3. People Pleasing - It’s Not Your Behaviors You Need To Change

I spent 50 years addicted to people pleasing and self-sabotage. I finally overcame it, but not by changing my behaviors (surprise!). Tune in to hear the story of my “aha” moment and what finally worked to break this pattern.

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Transcript

Hey there, and welcome to episode three of Mastering Midlife with Heidi. In episode two, we talked about what causes us to people please - things like wanting to be accepted and approved, wanting to maintain a feeling of control, not wanting to disappoint someone (which is my biggest hurdle). We also talked about the costs of this codependent behavior - things ranging from resentment and being taken advantage of, to health problems and loss of self-esteem. 

If you haven't listened to episode two yet, I highly encourage you to go back and listen to it first and then come back here because they do tie together. In this episode, number three, I'll be sharing my huge aha I got that allowed me to finally overcome my 50 year addiction to people pleasing and self sabotage - and it didn't have to do with changing my behaviors. So if you're done abandoning yourself, then this episode is for you. Keep listening. 

Are you constantly overwhelmed because you have too much to do and not enough time? Do you tend to overpromise and then feel guilty or exhausted? Does it feel wrong to take time for you because you were taught other people come first?

These are all a matter of boundaries, and that's what people pleasing is mostly about, not having boundaries. Boundaries about what's okay with you and what's not okay with you, what you need and want, and what your priorities are. 

The thing is that most of us were taught when we were young to be good, right? To get good grades, get along with others, don't talk back, and girls especially got this message to be nice and to get along and not make trouble. Don't hurt anyone's feelings - those are the messages I got anyway. Most of us got the message that telling someone “no” or setting a boundary was mean or rude, and I actually thought that people would think I was a bitch if I set a boundary, and that was as an adult.

But not setting boundaries is actually the unkind thing to do. It makes us more resentful and disconnected because we feel like we're being taken advantage of. We frequently feel guilty or obligated, which leads to more resentment and frustration. These feelings that we have, these frustrating feelings, bleed out onto other people.

It's not easy to be frustrated and resentful with someone and not have them know anything about that. So, this becomes a vicious cycle of feeling guilty and selfish to feeling frustrated and resentful. And the most important and first overlooked boundaries are the ones you set with yourself. We make boundaries into this big scary thing because we envision ourselves having to have these conversations, these hard conversations, with people we love - instructing them how they need to stop or start doing something to better meet our needs or to help our lives run more smoothly. 

But the fact is, many resentful or overwhelming feelings boil down to the boundaries that we aren't setting or keeping with ourselves. Ouch, right? Boundaries aren't about what you need someone else to do or not to do. They're not about the other person doing something wrong. 

Stay tuned. We'll be back in 60 seconds after a word from our sponsors. Oh wait, that's me!

So, I was saying that boundaries aren't about what you need someone else to do or about what the other person is doing wrong. They're about what's okay and not okay with you, what you need to fill your own cup. 

If you are not okay with being exhausted every morning, it's not about your spouse charming you into watching just one more episode of your favorite series. It's about you not being in integrity with yourself and getting your butt to bed when you say you will. 

I used to get so resentful when people would text me after 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night because it was disturbing my wind downtime, and I would then get caught up in the conversation texting them back. 

But, it wasn't about what they were doing that needed to change, and I finally figured it out - simply set my phone to go silent after 9:00 PM! No conversation was ever even needed to set this hard and fast rule that I had struggled with for months. It was about setting a boundary with myself. 

I used to say yes to every request or invitation that came along, out of obligation, fear of not being asked again, or not wanting to miss out on something. I would say yes immediately, even though many times my gut was screaming, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

The thing is we think the world is hanging on our every yes, and takes our every no as a direct insult. But the truth is every other person is living their own life. And our little no usually has very little consequence in the grand scheme of things. But, we build it up in our minds that every time we say no, we are hugely disappointing someone - and this is very seldom the case. 

It's interesting because when you don't set boundaries, you actually cause disconnection and people end up liking you less. Here's how: you create confusion for others when you continue engaging with them, but passively sending signals that you're annoyed by their behavior or by something that they said. You start getting short-tempered with others because your needs aren't being met and you're pointing the finger at them.

When you are being a chameleon and morphing yourself into whatever the other person wants you to be, or what you think they want you to be, they are not having a relationship with you. They're having a relationship basically with a reflection of themselves. This isn't balanced or interesting, and is not what a healthy person seeks in a relationship, whether it's a friendship or an intimate relationship, or even with a family member. 

People seek individuals who bring their own interests and passions and personality to the party. So, people pleasing actually is the ultimate form of inauthenticity because we do or say whatever we think the other person wants us to do, in order to be accepted and avoid our own discomfort of actually speaking our truth. There's really not much of a relationship when the other person doesn't even know the real me. 

Once I discovered how many negative impacts people pleasing had on my life, things like me going to college for a career I didn't enjoy - but not changing majors once I figured it out - for fear of disappointing someone or thinking that I had to stick it out because it was a decision that I made, because of my loyalty. 

Another one is that I had many failed relationships and many of them I stayed much longer than I should have, again for fear of disappointing someone. I stayed in a marriage and I lost my chance to have my own family.

I had health issues from my people pleasing, and the list goes on and on. People pleasing definitely took its toll. 

Once I discovered that, I went to work on changing these people pleasing behaviors. I joined Co-dependents Anonymous - don't know if you've heard of it, it's a 12 step program - and I went faithfully to meetings, every week. I was also seeing a therapist at the same time.

I worked on my behaviors, learning what boundaries were, and setting them (when I had the guts to). I tried speaking up more, but it felt really uncomfortable and like I was a fake because I was sure that other people didn't believe what I was saying. I made really slow progress, like very little. What progress I did make, I would boomerang back to the old behaviors of going with the crowd, not speaking my mind, and saying yes when I really wanted to say no.

One year later, after going to Co-dependents Anonymous for every week for a year, it was like I got struck by a bolt of lightning. I can remember the moment like it was yesterday. It suddenly occurred to me that it wasn't about changing my behaviors. It was all coming from the beliefs that I had about myself.

On that day in the meeting, I wrote this in my CoDA workbook: “My beliefs are what drive my behaviors. Without the negative beliefs I have about myself, I believe my behavior would be much different.” Wow. That moment and that thought in and of itself broke my pattern. 

I believed I wasn't good enough, that I wasn't worthy. That led me to have no self-acceptance, and that drove me to seek acceptance from outside myself through - you guessed it - people pleasing. 

I sought that acceptance from other people. So, after studying the subconscious mind the last couple of years and knowing what I know now, this all makes perfect sense because our beliefs do drive our behaviors.

In order to change our outcomes, we have to change the inputs, which are the thoughts and words we say to ourselves. Repeated enough, these thoughts and words become our beliefs. So, the solution is in your beliefs about yourself. Until you change your beliefs, you will not be able to change your behaviors. Just like me trying to change my people pleasing behaviors.

The people pleasing behaviors are just the symptom. To change it, you have to go to the source. It's like taking an aspirin for a headache. That's treating the symptom. Until you treat the cause of the symptom, the source of the symptom, you'll continue to get headaches.

So are you dehydrated? Are you stressed? Are you not getting enough sleep? Are you out of alignment? You need to treat the thing, the source. Once you do that, you stop getting the headaches. 

This goes for all things in your life. You want to lose weight, do you want to stop drinking? You want to make more money, or you want deeper, more fulfilling relationships? Do you want to feel happier and have more fun but you’re not? 

It's not about the food or the alcohol or the fact that your boss doesn't pay you enough. Those are just the symptoms. It's what's at the source. What are the beliefs you have about yourself? 

So stopping people pleasing is not about stopping, being kind, caring, and giving. It's about stopping giving so much that it harms you and causes you to abandon yourself. To do that, to stop giving so much that it harms yourself, you have to change the beliefs that you hold about yourself. These beliefs I'm talking about are the ones that are holding you back, the ones that aren't serving you, the ones that you think that come into your head and you start beating yourself up about.

Remember, you can't hate yourself into a version that you love. 

If you are feeling stuck and have tried to change your behaviors, maybe over and over and over again, coaching with my methodology is your fast track to change. In just five sessions, my clients are seeing massive results and results that are long lasting, where in the past maybe they've gotten little results and results that didn't stick. I've gone that route too, so I completely understand. 

If you'd like to know more about what coaching with me looks like, you can shoot me an email. I'll put my email address in the show notes, or you can shoot me a DM on Instagram @MasteringMidlifeWithHeidi. 

Connection is one of my top five values, so I'd love to connect with you further. Reach out and say Hi, follow me on Instagram, or join my private Facebook community, Mastering Midlife with Heidi. 

If you got value from this episode and know someone would get value too, I'd love for you to share it with your family and friends. When we grow and expand and help others do the same, the world becomes a better place.

And until the next episode, remember to give yourself grace for the place that you're in.