We think of appeasement as a collection of social behaviors that aim to restore a safe relationship and maybe attachment with another person who is perceived as more powerful or threatening. If we gave them any cause to be angry with us, we need to fix it and make them calm down and like us again. That is how we return to a sense of safety in the relationship.

 

What appeasement can look like:

• Agreeing to things we don’t want, doing things against our will but without being actively forced
• pretending we share an opinion/feeling we don’t have, being out of touch with our own opinions/feelings
• making sure other people’s needs are met first, no matter what happens with our own needs
• being out of touch with or down-playing our own needs
• being hyper-aware of the moods of others so we can intervene and regulate them
• offering or allowing others access to our resources (including time, money, energy or our body), inability to say no
• being incapable of tolerating tension in the relationship or others being angry with us
• noticing every misattunement and interpreting it as a sign of danger that demands reparation from us (not them of course)
• a moment of shock and shame when a conflict is noticed, followed by attempts to erase the reason for the disagreement or by over-explaining to apologize
• enmeshment, opinions, feelings and needs between people get mixed up
• perceiving only one thing as truth in a given moment, usually what the dominant person thinks, feels and wants, loss of complexity of experience as boundaries are lost

 

Appeasement as attachment strategy

While dissociation is the main physiological defense of children who grow up in unsafe and neglectful or abusive environments, appeasement is the main relational strategy we follow. Our care-givers are unpredictable and it is not safe to approach but we need to approach to survive and get at least the most basic needs met. We cannot leave them behind and live our own life, so we need to present ourselves in a soothing way that doesn’t stir any anger or violence. The better we manage to attune to their mood and act to meet their needs, the less risk there is for us. I don’t think that calling it ‘people pleasing’ is doing it justice. It is a complex, instinctive coping behavior with the purpose of survival. Humans show this pattern in the face of a more powerful person when other coping behavior would not support survival long-term. There is no better way to manage the situation. The problems start when life changes and this strategy isn’t needed anymore but we fail to adapt.

We will often see appeasement patterns in hosts or similar parts who took care of encounters with abusers in everyday life. We dissociate feelings and needs until we seem shallow and unreal but we are also without edges that could poke an abuser the wrong way. It can make hosts very easy to get along with. It also makes us a blank canvas for other people’s projections and that is not always a good thing (ask me how I know). Having edges is what tells other people that we have a personality. Sometimes we can get in touch with our feelings and needs when we dig deep and sometimes they get split off into other parts.

In bigger systems we will often find parts who developed around the mechanism of appeasement and identification with the abuser. They will repeat their opinions, try to take care of their feelings and needs and show great loyalty and love. The words that come to mind are ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ and ‘trauma bonding’. Our attachment system leads us to identify with abusers and to dissolve the boundaries between us. Their goals become our goals, their feelings our feelings. It happens to adults. As children, we have to rely on this survival instinct even more. We will talk about abuser-loyal parts somewhere else because helping them needs more integrative actions.

 

Boundaries and development

We need to keep in mind that we are dealing with a developmental injury and not just a behavioral problem. As young children we do not experience ourselves as an ‘I’ in relationship to someone else who is a ‘you’ and different from us. We cannot really tell the difference between the outside world and our inside experience. There are no boundaries. A scared caregiver causes us to be scared. And when they treat us badly, we experience ourselves as bad. There is no Space in Between where we can reflect, separate our experience from that of other people and then manage the situation. Because of our trauma background, parts of us might have never developed beyond this stage. They are still stuck there with no other options to experience the situation. On top of that, they are often scoffed at or ridiculed by other parts who have access to different strategies. Being told that we need to stand up for ourselves does nothing for us. We cannot feel ok unless the other person feels ok. We are bad unless they stop treating us badly. There is still no space between us. We attempt to soothe a situation so that it will be calmed for us as well. Setting a boundary that could upset the other person even more is beyond us.

 

New basic understanding

To be able to even just think about boundaries, we need to understand a couple of basic concepts. We are a person. And other people are persons too. Every person on the planet comes with their own thoughts and opinions, feelings, needs and wishes etc. They are all equally valid and all have a right to exist. We can imagine them like tokens in a game. My tokens for my thoughts, feelings and needs might be blue and yours can be a different color, but they all have the same general size. One is not bigger or more important and tokens cannot bow before others, they just are. Everyone has tokens. If we don’t know ours yet, we can reflect, try new things and broaden our experience. Take at least a week to notice your own thoughts and opinions, your own feelings, your own preferences and wishes every day. Other parts can support you by sharing how they experience life. Then you can check if you experience the same or something different.

 

The whole world is full of our own tokens and that of others.

We can practice noticing them all by watching any kids series that we like, for scientific purposes of course. Try to notice when someone expresses a thought, feeling or need. Notice how different characters have different thoughts, feelings and needs and how they exist at the same time. Nothing has to vanish. They exist all at once.

Our tokens don’t have to look like those of other people. We will still be safe when we are different. Nobody can take our tokens away. The mere existence of other tokens that look different cannot hurt us. It would need real actions for that. The law protects us from those actions.

Take some time to observe your own thoughts, feelings and needs and those of others when they show up in everyday life situations. The more you practice, the easier it becomes to sort through the dynamics.

 

 

The Space in Between

We need a bit of security with identifying ‘tokens’ in everyday life. Then we can start to analyse situations that were difficult for us. Start with something that involves only yourself and one other person or part. Imagine that you are sitting at a big table with a board in the middle. Then you can sort through the tokens that are all over the place. What are the thoughts and opinions, feelings, needs and wishes that belong to yourself? Which ones belong to the other person? Take your time to draw your own tokens toward yourself. You own these. They belong to you and they are ok. They are allowed to exist. Now push the game pieces of the other person away from yourself towards them. Those don’t belong to you. They belong to someone else. They own them. They can have them, no problem, but there is also no need to let them come so close. You can add a ‘pushing away’ movement if that helps. What you will get is a Space in Between, where there is a game board that offers neutral ground for an interaction. Notice this space. That person is not enmeshed or way too close. Exchanges don’t happen in our territory, or theirs. They happen in a Space in Between. Whenever we feel overwhelmed, we need to return to the awareness of this space. Without a felt sense of this space there can be no assertiveness. I believe this to be the most important discovery for managing appeasement patterns.

 

 

The Game in the Space in Between

Once we are aware of the board, the Space in Between, we can decide how we want to play our game. We can place a token on the board and observe what our partner will do. Maybe they will show one of their tokens too and we can respond to that. In some relationships these honest exchanges create depth and a sense of belonging, needs can be met more directly and the connection is strengthened. It is less scary to open up and show our own tokens when we know that it is happening on a board where all tokens are equal.

When we don’t feel safe we don’t have to show any of our tokens. There is no rule that says that we have to put them on the board. They can still exist and belong to us, there is no need to dissociate them. We just choose not to show them.

It is ok to look at the tokens someone else put on the board and decide that they don’t fit our tokens at all. They can all still exist, but there won’t be another exchange on the board. We just leave the space in between empty and move on. There is no rule that we have to put down a token just because someone else did it first.

Sometimes people feel the need to attack our tokens with their opinion but their opinion is just a thought-token on the board, where they expressed it. It is no bigger or more important than ours and we can push it back to their owner any time to emphasize the Space in Between. Their opinion cannot harm us, it is just there. Being loud doesn’t create any special rights.

Not every dissociative part will need this tool. Some are already very good at pushing the tokens of others away and they need to learn different relationship skills. Those who are stuck in appeasement patterns will have to make an effort to find the space in between to make exchanges more intentional and less reactive.

 

 

This concept is invaluable to me when it comes to feelings of intimidation. It is easier for me to sense my boundaries and my right to exist as my own person/part when I am aware of the Space in Between and the equal rights of all tokens on the board. Showing up and expressing what I think and feel has become a lot easier since I can treat it as an exchange on neutral ground that doesn’t come so close that it is immediately overwhelming. I am not as vulnerable as I always felt and not as exposed. I can push other people’s tokens back to their side when I dislike the interaction. It is an interactive game and not a matter of survival anymore. Even scary people are just people with tokens on the board and nothing more. And exchanges can actually become rather beautiful with the right people.

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Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. – V. Frankl

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