People Pleasing

A raw and honest episode on my experience with people pleasing. ♡ 

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Welcome to a Curious Mind podcast. Today I'm gonna focus on people pleasing. I'm gonna um I want to go into my experience with people pleasing, um how like I first discovered that I had that those tendencies and just how since I have sort of identified it and I'm working around it and working with it, I have um found a lot more joy and uh just satisfaction in my own life. Um yeah, today's episode is extremely like focused on like my younger self and sort of sending a message to her and uh like teaching young people that people pleasing is not something that actually brings you much. Yeah, so people pleasing um is when you when you forego your your needs, your wants, um you don't express yourself, you just sort of like you keep your you keep who you genuinely are very uh very much kind of like behind closed doors, locked doors, uh just very inwards. Um because you're scared that if you express yourself authentically, or if you are yourself, or if you express um differing opinions, or um maybe you are perceived as sort of like an inconvenience in any way that would cost you connection, and so over time you quieten your voice down, and that's not just like your actual voice, it's like your your genuine voice, like who you really are. Uh, you you sort of like turn it down to a point where it's actually like you cannot hear yourself anymore, and you don't actually know like what it is that brings you joy, what it is that brings you satisfaction, what it is that makes you happy, what kind of people you want to spend time with, what kind of activities you want to engage in, like what you just sort of like lose yourself through this consistent like dimming of yourself, and you dim yourself out of survival instincts, like you want to be connected. Humans are relational creatures, we need to connect to each other and have a community, and so you think that in order to have a community, you need to forego your own needs and your own wants to fit into that community, and um, and of course, like this can be in like other uh relationships, like uh, you know, partnerships, friendships, work relationships, all of these um like ways that you relate to other people, you can be a people pleaser in those um in those scenarios, and uh ultimately what it does is it makes you un it it robs you of the ability to understand yourself and it robs other people the joy and privilege of understanding you as well because if you don't understand yourself, how is anyone else going to understand you? Like, how are you going to be able to communicate those needs, wants, desires, interests to other people? And so you lose yourself, I guess, through that process, and um, and the problem with people pleasing is people pleasers tend to look quite joyous and quite happy and content because you know it's all for the greater good and it's to help other people and put other people's needs above your own. It and and it can seem heroic, but actually it's really selfish because you use other people's joy, satisfaction, praise as some sort of a mirror to yourself to feel that joy, satisfaction, and praise within yourself. But that then means that you're constantly looking on the outside for this joy, this satisfaction and praise. And if those people or whatever aren't there for whatever reason, you're you're lost, like you're not able to provide that for yourself. Um, and it can go deeper and deeper and deeper, you know, like people in your life, you may create a dynamic with people in your life where you are such a giver, you're constantly giving, that people become reliant on you because it's easy to become reliant on you because you're reliable, because you're going to forego your needs and your wants in order to make these people like you, and therefore you're left with a burden of this person's expectations that you have built over time, and you are you begin to feel trapped because you've created a dynamic with these people that like you need to show up XYZ ways, um, in order for this person to even acknowledge you, and it's too much for you, and therefore you get tired and you can't show up the way that you kind of demonstrated initially, and this person is therefore left in the dark because they're like, Well, I you know, I thought I could rely on you for that kind of stuff, and now you're not here, and it can it it just there are just so many ways that people pleasing actually it on the face of it can seem as though it's a really powerful and efficient way of building connection, but it actually in actual fact it's extremely detrimental to genuine connection because it's based off of not lies, but it's based on not the whole truth, and so yeah, once once you start to realise that um you cannot people please your way into every single relationship and like all sorts of relationships, and also if you do that, the quality of the relationships are not real and sustainable because if you think that a relationship is only it will only survive if you forego your needs and your wants, then that's not a relationship because it's not relational, you're just giving and you're not receiving because you're not receiving what you genuinely need, because that person doesn't know what you genuinely need, so you're just sort of like exhausting yourself, thinking that you're doing the right thing in order to maintain this relationship, and actually you're losing yourself, and you're not giving this other person or this these other people the chance to give back to you, and they don't know that they're not giving back to you because you've not made yourself clear. Um yeah, it's actually like almost like a silent killer. You know how like they say death of a death by a thousand cuts. I think people pleasing is like such is like if death by a thousand cuts was underneath a word in in the dictionary, it would be people pleasing. It's just like it it really is it's very detrimental. Um and yeah, I mean I have my whole life, um I have always felt as though I need to please people, and I never um I feel like the phrase people pleasing is definitely used a lot, and um I never really understood like what it means. Um I thought it was kind of like a yes man, like just someone that's constantly saying yes to things, but it's this it's actually really different, like it's not just like as simple as that, it's what I've just described. Um and it's really um it's really affected the type the kinds of relationships that I've been able to build throughout my life because I have given more than I have to people, and I have expected them to be able to give back to me what it is that I've been giving to them uh without communicating any of this in the meantime, and when I don't get back what I have been giving, I then feel hard done by and abused and used, and I cut people off, and like I can't um I really struggle to be able to find sort of like the middle ground of like this is who I am, and this is what I will do, and these are my limits and my boundaries and all of this sort of stuff. Like, this is where I will go, this is as far as I will go. This other person that I'm relating with may not have the same approach. That's okay, because I want to be of their friend, I don't want to be friends with myself in them. Um, but it's taken a really long time for me to get there, and the first time I ever discovered this was uh when I first went to therapy, um, and I was speaking about a relationship of mine that I was in at the time, and I was expressing how I felt as though like I was really tired at the from the relationship. I felt as though my needs weren't being met. I felt as though um I wasn't able to express myself to this person, um, and my therapist turned around to me and was like, Do you realize that what you're doing is actually extremely narcissistic? Like you think you you have conducted a dynamic in the relationship where this person is reliant on you, you have allowed a dynamic to be constructed, um, where this person relies deeply on you and has now poured all of their resources uh into you. Um you've allowed it, you've somewhat like in a weird like covert way, you've encouraged it because you have felt as though like you can save this person from whatever it is that um you thought they needed saving from, and now you've got a dynamic, you've you have been, you know, a player in building a dynamic with this other person where they are wholly reliant on you and it's too much for you to to carry, and so you're worried about leaving or saying something against the situation because you you have kind of you know, like you don't know how they'll be able to survive without you. And like when I like when I heard it the first time, oh wow, like so much of the way that I perceive the way that I perceived like relationships and friendships and what to expect from people and what not to expect from people, like so much of like my my whole foundation that I had created when it came to relating to people was just shattered in front of my eyes because it's it was completely true, like I was a player in the in in the game of creating a dynamic where this person um wanted where this person demonstrated like things that they wanted to work through, and I so desperately from a place of needing to be needed, decided that I was gonna fill all of those gaps and those roles in their life, um, like work overtime in order to sort of like be that that everything for them, um, all subconsciously, like I didn't do this, you know, knowing that I would be creating such a toxic dynamic. Um, but over time I was sort of building as well as my partner at the time, we were sort of building this dynamic which was exhausting me because I wasn't expressing my needs and wants. Because if I was to express my needs and wants, then like I would almost be sort of like taking away from the fact that I'm supposed to be the self-provider when it came to like emotional, uh, emotional stability. Um, and so I yeah, like it was it was really messed up. It was it's a very messed up situation to be met with. Um, when I had just gone to therapy to basically say, like, I'm really tired and I don't think that I'm can carry on, and um I'm not sure how to to go about it because I feel as though if I was to sort of end things, it would be really difficult for this person. Um and my therapist was like, Well, you have subconsciously been, you know, of course, in a much kinder and softer way, and um I'm hugely grateful for them to for having pointed this out to me. Um but it was a huge, huge learning point for me, and that kind of sent me on a journey of understanding and like trying to better um yeah grasp my people-pleasing tendencies, um, and it has been really eye-opening, and it has been really uh difficult because I have constructed so much of who I am based off of the fact that I am a people pleaser. So there are parts of myself that I really, really like about myself that are very much um like come from my people-pleasing tendencies. Like, I love people. I love people, I love understanding people, I love helping people, I love listening to people, I love empathizing with people, I love it when someone is in my presence and they feel seen, like it makes me feel so nice. Um, and like you know, I'm going into a into a career that is hugely influenced by that part of myself, and I love that about myself. I truly do love that about myself, and I think that it's a quality that I will always um love, but it's also like it can also be really um it can it can be problematic for me, and I need and I have been trying to uh identify when it starts to be a problem rather than a tra a good trait, you know. I've really made use of like my body in this in this process of sort of like listening to and connecting to my body. Um the author Gabor Mate speaks a lot about this about how like what we feel is um like the way that our body reacts to things, like how we physiologically feel about certain things is a huge indicate indicator um as to what's sort of going on psychologically. Um he uses the example of like sometimes when he's dishonest to his wife, she over the years has like developed neck ache, I think it was, and so like when he lies to her and she feels neck ache, she knows that he's lying to her because like over the years she's been able to pick up on the small signals um that he's obviously dropping when he's lying, uh, and that has caused her to feel tension in her neck, and therefore, like over time, she has used that as a as a tool to understand her husband better. Um, and I think that like I have been doing that so much. I mean, I love I've mentioned it before, and I'll mention it again, like my energy levels. I feel as though like the way that I feel I feel like a lot of who I am is like I'm quite an energetic, bubbly person, and I like to be around people and I like to um just be in the company of others, and ever since I've started to sort of like make note and take yeah, like take note of my energy levels before going into like a social interaction, and afterwards, it has hugely um helped me understand better like what kind of interactions make me feel good, and what kind of interactions don't make me feel as good, and like just being more um aware of that side of myself. One of the biggest things that I I really want to work on, and I'm trying to work on is expressing myself truthfully, like from the get-go, you know, being as truthful as possible because I really struggle to express like that made me feel insecure, or like that comment didn't really sit very right, and like I feel sad because of this, or I feel worried because of this, like just being a little bit more honest when it comes to sort of like feelings that come up for me. Um, because I would rather forego my feelings and authenticity in order to connect, but it leaves me with a different type of loneliness, which is just like losing myself in a relationship or in a dynamic and being with somebody that doesn't even know who I really am. Um, and yeah, like that is something I'm massively I'm still struggling with, and I've noticed it a lot actually recently. Like, I've really really really struggled to tell people when I'm struggling. Um, like there is a small handful of people in my life who know as I am struggling that I'm struggling because I I just find it so difficult, like so, so difficult to admit that it's like that things aren't great, you know, and it's not because it isn't from a place of pride, it's from a place of like wanting to protect other people from like my the heaviness, um it's like yeah, it's it's it's a really it's so weird, it is it is something that I like I still just don't understand about myself, but I know that it's from a place of people pleasing, it's almost like I need to be like a strong, reliable, like consistent person in other people's lives, and if they know that I am going through it, then that would kind of like break the bubble of like this strong, consistent thing that I am. Um, and that is terrifying to me because I base my value off of these things, you know. But ultimately, like when someone comes to me and is expressing, like, you know, I'm going through this really difficult thing at the moment, and this is happening and that's happening, and it's just all a bit shit right now. Like, I feel such a sense of privilege that they have shared that with me, because the fact that they like feel comfortable enough to share that is already a hugely like difficult thing for them to do, um, and so I know the value of sharing those things, but I just don't seem to do it myself because I think that there's a thing, because I know that there's a part of myself that thinks like I can't um I can't show this side of myself because that person will then want to run away from me because the way that I build relationships is like this sturdy, strong, consistent person, and if I sh seem to be something other than that, then that person's not gonna want to be my life anymore. Which is like I don't know, I just It's like logically, it makes no sense. Like it makes absolutely no sense. Like it honestly when someone comes to me and expresses like a grievance with me, but like comes to me and tells me it and is like honest with me and allows me to work through it with them. Like I feel such a sense of privilege because I'm just like, well, this person cares enough with me, uh cares enough about me to want to work through this with me. And I just don't seem to have it within me, or I I haven't learned to yet to have it within me to do that for them. So it's really difficult because I'm robbing people of like me. I'm robbing people of like of of the different sides of myself. Um I mean the first step in all of this is always like being aware of it, you know. Like I'm it's important that I'm aware of it so that I can catch myself when I find myself doing it. But um yeah, it's uh you can see like when I'm talking through it, like it you can see how it can cause problematic relationships. I feel like problematic relationships is not the right word, but it it can cause relationships that have holes and gaps where they actually don't need to be. Because I think that the point of being human is you realize that everybody else is human, like you want to relate to other humans, and humans are not perfect, and humans are complicated and flawed, and um they do things that annoy you, and you do things that annoy them, and that's the whole point of it, really. And if you sort of like hide those parts of yourself from people, it means that like you aren't allowing yourself to be fully seen and heard, and you're not allowing people to fully see you and hear you. Um the ways in which like I have started to um I guess just sort of catch myself, people pleasing, and try to sort of change my approach is uh first of all just sort of like saying no and giving the genuine reason rather than a lie. So, like, you know, if I just if for whatever reason, like I don't want to go out one evening, you know, which it rarely happens, but let's say it does happen, like I will just be honest and say, like, I I just don't have the energy, you know, for whatever reason, I've just had a difficult day and I don't want to go out, and I hope you have the best time, um, but I'm just not gonna be there, you know. Um, or just like expressing, or I I try to sort of like express like when I've always really struggled to contradict people, like if I'm speaking to somebody and they sort of like contradict me, I really struggle to be like, no, actually, that's not what I meant, like I meant this, um, and I've started to do that a lot more, and it's amazing how people don't really like care, in that it's not something that people take personally, like that's not but there was always a part of me that thought that they would take it personally because it's almost like I'm like attacking them personally for like not getting it right, but actually, what I'm doing is I'm giving them a chance to understand me better because I'm saying, like, no, no, no, like what I actually meant was this. Um, and so that has been really helpful. It's just like almost just finding my voice, you know, and so taking notice of like what it is that I that brings me like a sense of like peace, calm, like relaxation, happiness, joy, content, like that kind of what what that feels like physiologically, um, and then like when I catch my body being like at a certain thing, I'm like, oh, okay, what's going on here? You know, is it the company I'm in? Is it like the conversation that I'm having? You know, what is it? And I sort of like work through it. And I mean, the people that I definitely sort of like practice in quotations on the most is like the people that are closest to me because I have like a fundamental understanding that like I could probably so extreme, but I could murder and these people would still love me. Do you know, do you know what I'm trying to say? Obviously, it would never get to that, but I I I'm so confident and secure in like the specific relationships I was speaking about in my life that like I could murder and they would still love me, and so I'll practice being a bit more honest with them first. Um, and that then helps me find my voice and understand my voice better, so that like when it comes to building other relationships, uh, I've already I've already sort of practiced that muscle, you know, and and strengthened strengthened that muscle. Um, and ultimately I do think that people pleasing, like the best way to tackle it is exposure therapy. It is putting yourself in situations where potentially you feel like, oh my god, these people are going to completely like you know, like not want to connect with me ever again. Um, putting yourself in situations and testing the theory helps because you start to realise that people are not so fragile and like actually people are a lot more resilient and understanding than you think. And if you give yourself and those people the chance to sort of like work through it, most of the time you're able to, you don't have to forego your needs and your wants in order to create and maintain these kinds of connections. Actually, being yourself from the get-go is already like a really, really healthy and positive place to start from. Um, but in order for you to be your genuine self, you need to know yourself, and so I think that like through exposing yourself to certain things, feeling you know, the way that your body feels in those situations, um, yeah, and working through it that way, I think is really is a really good place to start. Yeah, it's uh I think it's something that so many of us work through and work, yeah, and have to sort of understand. And I I think sort of like the day and age of social media massively kind of like uh it just fosters it because you you want people to like you, like the feeling of being liked is so addictive. Um and so you know, whatever you can do to sort of be liked uh is sometimes paramount to um your your own needs and wants, and actually in the long run, it just doesn't serve you, like the sm the the small sort of like increases in you know the endorphins and the dopamine and all that sort of stuff uh and the serotonin, the small short bursts of it through being liked by others is not sustainable, and actually in the long term, the small bursts end up becoming like not as effective, but over the the time where you're kind of like foregoing your needs and wants in order to get these small bursts of joy because someone else around you is happy, you just sort of lose yourself. It's like a small burst and then you go further down, and then another small burst and it goes further down, and and in the end, like the small bursts don't do it for you. Um, because you're you're so lost because you you've lost your sense of self through this process. Uh the joy is that you can rediscover yourself, and most of the time I think that like you're actually a much more interesting and um just better off person because of the experience. I don't think that it's ever like a you know, I think that if you are a people pleaser and you're figuring it out, like I think it's such a cool thing. I think it's such an exciting part of your life to like rediscover yourself again, understand yourself better, and like practice expressing your your opinions and your limits and your boundaries, and like feeling proud of yourself for doing that and providing yourself with the sense of like satisfaction and joy and um and uh praise it's it's exciting, it's really cool. It can be really really exciting, um, but it's firstly very scary. So, yeah, that's my little message for my younger self or anybody that is in the place of my younger self. Um people pleasing on the outside looks really harmless and nice, but it's actually it can be very, very toxic. Um, and it's important that you identify it before you've just really, really, really, really lost yourself. I don't think that there's ever a point of no return. Um, but I think that the sooner you identify it, the sooner you can start understanding yourself better and looking after yourself better. Um, you know, I think that's the most important thing, you know. So yeah. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it, and I will see you again next week.