever enough to be selective from what it disconnects from when it comes to emotions and sensations.

Image, Tim Marshall


We can work with your body somatically to expand your capacity to feel, we can expand the container that lives within you so there is more space for your feelings to move around it and when we do this, we expand your capacity to feel and process emotions that are overwhelming.

From there your heart can open again to new love that is coming your way.