Book Review: "Are You Mad at Me?" by Meg Josephson

There's not much of a story behind this one. I found it whilst scrolling on Twitter and then noticed that it was quite pricey on Amazon. I searched around and found it on the internet for a lower price, snagged it and read it on my phone. Meg Josephson's book is about a number of things, but one of the main concepts that is covered is that how trauma changes fundamentally who we are and how we interact with people and our lives. There's so many books on how to 'get better' but not many books that explain what to 'get better' from. It was definitely an interesting read...

One of the main concepts she wants the reader to understand is that 'people-pleasing' is not a moral failure but rather a trauma response where the person tries to disarm a situation by doing something called "fawning". This is where the person becomes extremely conflict-avoidant. Once this person grows up having to have managed the emotions of particularly volatile adults in their life by disarming situations, they carry that over and end up burning themselves out over the emotions of others. This is not only bad for the individual doing the fawning, but it also leaves them open to emotional manipulation. When I was looking up the statistics for people who are emotionally manipulated and simply believe that they are doing the right thing, I found thousands upon thousands of stories.

Obviously though, not everyone knows what fawning is and so, Meg Josephson does a brilliant job at telling us not only the definition of the word but what the archetypes and behaviours of this concept seem to be. Fawning is a survival mechanism presented in childhood to avoid conflict situations with unpredictable adult figures. This can include being silent when the adult is volatile and being overtly helpful if the adult presents outwardly violent disappointment. This leads to anxieties such as: internalising hyper conflict-avoidance, obsessive behaviours and repeated beliefs that people are mad at you as you get older and older.

Josephson then looks at this fawning behaviour in individual who are: peacekeepers, performers, caretakers, perfectionists, chameleons and finally, lone wolves. Fawning presents in different ways in all of these individuals but they all have one or two main things in common: conflict-avoidance and people-pleasing. After this, the author gives us one of the main ways the reader (if they are one of these fawners) can cope with being this way. The technique is called NICER and it stands for: Notice, Invite, Curiosity, Embrace, Return. It is meant to help the person recovering to navigate overwhelming emotions and thoughts, especially if they become obsessive.

One thing I enjoyed about this is the Josephson does not shy away from the link between mental wellbeing and physical wellbeing, sharing her experiences of difficulties in recovering from fawning behaviour and how they caused things like acid reflux and burnout. It is definitely true that these behaviours can cause things like autoimmune responses to kick in and a development of lots of conditions typically associated with exhaustion.

Another thing I found key about this book is the way the author decentralises herself whilst also providing her own story. She doesn't overshare anything and nearly everything she tells us is part and parcel to the process. Her writing is compassionate and caring whilst also providing a great insight into the steps and ways in which a person fawning and raised in difficult emotional circumstances can recover. It is quite refreshing to read one of these books and not be bogged down by someone's life story, some parts of which don't even add to the narrative they are trying to write.

All in all, I thought this book was very helpful, insightful and just a plain fantastic read. I have learnt so much about fawning, what it is, how to see it in different ways and most importantly, how 'people pleasing' is a response rather than a personality trait. Maybe we should all look out for these behaviours in others, even though there are many out there who would exploit these kinds of people and manipulate them. It would be great if we could all simply help each other to become better people with stronger personal boundaries.