From People-Pleasing to Holy Freedom (Part 1): The Counterfeit Virtue: Unmasking People-Pleasing

New Podcast Series: 

From People-Pleasing to Holy Freedom: How to Stop Living For the Approval of Others and Start Living For God

Part 1: The Counterfeit Virtue

I'm so excited to welcome you to this brand-new 3-part series about one of the biggest struggles I see in Catholic women—and one I personally had to overcome myself.

Over the next three episodes, we'll explore how to stop living for the approval of others and start living for God.

Most women have never been told that people-pleasing is more than an unhealthy habit. It's often praised as kindness, selflessness, or simply "being a good person." But when our desire for the approval of others becomes greater than our desire to please God, it quietly steals our peace, our identity, and our freedom.

Throughout this series, we'll uncover the lies behind people-pleasing, examine what Scripture and the Catholic faith teach about it, and discover how to root our identity in Christ so we can live whole, holy, and free.

🤍 In Part 1, you'll learn:

• What people-pleasing actually is—and what it isn't

• Why it often disguises itself as kindness, humility, and charity

• The hidden emotional and spiritual costs of living for the approval of others

• The four false identities people-pleasing creates

• Practical, everyday examples of how it shows up in work, marriage, parenting, friendships, faith, and decision-making

• A simple homework exercise to help you begin recognizing these patterns in your own life

This episode isn't about guilt or shame.

It's about awareness.

Because awareness isn't condemnation—it's the beginning of freedom.

📖 Scripture for the Series

"Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ." — Galatians 1:10

🙏 Saints to Ask for Intercession

• St. Teresa of Avila
• St. Catherine of Siena
• St. Joan of Arc

➡️ Coming Next: Part 2

Where did people-pleasing come from?

Why does it have such a grip on our hearts?

And what do Scripture and the Catholic faith teach about breaking free?

In Part 2, we'll explore the biblical and spiritual roots of people-pleasing and begin replacing lies with God's truth.

Connect with Carrie:
Follow Carrie on Instagram @livingwholeandholy

✨ If this episode resonated with you and you're ready to move from people-pleasing to holy freedom, I'd love to walk alongside you through Catholic life coaching. Schedule a Free 1:1 Catholic Coaching Clarity Call with Carrie

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to the Living Whole and Holy podcast, where the Catholic faith and intentional living come together. I'm your host, Carrie Jane, a recent Catholic convert and Catholic coach, here to guide you toward a life that's rooted in Christ, centered in his love, and aligned with God's call. Whether you're a convert, revert, cradle Catholic, or simply exploring the faith, you're in the right place. Join me each week to hear inspiring conversations including conversion and reversion stories, timeless wisdom from the church, and practical Catholic coaching tools that help you deepen your faith and intimacy with Christ, cultivate Christ-centered habits, and be transformed for the renewing of your mind. If you're ready to discover and align to the beauty and richness of a fully integrated Catholic life, you've found your home. I'm so excited you're here. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

I'm so excited to be back with you for a series on people pleasing. And it's called From People Pleasing to Holy Freedom: How to Stop Living for the Approval of Others and Start Living for God. And this topic is really near and dear to my heart because it is something that I have learned to overcome and work through by working with my own coach for a couple of years now. And in the clients I've been serving, it's a topic that comes up time and time again in a struggle that my clients have. So I thought, why not do a series? Most women have really never been told that people pleasing is more than an unhealthy habit. It's actually a spiritual issue. While our culture often celebrates it as kindness, selflessness, or simply being a quote-unquote good person, it can quietly become a counterfeit virtue, causing us to seek the approval of others over the approval of God. The result isn't greater love or holiness, but anxiety, exhaustion, resentment, and a fragmented identity. So in this series, we'll expose the lies behind people pleasing, examine what scripture and the Catholic faith teach about it, and discover how to root our identity in Christ so we can live whole, holy, and free from people pleasing. I'm going to tell you a little bit about what to expect in this first episode. So we're going to define what people pleasing is because some of you might not even call yourself a people pleaser, but I'm going to talk about what it is, how it shows up, where it's actually stealing from you in your life, and how it can cause some false identities. And then in episode two, we're going to talk about what the church says and what scripture says about it, where it comes from, why, why we get so invested in it. And then in episode three, we're going to really talk about rooting our identity in Christ and how we can use practical Catholic coaching tools and mindset renewal in order to live more free and to break free from people pleasing. So I really want you to know that this is a problem that a lot of people struggle with, but we have hope in Christ and we have support in our beautiful Catholic faith to overcome it. So before I define people pleasing, I want to ask you a few questions. Do you say yes when every part of you wants to say no? Do you apologize for things that aren't your fault? Are you exhausted from carrying everyone else's expectations? Do you secretly resent people because you're constantly overcommitted or overscheduled, even though no one forced you to say yes? Do you know God is calling you to a dream he's put into your heart, but you're terrified someone in your life won't approve? Do you shrink or compromise your values in order to impress people? If you found yourself saying yes to several of these questions, you may not be just being too nice. You might be trapped in people pleasing. And I want to root this series in scripture. Galatians 1.10 says, Am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. And that's really what it comes down to. We can't be all that God is calling us to be if we are concerned with pleasing man rather than pleasing God. And I love this verse of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1700. It says, the dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God. We're going to talk about identity, like I said, in episode three, when we get to the part about reclaiming your freedom in Christ, because when you have your identity solidly in Christ, you will not easily fall into the trap of people pleasing. And I also want to mention some really beautiful saints that I feel have been talking to me as I've been putting this series together. They are very powerful saints in our Catholic Church. Two of them are doctors of the church. And I just want to call on them right now to ask for their intercession as we're going through this episode. So, Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us. Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us, and Saint Catherine of Siena, pray for us. Okay, so we're gonna start by defining what people pleasing is. We're gonna unmask it. Because once we are aware of how it's showing up in our lives, that's when we can ask God to give us the grace to transform it. And he really can supernaturally use his grace to transform anything in our lives, including people pleasing. So what is people pleasing? People pleasing is the consistent pattern and choice, yes, I said choice, of prioritizing other people's approval, comfort, or emotional reactions over truth, virtue, and the will of God. It's not the same thing as genuine charity, authentic service, or Christian humility, although it mimics all three with remarkable precision. And the enemy loves to disguise fear as virtue. So it can look very pretty and it can look like something virtuous, but it really is not. When we do anything, we always need to ask about our intentions behind what we're doing. What is the motivation behind this action? Action without proper intention is not virtue. And that's where people pleasing exposes itself for what it really is. Virtue just isn't about what we do, it's also about why we do it. So now that we've defined it, let's talk about the costs of people pleasing. There are so many hidden costs that, again, you might not be aware of. And once you're aware, that's really where the transformation can take place. So people pleasing doesn't just cost you your time and your energy. It steals your peace, it steals your joy, it steals your courage, it prevents you from really engaging in authentic relationships because when you're in people pleasing, you don't experience the freedom, the joy and the ease of authentic friendship or authentic relationship with people in your family or your spouse. It steals your identity, it steals your calling, your voice, your ability to hear God's voice because you're so consumed listening to everyone else's. And we're gonna talk a lot about some false identities that can happen when we're engaged in people pleasing in a minute here. But people pleasing often looks like chronic anxiety, overthinking, and endless thought spirals that get you nowhere, decision fatigue, or making decisions from fear, burnout, especially in career, perfectionism, inability to rest and overscheduling, which also can lead to always feeling behind or rushed. So then you're not even really able to be present for those around you, difficulty sleeping, resentment and emotional exhaustion, and I will talk about resentment in a little bit as well, hypervigilance in your environments. Maybe you're always walking on eggshells or fear that you're gonna rock the boat and upset somebody. Can also show up physically, like tight shoulders or a sinking feeling in your stomach. People pleasers don't usually struggle because they care too much. They struggle because they confuse being loved with being approved of. I have been through this before, and I've walked my clients through this as well to help them overcome it. Living as a people pleaser is exhausting. You're constantly scanning every room, reading everyone's facial expressions, trying to determine if someone's upset with you. You're exhausted before conversations even begin because you're trying to control everyone else's experience of you. You replay conversations you had earlier in the day at night, wondering if you said the wrong thing. You edit your personality depending on who's in front of you, which leads to you being a chameleon. You feel guilty when you rest because you feel like there's always someone else you could be helping. Someone doesn't text you back and your mind immediately starts wondering: Did I do something wrong? Why aren't they getting back to me? You carry the weight of everyone else's expectations, and somewhere along the way, you've forgotten what you actually want, or more importantly, what God is asking of you. You become so focused on keeping everyone else happy that you never quite feel free to simply be the person God has created you to be. And this is why people pleasing is so dangerous. It doesn't just steal your peace, it slowly steals your identity. So we're gonna look at different ways this can show up as false identities. And if you're recognizing yourself in this episode, I invite you not to judge yourself, but to be lovingly curious and hopeful about how God's grace can pour into your life to heal and transform this pattern and way of being. It doesn't have to be this way for you anymore, I promise. Awareness isn't condemnation from God, it's the beginning of freedom in Christ. So these are the four false identities women take on as people pleasers. And like I said before, this may be happening knowingly or unknowingly, but this is how it shows up. Number one, the first false identity a woman can take on as a people pleaser is the approval seeker. She constantly needs validation and praise to feel secure in herself and worthy. So her security doesn't come from Christ, it comes from validation. Her emotional states rise and fall entirely based on what others think of her. She could be feeling great in one moment, and then the next moment, terrible. She's devastated by any form of criticism, even if it's loving, constructive criticism, because her entire identity is constructed on the opinions of others. The second false identity is the conflict avoider. This woman will compromise her values, her convictions, her truth and integrity to maintain what she believes to be a surface-level peace. She walks on eggshells and tries to calculate the moves of others around her to avoid feeling emotion. She's afraid of conflict and speaking what is true to her values for fear of rejection and criticism. And most importantly, she's confused peacekeeping with peacemaking. Jesus calls us to be peacemakers. He said, Blessed are the peacemakers in Matthew 5, 9, not blessed are the peacekeepers. Peacekeeping is a way that we try to control situations and people, and it will never actually lead other people to peace or ourselves to be peaceful internally. The third false identity women take on as people pleasers is the fixer. She takes personal responsibility for everyone's emotions, problems, peace, and happiness. That's a big job. I want to remind you, we do have a savior. We are not the savior. We have a beautiful savior named Jesus Christ, and he does not want us taking responsibility for those, for other people. She believes at a deep level that her value is contingent on being needed or her roles in life at home and at work. She loses her identity entirely in the process of managing everyone else's lives. And she often cannot even articulate what she wants or what God is calling her to because she spent so many years living for everyone else. The fourth false identity that women can take on as people pleasers is the performer. This is a woman who is a high achiever, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to achieve or excel at what you do. God actually calls us to be great. But when she gets caught in overfunctioning, never rests, ties her worth to her productivity and the things around her and the things that she accumulates. And she feels value only when accomplishing things or doing something, she's in a false identity. She isn't necessarily afraid of conflict. She's just invested in proving that she's enough and often convinces herself that she needs to be doing more and achieving more. So I'm wondering if any of you can identify with any of those four. For me, the top one was the approval seeker, and I'll talk about that as I go on. People pleasing doesn't just make you tired, it fragments you. You become a different version of yourself depending on who's standing in front of you. Instead of living from your God-given identity, you're constantly adapting to meet everyone else's expectations of you. And that is exhausting. At its core, people pleasing is fear wearing the mask of love. It's very tricky, and the devil loves it that way. It's a seductive disguise. From the outside, people pleasing looks like kindness, generosity, hospitality, charity, compassion, servant leadership, and humility. And I want to promise you, you can be someone who exhibits these virtues in their daily lives and not be a people pleaser. They are mutually exclusive. They do not need to coexist together. And this is precisely what makes it so spiritually dangerous. It's a counterfeit virtue that's almost indistinguishable from the real thing. You think if I am kind and generous and hospitable and compassionate and humble and a servant leader, then I must be a people pleaser. Absolutely not. Authentic charity is motivated by love of God and love of neighbor and truth. People pleasing is motivated by fear, fear of rejection, fear of conflict, fear of being disliked, fear of abandonment. One is ordered toward God, the other is ordered toward self-protection and self-preservation. So actually, the more of a people pleaser you are, the more selfish and self-centered you become. Your life really isn't centered on God. It's centered on yourself and how you're perceived and if you can protect yourself and preserve the qualities that you think you want people to see. One of the biggest signs that your yes wasn't actually love is resentment. And I talked about that's one of the symptoms earlier. Real charity produces peace. People pleasing produces bitterness. So that's really your litmus test. People pleasing doesn't just keep you from saying no to people, it eventually causes you to say no to God. Every time you choose human approval over obedience to God, you've made someone else's opinion more authoritative than his voice. And the enemy would love nothing more than for you to mistake people pleasing for virtue. So as you can see, people pleasing is not virtuous. What I want to do now is walk you through some real life scenarios. We know what it is, but how does it show up? Okay, so there's a couple different scenarios that I want to walk you through. And again, take note and see if this is happening in your life. So at work, saying yes to impossible workloads out of fear of appearing uncommitted, lazy, or ungrateful. Now, this happened to me in my work in a public school as a speech therapist. I had a giant caseload. I have 60-day timelines for assessments. And I had to speak with my administrator and set some boundaries and say, I do need the full 60 days for my assessments. And you know what? I have more assessments than I can handle. I'm going to need some help. And also, I have 10 students over my caseload number. What can we do here? And I was able to get my 60-day timeline for these assessments that I had to do. I was able to get a speech pathology assistant to help me with my workload. And the extra assessments that I was not able to complete, I was able to have another therapist come help me with those. But when you say yes to everything in your work situation, what happens is you end up overworking and you burn out. And then you can actually end up resenting your vocation. And it can really take a toll on the way that you show up at work and how you perform at work. So that's how it showed up for me a lot in the past. It can also show up in marriage of never expressing real needs, real feelings, or real concerns so that you think you can avoid tension. But what happens is resentment builds silently underneath the surface of a marriage and it can look fine on the outside, but slowly it's suffocating on the inside. And sometimes we have to have difficult conversations with our spouse. We have to say things where we don't agree with their opinion and they're allowed to have their opinions. But when we have that ability to express our needs and our real feelings in marriage, your marriage will feel so much more free. In parenting, it can look like saying yes to every request from your child because you fear that they might see you as a bad parent or they won't like you. But what happens is when we raise children who never feel disappointment, who never experience responsibility and don't have boundaries, then they don't learn how to manage their lives when they get older. So saying yes to everything from your child may look like, oh, I'm just keeping the peace with them, but in the end, it's going to impact how that child grows up. In friendship, this can look like tolerating toxic, draining, or sinful behavior within friendship because being needed feels safer than speaking the truth and love. And you slowly lose yourself in the process. And this can also look like being around friends who are not engaging in virtuous activities. And we become who we surround ourselves with. And that's why it's important. If you really are wanting to grow your faith and live a life and become a future saint, so important to surround yourself with people who are having that same direction in life so you can get each other to heaven. So in faith, it can look like downplaying or hiding Catholic convictions. And this can happen at work, at family gatherings, in an effort to avoid being labeled, judged, or excluded, or more seriously being rejected. And I certainly experienced this in my life. I converted to Christianity much later in my life. My family knew me as one way. They are not people of faith. They're beautiful people, but they're non-believers. And it took me a really long time to share my faith. And then I became Catholic. And my brother went to a Catholic school and hated it. And I was really afraid of telling him about being Catholic. And I avoided it. But it really impacted my relationship with my family because I wasn't being myself. And I even, as embarrassing as this is to say, and I've mentioned it in other episodes, I used to take down religious items from my house if my family would. Come over. And I got to a point where I just said, you know, this is the most important thing in my life. Why am I hiding it? This must really hurt God. I just need to be who I am. I need to allow myself to express, fully express my faith. It's the most important thing in my life. And lo and behold, um, I stopped doing that and I told my family, and they did not reject me. They were actually very happy for me. Now, do I share my faith with my family? Meaning, can I really have deep conversations about my faith with my family? No. But I can be who I am around them and I don't have to hide it, and I don't have to be somebody who I'm not. That was a real wake-up call for me. In decision making, it can look like spending more time worrying what everybody else thinks rather than what God is asking. So if your decision making has been affected by people pleasing, you have a hard time hearing your own voice. You hear the voices of other people, you might hear the voices of the enemy. You have a hard time really connecting with his voice. It can also show up in parish life. It can show up like volunteering out of guilt and social obligation rather than genuine love of God and neighbor. And here is where I would invite you to really take stock of what your charisms are, because there's a lot of opportunities to volunteer at your church. But if they're not aligned with what you're really good at and the God-given gifts and talents He's given you, then you may end up not enjoying that way of serving. And it may, you may be serving out of people pleasing. So if you are a musician, look for ways that you can bring your musical talent to the church rather than doing something in administration if that's not your gem. Or if you are an intercessor, find out if you can do a holy hour, or maybe there are people at the church that need prayer. You can volunteer in that way. If you are a person who loves hospitality, see how you can cook for your church or bring in healthier food. That is my husband's charism and something he's so passionate about. So when we volunteer out of a place of gifts God has put within us, we are not going to feel obligated. We're going to feel like this is genuine and ways that we can truly help our parish. So, in closing, people pleasing is really a distorted love. Instead of rightly ordering our hearts toward God first, we begin to order our lives toward the approval of other people. My goal for today wasn't about making you feel guilty if you've been engaging in people pleasing. It was really about helping you see clearly. If you recognize yourself in this episode, don't let shame have the last word. Let awareness become an invitation. God isn't revealing this pattern or habit to condemn you. He's revealing it because he loves you too much to let you keep living under the crushing weight of everyone else's expectations. You were never created to carry the responsibility of managing everyone else's opinions, emotions, or approval. Remember, we have a savior. We can pray for people. He is the one who does the saving, not us. You were created to know God, love God, and become the woman he created you to be. People pleasing promises acceptance, but it delivers anxiety. I'm gonna say that again. People pleasing promises acceptance, but delivers anxiety. It promises peace, but it leaves you exhausted. It promises love, but it slowly steals your identity. Jesus offers something entirely different: the freedom of living as his beloved daughter of the Father. So right now I wanted to give you a little homework assignment. I love to give my clients homework to do between sessions, so I figured, hey, I'll do it here as well. This week I don't want you to try to change anything yet. I just want you to become a gentle observer. Yes, I said gentle. You can either do this with a note on your phone or you can jot some notes in your journal. So what I want you to do is open up a note in your phone or a page in your journal, and you're gonna make a tally for each of these things, okay? So you're gonna write these things in your journal. So every time you apologize unnecessarily, say yes when you want to say no, over-explain a boundary, replay a conversation in your mind, feel responsible for someone else's emotions, feel guilty for disappointing someone. I want you to make a tally. And at the end of the week, I want you to ask yourself, what pattern do I notice? Maybe you are doing all of these. Maybe you are doing some more than others. It's a really good idea to start getting aware. That's really how we start to change, okay? Then before you go to bed each night, I want you to spend a few moments in prayer. Kind of think of this as a mini examination of conscience. Or you can add it if you do a daily examination of conscience. You're gonna ask yourself these two questions. Where did I seek God's approval today? Where did I seek someone else's approval today? Don't judge your answers, simply notice them. And remember that awareness isn't condemnation, it's the beginning of freedom and your ability to transform this habit. So now that we've uncovered what people pleasing is, the next question becomes: where did it come from? Why does it have such a grip on our hearts as Christian women? Why do we so desperately crave the approval of other people? And what does scripture and the Catholic faith actually teach about it? That's exactly what we'll explore in episode two as we uncover the biblical and spiritual roots of people pleasing and begin replacing lies with God's truth. I really can't wait for you to join me on that and continue the journey with you. And before we go, I want to speak directly to the woman who saw herself in this episode. Maybe for the first time, you have words for what you're experiencing. Not everybody can identify themselves as a people pleaser. That you may have been thinking to yourself, I'm just a nice person, this is just who I am. I really wish I could change, but I just can't. I want to remind you, all things are possible with God. He is a God of mercy, he's a God of grace. If this episode helped you realize that you've been living under the weight of other people's expectations, I want you to know something. You don't have to figure this out alone. You have Jesus walking right next to you. You have support available to you. This is exactly the kind of work I walk women through in Catholic life coaching. Together, we'll uncover the lies you've been you've believed, we'll renew your mind with God's truth, and help you build a life rooted in your identity as his beloved daughter, not in the approval of everyone around you. That's really the springboard for making change. It's that solid rooting in Christ. My goal isn't simply to help you say no. More often, my goal is to help you become the woman God created you to be: whole, free, confident in him, and deeply rooted in his love. If you're ready for that kind of transformation, I'd be honored to walk alongside you. You can learn more about working with me through the link in the show notes. So before we go, I want to remind you, you were never created to spend your life managing everyone else's expectations. You were created to know Christ, become like Christ, and courageously live the unique mission he has entrusted to you. Until next time, remember this. You don't have to earn the love you've already been given. This week, I want you to ask the Lord for the grace to seek his approval above all else and go live whole and holy. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Living Whole and Holy podcast. If you're ready to dive deeper into life coaching from a Catholic perspective, I have a few spots available for one-on-one coaching. This is an amazing opportunity for you to work with someone who will empower you and support you to dream again with God, find more alignment, peace, and confidence in your life, and be the greatest version of who God is calling you to be. I would be so honored to support you on this journey. Send me a DM on Instagram at LivingHole and Holy for a free one on one call to learn more.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

If this episode blessed you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share with a friend. And remember, instead of doing what makes you happy, do what makes you holy.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Until next time, God bless.