(soft music)
- Hey, everybody.
Today, I want to talk about people pleasing.
And the reason that I want to bring this up
is because I feel like it just keeps coming up
in conversations that I have
either with those of you in the comments below a video,
or on Patreon live streams, or on Hangouts,
I feel like it just keeps coming up over and over again.
And if you've been following me for any amount of time,
or been on some of our Patreon live streams recently,
you know that I myself am a recovering people pleaser.
And I say recovering because I still struggle.
And there are times that I still find myself
saying sorry too much,
or trying to do things in order to get people
to act a certain way.
It's this weird way that I try to control my environment
when I feel overwhelmed.
And overall, I believe that there are two main reasons
that we can struggle with people pleasing behavior.
And the first and where I think it comes from for me,
but I'll dig more into that in a bit,
is anxiety based, where I can feel so anxious and so worried
about people being mad,
or that I'm not doing things right.
And the uncontrollable worry leads me into
trying to please others,
so that there's some semblance of control
if that makes sense.
And then the second one that I've talked about
in videos recently is kind of that fawn response,
or having people pleasing behavior in relation to trauma.
And the reason for that,
if you haven't caught those videos,
is really that we fawn over people in our lives
as a way to prevent them from harming us again.
And I do want to put out there,
because someone mentioned, I forget which video this was,
but let's say a video or two ago,
about how not all trauma or not all abuse is loud,
things that we would notice, it can be kind of quiet abuse,
emotional neglect and things like that.
And so I just want to say that that also could be a reason
that we people please,
so that maybe we get a little bit more of that attention
we've been craving, or something like that.
And I think it is important for us to know that trauma
and issues with people.
It can look a lot different, right?
It's not always out loud, and in our face,
we don't always feel the abuse physically.
We can feel it emotionally,
and that's just as painful, and just as powerful.
So people pleasing for me,
I mean, I'm still working on it,
and there are times, you guys,
when I don't, I haven't slept well,
I haven't been eating, like I'm hungry, right?
I haven't eaten in like three or four hours,
I'm starting to get hungry.
Or I haven't felt very connected to people in my life.
I'm feeling lonely.
You guys know that HALT, the hungry,
angry, lonely, tired, check in on those things.
If I'm not taking care of those basic needs for myself,
I will find myself slipping into that
people pleasing behavior more.
I will apologize for things that I,
I don't even know what I'm apologizing for.
I'll say, sorry, sorry, sorry.
I'll feel like I'm in the way if I'm out in public,
I will try to do things to please Sean overly.
Like what's not necessary.
It's fine to want to please people in our lives,
and to do things nice for others that we love,
but it shouldn't be overwhelming like that.
And the main way that it comes out for me
is saying sorry, I say sorry all the time.
I say sorry for things that I had nothing to do with.
I say sorry for things I'm not even sorry about.
I say sorry for taking up space.
And I think for me,
my people pleasing is born
out of my discomfort with conflict.
I have this intense struggle with conflict.
And for a while I wondered if maybe it came from trauma
in my childhood or something like that.
And I talked about it in therapy for a long time,
and even talked with my mom.
And she was like, even as a kid,
if your dad and I even just had a disagreement,
not even like a full on argument, you would be like,
stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, as a little kid.
I would want them to be like, stop screaming.
My mom's like, we're not screaming.
We're just arguing about where to go for dinner.
Like it wasn't,
I have always just been really uncomfortable with it.
And I, again, I dug into that
thinking maybe there was trauma there,
but I think really where it comes out of
is that deep rooted anxiety,
and just difficulty with conflict.
And I wish I had better answers for you,
but I wanted to put that out there,
because sometimes in therapy,
it's not like we have this neat answer
for why we have a symptom, right?
I people please, and it's not like,
oh, it's directly correlated to this.
And it ties up nicely in a bow, and we're okay.
It was more me discovering that I don't like conflict,
and I'm not even sure where that comes from.
My guess is anxiety.
'Cause there's a lot of people in my family
who have anxiety,
and I know I run on the anxious side of things.
So that anxiety coupled with the fact that for some reason,
I've always just hated conflict
makes me want to people please,
so that I'm never in conflict with other people.
And I work on it to notice the symptoms for me.
So I just want to put that out there,
'cause it's not always neat and tidy.
I'd love it if it was,
but if you feel like your therapy is a little messy,
and not all of it makes sense, it's okay.
I'm there with you.
So that's that component.
Then I wanted to talk a little bit about the trauma based.
If you find you have trauma in your life,
we can people please as a way to protect ourselves,
and in future relationships.
So let's say we have this abusive relationship
when we grow up,
when we find ourselves fawning over our abuser,
so that they maybe don't hurt us as much, or as often,
or as badly, or whatever we think that we're doing, right.
We're doing our best to do everything just right
to hopefully get a better result.
Then, so that relationship, let's say hopefully ends.
And then we go out to have friendships,
and romantic relationships,
or any kind of relationship in our life.
And we can find ourselves fawning or people pleasing again.
And I believe in this case,
and maybe this is even, as I think about this,
maybe this also relates to me,
but I think it comes from a low self-confidence,
or a difficulty with self worth,
because we can think they're not gonna like me
if I don't do things for them.
They're not gonna like me
if I don't offer this support, or that resource,
and I'm here to tell you that people can love us,
and want to be around us just because we're us, right?
It can feel like the only reason
someone would ever want to be around us,
because our nasty self-talk is telling us
we're just such a terrible person all the time.
We can think the only way to get someone
to want to be around us is by offering something,
like we have to have.
I will be the friend that goes above and beyond,
always offering my support, whether that's financially,
whether that's of my time.
And I won't ask for anything in return, right?
'Cause if we ask for things in return,
then we're gonna have to give even more,
and getting caught in that cycle
can lead to honestly emotional burnout.
And it compounds that lack of self-worth.
'Cause I'll even give an example personally.
So in my relationships with my friendships,
'cause I struggle with Sean too,
I'll over apologize, and he's like stop saying sorry.
And then I'm like, I'm sorry,
it's a horrible nightmare with that.
And I'm working on that, but with my friendships,
for some reason,
if I haven't been taking care of myself again,
having to check in, have I slept well, ate well?
What's going on with me, super stressed out,
'cause of work, what's happening?
And I have an interaction.
Let's say I went out to dinner with one of my friends,
'cause this happened, this was years ago.
But I went out to dinner with a friend,
and it's happened between now and then,
but this is just a very succinct example.
I went out to dinner with a really good friend of mine,
and we had a great time.
I hadn't seen her in forever, it was good to catch up.
We spent two hours just hanging out,
and then she was like, oh crap,
I got to go relieve the babysitter.
I gotta go, I'm so sorry.
And we got the check, and we left,
and it felt kind of,
do you ever have those interactions where it was wonderful,
and in the end, it was like, okay, bye.
And I felt a little dysregulated,
a little, did I do something?
Even though check the facts, Kati, I knew that I didn't.
But so, the next day I texted her,
and just said, oh thanks, it was so good to see you.
Good to catch up, blah, blah, blah.
And I didn't hear from her until the following afternoon.
And in that time from when I sent that text
until that following afternoon,
I had all of these like wild people pleasing thoughts
where I was like, slash anxious thoughts.
And I was like, oh my God, she's mad at me.
Maybe I did something, that's why she cut it short.
Oh my God, I think, I think,
I would, I need to apologize.
Something must have happened.
And in that moment, and in those swirly twirly thoughts,
I've learned that I need to, number one, distract.
So I remember that day,
I remember calling my mom, going for a walk.
It was when we were in Santa Monica,
and the weather was totally predictable.
Texas is not totally predictable,
but I would just walk around.
So I went for a walk, cleared my head, called my mom,
and just got myself to kind of calm down just a little bit.
'Cause I need that dysregulation or anxious buildup
to come down 15% or so.
And then I can do some fact checking,
because then in my head I was like, okay,
well what proof do you have, Kati,
that your friend is mad?
I couldn't come up with anything.
What would it, what could she possibly be upset about?
I couldn't come up with any answer,
because there were no facts to support this crazy,
anxious people pleasing thought spiral
I was getting caught into,
where I was like, oh my God, I need to apologize.
I'm gonna lose this friend.
You go from like zero to a hundred
if any of you struggle with it, like I do.
You know how quick your mind
just goes from one to the other.
But if I can distract, and slow down,
and check my facts, then I'm okay.
The trick is not engaging with that person,
and letting them know
about the chaos that you're experiencing.
And overall, that's what helps me, distract, check facts.
And that just helps me kind of push through,
because here's one last example.
And then we'll wrap this up.
Is that one of my good friends,
and I think she wouldn't mind me calling her out,
so I'll say her name, 'cause you guys have known her.
She's been on the channel before.
My good friend, Rosio, in the past, not anymore,
but in the past she's had this history
of triple booking herself,
and she, if she's watching this, she will giggle along.
'Cause she's like, yep, I used to do that.
And it would get to the point
where she'd be like racing from one thing to the next,
not able to enjoy any of them, right?
We've all double booked ourselves, I think.
Or maybe it's just us people pleasers,
but it's because she didn't want to upset anybody,
and she didn't want to not show up.
Then I understood that,
but I used to call her out on it,
and I was like, hey, if you're feeling rushed,
we can just reschedule, we can do this another time.
And I bring that up, because she's a close friend of mine.
I love her very dearly,
and it wouldn't have bothered me one bit
if she had to reschedule, or ask me to meet at another time,
or me to come closer to her house, or whatever it may be.
Now she has three kids,
so I usually will try to meet her in a place
that's easiest for her,
'cause she has more logistical stuff, right?
But friendships are about give and take,
and relationships in general are about give and take.
And there are times when it is helpful to give to someone.
But there are also times when it's helpful
for someone to give you something.
Hey, guys, editing Katie here real quick.
I was just listening to the video with Sean,
and I was like, I didn't mention two important things.
Number one is I think people pleasing sometimes for me
comes out of a feeling of responsibility
for other people's emotions.
I don't know what that's about,
but I have a suspicion
that it's because I struggled with placing
and upholding healthy boundaries,
and it's something I'm constantly trying to navigate.
And those two things combined,
I feel like just makes it really complicated and confusing,
because I struggled to see that relationships
can have healthy boundaries.
I don't always have to put the other person first.
It's just hard to see that sometimes.
And so I think those are two other important components
that maybe resonate with you,
'cause that's definitely something that I've struggled with.
Is sorry, my therapist used to say,
if you can give me a reason,
if you can answer the question, what am I sorry for?
I give you full permission to say you're sorry.
She's like, but if you can't come up with an answer,
that's not a real sorry then, that's people pleasing.
And it's one of those things,
once you see, you can't unsee it.
And so I could never come up with
the reason that I was sorry
for 99.99% of the times that I said it,
because I was just, I don't know why I was saying it.
I actually still don't fully understand why I said that.
I think it was kind of a way to like minimize myself,
and be like, are you mad at me?
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, if I, I'm sorry.
And it was just a way to deflect,
and keep the peace,
so that no one would be in conflict with me.
But anyway, I'd love to hear from you.
Do you struggle with that too?
'Cause like I said, I still have tough days,
when I haven't slept well, 'cause Sean and I have a puppy,
he's keeping her entertained in the other room,
so she's not climbing all over,
but, and so I'm getting up earlier,
so I'm not sleeping as well as I used to,
and making sure that I eat regularly,
and my job, there's a lot that's asked of me at times,
so I can get really stressed out.
And when those things are happening,
I'll find myself apologizing more.
And all of a sudden,
randomly worrying that one of my friends is mad at me
when I have no facts to support it.
And so I just have to check in with myself,
and I have to pay attention to when that
is coming up for me,
and then try to do some opposite action.
Try to maybe it's not even any action at all, right?
Because sometimes for me,
people pleasing is just a lot of action.
And so if I just don't do something
that can sometimes prevent me
from kind of making an ass of myself,
or people pleasing more.
Anyway, I'd love to hear from you.
How do you experience it?
And what's helped you,
'cause again, I'm still working on it.
It's something I still struggle with from time to time.
But yeah, I just want to have a conversation.
'Cause I feel like more and more people are mentioning it,
and talking about it.
And I want y'all to know I'm right there with you,
but overall, I'm doing okay.
One day at a time, I try to take time for myself.
I make time for my yoga.
You guys know that helps me keep myself sane, feeling good,
trying to eat regularly,
and connect with people who fill me up,
and also taking vacation.
Sean and I are taking vacation at the end of October,
beginning of November, and I couldn't be more excited.
So yeah, making some time for downtime is important too.
But anyway, I hope that was helpful.
I hope you enjoyed this.
It was just something I wanted to talk about,
but I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Have a wonderful week,
and I'll see you next time, bye.
(soft music)