The Disease to Please!

 In this episode of The Life Diet 365 Podcast, we’re talking about The Disease to Please — the exhausting cycle of constantly putting everybody else first while silently abandoning yourself.

Have you ever said “yes” when you were tired… overwhelmed… frustrated… or emotionally drained?
Do you feel guilty when you try to set boundaries?
Do you find yourself carrying the emotional weight of everyone else’s needs while ignoring your own?

This episode dives into the hidden cost of people-pleasing and how the need for approval, validation, and peacekeeping can slowly lead to burnout, resentment, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion.

We’ll unpack:

• Why people-pleasing often starts as a learned survival pattern
• The connection between burnout and overcommitment
• How constantly being available can diminish your peace and identity
• Why saying “no” feels uncomfortable for so many people
• The emotional consequences of abandoning your own needs
• How to begin choosing clarity over guilt

Because the truth is…every time you say yes to everybody else at the expense of yourself, you teach people that your boundaries are negotiable.

But around here, we don’t say no with guilt… we say it with clarity.

So if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, emotionally stretched thin, or silently struggling under the pressure of trying to keep everyone happy, this conversation is for you.

Take a deep breath, release the pressure, and let’s detox the disease to please.

Checkout my 2017 TEDx Charlotte talk "The Gift of No"  https://bit.ly/thegiftofno2017

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Life Diet 365 Podcast, the place where we detox the pressure, the people pleasing, and the patterns that keep us overwhelmed. I'm your host, Miss Straight Talk, and I keep my model simple. I'm not here to change your mind, I only want to offer you another perspective. And here's the truth: it doesn't take an hour-long conversation to create a shift in thinking. So whether you're driving to work, sitting in traffic, taking a lunch break, or trying to decompress after a long day, for the next 15 minutes, this is your opportunity to breathe, reset, reflect, and reclaim yourself. So exhale, release the pressure, and let's get into it. Well, hello there, and welcome back to another amazing, yes, I said amazing episode of the Life Diet 365 podcast. I am your lovely host, Miss Straight Talk. And so today we're gonna kind of do a little follow-up from the burnout episode. So if you have not listened to that one, I definitely encourage you to go back and listen to this one because to that one. Because let's be honest, some of us are not tired because life is hard. We're tired because we have made ourselves emotionally available to everybody. Everybody has access to us. Check this out access to our time, our energy, emotions, and our peace. And somewhere along the way, we convinced ourselves that being a good person meant never disappointing everyone anyone. So now we're overcommitted. Does that sound familiar? Overextended? Does that sound familiar? Over-explain, over give, and over-function. And the most dangerous part of all of this is people applaud us for us. Whoo, yay, wow, wah, wah. You know, they give us this whole big old speech about, you know, how wonderful we are, but nobody stopped us when we were abandoning ourselves. Like, do the people that we give ourselves to, I give myself to, who you give yourself to, do they ever stop to think, hey, you know, I'm asking a lot of that person, am I causing them to abandon themselves? Am I causing them to not practice any form of self-care? You know, they call us dependable, they call us loyal, they call us the strong one. But strength without boundaries eventually turns into exhaustion. So, yes, if you have not figured out what we're talking about today, it is the disease to please. Yes, a disease to please. And so this one here, I think this is like a great connection to uh burnout is not a badge of honor episode, uh, because it answers the question many listeners are secretly asking, why do I keep ending up burned out? And the answer for many of them could be because they learned that their value was tied to being needed, agreeable, dependable, available, and self-sacrificing. Oh, those vultures in our lives, they love when we self-sacrifice because it makes them feel like, oh my God, they're doing everything that they can to take care of me and to support me, they're giving of themselves, but they never ever think about what it costs you. So let's look at the basic description for disease, and that way it'll kind of help bring this parallel, not to minimize your thought process or your intelligence, but so the basic description for the word disease is it's defined as an abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure of function of a living organism, typically accompanied by specific signs or symptoms. So we know that we all are familiar with that. So now let's see how we can apply this to our conversation today. This episode has the potential to hit deeply because people pleasers do not often recognize um themselves as people pleasers. They don't see themselves, I'm not a people pleaser, I'm not that's not me. I don't do just say yes to everybody, I don't try to, you know, accommodate everything, but somewhere deep down subconsciously, it is happening. And the signs and the symptoms, and they call themselves, well, I'm just being helpful. You know, I'm a loyal family member, I'm a loyal friend, I'm a loyal coworker, I'm the strong one, I'm the dependable, I'm easygoing. You know, that's just me. I'm just trying to keep the peace. And we talked about that in the other episode. Whose peace are you keeping? Yours or theirs? You might be keeping the peace with them, but you're losing yours. But internally, these people are exhausted. Am I talking to you? Just don't take your hand off the wheel, just raise your hand, say yes, that's me, you're talking to me. I can relate. And so the addiction to be needed. Now that's an uncomfortable conversation. Because I think part of the challenge is no one wants to ever admit that they're pretty much being taken advantage of or that they're being used. And I believe that that is another form of awareness. Uh, what we talked about before, awareness is the be is the first step to detox. So, you know, be aware that um this addiction occurs. So some people become addicted to being needed, not because they're weak, but because being needed makes them feel valuable. If people meet need me, then I matter. And value is attached to being needed. And and let me just kind of say this: not that there's anything wrong with where when there's a need and there's value, there's nothing totally wrong with that. But what's wrong is when it consistently happens, and then that's where your happy place is, where you're feeling needed by others, and that's the only way that you can feel happy. And some people will say, if I fix things, then I belong. If I sacrifice, then I'm lovable. So when they're overwhelmed, they still say yes. Because saying no feels like rejection, it feels selfish, it feels wrong. And I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't have a problem saying no. And if you go and you check out my TEDx talk, The Gift of No, 2017, uh Charlotte TEDx, you will see you will hear the whole story and that will transform your life. So don't be afraid to say no. But here's the issue: when your identity becomes attached to rescuing people, you stop knowing who you are outside of helping people. I'll say that again. When your identity becomes attached to rescuing people, you stop knowing who you are outside of helping people. And this can even get any deeper, you know, with people who are in you know dating relationships because they're always trying to save that other person. If I could just save them, if I could just get them to change, if this mm-mm, no, your value is not tied to how you help them, they have to help themselves. Some people don't have any identity outside of service, and this can connect to just about anything how you serve your family inside and outside the home, service and on your job, service in a social organization. You know, they just go, go, go, go, go. And so people pleasers don't usually look weak. Mm-mm. Not at all. These are the people that all suited up looking real good, and you think they have it all together. Um, because I think some of you out there can identify with this, you identify with strength. Because people pleasers are often the dependable ones. They're the ones that you can pick up the phone or send a text if something is needed. You can pretty much about 99% count on them to be available. They're capable, they're smart, they have great ideas, they know how to make things happen, they show up consistently. Like, yes, this is who I am. I'm consistent. Everyone praises them for always being there. Oh, girl, you know what would I have done? You are always here. I can always count on you. Oh, yeah, you know, bro, you are the one. You always got my back. Well, that is good to hear, but you kind of have to dig deeper behind that and say, hey, am I always showing up? And are they showing up for me? But internally, these people are emotionally depleted. You have to be able to define what emotional depletion looks like to you. People pleasing is often high-functioning self-abandonment. That means you function on a high level and everybody's up there praising you and applauding and saying great things, but you've abandoned yourself. You've totally abandoned yourself. So now let's talk about where something like this would start. Because everything always has a beginning, there's always a foundation of where something starts. And it often comes from a point of survival, and this can be just one point. Now, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, so let me just clear that up. Um, but sometimes people pleasing starts in childhood. Some people grew up in environments where keeping peace kept you safe, meaning you didn't say anything, you didn't make any trouble, you were invisible. Um, you know, you just was like, I'm not gonna get in that because I don't want my name to come up. Uh being useful got you attention. You were always the little helper and you always did things to you know to make things happen. Um, being low maintenance got you praise. Oh my god, they don't need anything like this. It's just so great to have this person around. I don't have to do much for them or with them. Speaking up caused you conflict. Gotta use your voice. I am a big, big, big um supporter of people using their voice. You've got to use your voice, and everything you needed came second. You know, everything that you needed was put aside, or you were a second thought, or um, my my new phrase I always use: people treat you as an option. You know, people don't really consider you until it's necessary for them. Think about that. Let that sink in, let that kind of soak in uh your thoughts. So now, as an adult, you struggle to identify your own needs, not because you don't have any, because you do, but because you spent years training yourself to ignore them. You know how we push things back. Oh, I can make it, I'm gonna get through, I'm doing well, I'm okay, I'm not upset about it. But yes, yes, you are. You don't like it, you don't like how it makes you feel. You want to be seen, you want to be heard, and you have every right to be seen and to be heard. Some of us never learned boundaries. We were taught performance. You can say some people learned that love was earned through usefulness because as long as you're useful to me, I love you. As long as you're useful to me, I'll keep you around. But when I don't need you, I don't want to have you. And there's some symptoms that you know people pleaser, some symptoms that people don't realize that they're people pleasing. So chronic apologizing. Oh I'm sorry to bother you, I'm sorry to ask this, oh I'm sorry, mm-mm-mm-mm-mm. Feel guilty when resting, fear of disappointing people, over-explaining decisions that you make, feeling responsible for fixing others, saying yes when you don't want to, being emotionally exhausted, you know, feeling feeling being unseen despite how much you're always given. And I can sit here and think of a whole bunch of other things, but uh you have to know um those things that you identify with, things that identify you as a people pleaser. You can tell a people pleaser is exhausted because they start serving people with resentment instead of joy. A yes that costs your mental health is too expensive. You hear me? A yes that costs you your mental health is too exhausting. And here's something that um no one ever tells people pleasers. When people are used to unlimited access to you, they stop respecting the cost of your availability. Because you're always making yourself available. And so now with some of these things that I'm talking about today, you're gonna have to kind of take some notes. You know, where am I over taxing? Where am I giving more of myself? Where where are people not, you know, respecting my boundaries or where am I always um available? And the question to the the final question to ask is what's the cost of always being available? Is it preventing you from living out your dreams? Is it costing you from doing what it is that you want to do? Is it costing you from just having some time to yourself? You think you're keeping a peace, but you're actually keeping yourself emotionally imprisoned. And boundaries don't mean you stop loving people, it means you finally stopped abandoning yourself. What do you think about that? What do you think about this discussion? No more abandoning ourselves. Put those set those boundaries. Setting those boundaries begin with saying no, gotta go check out the TEDx. And so here are my listener action steps for today, and they're gonna sound pretty similar to the burnout. Pause before you um give a yes. Let me think about it, I'll get back to you. I need to check my schedule, you know. You know, I'll I'll see, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. Don't panic in that silence. We talked about that that pregnant pause. Don't panic in silence and be rushed to to respond. You don't owe a quick response. Uh, resentment is also a boundary alert. If you're feeling resentment with something or with someone because of how you're treated with them, that is that is a sign because you know, where am I feeling drained with this person? Or why do I feel drained? Or what about this activity is causing me to feel this way? Who only calls when they need something? Uh, oops, ouch. You know that person, you know who they are. Sit down and figure out who they are and know how you're gonna respond to them. Be prepared as to how you're gonna deal with that person. How am I overgiving? Because in some aspects, you're overgiving. I talked about apologizing. Stop, stop apologizing. Instead of saying sorry to bother you, say, do you have a moment? Instead of saying sorry for saying no, say, I'm not available. And just practice some small no's, not no huge, dramatic type thing, you know, not answering your phone immediately, declining favors, protecting your rest, protecting your peace, and not automatically volunteering. And so here's what I want to leave with you today. You cannot heal burnout while still believing your worth is attached to how available you are to everybody else. At some point, you have to stop asking, will they be disappointed? Will they make will I make them mad? Will they still speak to me? You know, what is the constant self, what is constant self-abandonment doing to me? Because people pleasing may keep everybody else comfortable while slowly destroying you. I really hope you got something from this episode today. Be sure to comment, share with your friends, and definitely I look forward to you coming back. Spend another episode of the Life Diet 365. Take care. Bye-bye. And just like that, another conversation, another perspective, and hopefully another step toward reclaiming yourself. Listen, every time you say yes to everybody else, at the expense of yourself, you're teaching people that your boundaries are negotiable. You don't have to earn rest, apologize for protecting your peace, or explain every boundary you set. Because around here, we don't say no with guilt, we say it with clarity. Until next time, protect your peace, guard your energy, and remember what drains you will never sustain you. This has been the Life Diet 365 Podcast with Miss Great Talk. Thanks for listening, and I hope you will subscribe and join me the next time. Take care. Bye bye.