Hard Times No More Relationship Podcast

How To Stop People-Pleasing Without Guilt -Ep. 30

February 27, 2024 • Allesanda Tolomei-Hard • Season 1 • Episode 30

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Tell me, do you ever catch yourself saying "YES" when you really want to shout “NO WAY!” And run in the opposite direction because someone has asked you to take on ANOTHER  COMMITMENT or help them out, and your plate is already beyond full?

 
But you can’t bear to say “no,” even though you know you should.

 

…You don’t want to let them down.

Or

…You know it will just be easier if you do it.

 

And, once again, someone else’s needs make it to the top of your priority list.

 

Well, guess what?

You might just be a people-pleaser, and this is probably no surprise to you.

 

In this week’s podcast episode, we're diving into this whole people-pleasing thing.

We're getting real and talking about why the people-pleasing cycle happens over and over again, how it's messing with your life (in more ways than you realize), and most importantly, how the heck to stop for good.

 

In this episode, you’ll hear…

>>> Effective ways to stop covering up your true feelings or agreeing to stuff you don't have the time for and don’t even want to do.

>>> The key reasons why you're always putting everyone else’s needs first.

>>> How to let go of guilt, without needing to say “yes” all the time, with some seriously simple strategies to help you set those boundaries, honor your own needs, and start loving yourself a little more.

>>> The fine line between generosity and healthy compromise versus straight-up people-pleasing. It's all about finding that sweet spot where you're taking care of yourself while still being there for others.

So if you’re ready to take back control of your time, your energy, and your freakin' life, then buckle up 'cause it's time to kick people-pleasing to the curb and start living your life on your terms.


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Find free tools and resources at Mrs-Hard.com

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Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Alessandra Tolome hard, aka Mrs Hard, and this is Hard Times no More, a podcast for people who are tired of struggling with boundaries, people pleasing and relationship problems.

Speaker 1:

I have overcome some hard times. Within three years, I stopped drinking, my mom died of cancer and my house burnt down in a California wildfire, and those are just the highlights. I have a lot of reasons to be miserable, but I'm not. The truth is, life was more challenging before these events happened. If you are tired of waiting for your circumstances to change to find happiness and peace of mind, you are in the right place. Join me as I share the tools I use and love to transform challenges into assets and interview others about their relationship journeys. Together, let's learn how to have a happy life full of healthy, meaningful relationships and say goodbye to hard times for good. Hey everyone, welcome to the hard times no more relationship podcast. I'm Alessandra Tolome hard, aka Mrs Hard, your host.

Speaker 1:

Today, we're going to talk about something that seems like a very nice thing on the outside that can really hinder our life, our relationships and our self-esteem. We're going to talk about people pleasing and we're going to talk about how to stop people pleasing without guilt, because guilt is sometimes a motivator for us to continue to people please, even when we know we should stop. So most people who have people pleasing behavior already know it. But let's talk about it, let's get on the same page and you can decide if this is something you do because awareness is the first step to changing behavior and if you feel like you already know what people pleasing is, this will just help you gain clarity as to how people pleasing is showing up in your life, and then we will dive into the causes, like why we do it, why it's hard to stop and how to stop it, so that you can change your behavior for good and that will create healthy relationships in your life. It will give you more energy, it will help you cultivate more self-love and it will help you manage your time better so you're not as tired, stressed and anxious.

Speaker 1:

So many good things can come from changing people pleasing behavior. So first, it's totally normal to want to feel loved and valued, especially from people who are close to you. We all want to belong and many of us occasionally adapt our behavior to make social situations and interactions more smooth. I mean that's totally normal, but there's a fine line between healthy compromise, generosity and people pleasing. It's all about your motives and whether you truly have the resources to give or not. Healthy compromise is great In all of our relationships. We have to make compromises from time to time, and that is part of being in a healthy relationship, and compromising can help you grow, because maybe you agree to do something you wouldn't normally like to do Like, for example, my husband really likes to play games, and I don't always love to play games, but for some reason, I have this resistance to it when I first start and then I end up really loving it, and so, by being open to playing games, I'm actually having fun with my husband instead of just being like, no, I just want to do what I want to do, which would be puzzles. And then, in regards to generosity, it's great to give, it's great to give your time, your money, it's wonderful to help others. These are all very wonderful behavior traits, character traits, and they really create an opportunity for happy connections with others. But there is a caveat it's great to be generous as long as you have it to give. And this is where people pleasing comes in, because people pleasing comes from a place of needing to say yes, needing to please others and ultimately sacrificing yourself and your needs for other people. And that is the key. That is the key difference, the fine line. Do you have it to give? That is going to be a theme in today's podcast.

Speaker 1:

And if you're a people pleaser, you know it's really hard to break the cycle, even if you know it's creating unhealthy relationships, it's stressing you out and it's something you've promised yourself you're going to stop, but you can't quite seem to follow through with that personal commitment. And these are the red flags to look for. If you're on the fence, if you're like, you know I go with the flow sometimes and maybe sometimes I sacrifice my time, my wants, my needs. But I'm not quite sure. If I'm a people pleaser, here's how you can tell. Do you downplay your needs? Do you cover up how you really feel, or agree to favors and feel super guilty if you say no? Or maybe you avoid saying no altogether. You may tell yourself it's just easier if I do it or it will upset my friend or family member if I don't say yes. You may also find yourself saying if I say no, it means I'm letting them down and I can't bear that guilt. Or you may say I'm afraid of conflict, so I'll just agree to avoid any tension.

Speaker 1:

You may find yourself taking on extra work, even if you don't have the time. You may find yourself over committing to plans, responsibilities and projects. You may find yourself avoiding, advocating for your own needs, like saying you're fine in quotation marks fine when you're not. And this kind of behavior can lead to stress, resentment, anxiety, passive-aggressive behavior, being quote needy because your needs aren't met and it comes out in some other way. It doesn't just go away and right after you say yes, you may feel good in the moment, but it's fleeting, because then you have another thing on your plate that you have to do, or you weren't true to yourself and you can feel that little hurt, that little jab of man. I wasn't true to myself, I didn't feel comfortable saying what I really needed, and so now my self-esteem has been hurt, my self-worth has been hurt.

Speaker 1:

And so what is the motivation behind this behavior? What is the root cause? So some of the reasons you may find yourself people-pleasing can be low self-esteem. Like we said, when we say yes to something or over commit or go with the flow even though we have different feelings about it, denying that little voice inside of us that says no, I don't really want to do. That hurts our self-esteem, because we are making other people's needs more important than our own. And if we have a pattern of doing this over a long period of time, you may not even know what it is you need. You may have derived your sense of purpose, your self-worth, so much from others for such a long time that you have lost touch with what your needs are, because your needs just blend into what everybody else needs and then you're just a human doer and I struggled with this for a long time.

Speaker 1:

It took me a long time to realize that I needed to be needed, to feel value, to feel worthy, to feel like I can take up space on this planet. I had to have like a job or to be helping someone in some way, and that was because I had really low self-esteem. And if I look back, it was in my teenage years, when I used to help take care of my father and help with family responsibilities, that that pattern started, because I would get praise and attention for doing so much. And then also my mother modeled that behavior. She was somebody who did it all. She took care of the family, she worked 40, 50, 60 hours a week. She had a lot on her plate and that was just how it was supposed to be, and so it kind of became an expected role, unconsciously, in my family, for me to take on this overdoing.

Speaker 1:

And later in life this led me to have very unhealthy relationships where I would get into a relationship with somebody and I would be afraid of them not liking me or not needing me. So I would go above and beyond, I would pay their bills, sometimes I would buy dinner, I would drive us around, I would do whatever I needed to do to create convenience for the other person and I was very go with the flow, never raised a single conflict in the relationship. And then three, four, five, six months afterwards I would feel resentful and burnt out. I would feel like the other person was taking advantage of me and I didn't realize that I was setting up the relationship to be out of balance from the very start, and I didn't know how to correct that behavior for a long time, because I was so scared that if I wasn't a people pleaser to this person, they wouldn't like me, they wouldn't find me valuable or worthy, and that my needs weren't important. And so people pleasing starts out as an action that has very good intentions but actually creates a lot of dysfunction in relationships. It's much better, even though it's uncomfortable, for people who tend to people please to state what your thoughts and needs are in a kind manner and at the appropriate time, and to trust others, to let them get to know you, to trust healthy compromise in relationships where sometimes you'll do what the other person wants and sometimes they'll do what you want, and that you have the back and forth and that that creates a positive, trusting relationship.

Speaker 1:

And another cause of people pleasing is anxiety. We've talked a lot about anxiety on this podcast here, so many of us struggle with it and anxiety is a factor because if you are a people pleaser, you may feel anxious about fitting in. You may feel fear about rejection or offending someone, for example. If you're a person with social anxiety, you may feel that you need to do whatever your friends want to do in order for people to like you, and this can be a subtle attempt to control other people's perception of you, bringing in that easygoing vibe. But it's a false easygoing vibe and when you're anxious, you're not really easygoing and, like we talked about, this can make the true feelings you have come out in other ways the resentment you may feel, the feelings of not belong, of inadequacy, of low self-esteem. And so it's important to cultivate self-esteem, interesting relationships, so that you can let go of fear and let go of how others may see you, because there's so many good things about you, no matter what you've gone through, no matter how you're doing right now, even if you're a mess, there are amazing qualities you have in unique ways that you function in the world and unique gifts that you have that you can bring to relationships.

Speaker 1:

An anxiety stands in the way of our connection with others. So by addressing your anxiety, by addressing your self-esteem, you can have healthier relationships with others where you're more authentically yourself. An exercise you can do to help you cultivate self-esteem is to write 10 things you like about yourself. And if you've never done this exercise before and your self-esteem is really low, I applaud you if you can come up with three, because when I first did this exercise, oh my gosh, it was so uncomfortable Because there weren't that many things that I liked about myself at that time or that I knew I liked about myself, or I felt weird just writing about it Like I didn't want to admit that I liked things about myself because I wanted to appear humble, without needs.

Speaker 1:

And if this is challenging, imagine that you're writing about your best friend what your best friend is. You Try to remove yourself from yourself. So imagine it's a friend of yours, but they have all of your character traits. What are 10 things you like about them? And if you can't get to 10, just work on it. Add it to your morning routine and see how many things you can come up with per day that you like about yourself, and see if you can see it reflected to you and others, the people you hang out with, because birds of a feather flock together, so most likely your friends are reflection of you and may reflect the same character traits you already have. So try to cultivate an awareness of the things you like about yourself so that you're also looking within for validation instead of looking externally, because looking externally for validation will continue to feed that people pleasing flame and keep you going down the road you don't want to go down. So find your own self worth from within. And it's a journey. It's not an overnight thing, but I believe that you can do this, because I had very low self esteem and I don't today.

Speaker 1:

And another root cause of people pleasing is that you've seen it modeled Just like I talked about earlier with how I saw it modeled by my mother. A lot of us inherit our people pleasing behavior. We believe that we have to continue this behavior to be a good wife, a good mother, a good friend, a good daughter, a good person. And that's some pretty black and white thinking. You know, if you say yes, go with the flow, never cause a rift, but you don't speak up for yourself and you continue the cycle of creating low self esteem, then you will be a good person. And that definitely ties into perfectionism, of needing to be perfect in your relationships to then receive worth, and that's again looking externally for validation rather than finding internal validation. And then, last but not least, trauma response is a reason why people people please I don't know if you've heard of trauma responses before their fight flight fawn and freeze Fawn is a people pleasing behavior.

Speaker 1:

And if you're in an abusive relationship, it makes sense why fawning would be a tactic that you use, because maybe if you're dating somebody who's an alcoholic or has an explosive temper, you try to diffuse the situation and create stability in the situation by not upsetting the other person, because I've been in emotionally abusive relationships in the past and I definitely used to fawn and it made it very hard to see what was healthy and what wasn't healthy, and I remember taking on a lot of the responsibility in the relationship for the behavior that was happening. I remember believing that if only I behaved a certain way and did certain things then the relationship would be peaceful and that it was all my fault when things weren't going smoothly in the relationship and that really made my self-esteem spiral and that can become a really challenging emotional pit to get out of. And then you feel like you can't tell people in your life what's really going on because you don't want them to judge your relationship. And so there's so many different ways in which people pleasing comes in in those relationships. I'm Niff. Your people pleasing is because of a trauma response. It's really important to reach out for help to see a therapist that can work with you in a capacity in which you could heal those really deep trauma wounds. So I know that got really heavy, but just need to say that if it's a trauma response, until you address that trauma response you're not gonna be able to move through the people pleasing behavior. So that's very, very important to address.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about how to stop people pleasing without guilt. We've already touched on it a little bit. You know, building your self-esteem is number one, trying to make that list of things that you like about yourself, because other people see those things in you. If you spot it, you got it. And it doesn't just work in the negative way where somebody annoys you and if you spot it, you got it. It's if you spot it and you like it in somebody else, there's a chance that that characteristic is in you as well. And when working on building your self-esteem, really work on how you talk to yourself.

Speaker 1:

I have an exciting workshop coming up in April. That's gonna be all about how we talk to ourselves, how we communicate with ourselves and how we can create a more loving connection with ourselves, because receiving that validation internally will change your life in your world, especially if you've resonated with a lot of the people pleasing behavior we've discussed, if that's a go-to for you, and I want you to become aware of that narrative in your head that you have about yourself. See if you can write down some of the thoughts you have that are related to people pleasing behavior, because awareness is key if you're gonna make a change and we all have narratives in our mind, whether we realize it or not. For some people the narrative is more of a feeling at first than actual words. But see if you can first be queued in by a feeling of discomfort, overwhelm, resentment, stress, anxiety, and then see if you can tie where that feeling is coming from to a thought and see if it's a consistent thought that comes up for you and the narrative that's telling you that those thoughts is called your inner critic. That inner critic is very critical. It's not very kind to us and the inner critic can really hinder us from loving ourself. But when we recognize that voice as something separate from ourselves it's not who you truly are Then you can become empowered to decide if you wanna listen to it or not.

Speaker 1:

And when you're changing this kind of behavior, be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to make mistakes. For example, if someone asks you if you can do them a favor, if you can take over a commitment, and you automatically say yes, give yourself permission to five minutes later, a day later, let them know that you've changed your mind. You've looked at your schedule and you actually can't commit to that right now Because sometimes we get really hung up on perfectionism. You know, like, oh my gosh, but I said I would do the thing. They're gonna think I'm unreliable if I change my mind. Well, even worse, if you don't change your mind and you don't vocalize that to them, you're gonna continue the behavior.

Speaker 1:

The discomfort of having to go back and say you know what? I made a mistake, I actually don't have the time will create a smaller and smaller gap between your realization and the change in the behavior in the future. For example, when I first started practicing this specific kind of work around people pleasing, I would automatically say yes almost all the time. Whenever anybody asked me if I could help, if I could give time, energy, money, any of my resources at all, I would automatically say yes because it was so ingrained. That's what I had done for so many years and I had to call the person. I had to reach back out to them, I had to see them and I had to tell them. You know what I actually can't do, that I'm sorry and it was so uncomfortable, but that helped me queue in and then eventually pause when I was asked if I was available and say you know what? Let me get back to you.

Speaker 1:

Even if I was pretty sure I could do it, I had to get into the habit of creating a pause and taking an hour or a day to think about if I was truly available or not. I also had to set some boundaries around my energy and my schedule and my relationships about what I would do and wouldn't do, for example, with my work. I usually won't respond to emails and texts after 6 pm because that is my time off, I'm no longer at work, and then if I decide to take a trip, I will use my phone less. I won't check my email as often. I also may not respond at all to people who are asking about work things, and in the past I had a habit of always being available, no matter what time of day it was. But that wasn't good for me, it wasn't healthy for me, it wasn't good for my relationships, and creating that boundary people respect that they understand.

Speaker 1:

Oh, after 6, yes, you're off of work. You should take time off, you should take time to replenish. That is an okay thing, and so it's about assessing what's gonna be right for you. What do you want? Your new non-people pleasing life to look like. What kind of boundaries will that require? And you can start small. You could start just with the pause for the hour or the day and then give the person a response. Or you can decide for one week you're not gonna take on any new commitments and just say no, I'm sorry, I'm not available to each commitment that comes up until you're not feeling overwhelmed and stressed anymore. And if that is very uncomfortable for you, I suggest going into what I call robot mode, where you just go through the actions and say the thing, even though it's uncomfortable. I've also had experience with that in the past, where I needed to just know for a period of time that I wasn't gonna take on any more commitments. And we do that to the best of our ability. Like I said, it's okay to make mistakes during this process. Anytime you learn a new behavior, you're gonna make mistakes because there's a reason why it's been hard to get to for a period of time.

Speaker 1:

So be gentle with yourself. Let your inner critic who's telling you you have to be perfect at it right away, let them go and just do your best to move closer and closer towards the life you want, and you'll see over time that when you say no, you still have friends. You still have people who know that you love them and you have people who know that you care and they may even applaud you for saying no because they know that you're a people pleaser and that you overly give and it'll make them happy and joyful if it's a healthy relationship to see you taking care of yourself. And one last thing when feeling like you need to give of yourself in your relationships because you believe it's just easier if you do it or the person can't do it without you, remember that everyone has their own life path. They're on their own journey and you are not God. That might sound harsh or like you're like. Of course I know I'm not God, but think about it Sometimes, as people pleasers, we like to have a lot of control in helping others.

Speaker 1:

We help others, but it's really secretly control because we don't trust others to do things right. Maybe you agree with me, maybe you don't. That's fine, but if this resonates with you, it can be helpful to remember that they have their own life path, that other people can help them, they can find other resources and it's not all up to you that you are not responsible to control them, to fix them or to cure them. You know you can let it be and you may be surprised that when you step back you see that they are fine without you. And sometimes that can be a little hurtful if you put in a lot of energy into helping them in their life, but then it can also be deeply relieving because then you can see there are plenty of ways that people can find help on this planet and it doesn't have to just be you.

Speaker 1:

All right, that's all I've got for the topic of people pleasing. I hope that you have more clarity on what people pleasing is. You can see if you're doing it in your life and if you want to change it, you can see how to change it. So thanks for hanging out with me today. I'm excited to hang out with you again soon. If you wanna say hi, you can find me on Instagram at MrsHard underscore times no more or on Facebook at Mrs Hard. You can also check out free resources and tools at MrsHardcom, and I will be telling you more about a special workshop coming up in April in the following episodes. So I wish you a wonderful day Until next time. Take care.