People-Pleasing and the Cost of Losing Yourself

What if your kindness isn’t kindness at all, but a survival strategy? In this episode of Lumen, hosts Christopher Mooney, LCSW and Kenyon Phillips, LMSW unpack the often-overlooked link between the trauma response of fawning and people-pleasing by reframing the habit of saying “yes” as a survival mechanism rather than a personality trait. Together, they explore how the fawn response develops as a way to stay safe—appeasing others to avoid danger, conflict, rejection, or loss—and how that pattern can quietly take over our relationships, jobs, and identity. From staying in relationships too long to overextending at work, Christopher and Kenyon connect the dots between fear, early conditioning, and the compulsive need for validation while breaking down the four distinct types of people-pleasers. They also examine the emotional and physical toll of chronic self-abandonment, including resentment, anxiety, and stress held in the body. At its core, this episode is an invitation to recognize the fears that drive most people-pleasing—and to begin the work of reclaiming your boundaries, your voice, and your sense of self. 

To book a free consultation with Christopher, Kenyon, or the other providers at Lumen Therapy Collective, visit lumentherapycollective.com. 

Follow Lumen on Instagram: @lumen_therapy_collective

Subscribe, share, and review Lumen on your favorite podcast platform!

Lumen is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, diagnosis, or treatment. If you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact local emergency services or a trusted mental health professional.

Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Lumen, a podcast that sheds light on mental health, relationships, and what it means to be human. I'm Christopher Mooney, LCSW.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

And I'm Kenyan Phillips, LMSW. Each episode we unpack psychological patterns that affect our relationships. No jargon, no judgment.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Just thoughtful conversations to help you understand yourself and others a little more clearly. I thought today we've we talked we talk about the four responses to anxiety all the time. It comes up. Also known as the trauma responses. Trauma responses, fear responses, right? And I think that we And they are. We recently had well, we recently had them referred to as the four Fs. Four Fs, right? Right. So and that was referred them to the referred to as the four Fs. Which is like, oh, we should continue to use that. So but we have freeze, uh-huh. We have fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Fawn. Right. And so when we've talked about we've talked about fight or flight, and we'll go back in. And I think what would be good is to in each take take one episode and kind of talk about each one. Yeah, nice. But today I want to talk about fawn because that's come up a lot. And I think that's kind of the most vague out of all four. So you know, the anxiety responses are fight or flight, freeze or fawn. And we think about when we think about fawn, we think about you know, people pleasing is the is the word that kind of comes to mind. And I thought today we could talk about what people pleasing is and what that really looks like and how that affects our day-to-day life. And maybe some people are people pleasers here or think they're people pleasers.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

And so we can kind of get into that. And so, you know, I was just thinking about this like scenario of like how many times, or I'm wondering if this has ever happened for you, like where you said yes to something that you didn't want to do, but you said yes because you just you couldn't say no. And you might be exhausted, you might have been overwhelmed, you might just not want to do this thing for somebody, but you end up saying yes, and now you're sitting, sitting there just wondering like why you have like resentment, why you have anger, why you have frustration, why you have more feelings of over overwhelm, why you have more like kind of like stress. Right. And I was just thinking about how often like do we all do this? We say yes to something we don't want to, right? And why we do that. And so I want to get into that today and talk about that pattern that's underneath that that moment of like saying yes when we really can just say no in a in a nice way. It's not, it doesn't have to be disappointing or something.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Well, no is a complete sentence, and right, you know, I think we forget that so many people I talk to, this is a chief complaint. People pleasing. It's something they want to change.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

What comes out of that when you talk to people? So, like, and I I hear this all the time too. So I'm wondering for you like, what do you hear as they when they say, Oh, I'm a people pleaser, I want to change this. Do they what are some examples of examples?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Are staying in a relationship that should have ended years ago, but they feel like they can't leave because they feel badly for the other person. That comes up a lot. Yeah. People pleasing with regards to aging parents, that comes up a lot. People pleasing on a job situation, feeling like, oh, I need to, I need yeah, I'm be my boss is asking me, or my supervisor is asking me to do something to go above and beyond. I really don't have the bandwidth for it, but I'm scared that I'll lose my job, or I'm scared that they won't give me a promotion.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

That's a really important so so that speaks to some of the issue, I think, directly of where people pleasing comes from, right? This this idea of fawning. It's this fear and it's the and and we we do it to avoid consequence or this idea of consequence. Like we we start to maybe catastrophize some of these ideas where you start to make make the the the scenario worse in our mind. Right. And so we end up catastrophizing this the the consequences, right? And then it's like, well, I if I tell my boss no, what's gonna happen to me? You know, we start to think like we start to spiral on it. Like, I'm gonna get fired, I'm not gonna get the hours I want, that you know, all and then it's like you know, the you the spiral starts from there.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Just I'm down to like homeless. Exactly. I've lost my job, I've lost my home, I've lost you know, everything. Oh, yeah. I can't support my family, but it happens in relationships.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Tell me, tell me a little bit about how you've seen that happen in relationships too.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

It really well, I'm I am the king of the people pleasers. My wife will tell you that you know, it's her chief probably gripe with me is that she views me as somebody who can't say no. Kind of like that Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man. Yeah. And part of me is really excited, like I genuinely get excited about stuff, and I definitely take on too much out of a sense of, on the one hand, out of a sense of enthusiasm, but there's also this part of me that I think seeks validation by saying the classic people pleaser. There are these four types that tell me the tell me the four types that amateur.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

You were talking about the the fear before, like the guilt or the consequences, but now you're saying there's this other thing about the validation. There's validation, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

The classic people pleaser is perfectionist who seeks validation by people pleasing. So the idea, the the mindset is if I do everything for you perfectly, you will see my value, you will like me, you will honor me, I'll be safe. The second one that people talk about is the shadow. This is sort of like the wingman, the person, the people pleaser who's content to like kind of stand behind somebody else, usually a more dominant friend or partner, and just kind of like quietly acts as the second in command, also in order to feel safe. Then you have the pacifier, then you have the pacifier, and the pacifier is somebody who's really most outwardly traumatized. That's somebody who's just conflict avoidant. They they are so afraid of any type of conflict that they'll just say yes, even when they want to say no.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

That sounds like that's something that really stems out of a lot of experience, maybe even in kind of in childhood and growing up. Absolutely. ACE's adverse childhood experiences play a huge role.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

So I think it's ACEs, adverse childhood experiences. Yeah. Yeah. Adverse childhood experiences, aces usually they've been statistically linked to mental health diagnoses, behavioral problems, all kinds of disorders, substance use disorders. It's the list goes on. But the final type, according to Emery Tyrell, is the the resistor. The resistor is somebody who's like really almost can be conceived of as a passive aggressive people pleaser. So that's somebody who will say who doesn't really outwardly seem like a people pleaser, but they just really cannot say no. However, they don't follow through on anything.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Oh, so they'll they'll actually say, Yeah, I'll do that.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Yeah, yeah, I'll do that. Yeah, I'll meet you on Friday, and you never get a call, you never get a confirmation, or they're a no-show that goes to you.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

That one sound that's that's just uh full of resentment and and aggression, really. That's like you said, passive aggressive. It's passive aggressive. It is.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

It's also you see that also a lot with people who have symptoms of depression. You know, it's just like they when they're when there's so much overwhelm. Overwhelm comes with all types of people pleasing, right? But you will see that a lot too. The yeah, resistor.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

So so the intention may be there, right? With with and that's you know, they have they're they're well intended to to follow through, but they don't.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Right. Okay. And I think with all types of people pleasing that we're discussing here, the the net net is a lot of resentment, as you mentioned earlier, not really living your own life. Kind of like the person who's people pleasing, the people, the person who's doing the pleasing, the person who fawns. And I love in a lot of times when you'll see the four F's, you'll see a symbol for each one, like a fist for fight. Right. For fawn, the symbol is usually a person kneeling before another person, like a stick figure kneeling before the other stick figure. And it's but yeah, you you'll the pleaser usually, if not always, ends up in a position of feeling resentful, feeling as though they're not living their own life, that they're like sort of, you know, they're they're starring in, they're the guest star, they're the co-star in somebody else's life. There's a lot of self-care that gets denied, put to the side. Because they're caring for the other person in the relationship, right? Always putting other people first. Right. And if you think about it in like a work environment, the example you gave earlier, picture this you're working late on something, your boss drops another emergency on your desk at 9 p.m. and says, Hey, I need this done by 6 a.m. tomorrow. You're already working on something else, you haven't slept, you have a family that you're supposed to go home to and care for. Yeah, yeah. And you just say yes because you're afraid, essentially, of you know, alienating your boss, losing your job, being regarded as less than, but you're actually like you're hanging yourself out to dry in your relationship and in and at work.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

So you end up your relationship ends up suffering because you can't say no at work.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

And then I assume that those those tendencies then spill over into the relationship where you try to end up making up for it, uh giving into maybe or maybe pushing boundaries that you probably should hold in a relationship because you're trying to make up because of the feelings of guilt. So the starts this whole cycle where the fawning and the resentment and the giving up of boundaries and the just giving in is across the board in your life. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

A typical scenario will be the partner who's the you know who's who's at work spending too much time at work, does go home and their partner they think they need to buy something that they can't really afford to please the partner. Right. Or the partner says, Hey, I'd really like to go on a vacation. I know we can't really afford it, but you know, you've been working so hard at work and the kids are you know getting cabin fever and I'm stressed out, and wouldn't it be great? So you end up like getting into debt because you don't want to alienate your partner or your family, and then you're getting it, as you said, from both sides.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

This this also we see this start to have effects on the body. So we think about how it has effects in the in the relationships with our own mood, it it contributes to more anxiety, which we know contributes directly to depression, right? The feelings of guilt they will turn into feelings of shame. And that that anger turned inwards, we know is when we think about depression, the simple definition anger turned inwards. Right. We said we can't express that anger because we're fawning. We're we're too worried about setting a boundary. We end up turning it inwards. We resent ourselves for not being able to hold a line, turns more to depression. But that starts, we start to feel that more in the body physically. So we might see this as you know, this kind of idea of like chronic tension, right? Yeah, like clenching jaws, stomach issues, passive aggressiveness just leaked out as resentment, this emotional numbness we start to feel. We start to feel the aches, the cramps. Yeah. Our body we anadonia. Yeah, our body starts to keep our our body like we feel it.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

We feel it everywhere. Totally. And part of it is what you were talking about last week, you know, with cortisol levels going up, because people pleasing causes stress, it causes anxiety. And so when our cortisol levels go up, we don't sleep well, we get irritable, uh, our digestion, you know, goes down, we gain weight. Yeah, it's it's not a good look.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

No, no, it's it's this idea of like our bodies are keeping keeping the tab even when even though our mouth keeps saying yes. Yeah. Right. So it's like we have this this it and it's a knee-jerk reaction. Remember, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn are all reactions, they're all immediate reactions to anxiety, to this primal fear that we have instead of response. And we want and we want to start working towards responding, not reacting. Right. But that's our body, something's gotta give at some point. So like right, we have to pay somewhere. And and it seems like physically we we do that through through cortisol.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

For sure. And then that can lead to like heart problems and heart attacks, even. And cancer has been linked to certain types of cancers have been linked to high cortisol levels, high cortisol and stress, right? Exactly. But uh you're touching on something interesting. There it is a reaction, it's not a response, it's a reaction because usually people pleasers at some along the line of their development learned that it was unsafe to say no. Correct. That saying no sometime somehow is dangerous.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yeah, and I think I think when we when we look at whatever environment we grew up in, or maybe it was in school, like we we start to think about where those moments were that it was unsafe for us and what that looked like. That could be as and it doesn't have to be really abstract. It can be as simple as being bullied, it can be just shutting being shut down when we talked about something, right? Wanting to express a feeling and not having that acknowledged, right? And and people don't have to go overboard to say, oh my god, tell me more about your feelings. We it can be just as simple as hey, you seem really upset right now. Just paying attention. And and if that wasn't done or it was minimized or dismissed as like, don't feel that way, or that's not important. Right. And we talked about that when we were talking about like, you know, I think with with men and kind of how they respond to feelings, we respond to feelings, right? And as men, as men, and how often, and I I catch myself doing this with my with my son a lot, like especially in sports and in other moments. I'm like, come on, just get up. It's fine, just get up. Right, you'll be okay. Shake it off, just just rub, rub, rub it, it'll be fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just pour some water on it, be okay. Right. And and no, like sometimes you it it's nice, yeah. That dude, that looks like it really hurt. Like that sucks. Still gotta get up. Right. But that looks like so so not dismissing things. No, you know, and and and you're right, it's it is it is a direct result of of not having those things acknowledged as a kid.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Exactly. And I mean I grew up in a home with no boundaries. It was if the few times I experimented with holding a boundary with my parents, you know, as a child, I was shut down real fast. Right. And so what I learned was I don't get to have boundaries. And part of not having boundaries means you don't get to say no.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Yeah, even if you, even if you want to, because it's just not, it's just not right. It's not gonna be respected, or you're shut down right away.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

And as a child, you often, you know, because a lot of us learned this in childhood, your fears are unf they're not really reasonable. Right. You have a sense that, oh, I'm never gonna be loved. You know, my parents are not gonna love me. They're gonna, they're not gonna feed me anymore. They're gonna, you know, I'm not gonna have a place to to stay.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Kids are very black and white in the way you think they haven't they haven't established that kind of understanding of of gray area and nuance. Right. Right. So that's why it's like kids are rigid for a reason. It's okay. That's how kids, that's how we develop.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

But but yeah, that's so you're right. That all of a sudden that fear becomes if if I if I set a boundary here, not knowing that it's a boundary, if I if I push back on this and I get shut down, then my my parents don't love me or they're going to like, I don't know, leave me outside. Right.

unknown 16:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah.

unknown 16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Absolutely. I definitely had really kind of outsized fears as a kid. And that the other I think the other problem with people pleasing is that society rewards it. People like it. You know, like there's a saying in recovery when we stop people pleasing, people stop being pleased. And many of us can't deal with that, with the idea of being displeasing to others. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Having somebody disappoint- because we we we look at it as disappointment. Right. Somebody's disappointed in me, then I'm not good enough. It starts that shame cycle. I'm I'm a mistake, I'm bad, I'm broken, I'm not good enough. Because somebody, somebody in this world of millions and or billions and billions of people might be upset with me for a few minutes.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

And yeah, and and in again, a fear of people being angry with us too. It's one thing, you know, disappointment is definitely scary. And and anger, like the idea that, oh, if I say no, somebody's gonna actually attack me physically. You know, I think some people have that.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Because of course, that's physically or emotionally, like when we think about how do we handle when other people are angry with us, how do we handle when other people are disappointed with us? So we think about fawning and the people pleasing and constantly having to give in and and push the boundaries past what we're comfortable with. Right. It's it's really this response too to not not being able to handle or being worried about how we will handle somebody being angry, upset, disappointed, you know, feeling that we're less than. Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

You run into this with anybody who's who's kind of like chronically self-abandoned. We stop if we identify with that behavior. We we stop even knowing what we want, what we like, who we are. The identity just gets completely subverted. I'm wondering what happens when we lose a sense of self. When we lose a sense of self, often we end up in relationships with abusive, narcissistic partners. That doesn't have to be a romantic relationship alone. It can also be a working relationship. We often end up working for with people who are abusive, narcissistic, take up all the air in the room. And it also looks like, as you pointed to earlier, a decline in health. Yeah. It's something you see a lot in Al-Anon, 12-step recovery. Al-Anon is a program for it was designed originally as like a family for the friends and family of alcoholics. And the one through line you'll usually find in any kind of Al-Anon meeting is that people who come to those meetings have real trouble living their own lives, keeping the focus on themselves. It's much easier for them to fall into caretaking for another person.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

So people pleasing can look like caretaking sometimes. Absolutely. There's there's a line though.

unknown 19:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

There's a because so and and I think that that's an important distinction here too, is that there is a difference between somebody being helpful and saying yes because they help and they care and they care for, and somebody who's people pleasing.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

I would call that the difference between absolutely. And I would I would point to that even more granularly as the difference between caretaking and caregiving. Care giving is being helpful. Cared giving is hey, I'm giving of myself because I want to and because it's appropriate. Right. Caretaking we take something from the person we're supposedly caring for. Caretaking is often often looks like codependency. Dominance. Like sort of like a very genteel form of asserting dominance over somebody else, infantilizing.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

It's main, it's almost like maintenance. I don't think of um you don't call the person who watches a vacation house a caregiver, you call them a caretaker. Right. And if we if we look at it that way, even separated, like like the just where where else do we use that word? Totally. We're just thinking of that like the yeah, there's the caretaker for the property. Yeah, there's not a caregiver for the property. Well, that would be really nice. It would be nice. It would be maybe, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Maybe for the landscape architecture and landscape design. Uh but yeah, caretaking is, and that's a term that's used a lot with regards to codependency and alanonic family systems, alcoholic family systems, caretaking. There's there's a real negative connotation to it. And I think people pleasing falls under that category. Whereas there can be like a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Right. So we have a loss of self, which I also want to highlight, and we can we'll talk more about in in depth in another episode. But you know, when we start thinking about addiction and depression and other mental health issues, there's there's a a lot of evidence that looks at, you know, when we lose our sense of self and our sense of purpose, that is. When addiction kind of comes out, that is when depression and these other mental health issues really flourish. Absolutely. Because that becomes our our sense of self. That becomes the thing that defines us. And then there's all sorts of other, like other people define us that way. And it's very easy, right, to be defined that way with this maladaptive behaviors. So losing our sense of self opens the door for other maladaptive identities. Absolutely. Right. I become, I become the person that, you know, can't set a limit. I it's anything that's kind of shame-driven. Totally. And I think that's a lot of what we see, you know, with addiction and addiction across the board, not just drugs and alcohol, but you know, sex addiction, porn, shopping, gambling, all of it.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Right. Any kind of maladaptive behavior that becomes an identity basis. You see it, I you know, in terms of identity formation, you see it in kids. You know, like it's always easy, the stereotype is, and I think there's some truth, there's some truth to it. If you're not sure what your identity is in school, you can always hang out with the stoners, right? Because they'll accept you. It's the equalizer. And you're you'll be defined by that behavior. Oh, you're somebody who uses drugs. There's a certain cachet that's like associated with that, a certain rebelliousness, style, um, devil may care attitude that seems sexy to young people. Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

The substance abuse, it's it is, it's the great equalizer. Right? You can always be accepted there. They that anybody because you can have all all sorts of different backgrounds, but if you come together around drugs, around this maladaptic behavior. Yeah. Like the yeah, the potheads, the stoners, they'll they'll take anybody in.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Right. Yeah. And you see it in bars. You see it like the bars become this great equalizer. In a way, it's kind of beautiful, you know. Like you think about the book or the movie Barfly. There's there's a poetry to it. Bukowski would talk about it a lot too in his writing. There, there is there's a camaraderie for those with an alcohol use disorder. It's also social. Yeah. But I don't know. Yeah, there, as you said, there's there's something equalizing. It it cuts across class barriers, race. We're not others.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

All of a sudden we're fitting in. So those things that trigger fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, those when we think about our primal response, the minute we feel other, the minute we're outcast, the minute we're outside of the circle or the tribe or the family or society, the pack, the herd. Those are those are our responses. Those are going to be the four responses, no matter what, one of the four, or both. I don't know if we can have we can have combinations of it. But when we feel othered, that is, that is what happens. Right. And so that that's yeah, so at uh your example of like the you know, the substance use or being in a bar even, or just or around that, you're you suddenly have a place, and it's a maladaptive place, and it's not healthy, and there's all these other issues, but there is there is on the on the flip side of that something productive out of it.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

There is, there's something uh affirming about it. And I think about like dead shows, for example, yeah, going on tour, something you know about. There is, yeah, I mean, people can laugh at it and say, oh, it's a bunch of people tripping, and it, you know, it's it's negative, it's maladaptive. I know so many people who derive not only a sense of identity, but a sense of community from going on tour. Can you describe what that that means?

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Well, yeah, well, so I actually never went on tour, but all the people that talk about about this, and I was just thinking as you were talking, when when when Bob Weir died recently, who was in the Grateful Dead. Yes. I was people just need to know that. Right, right, right, right. But when when he died recently, I was listening to Sirius XM, the Grateful Dead channel, and there is there is such a community of you know, 70, 80 years of or 80-year-olds, like from 80 people 80 years old and younger, all talking about and and calling in and coming together and talking all about how Mourning the Lost Mourning the Lost, but feeling part of this community.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

And it's interesting on that on that channel on Sirius, they they have like a regular call-in, like in the mornings. I think people call in just share stories. And it is, it's you get people who are young and people who are older, and just they they it's all similar and they all felt part of. I saw this when I was in my in college, we went to go see fish. It was the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

You know, it was the same kind of like in the parking lots, everybody hanging out, and there was this sense of community, and people just touring as groups across the country to go and follow these bands, but really became a bigger family of places where they were accepted where they probably weren't other places.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

You know, they outcast small towns, whatever it might have been, yeah. They were they felt other everywhere else, right, and had this sense of community and connection here in that in that spot.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Totally. And even when I see like a hot topic in the mall, I don't roll my eyes because it's like, oh, that warms my heart. This is giving me, yeah, it's like, oh, okay. Because traditionally, the hot topic kids, you know, and I'm talking about like goth kids, I guess, you know, who are punk or whatever, who were who dressed in a way that was definitely considered other, you know, have a place to gather and buy their their leather and their pleather and their spikes and the and their eyeliner.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Right. I was just, I was at uh my best friend and I went to go see Nine Inch Nails last year, last February. Amazing. I've seen them a lot. Incredible. We've gone, yeah, we've gone a bunch. And this was like, we were like, okay, we're getting old now, we should go. Trent's getting old now, we should go. Right. And it was great. Like, you know, I just going there, I refrained from wearing eyeliner, and I was I was going to because I felt like it was, it would have been like appropriate. But it was this whole moment where I was, I just felt like there was this community even there, and like this oh, big time, heavy, yeah, kind of industrial. I mean, that just so loud and intense. And but the community there, and you could see it. There were people, there were still there were like teenagers there, which I was like, oh, this is awesome. Like this music is carrying on to like young kids. But then there were a bunch of people who were like in their 60s all the way, you know, through through, you know, and I was looking around looking for other people my age, like in their mid 40s, going, okay, like let me find, let me find my group. It was everybody, yeah. And it was so chill, it was like intense for the music, and people were like dancing, we were all like, you know, throwing ourselves around, but there was such a respect and a in a sense of community that that even these people who were typically outcasts, right? And all the the you know, that that kind of vibe, they all came together. Yeah. There was there was a warmth and a real kind of like there was just a different feeling to it.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Totally. No, it's it's it's spectacular to be able to like participate in that and witness it. And even if it is in your community, to see, oh wow. A lot of people who, as you point out, yeah, or have been othered, have that experience, yeah, are not having that experience here within this context.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

It's interesting too when we think about this, when we think about authenticity, and this is just going through my mind as we're talking, how we feel othered or about like what we feel on the inside versus what we show on the outside. Ooh, totally. And so I'm just thinking about like, so that that group of people, like at a nine age now show, like the all dressed in black and eyeliner and spikes and everything. I was like, God, that felt that something resonated with me internally. I don't dress that way, I don't present that way. I don't really, that's if you saw me walking down the street, that's typically that's not me. I'm not but on the inside, I'm like, oh, that there's there's a piece of it that resonates. It's not all of me, but there was a piece of that that really resonated. And I was like, hey, this is really, this is really something that's important and interesting. And I'm just thinking about that, like how what we show on the outside, and how often does that align with what's on the inside? And I think that kind of that that goes back to this idea of fawning. What we present to people and what we tell people we're going to do, what we what we give into doing versus what we feel on the inside and what we want on the inside. When we're inauthentic, we start to experience resentment and depression and anger and anxiety. Right. And and I think it really I I do believe strongly in in being genuine. We have to, we have to have our insides match our outsides.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

You always say that as sort of the measure of mental health. How you know how how well are we? Are we are the insides and outsides matching? I also love that we contain multitudes. We do have you know different aspects to us. There's a part of you that plays banjo, there's a part of you that you know sends me Tony Trishka albums, right? There's a part of you that goes to Nine Inch Nails concerts, there's a part of you that listens to Digital Underground's first album. That's right. Obsessively. There's and and you dress, you know, you're wearing Birkenstocks right now. It's I think it's fascinating to consider identity within the, you know, within that frame, that framework. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

And how you talked before about pushing back on boundaries or having no boundaries, right? The the in that space, my experience of having not being allowed to have boundaries. And I think that that this happens in that space. Where do you express yourself? How can you express yourself? Can you express yourself safely? When we think about ourselves as parents and and to people listening, if you are a parent, like that idea of like how well do you set the stage for your kids or other people in your life, even if it's not parenting, how well do you set the stage and and create a space for others to express themselves?

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Ooh, that's so good. Yeah. I think that's what a lot that's a lot, yeah. As a parent, absolutely. And you know, Soren, my son, has he has blue hair and he just pierced both of his ears, and he has a very specific way of dressing.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

And I think he looks great. I love it. It's very much my style. Now, if he wanted to dress like a preppy, I probably wouldn't be as stoked, but I would absolutely it would, it's my I see it as my job to encourage it. Like whatever he's into, whatever he feels like is an expression of his identity, I don't want to stand in the way of that.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

No.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Just like I don't want to stand in the way of my clients, you know, who are expressing their identity or experimenting with their identity.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

No, we we are responsible for our our our own in in that sense. And when I always this this idea is like when when your side of the street is a hundred percent spotless, then you can start looking at the at other people's side of the street. Right. But until until you're perfect, yeah, you can't you can't pass judgment on somebody else's side of the street. Ooh, I love that. And that's uh yeah. Between that and and having your insides match your outsides, that's uh but the thing is the idea is here we'll we'll never reach perfection. We've talked about this in our per in talking about perfectionism. We'll we never actually get to that point. So really focus on on on being authentic and and and working on yourselves. And that that gives space for your your kid to have blue hair, and you know, and and he hey, he once in a while he can dress preppy if he wants.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Yeah, he also likes to wear suits. Love it, and yeah, it's it's and I'm just my job again is to just be like, yeah, if you love it, do it, try it out, you know, as long as you're not hurting anybody. That's right. It's very 60s, it's very like just as long as you don't hurt anybody. But I love that. And then in terms of how to if we find ourselves as people pleasers really uncomfortable, getting to the point where our people pleasing is getting in the way of our lives, creates loneliness, happiness in our loneliness. Yeah, but how do we like combat it?

SPEAKER_01 34:42

How do we deal with it? So one of the things, and you mentioned this before, and you were shut down, not by me, but you were shut down as a kid, pushing back on boundaries, yeah, express experimenting with boundaries, experiment, yeah. And that is that is all we can do in life, all treatment, therapy, mental health treatment in life, outside of treatment, it's all collecting evidence. Yeah, we constantly have to collect new evidence that supports an idea. Right? We spend so much time collecting bad evidence. Oh, this is why I'm awful, this is why this doesn't work. Right. Let's start looking at it, feeding into a cognitive distortion. Exactly. Let's look at collecting some new evidence and evidence that might support a different hypothesis, such as saying no won't kill me. Saying no won't kill you. The person might be upset, but if if somebody's upset with us, it doesn't mean they hate us. And it certainly doesn't mean that we're a bad person. We're not a bad human being because somebody's upset with us.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Yes. That's so important. Yeah. And somebody isn't gonna stop loving us or being our friend or fire us because we say no or because we, you know, don't give them what they want.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

And it and I think it's important to to kind of highlight how we say no. If you burn the bridges and blow up the entire place because you're saying no, because it's the only way you've ever known, right, that's going to create a problem. Yeah. So if you're going to push back on a boundary and try to collect new evidence and and say no and express yourself, do it in a way that is respectful and where it can invite a conversation. Because if you think about this, it we see this a lot in like couples work, where there's there's so much breakdown in communication, and all of a sudden, now if I say no, if if I'm blowing it up and you always do this, and and start doing the whole blaming thing and make it in aggression aggressive, that's gonna shut down the other person's gonna come back at me. Right. And that can be with a boss, that can be on the street, that can be anywhere. If I say no in a way that's, hey, I don't like this, I would like it this way, that opens up the door for a conversation from the other person. They they can be curious then. They can say, Okay, well, I like it this way. Now you still might not agree, you still might have two different ideas about what you want, but it but it opens the door to say, okay, well, now let's come to some kind of space in the middle.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Or maybe this time I get a little bit more, and maybe next time you get a little bit more. Right. You you start to you start to actually have a relationship, a working relationship where there's a give and take versus just a no F you, you never give me this, or I'm not, I don't care what you want. Right. We don't we don't want to shut the door on anything. Right. So we want to set the stage for there to be an open conversation, some almost like a negotiation, yeah, or some kind of agreement in the middle. Totally. Right. So so we we push back on that. We have to, we have to try and collect new evidence, set boundaries. I'm wondering other thoughts about how to push back or or how to kind of change some of the the fawning behavior.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

The fawning behavior of the people pleasing. I think like starting almost the way you would you would maybe experiment with exposure therapies, start s with small no's, you can do like relatively safe people. Yeah. People who you feel like, okay, I could experiment with saying no. You, for example, I mean, we're we work closely together, we talk all the time. I know that I can say if if I know that I would hope that you'd feel like, hey, if you were uh not up for recording a podcast on a Tuesday because you were sick or you were just totally overwhelmed, you could say like, hey, I can't do it today. And you could do it at the last minute, and I wouldn't be pissed. Right. I wouldn't per berate you. That's but you know, identify who those people are in your life who you who feel safe to experiment with.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Yeah. I was just thinking, don't do it with another people pleaser though. Oh, because it's just a cycle of like, no, it's okay. Are you sure? I'm so sorry. No, it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Meanwhile, you're both seething. Yeah, you're so like God.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

I wish he would have just told me it's not okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. But that's one way to do it, I think, is is to, you know, like I have we we say, you know, don't go to the hardware store for oranges. There are certain people I know are not safe to say no to, or for me to experiment with any sort of new behavior, of course, or behavioral modification. But they I also, you know, I have those hopefully everybody has at least one person that they can feel safe with.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

If they don't, they can reach out. I'll uh you and I will both certainly help people practice that. Like just reach out, I'll talk with you about it. Yeah. The other thing I want to highlight too is learning to tolerate guilt. Guilt, yes, guilt is the withdrawal symptom of setting a boundary. When we let go, when we start pushing back on fawning, fight or flight and freeze two, but we when we start pushing back on fawning, the withdrawal symptom is guilt. We're gonna we're gonna such a good point.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

We're gonna feel really bad. Anytime we stand up for ourselves, if we're not used to doing that, yeah, we're gonna feel guilty. And that for me, as a struggling, you know, reforming people pleaser and codependent, I know that that's actually a sign that I'm doing that I'm taking care of myself. Right. When I start feeling guilty.

unknown 40:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

So guilt, yeah, guilt being it's the withdrawal symptom of people pleasing. And it doesn't mean that you did something wrong, it means that you did something new. Nice, it's not, it's not right or wrong.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

And guilt, remember, the difference between guilt and shame is guilt is I made a mistake, and shame is I am a mistake. Right. And then so when we feel that guilt, it's not that we did something wrong, it's that we're doing something new. And it feels weird, it feels scary, it feels, it feels so it's okay. We're good, and and the only way to learn how to tolerate feelings is to sit in them for a bit. Yeah, stop, recognize them, say, Hey, I'm feeling guilty right now. Right. Say, tell yourself I don't need to feel guilty right now. I did something new, I did something, I'm pushing back on this. Yeah, I can sit with this, and it gets better over time, it diminishes each time we do it.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

As we get more comfortable with it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And we can, I think, reframe and understand actually, yeah. I don't need to feel guilty.

SPEAKER_01 41:12

Right. The other the other point I want to make as we as we kind of close our our conversation about people pleasing is that we need to pick repair over perfection. We talked about perfection before. So this is this is the idea that if you start to set boundaries and you start to say no and it fails, and you screw it up, or something bad happens, or people somebody gets upset, that's okay. You might screw it up, you might fail at it. It might look really awkward, you might fumble through it, and then you might people please to make up for it. That's okay. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's it's the the the goal here isn't perfection, it's learning assertiveness. It's learning how to step up and actually just be more honest about what we're feeling. Our feelings are complicated, our feelings shift. It's it's it's they're organic, so they're not going to be the same every time. That's why perfectionism doesn't work here. It it's just this idea of like, I just I just need to work on saying what I feel right now. And and then if you mess up and make a mistake with it, call it out. Hey, you know what? I that was really awkward. What I tried to say here was yes this dot dot dot. Yes, right, and fill in the blank. Or what I meant was this. I'm working on this. There's no shame in saying, like, yeah, I'm really working on trying to set some new boundaries with myself because I don't want to be a doormat anymore. Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

I love that. Yeah, how could you get if if I care about somebody and they say that to me, how can I not support them? Right? That would be you'd be rude, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:51

Be other things, but like, yeah, if somebody comes up to me like, oh, I'm working on this, like, dude, try it out. Yeah, I'll I'm like I said before, and I know you and I are both here for that. Yeah, and I think in a in our practice, as if if people want to try that too, they they you know, right hey, goss, I'm having a hard time with people pleasing. I I I give in a lot and I feel really guilty and shameful over it. Right. We work through it. It's not that's not a lifetime of of therapy. That's working through some really set specific approaches.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

I love that. And then finally, like before we say yes, maybe go through a list of criteria. If I say yes to something, what you know what for you, what does it take for you to say yes?

SPEAKER_01 43:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

What's a yes? For me, like yeah, personally.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

I have to think about what what it what I need to give. So there's some people I just say yes to because I know I also know those people aren't going to ask things of me that like they're aware of me.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

So I I know that they're not going to take advantage of if you give them an inch, they're not gonna take a mile. Right. Okay. So but I but I Step back with before I say yes, I I often have to think through okay, how is this going to play out? Do I have enough energy? Do I have enough bandwidth to handle this? Nice. Do can I afford it? Also, can I give this person what they're asking for? Are they asking for too much? Are they asking for something that's out, you know, that's extraordinary? Am I the person for this? Sometimes I don't say yes because I'm just not the right person for that thing. Yeah. I find this in in in in treatment. Like as a as a therapist, if somebody calls me, we we do a consultation first because we need to make sure we are the right person for the person calling and that they're the right person for us as a therapist. I think there's a lot of people who will just be like, yeah, I can deal with it all. Like I feel confident I can deal with most issues that are that somebody comes to treatment with. But this is, I think that's important to say, am I the right person for this? Right. You have to be aware of again what's on the inside in what you are capable of.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Those are really helpful criteria. Thanks for listening to Lumen. If today's conversation resonated with you, we encourage you to follow, review, and share Lumen with anyone you think would appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

We'll be back soon with another conversation designed to bring a little more light to the human condition. I'm Christopher Mooney, LCSW. And I'm Kenyon Phillips, LMSW. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. Lumen is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, diagnosis, or treatment. If you're experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact Local Emergency Services or a trusted mental health professional.