← Take Out Therapy: End Overthinking & Overwhelm for Empathic High Achievers
Take Out Therapy: End Overthinking & Overwhelm for Empathic High Achievers
People Pleasing Recovery Plan for Overfunctioning, Exhausted, Empathic People
00:19:51
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
In this episode, you'll discover why people pleasing isn't just about being nice. It's actually a trauma response that slowly erodes your self worth. Welcome to Takeout Therapy, the podcast for empathic high achievers who are done with overworking, overthinking and overwhelm. I'm Rebecca Hunter, an anxiety expert and therapist helping busy, big hearted people like you learn practical skills to quiet your racing mind, overcome self doubt and actually be present in your life. If that sounds good to you, the right place, visit takeouttherapy.com for more helpful resources. Thanks for listening. Let's get to work. Well hello there friend. I'm so glad you made a little time to show up for the session today. Today I want to talk about what people pleasing really is and how it begins, why it's such a heavy, confusing way to live and how to recognize the pattern and start getting out of it. Here's the thing about people pleasing. It's kind of sneaky. It doesn't always look like people pleasing. Sometimes it just looks like being a really nice, engaged, compassionate person. Someone who's generous with their time and attention. Someone who helps keep the peace when everybody else is crumbling around them. A lot of people that I work with don't realize how much of their identity is is wrapped up in meeting other people's needs. They know they feel overwhelmed, resentful, sometimes really stuck. But they think that's just adulthood or relationships or parenting. This episode is really about naming what's happening underneath and begin to untangle from that constant game of making other people happy all the time. People pleasers kind of suffer silently because typically they don't always know they're people pleasing. It feels like they're just being good people. They're helpful and they like being liked. Don't we all? But it's exhausting. It's disempowering and it's kind of inauthentic because most of the time our first thought isn't like, let me help everybody else before I help myself. It isn't just a bad habit. If you're a people pleaser, you're disappearing into your own life. People pleasing isn't kindness, it's management. It's emotional management. It's fear management. It's just trying to control for situations that could potentially be out of control. I hear from people all the time you say yes when you really want to say no, and actually you can't believe you just said yes. You show up to things, boards and meetings and volunteer things when you're Literally too tired to think, and you stay quiet when something actually really needs to be said inside. What happens when we do these behaviors is that we start to feel really angry. We start to feel resentful of the people around us. We feel like people use us and don't appreciate us. And we feel really invalidated because here we are being so freaking helpful and nobody's even noticing. But people pleasing isn't generosity. It's kind of just avoiding oneself. You see, people pleasing comes from the past. People pleasing is what we call a trauma response, which doesn't really necessarily mean that there was a lot of trauma. But it's about survival programming. It's not just about your personality, right? Because remember, your brain grows the most in your childhood. So as kids, we learn that when we are approved of by adults, that when adults approve of us, that's a safe situation for us. That making adults comfortable is way less chaotic. And sometimes what that means is that we learn to suppress our own needs in order to get the attention and love that we need. It's a perfectly normal developmental experience. And I'll give you a couple more examples. Some people. It starts with a teacher who couldn't be pleased, who's very critical, or a parent who only really paid attention when you were in performance mode, like in alcoholic homes or any emotionally unpredictable environment. People pleasing becomes a bit of a lifeline for kids to get their needs met. Right. It doesn't matter how subtle or extreme it was. What's important to understand is that your brain just remembers this, like, code, which is keep people happy. That's how we stay safe. But the problem is now you're a grown adult, and that same survival strategy is probably slowly suffocating you. Am I right? You know, I think a lot of people in this position are starting to wake up. There's so much more information available out there about people pleasing and about this dynamic. And I hear from a lot of people that this idea resonates for them. And this idea that they're not really being generous, that they're not really just a big giver, but rather they're people pleasing starts this internal pull towards change and the want to be one's own self, right? Individuated whole. The thing is, the body knows when something's off. I say this all the time. Even in the moment of saying yes to something, you want to say no to something tightens your breath shallows, maybe your energy drops. And there's often this little background whisper of like, no, don't do that, or this isn't right and yet it still happens. The yes just flies out of your mouth, right? Because people pleasing isn't about logic, it's about nervous system wiring. It's a habit of self sacrifice built from growing up. As people begin to heal, we start to recognize these things in our life and something shifts. The desire grows for authenticity, just to be able to do what we want to do and say what we want to say over having somebody approve of us. The desire grows for peace over having things be perfect or pretty, and for relationships where both people show up fully there with their needs and their limits and everything. It's not about becoming selfish. Recovering from people pleasing is about returning to oneself. I would consider myself a recovered people pleaser. I grew up in a home full of chaos and alcoholic parents, and it was really hard to get attention unless I was definitely performing or doing some people pleasing. It took me a long time to recognize what was actually happening. When adulthood hit and I had two kids 16 months apart, I pretty much just fell apart. I was always choosing parenting my two young sons over taking care of myself. I was always putting my partner first, whether it was necessary or not. You know, my husband used to always say, go, go do something for yourself. And I would be like, no, no, no, Right? And still to this day, I catch myself wanting to people please, wanting to agree with things I don't agree with or offering things I don't have any interest in doing or just being overly performative when everything in my body is telling me no. We all do this sometimes. But my point in presenting this to you today is that we can unlearn it. And frankly, we should unlearn it or at least know when it's happening. Let me give you some ideas so that you can shift out of people pleasing. And I would say I'm going to give you a bunch of ideas and just take them one at a time. When you master the first one, move on to the second, and so on and so forth. The first thing you want to do is notice when it happens. I think it's really hard to name people pleasing when it comes up, but we need to start being able to catch ourselves in the act. For example, answering a text as soon as it comes in with an affirmative, right? Saying yes too fast is a good red flag of people pleasing over functioning. Doing things for other people that they can do for themselves, especially adults, but kids too, right? Like, are you still doing your adult kids laundry or making their meals? That's a good sign. There's people pleasing Going on and faking agreement. It doesn't mean you have to go through the world disagreeing with everybody you disagree with. But generally faking enthusiastic agreement is a red flag for people pleasing. My friend, pay attention to your body cues because they will alert you to your people pleasing habit faster than anything else. Perhaps for you it's a little bit of tension in your tummy. Maybe it's eye rolling or other cues that you're feeling resentful or that deep exhale of regret after the yes flies out of your mouth. Find your cues and start to be able to name people pleasing when it's happening. That's the first shift that you can make. Then once you conquer that, you want to look around your life a little bit and pick three areas where people pleasing seems to show up a lot. Is it at home? In your relationship? Is it with your kids? Is it in your friendship? Is it at work? The point of doing this is just to be curious about what are the areas of my life that I can really hone in on to work on improving my skills here. This isn't an exercise in judging yourself or being hard on yourself. It's really just gaining insight about what's going on as you choose your three people pleasing zones. Do a little writing here and give yourself some examples of what it looks like and each area of life. Then once you have the information you need, it's time to have the conversation. Is the conversation that you're not going to people please anymore? Kind of if you're about to stop doing something in a relationship that you've always done, like for example, cleaning up after your partner or taking care of your adult kids a little too enthusiastically, staying late at work or just prioritizing your kids needs over your own self care. Talk about it first. It's super simple to go to the people in your life and just say something like I've been over functioning and I'm working on it. Here's what that might look like to you. Here's what might look different, right? To your kid. It might be like I have been doing stuff for you that you really could do for yourself. So if you need help learning how to make a sandwich, I'll help you. But I'm going to let you go ahead and make your lunch from now on, right? It's about teaching people that change is coming. If you've been over functioning partner, it's totally appropriate to just be like hey friend, I've been doing too much and so I've decided to step away from Doing some of the things I'm doing so I can take better care of myself. You're gonna see some change here and I'm asking for a little support. You just wanna let people know what you're changing and why so they don't think you're just disappearing from the relationship or flaking out. You know, I work with a lot of people in high pressure, high level jobs and sometimes they want to readjust their work boundaries so that they can take better care of themselves. And this is one of the places where it's really important to conversation to say to your boss, my boundaries around work have not been great and work has been bleeding terribly into my life and doing a little damage. And now I'm going to do some damage control. So you're going to notice that I'm going to trim my working hours to regular working hours and I'm not going to be taking my laptop home anymore. Just give people a heads up as to what the changes are that you're making so that they can respond to them appropriately. And then when you're in your life and you're like, okay, I know where I need to do the work and now I'm ready to do it, I'll give you three things to remember while you're in the middle of doing people pleasing work. Because it is hard. One thing to do is to always just pause before you respond to any requests. You see, my friend, you've trained the people in your life that you're a yes person, and now you need to train them that you're a maybe person. So instead of answering that email right away, instead of clicking that text right on back, walk away from the email, put down your phone, take 5, 10 minutes, 24 hours to check in with yourself and ask, does this actually feel right to me or is this part of my pattern of people pleasing? What do I want to do here? If you pause before you respond to requests, you will be blown away by the amount of time you're able to get back. And then the second thing that I would say is, when you're in the middle of doing this work, always be listening to your body. If it feels heavy or tense or exhausted, drained, the answer is probably a no. Or if it feels connected, playful, peaceful or light, it's probably a yes. So get to know your body's unique cues about what's right for you and what's not right for you. And then my last tip for you is, expect imperfection because you're going to mess it up. You're going to get it wrong. If you're a people pleaser, you've been out this a while. You're going to say yes and regret it. You'll say no and feel panicky. And that's okay. This is what learning and personal growth feels like and looks like. You get to change your mind, you get to change and you get to be human. So just practice being imperfect and trying again during this people pleasing recovery process. People pleasing. It's really important to see it, to name it and to clip it because it keeps people in survival mode with an elevated nervous system. You're just reacting to life as opposed to responding. People pleasing disconnects you from your intuition, from what you know that you need to do. It disconnects you from your boundaries of like, I'm gonna do this and then I'm not gonna do this. When you get into people pleasing mode, you don't have any boundaries. People pleasing disconnects us from our own lives. And when we stop doing it so much, we don't just suddenly become a selfish jerk. We just become authentic and at peace. It's not at all about rejecting others. It's literally just about making some room for yourself. That's how you build a relationship with yourself. That's how you build self trust and a life that is yours. This is what it looks like to do the work of healing from the past and becoming a fully capable and functioning empowered adult. Just see what's happening without a bunch of judgment because that's a waste of time and work to update things to where you'd like them to be. And if you decide. Rebecca, I'm a people pleaser and I like it. Even though I'm exhausted and burning out. Hey, that's cool, friend. You can do this work when you're ready or not. Because the way you choose to live is yours to decide. That's the definition of empowered. As long as you know what's up, that means you're making a choice and it's your choice to make. At least now you know that people pleasing is a response to your past pain. But it doesn't have to be your present pattern. You can recognize it, slow down and respond totally differently. And I will say real connection starts with being honest with yourself and with others. If you have interest in digging in a little bit deeper with me on this, just book a consult call through the link in the show notes. It's a whopper. We can talk about whether people pleasing is a problem for you and what you can start to do about it on a bigger scale so you can have some time for peace and joy in your own life. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I really appreciate you being here to do this work. New sessions are released on Fridays, and of course I've got my mini session on Monday mornings. Be sure to do a quick review so more people can get this kind of help. Speaking of which, if you haven't taken my free newly revamped class, that helps. If you haven't taken my free newly revamped class that helps you stop overthinking everything to death, just grab it at takeouttherapy. Com. I'd love to teach you what actually works. And remember, takeout therapy is a great educational resource, but always get the level of support you need for your situation. Head to takeouttherapy.com to stay in the loop until next time. Take good care of yourself, friends.