The Mind-Body Couple

People Pleasing Triggers Chronic Pain/Symptoms. Here's What To Do About it!

• Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson • Episode 104

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Excessive people-pleasing isn't just a social habit—it's a physiological trigger for chronic pain and symptoms. In this revealing episode, we explore how constantly putting others' needs before our own creates a state of nervous system danger that manifests as physical suffering.

We unpack why people-pleasing behavior develops (it made evolutionary sense for survival) and why it's so difficult to change, especially when relationships have adapted to expect our accommodation. Through personal examples from our own relationship, we show how these patterns create resentment, dysregulation, and ultimately physical symptoms—and how changing them can lead to healing.

The heart of our conversation centers on four powerful strategies to break free from people-pleasing: practicing exposure while sitting with the inevitable discomfort, honoring your authentic values and needs, setting appropriate boundaries, and learning free expression of emotions. Each approach requires practice and patience, but together they create a pathway toward greater authenticity and physical well-being.

What makes this episode particularly valuable is our acknowledgment that changing these patterns isn't simple—it requires understanding that as we adjust our behavior, we're also retraining others who've grown accustomed to our accommodating nature. We offer practical starting points for those who recognize themselves in these patterns, while emphasizing safety considerations for those in challenging situations.

Ready to transform your relationship with yourself and others while reducing pain? This episode provides both the understanding and practical tools to begin that journey. Subscribe now and join our community course focused on mind-body healing.

Tanner Murtagh and Anne Hampson are therapists who treat neuroplastic pain and mind-body symptoms. They are also married! In his 20s, Tanner overcame chronic pain and a fibromyalgia diagnosis by learning his symptoms were occurring due to learned brain pathways and nervous system dysregulation. Post-healing, Tanner and Anne have dedicated their lives to developing effective treatment and education for neuroplastic pain and symptoms. Listen and learn how to assess your own chronic pain and symptoms, gain tools to retrain the brain and nervous system, and make gradual changes in your life and health!


The Mind-Body Couple podcast is owned by Pain Psychotherapy Canada Inc. This podcast is produced by Alex Klassen, who is one of the wonderful therapists at our agency in Calgary, Alberta. https://www.painpsychotherapy.ca/


Tanner, Anne, and Alex also run the MBody Community, which is an in-depth online course that provides step-by-step guidance for assessing, treating, and resolving mind-body pain and symptoms. https://www.mbodycommunity.com


Also check out Tanner's YouTube channel for more free education and practices: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Fl6WaFHnh4ponuexaMbFQ


And follow us for daily education posts on Instagram: @painpsychotherapy


Discl...

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the MindBodyCouple podcast.

Speaker 2:

I'm Tanner Murtaugh and I'm Anne Hampson. This podcast is dedicated to helping you unlearn chronic pain and symptoms. If you need support with your healing, you can book in for a consultation with one of our therapists at painpsychotherapyca or purchase our online course at embodycommunitycom to access in-depth education, somatic practices, recovery tools and an interactive community focused on healing. Links in the description of each episode Hi everyone, hi, everybody, welcome back, welcome back. I had a busy morning, Anne. I did some work on our next upcoming course in the far future.

Speaker 1:

Tanner and our producer Alex have been tirelessly working on this.

Speaker 2:

Working away at refining our model.

Speaker 1:

It's exciting stuff.

Speaker 2:

And then I took our dog, Darla, for a walk.

Speaker 1:

Very good, Good dog owner Tanner.

Speaker 2:

To Tim Horton. She was very excited. Yes, and then I ran my Qigong group.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that is productive. Actually it's a productive morning. Yeah, good job, tanner. Thank you. Is that why you're sharing this. I don't know you want some like ops here.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate that, but that wasn't necessarily the point of that. Okay, are you sure? I'm sure? Okay. But today we have a common thing that I discuss when I'm working one-on-one in therapy, and we have a whole module on this in our digital course. That's up and running already in our digital course. That's up and running already, and our topic today is people. Pleasing triggers chronic pain and symptoms. Here's what to do about it.

Speaker 1:

Ah good, I like how we have the here's what to do about it, because I think we often talk about people pleasing as something that can trigger pain and symptoms, like you say, but often we can feel like like now what?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I feel when you say the word people pleasing, people know within 10 seconds in their brain if they relate to this or not. But I think for a lot of people that view it as this like fixed thing, like I'm not going to be able to change this, and we want to be really clear early on in this podcast right now that it doesn't have to be a fixed thing.

Speaker 1:

It is changeable with a bit of work and time and we're going to talk about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and working with people I've seen not only myself personally, but you know, so many people I've worked with have major changes in this area and, as a result, their pain and symptoms reduce. So I wanted to give a message of hope that I do think this is very possible.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And so first to start, we really want to define people pleasing and we really look at it as people pleasing is excessively working in the service of other people, is excessively working in the service of other people, often pitting our own needs last and their needs first. This might result in our own needs being unmet. We might build up anger or frustration around this. Sometimes we're so used to people pleasing that we don't even realize that this is happening, and so often, when we're kind of not listening to our needs but we're putting others first, it's common to build up kind of frustration, resentment, maybe anger, this agitation, feeling like we're not being heard, but it's often colored by this idea that, well, we're helping out other people and that can make us fall into it a lot more.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and a point to that is it makes sense Like if you're always putting other people's needs above your own, you're going to feel resentful. But the problem is, if we're people pleasers, then we don't express that outwardly.

Speaker 1:

Well, and I think kind of this idea of this buildup resentment, but maybe, not knowing it's there, we can often rationalize that away and think, well, I want them to be happy and I'm happy having them be happy, and so that can quiet down resentment. But that very much, that frustration really does build. It does yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I think a common thing that I see with people is this lack of purposeful action. If we talk about purposeful action. If we talk about purposeful action we've done podcast episodes on this before this is authentic action, based on our values and what's important to us, what we're passionate about.

Speaker 1:

But the thing is, as you just described if you're always putting other people's needs above your own like all of this purposeful action things that are actually meaningful to you it just gets like thrown to the side yeah, and it doesn't mean if we fall into people pleasing behavior that we don't have passion or have things that we care about, but they become less maybe important or the desire to people please become so strong that it's easier just to do that than kind of decide and fall into our purposeful action and so we just that becomes almost habitual.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and because of all the things you've said, putting other people's needs above your own, feeling resentful inside, not taking actions based on like purpose or meaning. As a result, that's going to make us really dysregulated inside. We're constantly going to be in these states of fight, flight or freeze, and that's why people pleasing is so much a trigger for people's chronic pain and chronic symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and so we know, when we're kind of always in a state of dysregulation, that that can often tip off into chronic pain and symptoms. And so if this is partly the cause of that dysregulated state, this is how that connects to neuroplastic pain.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it's an important kind of definition of like people. Freezing may not directly cause pain and symptoms, but rather it puts us in a state of danger constantly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because this is this way of coping that can be long lasting for people, and we get used to it, so it feels really normal to us, but we're always in the state of danger and then, as a result, pain and symptoms follow.

Speaker 1:

Well, and that might lead to the question of like, why does people pleasing even happen If we see this pattern, if we know, you know it's not really good for us, but we all tend to maybe not all of us, but a lot of us probably listening to this podcast, myself included can tend to fall into people pleasing behavior. Well, it makes sense as human beings that we want to please others, we want to be liked, we care for others, we want to do a good job, and so I think that's kind of a universal human experience that we want to fall into good relation with others.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I always think about it like evolutionarily. It makes sense that a wide range of human beings have this trait of people pleasing, this way of coping, because you're more likely to survive. Like you think back when people lived in tribes and we didn't have this big technological society, you were more likely to survive if you were pleasing people around you. You were nice to them, they felt connected to you. It makes sense why this developed evolutionarily. So it is like a biological instinct that we all kind of hold.

Speaker 1:

Right, and I think when it becomes maybe something of problematic behavior or can lead to kind of constant states of dysregulation, is when we kind of go into people pleasing in the extreme, almost. Yeah and that's something that we want to look at, because it doesn't mean necessarily people pleasing is wrong or bad and we don't really want to give that message out. It's when it becomes harmful for us.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and the one thing I want to define really quick here as you're talking, because I think it can be confusing is people think of this as like a personality trait. Yeah, where they're like this is part of my personality, I'm just really nice and serve others. That's part of who I am. But the reality is it's the way of coping. Yes, it is. It's this survival mechanism where we're trying to cope, and at typical levels it's not too concerning. You know, you people-freeze in some areas. You take care of your own needs in others, but for a lot of people with chronic pain and chronic symptoms, we just lose all boundaries and we're constantly taking care of everyone else and what happens is people-freezing is the only way that we're trying to strive towards safety, like we're trying to get social acceptance, trust, love from others by always pleasing.

Speaker 1:

Well, and I think when we're always operating in that behavior in our relationships, to stop people pleasing can be really really hard and maybe more uncomfortable, because we're always in that people pleasing role and we'll talk more about that when we talk a bit about exposure. But it's almost becomes such a way of being that almost to think of doing it differently is unheard of.

Speaker 2:

Yes, essentially this is a nervous system response and we think about it as part of the FON response. And so you know, when our nervous system is dysregulated we may go into different mixes of states, you know fight, angry, frustrated, flight, nervous, anxious, panic, fon, which you can include an element of people pleasing, or freeze and shutdown, where we just collapse, go numb, go into kind of despair, hopelessness, and so to learn more about these states, people can definitely go back and focus on our past episodes because we've got lots of information on the nervous system and really lay it out. But today we're going to be talking about this people pleasing, this FON response. So when we think about a FOM response, it can look a variety of ways and I'm going to break it down into physically what this can look like the mental experience and the behavioral experience. So the physical experience for a lot of people when they're in this pleasing response, this FOM response, it can look like nervousness, tension, difficulties breathing, increased heart rate, like rapid heart rate, it could be difficulties with sleep, numbness, frozenness, tingling, heat and for a lot of people it gets tied in with like their chronic dizziness, chronic pain, fatigue, tension or other physical symptoms.

Speaker 2:

When we think about the mental experience and I've really related to this in my own journey. It can look like things like worrying about others all the time, thinking about others constantly. For some people it goes so far that they almost start to lose this identity of themselves, who they actually are. We can have low self-worth. Low self-esteem could be tied into this self-critical thinking, self-blaming, obsessing, like they have an interaction with someone and then they're obsessing later Like did what I say affect them negatively? Like they almost start to ruminate on it and really dwell. This can also include an element of victimization for a lot of people. And you know, the last thing I want to talk about is the behavioral experience. So it can be people-pleasing. Perfectionism would really fall into this FON response as well. Codependency, agreeableness, lack of boundaries.

Speaker 1:

It can be lack of assertiveness and ignoring our own needs and self-care. And so, if you're listening to this and you relate to anything that Tanner just listed off, there again we really want to validate that recognizing this can be hard, trying to change this can be hard, but we really again want to say that there is hope that we can make changes to these behaviors, we can learn new ways of coping and it's important to, if you recognize this, to lean into that idea.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and for myself, I've really struggled with people pleasing. Actually, right now I'm at a really good place with it. I've done a lot of great work with it over the years, and maybe worse is.

Speaker 1:

I was a bit more pleasing. Sometimes I'm smiling right now because I was like, yeah, not that I want you to be people pleasing, but you, but you don't really people-please me anymore, tanner.

Speaker 2:

I've got some firm boundaries in place.

Speaker 1:

He does have firm boundaries it's hard for me to get used to.

Speaker 2:

I know Well, I think for a large part of our relationship. Before I had chronic pain and during I was very pleasing.

Speaker 1:

You know I was actually kind of joking there, but you're being really serious about this now.

Speaker 2:

I really of joking there, but you're being really serious about this now why I?

Speaker 1:

I really think there's been a huge shift over our relationship. Oh, we're gonna be vulnerable.

Speaker 2:

Here we're getting we're getting real okay but you know one thing that would happen with me and ann early in our relationship and um okay uh, and it wasn't ann's fault, so I want want to be clear.

Speaker 1:

Yes, thank you.

Speaker 2:

I want to be clear Anne's very nice. You can be a people, pleaser yourself, okay, fine.

Speaker 1:

I thought we were talking about you. We both got this straight Anne.

Speaker 2:

But one thing that would happen earlier in our relationship is Anne would get big ideas of where her life's going to go. She'd be like I want to move to this place or I want to move to this place, or I want to like change careers and do this path. Yeah, and what would happen is I would just go along. I'd be agreeable to like ann's big plan yes, oh yes, and it was a disaster and what would happen is exactly this is I would get more and more resentful inside.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, because I'd be. I don't want to move to that place, I don't want to go there, but I wouldn't say anything. Oh yeah, and this sometimes like certain ideas that I would have For months.

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, sometimes a year.

Speaker 2:

Like you, would be moving towards this direction.

Speaker 1:

Actually, this is a really good example, tanner, because, yeah, so Tanner's thinking okay, I'm just going to, you know, be agreeable, you know I'm going to ignore my needs and I'm going to, you know, try to not just let Ann think this. I think you're trying to kind of convince yourself of this too. Yeah, a year comes along and I think like we're doing something or our life is heading in some direction, and Tanner will then finally be like no, I can't do that, and I would be rageful and confused and felt I would feel lied to, and so and that's a really great example of people pleasing, because it doesn't always get us where we think we're going to be- yeah and in our relationships.

Speaker 1:

That doesn't always do that because there is a bit of I want to say dishonesty and people might be upset with that word, but there's a bit of um, I want to say dishonesty and people might be upset with that word, but there's a bit of.

Speaker 2:

Well, you're not being authentic. Yeah, and again, I want to be clear, as we say the word dishonesty, because I think you're right it can trigger people and we don't need to do that. You're not to blame for people-pleasing, no, someone's childhood, you know this develops naturally of like certain experiences. This is how you seek safety, especially in people's situations where they've faced abuse. It makes sense because if you please the people that potentially were abusing you emotionally, physically, you're going to be more safe.

Speaker 1:

Well, and it's interesting to look at it in that way because, again, it is a learner response, it's a coping response and sometimes it really does serve us in a safety way. Yeah, if we keep using this coping response always.

Speaker 2:

It doesn't.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't. And this example of you and I yeah, it caused more damage in our relationship. Exactly, and it felt on my I it caused more damage in our relationship.

Speaker 2:

Exactly.

Speaker 1:

And it felt on my end maybe that you weren't being honest with me.

Speaker 2:

And, I think, in hindsight, looking back at this there was never an intention on my end of lying to you Like I'm going to lie to Anne. It was almost like, internally, I was lying to myself. That's almost how it felt, and again, no one's to blame for this, but I think I'm just speaking to my own experience. But that's almost what would happen is I would be like and has this plan, she's excited about this plan. I want to feel supported and loved and like I care about this plan, even though in the back of my mind and sometimes I wouldn't even realize I was doing it. But I didn't actually want to do that. I don't want to move to wherever. I don't want to, like you know, switch things up in my life in that way. But I would go along with it. And then what would happen internally is that anger would build and build.

Speaker 1:

Right, and so there was just like underneath the anger and I remember this period where this happened a lot in our relationship at first, and I remember as the other person on the other side I would sense some of that, but I would be very confused because then his words are saying, no, I want this, but I could tell something, and so it was very confusing as the other person in the relationship as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think we have the privilege in our relationship. I want to be clear that both of us are very loving and supportive of one another. Right Unintentionally, we harm one another, as any relationship does I guess.

Speaker 1:

So yes, as we put that out there for the world right now.

Speaker 2:

Some people are in harder situations where if you have a partner that's abusive, narcissistic like any of these traits, manipulative, someone who is a people pleaser, they really get taken advantage of as a result, when in our relationship there was definitely emotional, heated conversations that would happen as a result of this pattern I had, but we made it through right Like we worked through, we were supportive, we adjusted and now I'm very cautious of these old patterns because that pattern earlier in our relationship and we're talking like these stories, we're sharing this like a decade ago almost at this point, but it really was one of these factors that led to my chronic pain well and interestingly, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So a lot of that time you're in this state of like, dysregulation, not really honoring your needs, not tending to yourself, and that's a big thing that we'll keep talking about. For people that do relate to people pleasing behavior, but feel like they fall into what you're describing, tanner, of like. I actually do need this to feel safe or be safe.

Speaker 2:

It's a tough situation Because we're about to go into four ideas for reducing people-pleasing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

But I want to be careful in our words of like these ideas do work, yes, but I want people to be safe Because if someone's in like an abusive situation, if you start to reduce the pleasing behavior that maybe is keeping you safe, like I just need people to have awareness of that as we speak to it. Before we were recording this podcast, I was thinking about that of. You know, these ideas do work quite well, but I also want people to be safe because as you start to change behavior and if you're in an abusive situation right, there can be negative effects and I want to be clear about that.

Speaker 1:

Well. So I think something important to ask is one do I relate to this? Two, I'm really having good ask of like is this okay to start reducing right now? And if it is, even though it's going to be hard, then we'll get into the. How do we do that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I like that. So we're going to cover four ideas to reduce people-pleasing and they all kind of tail off one another.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I'll state all four first and then we're going to dive into them. So number one exposure and sitting with the dysregulation. Number two, honoring your values and needs. Number three setting boundaries. And number four free expression.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I'll start talking about exposure, which is kind of one of our favorite topics. We talk about exposure with everything, basically, and it's the same with this. We want to work on reducing people-pleasing. We need exposure to exactly that and not doing people-pleasing behavior Sounds really simple but super hard to do. So we want to really validate that this is not an easy thing. It can feel really vulnerable, especially if this is really habitual. Or, yeah, we might not, like we might know if we're embarking on this, okay, we're safe to reduce it, but we might emotionally not feel safe to do it. So we might know, okay, I can do this, but I'm so dysregulated, yeah, when I try to reduce, reduce and we talk about this concept that we've mentioned on the podcast before of just the healing window.

Speaker 2:

This is the window that you can tolerate doing any exposure or attending to anything inside, because it'd be simple if it was just as you're saying oh, just reduce your people pleasing in X way. But the hard part is is, as you do, that you're going to get this dysregulated response. This can look like anxiety, can look like shutdown, guilt, shame, um, people feel that and if you make the exposure too big to reducing your people pleasing and you have this huge wave of dysregulation, people snap back. They snap back into doing the people-pleasing, appeasing others, gaining social acceptance that way, because it's too much.

Speaker 1:

Right. So, just like any form of exposure, we want to start really small, something that's challenging but not too challenging. One point we want to make here is that we're not just retraining ourselves, we're also retraining others, and so in Tanner and my example, he was also retraining me in some ways by starting to reduce his people pleasing, but I don't always like it. I'm like why are you being so band-raised with me?

Speaker 2:

And so it's taken us time to get used to that in our dynamic and it's such a key point because, as I said, like if someone's in an abusive relationship, um it, it can be really, really challenging, yes. But even if someone's in like a safe, supportive relationship like ours, yeah, they're not gonna like it. No one's gonna like that. You're reducing, you pleasing them and it's gonna take time for them to adjust. And I think that's part of the exposure is like it's not like you just reduce the the people pleasing and say, under the sunset, you're gonna get dysregulated, you're gonna see someone else not like it. That's gonna increase dysregulation and you need to learn to sit with that and not respond behaviorally yeah, now again back to our example.

Speaker 1:

In the long run I am glad now that he isn't people pleasing me all the time, and so I think if we want to reduce our people pleasing behavior, we have to see the end goals of that of maybe honoring our needs, kind of changing the dynamic of our relationships too.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so when we talk about examples of what this can look like, yeah. This could be things like saying no to an invitation or a work task. The magic word no. Yes, yes powerful world saying no, really I've gotten quite comfortable with it except now you do no man expressing yourself and that you're upset with a friend or a family member that's a hard one too yeah, not sacrificing too much of your time. Yeah, accepting when someone doesn't like you. That can be a really difficult one. That that can feel very uncomfortable.

Speaker 1:

So when we talk about exposure and we start doing this, there's a bit of blowback and that might be it of like. Okay, I have to sit with the fact that I can control right now if this person doesn't like me or not.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and lastly, like choosing to stand up for yourself in an unfair situation. So I want to go back to the second last point that we mentioned there accepting when someone doesn't like you. It's interesting because that used to affect me, like so deeply when I was in pain and right around the time when I'm healing. When I was in pain and right around the time when I'm healing, and when I started our main company, our therapy business, I started doing YouTube, yeah, podcast, and I want to be clear with people listening. That's not easy. Yeah, I think it's important people know that we put a lot of time and effort and we share a lot personally out to the world. 99% of the time, people are very loving, caring, grateful and I really appreciate the support definitely but some people I have had awful things said to me.

Speaker 2:

yeah, youtube, and each week I'll probably get a few comments. Luckily, youtube has this great, this great function hide user. So anyone that is needlessly rude well, I shouldn't say needlessly anyone that's rude anyone that says something negative about my appearance, anyone like anyone that's inappropriate or rude to someone else on the channel. I'm learning to accept that people may not like me and I'm not going to engage.

Speaker 1:

And was that really hard for you initially, tanner, to maybe put in that action of like okay, I'm just going to not allow that person to comment anymore and move on and set that boundary. Was that hard for you at first?

Speaker 2:

It was difficult because what would happen is people would say mean things and I would try to like work with them. I would be too nice, I'd be trying to be nice to someone who's clearly just being rude to me, right? And now I've learned no, like it's, it's not worth my time, and so, like I think that's like a great example of like me learning that people may not like my content, may not like me, and that's okay. I'm not going to spend my time focused there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's a good example of exposure over time, and it does become much easier. Number two honoring your values and needs. Here's the thing. When we can live more authentically, this creates safety within our nervous system.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

Authentic. I like that word and part of healing, I think, for people is coming back to your authentic self. As we go through life, we face dangers we face dysregulation, trauma, chronic pain. We almost get dragged further and further away from who we authentically are. We start to cope in all these ways that don't really match our values or needs.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And the starting place is starting to identify um like your authentic values yeah, and I like that you say it, like that tenor, like identifying what they are. And I think sometimes, especially when we're in this journey with chronic pain, um, we don't really know what our authentic self needs or what our values are, and sometimes we get like I've talked with people who tell me that they have gotten so kind of lost with their pain and consumed with their pain that they almost feel like they don't have time to answer that question. But answering that question and like taking time there can actually help give some direction of what we need to do yes, and this takes time.

Speaker 2:

It takes time to discover this. Yeah, um, you know one thing is, you almost have to try things out. You have to try different values out to see almost what feels right to you.

Speaker 1:

And then making like space for that. I know for me like an example of my values and needs, I think as a woman and as a mother is having my own time for things that I care about, and I've really had to speak up about that in my partnership or my family or with my friends or whatever that may be, and set boundaries and put time into that. But I know, when I'm not taking that time for me and making sure that's there throughout my weeks, I don't feel like I'm honoring my authentic self. Then I feel like I'm just pleasing everybody else because I think and we talk about mothers and women a bit on this sometimes I can feel like I'm just pleasing everyone else because that's part of my role and so this has been really important for me to have a voice around.

Speaker 2:

And I feel like this is something we really discuss every day or two of like.

Speaker 1:

I'm firm, just like actually you're firm, Tanner, but now not agreeing to ring.

Speaker 2:

I know.

Speaker 1:

I'm pretty clear of like hey, this week has gone off the haywire. Like when our kids are sick it's a disaster, which is fair. I take care of them a lot when they're sick, and then I get sick but all my needs get really shoved aside. So I become very vocal about making sure those get met quickly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, me and Ann. And I think it causes healthy arguments, frequent, healthy arguments. Yeah, it's not like. Me and Ann are just like flowing around just calm. No no, we have some of that in our life, but there are healthy arguments that we have because we're both willing to say no and fight for what we authentically need and value.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and actually that's taken time and practice and time to feel safe in that. So again, with challenging people, pleasing behavior, we don't challenge it as much because we don't feel safe. And so starting to kind of expose and practice and create safety, maybe with the discomfort that can come along with that, is important. Yes.

Speaker 2:

And with all of this stuff can come along with. That is important, yes, and with all of this stuff, um, as we go through these, these four ideas to reduce people pleasing in our digital course, the somatic safety method, we have all of this laid out yeah uh, lots, a whole module just on, like educational videos for for perfections and people pleasing, lots of practices worksheets.

Speaker 2:

So if you need the extra support, you can consider that and the the link is down below uh, in the episode description. But let's move to number three so number three is setting boundaries.

Speaker 1:

Uh, that can feel like a dreaded word sometimes to a lot of people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and this, and this is a form of exposure.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

As we said, when we people please too much, we lose boundaries.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and so, like we've been talking in this whole podcast about setting boundaries with each other, sometimes it might be setting boundaries with, you know, coworkers might be setting boundaries with our kids, might be setting boundaries with our families. It might even be setting boundaries with the neighbors. Right, yeah, there's like boundaries, um, whether we set them or not, is everywhere in our lives yeah, people need to consider like what boundary do you need to enforce in your life?

Speaker 2:

and sometimes it's almost useful to like think about if you set that boundary, what would the benefits Like? Is there boundaries around communication, around time, around expectations? And this is both at work and at home. And essentially, when we don't have enough boundaries, as we said, you're human, you're going to get resentful Right, you may be clicked off to it, not feeling it, but it is building inside. And the beautiful part about boundary setting is that, although it's hard at first, it is exposure. It will increase dysregulation Over time. It can have lots of great benefits. Like me and Anne know, we set boundaries firmly with each other of like time for our hobbies, time away from our kids, where we have time to ourselves doing the things that we want to do right and that's essential, and it's not that it doesn't get out of balance at points, but we're communicating back and forth consistently what the expectations are yeah

Speaker 2:

and lastly, number four free expression, also a form of exposure for people. Pleasing, expressing emotions and concerns with others can feel really dangerous. We talk lots on this podcast about people feeling emotions, connecting with emotions. We just did an episode on embodiment, last episode of embodying the emotional energy. But the other way we move through emotions or dysregulation is we express it outwardly, and I don't mean in like this blind, angry rage. Right, I want to be clear. I'm not. It's not to say that there isn't moments where that's the appropriate response. There are extreme situations but for the most part, like what will happen to people is they'll like let resentment build and build and build and then they'll snap. I'm a great example.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, like you used to do, this is exactly what I did right around the time.

Speaker 2:

I was in pain, recovering from pain, and I wasn't even feeling or expressing emotions. I was just clicked off at that point.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Like it was too much. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about you know, understanding you know how someone's hurt you, or understanding how someone's crossed a boundary and expressing to that, that to them. And again, we want to do this safely, like make sure the person you're doing this with you have some safety and security with. But it's so essential and it's such a hard thing to learn, but it helps other people understand our needs. Yes, great. Back to the example of like and having big plans and me just going along with it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It caused a lot of confusion for you. Yes, because you didn't know my needs. I never freely expressed no, I don't want to move to this place, or I have other things I want to do at this point in our life well, there was no awareness.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it's funny because, like, if you're ever someone that's like, oh, that that's been told. Hey, that really caught me out of left field. Um, maybe there's a reason to that, in terms of like, oh, maybe the other person really had no idea because they haven't been expressing myself.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and people sometimes have confusion around what a healthy relationship is. Healthy relationships. They have rupture and repair. Yes, that's normal. Ruptures are, you know, arguments, disagreements, whatever it might be. We argue all the time. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Actually, well, that's good. Then we're saying that's a good thing.

Speaker 2:

Well, there's ruptures, but then there's also the repair.

Speaker 1:

Ah, so we want repair. We want it to feel safe to repair.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and again, we have the privilege of wanting to be in relationship with each other, obviously, and wanting to create safety.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, I just laughed at that, I just wanted to make sure.

Speaker 2:

Hopefully you don't disagree with that.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for clarifying that, yeah.

Speaker 1:

But I think there is a security in our relationship where we've learned over time that there can be ruptures and, given a few hours or a day, there will be repair yes and we'll work it through, and that's what we're going for in this kind of free expression when we want to start exposing, to expressing emotions, kind of freely starting small is okay too, and so if you're someone that's like I never do this in any of my relationships, which can be very common, I hear that a lot. It's like, okay, where can I slowly start? So might be, you know, expressing oh hey, I actually don't like that movie and that's where the expression of emotion is of like I don't like that movie at all. I hate it. That could be a starting place.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like you can start with things that feel a little bit safer. Like the most deep hurt you've ever felt in a relationship about someone may not be the place to start here. Totally Like opinions, yep, whatever. It might be like. Starting to set boundaries and freely express what you want, yes, can be a great starting place and, like we said, people aren't going to like it Because if you've gone along pleasing your family or your friends, they view you as easygoing. They view you as like they're just going to go with whatever I want. Now you're having an opinion, now you're expressing, no, I didn't like when you said that, or I don't actually want to go to that restaurant. Like you're freely expressing what you want and that will take people time to adjust to. Yeah, expressing what you want, and that will take people time to adjust to yeah. So, in conclusion, these are the four ideas to reduce people-pleasing Exposure and sitting with the dysregulation, which is number one. Number two honoring our values and needs. Number three setting boundaries. And number four free expression.

Speaker 1:

And we really want to keep in mind that while we're doing these things, we're doing it to feel safer in relationships, hopefully, um recognizing that we can be in these relationships with people and also meet our own needs and, yeah, that ultimate goal of like, if I reduce my people losing, maybe I'll reduce my dysregulation and that will impact pain and symptoms exactly that's kind of the the, the beautiful trend that happens for people.

Speaker 2:

They reduce people pleasing, they feel generally more regulated over time and pain and symptoms start to come down because you feel safer in your life well and, I think, happier.

Speaker 2:

Like that example tanner, now you're not doing things in your life that you didn't want to do and essentially, this is a way to create social safety yeah we've done lots on like these internal things of creating safety internally, which this will, but you're creating safety in your life and how you live your life, which is what we're going for. So I hope this episode was helpful for everyone. Yeah, um, and we'll talk to you all next week. Talk to you next week.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening. For more free content, check out the links for our YouTube channel, instagram and Facebook accounts in the episode description.

Speaker 2:

We wish you all healing.