Ending People-Pleasing and Starting 2026 With Better Boundaries

In this episode of She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope, Anna McBride explores what it means to complete old relationship patterns as we move toward 2026.

Anna shares how years of performance, caretaking, and codependency led to emotional exhaustion — and how slowing down, choosing herself, and setting clear boundaries changed everything.

In this episode, we explore why “not everyone should have access to you," and many more gems of wisdom around fostering healthy relationships.

✨ Journaling prompts included to support your own relationship completion and clarity.

If you’ve ever felt tired, resentful, or disconnected in relationships, this episode offers a compassionate and honest path forward.

👉 Subscribe for more conversations on healing, self-worth, boundaries, and practical hope.
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Transcript

The Wake-Up: Access, Boundaries, Confusion

Marriage, Needs, And Self-Blindness

Post-Divorce Dating And Performative Self

Pausing Dating And Owning My Part

Roots: Scarcity, Neglect, And Codependency

Self-Love As Prerequisite For Love

Choosing Yourself And Letting Relationships Fall Away

Emotional Exhaustion And Safety In The Body

Quality Over Quantity Across All Ties

Reclaiming Time, Schedule, And Creative Work

Owning Yeses And Noes Without Regret

Accountability, Hard Conversations, And Alignment

If It Costs You Being You, Pause

Weekly Check-Ins And Staying Ahead Of Resentment

Pause Before You Proceed

No Is A Complete Sentence

Boundaries That Start With You

Communication As Connection And Communion

Safety, Nervous System, And Sovereignty

Presence Versus Performance

Harvard Finding: Quality Predicts Well-Being

Journaling Prompts For 2026 Growth

Subscribe For Workshops And Retreats

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome back to She Asked. Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I am so excited that you're here. This is the second episode in the series of where we're completing things, where we're wrapping up, letting go, and moving on from certain behaviors, certain situations as we enter into 2026. In this episode, we're going to be talking about relationships. Not just romance. We're going to talk about the boundaries we have, the energy we carry, and the way we show up in relationship to other people and ourselves. This year I learned something big. Not everyone should have access to me. Not to the degree that I was letting them. Because I had terrible boundaries around that. So I had to really shift and grow when it came to that. I thought that if somebody needed me, if somebody wanted me, they should have access to me. Not true, folks. Not true. And it really had to deal with the fact that I was very confused around how to relate, specifically to men. But it wasn't just with men. It was around all my relationships. I didn't have a lot of clarity as I do now about what I was doing that was contributing to me not feeling very connected or very satisfied in the way I was relating to other people. I'm happy to say that's changed, but let's begin this episode, as I like to do with all of our episodes, with a story. This story is about relationships. I'll be very specific. I'm going to probably talk mostly about the way I was relating to men. I, as I've shared before, was married for a very long time, for 36 years, and that relationship was one that I wasn't happy in. And yet I remained there. I kept attempting to seek and get attention, to seek and pull out of my ex-husband certain qualities, certain behaviors, certain things that were going to meet my emotional needs in the relationship. Yet I wasn't really expressing my needs. I wasn't really relating in a mature way in terms of being able to articulate what my needs were. And I wasn't really clear on what I needed or wanted, or what my attachment was with him. All this to say is that I didn't really know how I was showing up in that relationship. And this may sound strange to people who know me because I worked as a therapist in this time and I was helping people improve their relationships in their lives while still neglecting the ones in my life. Yeah, I'm sorry to really be able to say that to myself out loud here to you, because I really was blinded about myself. And I'd come to appreciate that the reason why was because I wasn't really, I didn't really know myself. I hadn't really taken an honest accounting of who I was in relationship to myself and to other people, particularly to men. I thought that in order to really be desired, I had to be performing. I thought I had to show up looking a certain way, with a certain weight, with a certain tenacity and a certain flirtiness in order to be desired. And maybe that might be true for some people, but it wasn't working for me. It only got me into repeated bad relationships, one right after the other. Upon my divorce, I started dating. I started dating hard. And I was attracting all kinds of men that were interested in the way I looked and the way I would show up performatively. They weren't really interested in getting to know me in a deeper way. And my tendency to rush into some sort of relationship really prevented me to slow down enough to get to know them to see if they were worthy of my attention. So I would get down the road when it came to things like physical connection with them. And that would happen well before I really got to know them. So this is something I had to really take an honest accounting of. How I was participating in the dysfunction of these connections. I was so quick to want to be in relationship to a man that I never really thought about who I was connecting with. I thought as long as he was appealing, as long as he had a career, as long as he was able to hold a conversation at an intelligent level with me, like that was enough. Yeah, that's how I was being. Because I had a few, more than a few, experiences that were not good when it came to dating. I made a decision, I think it was eight months ago, to stop dating, to slow down, to get to know me when it comes to those kinds of connections and how I was participating in everything, not as a victim, but as a willing participant, and I wasn't really looking at what I was doing in it. So the way I approached it was I got involved with a 12-step program that helped me and really required me to look at my part in everything. I got to know the part of me that was showing up when it came to dating. I got to know the part of me that was formulating these very immature approaches to the way I was connecting to men. And they showed an addictive pattern that had to do with a few areas of my life that were formulated when I was really young. And so this episode is not about the addiction patterns, it's about what I was willing to look at and what I needed to look at and how I began to shift and heal those parts of me so that I can grow into the version of me that is really ready to relate to anybody, not just to men. It's also with women and my relationships in my family, because the dysfunctional way I was relating to men is really a precursor or one level of just how I was not relating in a healthy way to everybody. I was just rushing, rushing, pleasing, performing, and not thinking about how it affected me. Not thinking about how I was really showing up to these other people. And it didn't feel good. It felt really yucky that I would I was doing that. And I'm of this age. I am well into my sixth decade of my life. And yet I can tell you that the amount of clarity I have now about how I was being insincere or not completely honest about how I felt about myself and the way I was relating to other people. I was being who I thought they wanted me to be so that they would be pleased with me. Because I had this misunderstanding that to be pleasing was a direct line to being liked or loved. And that's really another example of how I just didn't know how to love. And so I grew up not knowing how to love because in my household of origin, love was scarce. I was one of 11 children with a household with two parents who had their own addictions, and so they weren't emotionally available. So my ability to feel as though I was connected to them emotionally wasn't a part of my existence. There was a lot of what I felt was emotional neglect. And what that meant was I wasn't being shown a healthy way to connect or to relate to my parents or even to my siblings. We were brought up to really be responsible for each other. It was promoted that we had to be together all the time, worry about each other all the time. And that really was the foundation for codependency. And when you were raised in a codependent household and thinking that's love, you can imagine how confused I was as an adult trying to create love relationships. Either my father or my mother, but the way I related to him was very parental. And I've learned that is not a good foundation for a healthy love relationship. My self-esteem was so low, and I was constantly chasing attention and misunderstanding that if I got that attention, it meant I was pleasing. And if I was pleasing, I would be loved. So I was doing this dance of attempting to be the version of me that would be pleasing and performing in a way that was true to what they wanted and not always in alignment with what I wanted, that I ended up always missing the mark. I never quite felt loved. Not by my husband, not by my children, not by my friends and family. And it wasn't their fault. Because if I didn't love myself, which I didn't, how can I expect anyone else to love me? I was really confused. Another takeaway from my story is that I thought that if I really loved people, I had to be available to them as their needs arose. I had to rescue them if they needed rescuing, and I had to really be pleasing to them. This works for them. It never really worked for me because I would turn my life upside down, and I did many times. For them, I never quite got it that I was supposed to only be pleasing this person. That I'm this life is about me being pleased with myself first, and then see how I want to continue being pleased by how I was showing up and relating to everyone else in my life. It really was so simple and yet so elusive to me. And I think it really began and continued because I wasn't able to really understand or appreciate how I had to choose me. I had to choose me, love me, and be so accepting of me in order for me to invite in a relationship that was going to reflect that. So as you can see, this relationship story is really about how I had to learn to come home to myself, reconnect with myself, accept myself, love myself before I could have a healthy relationship outside of me. So I'm so happy that eight months ago I stopped dating. I wasn't really good at it anyway. So I had to stop that in order to get clarity about what I needed to heal within me in order to create this attraction of relationships that are more reflective about what I need, what I want, what pleases me. And here's the thing: there's an expression that I've heard many times that when we stop pleasing other people, they stop being pleased. So don't be shocked when you start choosing yourself that other people may be turned off or turn away. I don't want you to see that as a symbol or a red flag that you're doing something wrong. You actually might be doing something right. So as relationships fall away, that's when you start to realize that they might not have ever been meant to be there in the first place. So there's a statistic from the American Sociological Review from 2022, which says that women are most exhausted in their relationships. I wonder why that is, don't you? I can tell you from my own experience that I was exhausted with all the performing that I was doing. I didn't even realize what that was doing to my body, to my spirit, to my nervous system. I never felt safe. So I never could really relax. And that's because I wasn't relaxed within me, with myself. Because I always felt like I had to be ready for a close-up, ready for a show, ready to go on and perform. You can imagine, it's exhausting, and yet a lot of women do what I did. They might still be doing it. Yeah, I'm here to tell you that we don't need to experience emotional exhaustion to have good relationships. We need to just remain connected to ourselves and prioritize our needs, our desires, our pleasing above anybody else. We're not tired because we don't care. We're tired because we were never taught how to attend to ourself first. So we're going to talk about that. So I mentioned that eight months ago I stopped dating. And I use that as a demarcation of my need to become clear about what I really needed or wanted in my relationships. It wasn't just about the men, although they were the thing that I was paying most attention to. Yet the more I looked at that in those relationships, I was gaining clarity about all my relationships. About the ones that I was putting a lot of energy into, yet not getting a lot of energy out of. I know I didn't. I was always overly generous in and how I was attending to the people in my life. Before I was considering how well I was being attended to or fed by these relationships. There was a disparity there. So what I did eight months ago is that I chose my own growth over familiar relationships. I no longer wanted to have that same kind of relationship that I had with my husband, or that I had with these other men that I dated, or that I had from my family of origin. I wanted something that was quality. I wanted to choose quality over quantity. So part of what came out of that process was that I took a really close look at all the relationships in my life. I looked at the ones that were professional, the ones that were a bit more casual, and the ones that were in my family. And again, holding myself accountable to how I was showing up. So in my professional life, I had to look at everything related to how much time I was investing in some of these commitments that weren't contributing to me being fully self-supporting, that were keeping my self-worth idea lowered and not allowing me to grow there. I had to look at the relationships that were social. Like I only have so much time. How much time was I going to give to these organizations, to these connections that when it came right down to it, weren't that important to me? And then lastly, I had to look at the way I was relating to people in my day-to-day, people that I care about, but I wasn't really making enough time for them, or I wasn't really asking myself, where do I want to spend my time? Because it matters. I think it's true what they say that who you give your time to as much a statement about who you care about than where you put your money. I upped my investment in myself this year. That looked like really taking care of myself with more time involved. I didn't want to rush through my personal time, meaning I didn't want to have to quickly get up and jump into servicing other people. I wanted to slow down and be able to start my day the way I want to. So I found that I had been really quickly getting into service in things that were important to me, like recovery, but I was rushing through things like meditation and prayer and the reading and my creative work. So I had to shift with that time frame quite a bit. I also had to consider what I was doing in terms of really planning out my time. Like how did I want my day to be spent and who with? And I didn't want to just quickly give away my time to people and things that really weren't helping me expand and grow. Yeah, there was a lot of shifting around with my schedule. Because as I mentioned first thing, I was letting everyone have access to me if they just mentioned that they needed help or that they wanted to see me. I didn't even think about me. So it's important that you slow down and think about who you are making commitments to and does it really serve you? I really want to show up being authentic, being true to me. So that means that I really have to take a look at who I'm really committing to. I was not that long ago so overly committed to so many things that weren't really serving me. I thought they were, because I thought that they were important because people wanted my time and help with things, so I was a yes girl where that was concerned. Yet being saying yes to someone else often means that you're saying no to something for you. And earlier this year, actually just two months ago, I realized that what I kept putting off was a book that I have been writing for seven years. And yeah, I hadn't been ready to really write it, but I am now, because I have really progressed a lot in my healing process, and that's what this book is about. And so seven weeks ago I began a seven-week commitment to finishing my book. And so, in order to keep that commitment, there's a lot of no's I had to give out to people who asked me for time, the people who wanted me to help them, the people who wanted my service. And it was hard to say yes to me and this creative project and no to these asks, to these invitations. And that was a real learning curve for me because I want to, with being authentic, I wanted to own my yeses and own my no's. Yeah, relationship to our behaviors, relationship to ourselves, relationships to other people so that I didn't overextend myself, I didn't not take care of myself, so no neglecting me. And I wanted to also be able to slow down enough to make sure I was really connecting with my feelings. Because often that's what would happen, is I would quickly say yes and then live with the regret. And I don't want to have any resentments in my relationships, any resentments connected to my commitments. So I had to really look at how quickly I was saying yes to some commitments when I really didn't want to do them. So slowing down is key and asking yourself, do I really want to do this? And understand and appreciate that it's really okay if you don't. At this stage in my life, I only want to do what I want to do. I know I have to work, I know I have to have an income, but I only want to be doing those things that really matter to me. Because I believe that if I were just working to please other people, then I'm not going to get anywhere. I'm certainly not going to feel like I am living a purposeful life. And I don't want to pretend that everything is fine anymore. If something I don't like, I speak up. If something isn't working in a relationship, I attend to that. I really look at it like if I'm upset, I look at what I am doing to contribute to the upset. So I hold myself accountable to better see clearly what's really going on, and then I challenge myself even more to talk about it to the people involved, not just gossip, but really approach it and have those difficult conversations because it is through those conversations that relationships can shift and change. I'm telling you, I've really grown up when it comes to relationships. And I want you to know that when you expand and grow and attend to you, it means that you are no longer shrinking. You're no longer doing this self-erasure stuff. You're attending to you and what really matters. So I am finally clear about who I am and what I want and what I want in a relationship and what I don't want anymore. I don't want to participate in relationships that make the other person feel attended to and I feel neglected. I want to make sure that as best as it can, it's not something that is about caretaking for them. It's about one in which we both feel connected and able to be ourselves, authentically ourselves. So if you notice that you've been people-pleasing in your relationships and that you've been shrinking or making yourself fit in so that the relationship can continue, or if there's fear involved in terms of am I enough? Am I going to be able to hold their attention? You might want to slow down and take a look at that. Because from my experience, that if the relationship you're in costs you being you, it won't work. It didn't for me, and I don't think it's meant to for you either. Because that will only lead to resentments or some sort of unhealthy behavior on your part in order to cope in that relationship. And that's not what we're here for. The She Ask podcast is going to always encourage you to be true to you, to show up healthy, to be the best expanded version of you, and heal all the parts of you that might be holding you back from being that. Because that's what this life needs us all to show up in a more expanded way in every relationship. The one with yourself and the one with others. So here are some things to consider as we're going into 2026. These are maybe habits that you could start to develop or build upon if you're already doing them. So maybe have one honest check-in a week. First of all, you better be checking in with yourself at least once a week. Meaning what's working, what's not working, and where do I need to speak up if something doesn't feel right. And after you check in with yourself, maybe extend that out to someone else that you care about. Maybe the personal love relationship in your life, or if you're like me and aren't dating, maybe the other people of consequence. For me, it would be my children first, and then my siblings and my family, my friends, my teachers, my other connections that I have socially. I want to make sure that I am connecting instead of isolating. I'm not holding in anymore things that are upsetting me. Yet before I take my upsets outward, I make sure that I'm clear on what it is that I'm upset about and what it is that I am doing to contribute to that upset. And then I do a check-in with the other person to make sure that we have an honest conversation about that and attend to the situation instead of ignoring it, instead of pretending that it's not happening or that I'm not feeling upset. That way we stay ahead of resentments. And I want you to slow down. How about that as a habit? A pause before you proceed. Maybe a pause and pray before you act. I can't even tell you how many times I wish I had done that. I'm learning to do that now. I'm making it an active part of before I enter a room, before I begin a conversation, before I record a podcast, I slow down, I take a breath, and I consider what is it that I really want to say. Because when it comes to relationships, here's one thing I know for sure that the intention I bring to the conversation matters. The idea of what is it that I really want to communicate? How do I want to connect with this person? It matters. Because if you're not conscious there, you could be jumping in and having a completely different experience than what you had intended. So slow down, consider, pause before you proceed. And I promise you, it'll be better. Also, another habit is the idea that no is a complete sentence. Let's stop justifying, arguing, defending, or explaining our decisions. Let's just be at peace with them, whether they're a yes or a no. So if you really don't want to do something, don't do it. If you really want to say yes and yet you're worried about what other people are going to think about it, be at peace with it before you proceed with it. I often would jump in into things, say yes, and commit to things without really considering the impact on me. So therefore, I never felt safe when I was asked to do something because I felt like I was going to be betraying myself, and I often did. Now I want to slow down, I want to arrive with peace at my decisions, and I want to be able to own my no's and my yeses with authentic clarity. So as we close this year, I want us to consider who are you? Who are we becoming in our relationships to ourselves and to other people? So what are the boundaries that you're going to set for yourself? Remember, boundaries are the things that we will no longer participate in. They're not about the other person, they're about you. So I want to make sure that I set a boundary for myself that I will no longer just quickly say yes. I will slow down and consider. Do I want to do these things with these other people or these commitments, or do I not? I want to, when I begin dating again, really consider the other person. Get to know them. It takes time to get to know someone I've learned. And yet I was so quick to run into something, to say yes to a relationship or a situationship without even considering the quality of the other person and whether they were a good fit for me. So boundaries are important. I also want to own my communication, and I offer that to you: that how you communicate matters. The word communication has in its root this idea of communion, which means that in order for you to really be understood, to really get the message across, you need to first connect. You need to first really find a way to connect with the other person if you want to have a true communication where your message is carried across, where you hear them and understand them, where you both benefit from that connection. How often did I just jump in saying words, saying things that I didn't mean, didn't know, and it was mostly out of reactivity? If you slow down and consider what you want to say, I promise you the communication will get better. I also want to be in safe relationships. I want to slow down enough to consider the impact of the relationships that I'm choosing to get into, of their impact on my nervous system. I want to know that I feel safe always. I want to know like I'm really taking the time to consider whether I feel safe with someone before I really invest in time with them, make a commitment with them. And that really requires me being aware of feeling safe inside myself as I connect with them. So I have to listen with my whole nervous system, that's all my senses, as I get to connect with people so that I truly know that I feel safe. Too often in my life I haven't. And so I want to make a commitment to myself and I offer this to you to head into 2026 and only say yes to invite in relationships that you feel safe in. And I want you to be authentically you. That means that I want you to show up with presence, with authenticity, with true sovereignty as you go into the new year. And that really, if you don't know yourself yet, get clarity around that. Know the difference between presence and performance, or presence versus perfection. I was always worried about what I looked like, how I thought people were seeing me, was I pleasing enough to them that I wasn't really aware of the inconsistency of that, the confusion that was creating, and how misaligned that was with who I really am. So here's something else to consider, and this is a statistic based on something that was studied at Harvard about adult development, that it is the quality of the relationships, not the quantity, that matters in our overall well-being and longevity in life. It is true what they say, that we aren't meant to have multitudes of relationships. We are meant to have a certain number, and everybody's got different capacities for this, of high-quality relationships in order to feel like we matter, like we are really enriched in our life. I always thought there was something wrong with me because I have truly very few friends. Yet I would see other people making lots of friendships. And what I've come to appreciate is that my capacity for connection was really stunted at a young age. And so now because I'm finally at a place where I want to make sure that I'm pleased, that I'm safe, that I'm being authentic first in the way I'm connecting with people, that I'm realizing that the only people who I resonate with are ones that meet those requirements, those needs for me. So it might be something to consider for yourself going into 2026, like quality over quantity. So I'm going to give you some journaling questions to consider and write about so that you get to know how it is that you were showing up in relationship to other people. The first one is where did I abandon myself in relationships this year? And what pattern was underneath that behavior? Oh my goodness, how often did I abandon myself in my upbringing, in my marriage, and even in other relationships to other people? Certainly with men. I was attending to them and abandoning me. So where did you abandon yourself in relationships this year? And what was the behavior pattern behind that? What was maybe the parts of your personality that you might need to attend to or heal in order to do it differently? Second question: which relationships feel in alignment with your growth and which relationships pull you backward? There were so many relationships that were not attending to me, not allowing me to expand. My marriage was one of them. Certainly the men I dated was another extension of that. And so, since we're all About growth here on the She Ask podcast, I want you to consider where you've been shrinking instead of allowing yourself expand, particularly in your relationships. And then thirdly, how do you want to feel about your relationships in 2026? How do you want to feel? Because feelings are the way we heal, and if we don't feel safe, then we need to really look at that. And what boundaries might you need to set like for yourself so that you can feel differently about your relationships going forward in 2026? So consider those journaling questions. Really, I want to invite you to take a deep dive and consider how you're showing up in relationship to other people and own your part because you and your behavior, that's the only thing you can really do anything about. So if this conversation supported you, if I would invite you to subscribe to my newsletter where you're going to hear more information about this topic as well as the workshops and the retreats that we have planned for 2026 so that you can go into the new year a little healthier, a little bit more expanded, and ready to have your relationships grow to another level. So until soon, be well. Welcome back to She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I am so excited that you're here. This is the second episode in the series of where we're completing things, where we're wrapping up, letting go, and moving on from certain behaviors, certain situations as we enter into 2026. In this episode, we're going to be talking about relationships, not just romance. We're going to talk about the boundaries we have, the energy we carry, and the way we show up in relationship to other people and ourselves. This year I learned something big. Not everyone should have access to me. Not to the degree that I was letting them. Because I had terrible boundaries around that. So I had to really shift and grow when it came to that. I thought that if somebody needed me, if somebody wanted me, they should have access to me. Not true, folks. Not true. And it really had to deal with the fact that I was very confused around how to relate, specifically to men. But it wasn't just with men. It was around all my relationships. I didn't have a lot of clarity as I do now about what I was doing that was contributing to me not feeling very connected or very satisfied in the way I was relating to other people. I'm happy to say that's changed, but let's begin this episode, as I like to do with all of our episodes, with a story. This story is about relationships. I'll be very specific. I'm going to probably talk mostly about the way I was relating to men. I, as I've shared before, was married for a very long time, for 36 years. And that relationship was one that I wasn't happy in. And yet I remained there. I kept attempting to seek and get attention, to seek and pull out of my ex-husband certain qualities, certain behaviors, certain things that were going to meet my emotional needs in the relationship. Yet I wasn't really expressing my needs. I wasn't really relating in a mature way in terms of being able to articulate what my needs were. And I wasn't really clear on what I needed or wanted, or what my attachment was with him. All this to say is that I didn't really know how I was showing up in that relationship. And this may sound strange to people who know me because I worked as a therapist in this time and I was helping people improve their relationships in their lives while still neglecting the ones in my life. Yeah, I'm sorry to really be able to say that to myself out loud here to you, because I really was blinded about myself. And I'd come to appreciate that the reason why was because I wasn't really, I didn't really know myself. I hadn't really taken an honest accounting of who I was in relationship to myself and to other people, particularly to men. I thought that in order to really be desired, I had to be performing. I thought I had to show up looking a certain way, with a certain weight, with a certain tenacity and a certain flirtiness in order to be desired. And maybe that might be true for some people, but it wasn't working for me. It only got me into repeated bad relationships, one right after the other. Upon my divorce, I started dating. I started dating hard. And I was attracting all kinds of men that were interested in the way I looked and the way I would show up performatively. They weren't really interested in getting to know me in a deeper way. And my tendency to rush into some sort of relationship really prevented me to slow down enough to get to know them, to see if they were worthy of my attention. So I would get down the road when it came to things like physical connection with them. And that would happen well before I really got to know them. So this is something I had to really take an honest accounting of. How I was participating in the dysfunction of these connections. I was so quick to want to be in relationship to a man that I never really thought about who I was connecting with. I thought as long as he was appealing, as long as he had a career, as long as he was able to hold a conversation at an intelligent level with me, like that was enough. Yeah, that's how I was being. Because I had a few, more than a few, experiences that were not good when it came to dating. I made a decision, I think it was eight months ago, to stop dating, to slow down, to get to know me when it comes to those kinds of connections and how I was participating in everything, not as a victim, but as a willing participant, and I wasn't really looking at what I was doing in it. So the way I approached it was I got involved with a 12-step program that helped me and really required me to look at my part in everything. I got to know the part of me that was showing up when it came to dating. I got to know the part of me that was formulating these very immature approaches to the way I was connecting to men. And they showed an addictive pattern that had to do with a few areas of my life that were formulated when I was really young. And so this episode is not about the addiction patterns. It's about what I was willing to look at and what I needed to look at and how I began to shift and heal those parts of me so that I can grow into the version of me that is really ready to relate to anybody, not just to men. It's also with women and my relationships in my family. Because the dysfunctional way I was relating to men is really a precursor or one level of just how I was not relating in a healthy way to everybody. I was just rushing, rushing, pleasing, performing, and not thinking about how it affected me. Not thinking about how I was really showing up to these other people. And it didn't feel good. It felt really yucky that I would I was doing that. And I'm of this age. I am well into my sixth decade of my life. And yet I can tell you that the amount of clarity I have now about how I was being insincere or not completely honest about how I felt about myself and the way I was relating to other people. I was being who I thought they wanted me to be so that they would be pleased with me. Because I had this misunderstanding that to be pleasing was a direct line to being liked or loved. And that's really another example of how I just didn't know how to love. And so I grew up not knowing how to love because in my household of origin, love was scarce. I was one of 11 children with a household with two parents who had their own addictions, and so they weren't emotionally available. So my ability to feel as though I was connected to them emotionally wasn't a part of my existence. There was a lot of what I felt was emotional neglect. And what that meant was I wasn't being shown a healthy way to connect or to relate to my parents or even to my siblings. We were brought up to really be responsible for each other. It was promoted that we had to be together all the time, worry about each other all the time. And that really was the foundation for codependency. And when you were raised in a codependent household and thinking that's love, you can imagine how confused I was as an adult trying to create love relationships. Either my father or my mother, but the way I related to him was very parental. And I've learned that is not a good foundation for a healthy love relationship. My self-esteem was so low, and I was constantly chasing attention and misunderstanding that if I got that attention, it meant I was pleasing. And if I was pleasing, I would be loved. So I was doing this dance of attempting to be the version of me that would be pleasing and performing in a way that was true to what they wanted and not always in alignment with what I wanted, that I ended up always missing the mark. I never quite felt loved. Not by my husband, not by my children, not by my friends and family. And it wasn't their fault. Because if I didn't love myself, which I didn't, how can I expect anyone else to love me? I was really confused. Another takeaway from my story is that I thought that if I really loved people, I had to be available to them as their needs arose. I had to rescue them if they needed rescuing, and I had to really be pleasing to them. This works for them. It never really worked for me because I would turn my life upside down, and I did many times. For them, I never quite got it that I was supposed to only be pleasing this person. That I'm this life is about me being pleased with myself first, and then see how I want to continue being pleased by how I was showing up and relating to everyone else in my life. It really was so simple and yet so elusive to me. And I think it really began and continued because I wasn't able to really understand or appreciate how I had to choose me. I had to choose me, love me, and be so accepting of me in order for me to invite in a relationship that was going to reflect that. So as you can see, this relationship story is really about how I had to learn to come home to myself, reconnect with myself, accept myself, love myself before I could have a healthy relationship outside of me. So I'm so happy that eight months ago I stopped dating. I wasn't really good at it anyway. So I had to stop that in order to get clarity about what I needed to heal within me in order to create this attraction of relationships that are more reflective about what I need, what I want, what pleases me. And here's the thing there's an expression that I've heard many times that when we stop pleasing other people, they stop being pleased. So don't be shocked when you start choosing yourself that other people may be turned off or turn away. I don't want you to see that as a symbol or a red flag that you're doing something wrong. You actually might be doing something right. So as relationships fall away, that's when you start to realize that they might not have ever been meant to be there in the first place. So there's a statistic from the American Sociological Review from 2022, which says that women are most exhausted in their relationships. I wonder why that is, don't you? I can tell you from my own experience that I was exhausted with all the performing that I was doing. I didn't even realize what that was doing to my body, to my spirit, to my nervous system. I never felt safe. So I never could really relax. And that's because I wasn't relaxed within me, with myself. Because I always felt like I had to be ready for a close-up, ready for a show, ready to go on and perform. You can imagine, it's exhausting, and yet a lot of women do what I did. They might still be doing it. Yeah, I'm here to tell you that we don't need to experience emotional exhaustion to have good relationships. We need to just remain connected to ourselves and prioritize our needs, our desires, our pleasing above anybody else. We're not tired because we don't care. We're tired because we were never taught how to attend to ourself first. So we're going to talk about that. So I mentioned that eight months ago I stopped dating. And I use that as a demarcation of my need to become clear about what I really needed or wanted in my relationships. It wasn't just about the men, although they were the thing that I was paying most attention to. Yet the more I looked at that and those relationships, I was gaining clarity about all my relationships. About the ones that I was putting a lot of energy into, yet not getting a lot of energy out of. Before I was considering how well I was being attended to or fed by these relationships. There was a disparity there. So what I did eight months ago is that I chose my own growth over familiar relationships. I no longer wanted to have that same kind of relationship that I had with my husband, or that I had with these other men that I dated, or that I had from my family of origin. I wanted something that was quality. I wanted to choose quality over quantity. So part of what came out of that process was that I took a really close look at all the relationships in my life. I looked at the ones that were professional, the ones that were a bit more casual, and the ones that were in my family. And again, holding myself accountable to how I was showing up. So in my professional life, I had to look at everything related to how much time I was investing in. In some of these commitments that weren't contributing to me being fully self-supporting, that were keeping my self-worth idea lowered and not allowing me to grow there. I had to look at the relationships that were social. Like, I only have so much time. How much time was I going to give to these organizations, to these connections that when it came right down to it, weren't that important to me? And then lastly, I had to look at the way I was relating to people in my day-to-day, people that I care about, but I wasn't really making enough time for them, or I wasn't really asking myself, where do I want to spend my time? Because it matters. I think it's true what they say that who you give your time to is much a statement about who you care about than where you put your money. Because if time is the most important resource, then who I give my time to has to be a part of that equation. And so the very first thing I did was to consider how much time and investment was I was making with myself. I upped my investment in myself this year. That looked like really taking care of myself with more time involved. I didn't want to rush through my personal time, meaning I didn't want to have to quickly get up and jump into servicing other people. I wanted to slow down and be able to start my day the way I want to. So I found that I had been really quickly getting into service in things that were important to me, like recovery, but I was rushing through things like meditation and prayer and the reading and my creative work. So I had to shift with that time frame quite a bit. I also had to consider what I was doing in terms of really planning out my time. Like how did I want my day to be spent and who with? And I didn't want to just quickly give away my time to people and things that really weren't helping me expand and grow. Yeah, there was a lot of shifting around with my schedule. Because as I mentioned first thing, I was letting everyone have access to me if they just mentioned that they needed help or that they wanted to see me. I didn't even think about me. So it's important that you slow down and think about who you are making commitments to and does it really serve you? I really want to show up being authentic, being true to me. So that means that I really have to take a look at who I'm really committing to. I was not that long ago so overly committed to so many things that weren't really serving me. I thought they were, because I thought that they were important because people wanted my time and help with things, so I was a yes girl where that was concerned. Yet being saying yes to someone else often means that you're saying no to something for you. And earlier this year, actually just two months ago, I realized that what I kept putting off was a book that I have been writing for seven years. And yeah, I hadn't been ready to really write it, but I am now, because I have really progressed a lot in my healing process, and that's what this book is about. And so seven weeks ago I began a seven-week commitment to finishing my book. And so, in order to keep that commitment, there's a lot of no's I had to give out to people who asked me for time, to people who wanted me to help them, the people who wanted my service. And it was hard to say yes to me and this creative project and no to these asks, to these invitations. And that was a real learning curve for me because I want to, with being authentic, I wanted to own my yeses and own my no's. Yet let's be clear, it's not that easy to say no to people who really want to give me attention, and yet I realized that I have to stop chasing attention. So every time I said yes to me, I was saying no to that behavior. Every time I was saying yes to my creative projects, I was saying yes to expanding in those ways. Yeah, relationship to our behaviors, relationship to ourselves, relationships to other people so that I didn't overextend myself, I didn't not take care of myself, so no neglecting me. And I wanted to also be able to slow down enough to make sure I was really connecting with my feelings. Because often that's what would happen, is I would quickly say yes and then live with the regret. And I don't want to have any resentments in my relationships, any resentments connected to my commitments. So I had to really look at how quickly I was saying yes to some commitments when I really didn't want to do them. So slowing down is key and asking yourself, do I really want to do this? And understand and appreciate that it's really okay if you don't. At this stage in my life, I only want to do what I want to do. I know I have to work, I know I have to have an income, but I only want to be doing those things that really matter to me. Because I believe that if I were just working to please other people, then I'm not going to get anywhere. I'm certainly not going to feel like I am living a purposeful life. And I don't want to pretend that everything is fine anymore. If something I don't like, I speak up. If something isn't working in a relationship, I attend to that. I really look at it like if I'm upset, I look at what I am doing to contribute to the upset. So I hold myself accountable to better see clearly what's really going on, and then I challenge myself even more to talk about it to the people involved, not just gossip, but really approach it and have those difficult conversations because it is through those conversations that relationships can shift and change. I'm telling you, I've really grown up when it comes to relationships. And I want you to know that when you expand and grow and attend to you, it means that you are no longer shrinking. You're no longer doing this self-erasure stuff. You're attending to you and what really matters. So I am finally clear about who I am and what I want and what I want in a relationship and what I don't want anymore. I don't want to participate in relationships that make the other person feel attended to and I feel neglected. I want to make sure that as best as I can, it's not something that is about caretaking for them. It's about one in which we both feel connected and able to be ourselves, authentically ourselves. So if you notice that you've been people-pleasing in your relationships and that you've been shrinking or making yourself fit in so that the relationship can continue, or if there's fear involved in terms of am I enough? Am I going to be able to hold their attention? You might want to slow down and take a look at that. Because from my experience, that if the relationship you're in costs you being you, it won't work. It didn't for me, and I don't think it's meant to for you either. Because that will only lead to resentments or some sort of unhealthy behavior on your part in order to cope in that relationship. And that's not what we're here for. The She Ask podcast is going to always encourage you to be true to you, to show up healthy, to be the best expanded version of you, and heal all the parts of you that might be holding you back from being that. Because that's what this life needs us all to show up in a more expanded way in every relationship. The one with yourself and the one with others. So here are some things to consider as we're going into 2026. These are maybe habits that you could start to develop or build upon if you're already doing them. So maybe you have one honest check-in a week. First of all, you better be checking in with yourself at least once a week. Meaning what's working, what's not working, and where do I need to speak up if something doesn't feel right. And after you check in with yourself, maybe extend that out to someone else that you care about. Maybe the personal love relationship in your life, or if you're like me and aren't dating, maybe the other people of consequence. For me, it would be my children first, and then my siblings and my family, my friends, my teachers, my other connections that I have socially. I want to make sure that I am connecting instead of isolating. I'm not holding in anymore things that are upsetting me. Yet before I take my upsets outward, I make sure that I'm clear on what it is that I'm upset about and what it is that I am doing to contribute to that upset. And then I do a check-in with the other person to make sure that we have an honest conversation about that and attend to the situation instead of ignoring it, instead of pretending that it's not happening or that I'm not feeling upset. That way we stay ahead of resentments. And I want you to slow down. How about that as a habit? A pause before you proceed. Maybe a pause and pray before you act. I can't even tell you how many times I wish I had done that. I'm learning to do that now. I'm making it an active part of before I enter a room, before I begin a conversation, before I record a podcast, I slow down, I take a breath, and I consider what is it that I really want to say. Because when it comes to relationships, here's one thing I know for sure: that the intention I bring to the conversation matters. The idea of what is it that I really want to communicate? How do I want to connect with this person? It matters. Because if you're not conscious there, you could be jumping in and having a completely different experience than what you had intended. So slow down, consider, pause before you proceed. And I promise you, it'll be better. Also, another habit is the idea that no is a complete sentence. Let's stop justifying, arguing, defending, or explaining our decisions. Let's just be at peace with them, whether they're a yes or a no. So if you really don't want to do something, don't do it. If you really want to say yes and yet you're worried about what other people are going to think about it, be at peace with it before you proceed with it. I often would jump in into things, say yes, and commit to things without really considering the impact on me. So therefore, I never felt safe when I was asked to do something because I felt like I was going to be betraying myself, and I often did. Now I want to slow down, I want to arrive with peace at my decisions, and I want to be able to own my no's and my yeses with authentic clarity. So as we close this year, I want us to consider who are you? Who are we becoming in our relationships to ourselves and to other people? So what are the boundaries that you're going to set for yourself? Remember, boundaries are the things that we will no longer participate in. They're not about the other person, they're about you. So I want to make sure that I set a boundary for myself that I will no longer just quickly say yes. I will slow down and consider. Do I want to do these things with these other people or these commitments, or do I not? I want to, when I begin dating again, really consider the other person, get to know them. It takes time to get to know someone I've learned. And yet I was so quick to run into something, to say yes to a relationship or a situationship without even considering the quality of the other person and whether they were a good fit for me. So boundaries are important. I also want to own my communication, and I offer that to you: that how you communicate matters. The word communication has in its root this idea of communion, which means that in order for you to really be understood, to really get the message across, you need to first connect. You need to first really find a way to connect with the other person if you want to have a true communication where your message is carried across, where you hear them and understand them, where you both benefit from that connection. How often did I just jump in saying words, saying things that I didn't mean, didn't know, and was mostly out of reactivity? If you slow down and consider what you want to say, I promise you the communication will get better. I also want to be in safe relationships. I want to slow down enough to consider the impact of the relationships that I'm choosing to get into, of their impact on my nervous system. I want to know that I feel safe always. I want to know like I'm really taking the time to consider whether I feel safe with someone before I really invest in time with them, make a commitment with them. And that really requires me being aware of feeling safe inside myself as I connect with them. So I have to listen with my whole nervous system, that's all my senses, as I get to connect with people so that I truly know that I feel safe. Too often in my life I haven't. And so I want to make a commitment to myself, and I offer this to you to head into 2026 and only say yes to invite in relationships that you feel safe in. And I want you to be authentically you. That means that I want you to show up with presence, with authenticity, with true sovereignty as you go into the new year. And that really, if you don't know yourself yet, get clarity around that. Know the difference between presence and performance, or presence versus perfection. I was always worried about what I look like, how I thought people were seeing me, was I pleasing enough to them that I wasn't really aware of the inconsistency of that, the confusion that was creating, and how misaligned that was with who I really am. So here's something else to consider, and this is a statistic based on something that was studied at Harvard about adult development, that it is the quality of the relationships, not the quantity, that matters in our overall well-being and longevity in life. That we aren't meant to have multitudes of relationships. We are meant to have a certain number, and everybody's got different capacities for this, of high-quality relationships in order to feel like we matter, like we are really enriched in our life. I always thought there was something wrong with me because I have truly very few friends. Yet I would see other people making lots of friendships. And what I've come to appreciate is that my capacity for connection was really stunted at a young age. And so now because I'm finally at a place where I want to make sure that I'm pleased, that I'm safe, that I'm being authentic first in the way I'm connecting with people, that I'm realizing that the only people who I resonate with are ones that meet those requirements, those needs for me. So it might be something to consider for yourself going into 2026, like quality over quantity. So I want to give you some journaling questions to consider and write about so that you get to know how it is that you were showing up in relationship to other people. The first one is where did I abandon myself in relationships this year? And what pattern was underneath that behavior? Oh my goodness, how often did I abandon myself in my upbringing, in my marriage, and even in other relationships to other people? Certainly with men. I was attending to them and abandoning me. So where did you abandon yourself in relationships this year? And what was the behavior pattern behind that? What was maybe the parts of your personality that you might need to attend to or heal in order to do it differently? Second question: which relationships feel in alignment with your growth and which relationships pull you backward? Alright, there were so many relationships that were not attending to me, not allowing me to expand. My marriage was one of them. Certainly the men I dated was another extension of that. And so, since we're all about growth here on the She Ask podcast, I want you to consider where you've been shrinking instead of allowing yourself expand, particularly in your relationships. And then thirdly, how do you want to feel about your relationships in 2026? How do you want to feel? Because feelings are the way we heal, and if we don't feel safe, then we need to really look at that. And what boundaries might you need to set like for yourself so that you can feel differently about your relationships going forward in 2026? So consider those journaling questions. Really, I want to invite you to take a deep dive and consider how you're showing up in relationship to other people and own your part because you and your behavior, that's the only thing you can really do anything about. So if this conversation supported you, if I would invite you to subscribe to my newsletter where you're going to hear more information about this topic as well as the workshops and the retreats that we have planned for 2026 so that you can go into the new year a little healthier, a little bit more expanded, and ready to have your relationships grow to another level. So until soon, be well.