People Pleasing

Sal Jefferies: 00:00:03

Welcome to Mindset, mood and Movement, a systemic approach to human

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behavior, performance, and wellbeing.

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How psychological, emotional, and

physical health are all connected.

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In this episode, I'll be sharing

my knowledge and experience to help

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you overcome a challenge that you

might be facing in life health.

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All work.

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Sal: Do you find yourself saying yes

to things when you'd rather say no?

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Do you find yourself doing things to

make people happy, to please them,

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when actually you don't really want

to do it, but you feel compelled to?

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Okay, well, people pleasing is a modern

phenomenon and it's widespread and it

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can be a serious problem and it can

really degrade your life and your work.

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So in today's episode, I'm going

to talk about this, about the kind

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of the how, the what and the why,

and how do we deal with this stuff?

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But first we need to understand

it as with any problem.

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It's so tempting in our culture to get

rid of the problem, solve it, band aid it.

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That is not helpful.

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We want to understand why.

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Why do we have this pattern?

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Why do we do this behavior?

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What does it serve?

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Where does it come from?

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Because if we don't understand its origin

and its usefulness, then generally we're

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gonna probably cycle back to that pattern.

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So people pleasing.

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On the surface it can sound lovely.

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You know, you're making people happy,

um, not rocking the boat, keeping things

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all smooth, those kind of statements.

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They are all Let's just say they're

all things we can say to ourselves

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that basically confirm why we do it.

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The real reason we do it is for, let's

say, some more heavyweight reasons.

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It's low self worth, kind of fear, fear

of rejection, lack of assertiveness,

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perhaps not wanting to fit in.

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All these kind of things.

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So, let me, let me take you

through this a little more.

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I worked with a guy, uh, a little while

back, uh, Stephen, so we'll alias him,

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but Stephen, Stephen was a super guy,

really nice, just had a huge network of

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people, really successful, hard worker.

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But Stephen was a people pleaser,

and we were doing some work on,

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uh, his performance, uh, both, you

know, as a person and in his work.

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And the, the pattern was coming

up, it was clear to me, and my job

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was to help it become clear to him.

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So we got into it, and, uh, what?

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Got into the point of why do you

say yes when really you want to say

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no to to events to things going on?

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He on the surface gave me an answer,

which was like, oh, I just you know,

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I Yeah, I'd like to keep people happy,

you know I'm a people person all this

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stuff, but actually when we drilled

down and got underneath him whilst that

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was true to some degree What he really

was doing was avoiding confrontation

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What he didn't want to say to someone

is like, no, I don't want to do that.

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Or I can't make that or that's not

going to happen because that would be

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alias to I am confronting this person.

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Now while that's not actually true,

saying no to somebody is simply saying no.

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The belief of this is a confrontation

about to happen is often what goes

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on in the people pleasing mindset.

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So, if this is going on for you, then

it might be a fear of confrontation.

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What does it mean to stand up

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for

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Sal: yourself?

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And we've got to cycle this back.

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Early experience normally is where

these, these formations lie in our

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experience of, in our brain, literally,

in our body, in our psyche, about

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what it means to be in confrontation.

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And the problem we have

is that if we think of...

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Every time we say no to someone,

that equals confrontation.

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The people pleasing pattern will slip

in, and there you'll be, saying yes to

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everything, even though you don't want to.

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But nothing is all, so it

may not be confrontation.

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It might simply be, Oh, no thanks, that's

a great invitation, but I can't make that.

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Or, No, my workload's too

busy, I can't take that on.

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And that actually

becomes about discussion.

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So we have to be very careful of not

understanding these sub patterns.

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So that's number one.

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So Stephen's work was really to

understand people pleasing was a

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strategy to avoid confrontation.

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When we realised that most

no's don't equal confrontation,

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then things could change.

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But there was one more layer to this and

it was also about he didn't like people

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getting upset with him He didn't want

to see someone hurt or upset and again,

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there's there's there's a there's a very

human loveliness to that But who says

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you're going to upset someone by being

truthful or saying what you need to say?

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There's a way to do it, but if you

start to believe that I'll upset

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them, there's another layer to this.

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It's because it's my fault

was Stephen's problem.

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He has on this negative belief

that if someone was upset, he

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would be the cause of the upset.

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And hence, don't want to upset

anybody, get people pleasing.

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So keeping an eye on this.

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Avoiding confrontation, finger of a blame

pointing at you to being upsetting people.

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This is normally built on our

early childhood experience.

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So we need to get up to date.

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How you communicate with people.

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How you understand that

you can say yes and no.

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But separating out the fact

that if someone gets upset,

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they get upset perhaps.

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But be careful of not assuming

that's always going to happen.

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Because it probably isn't.

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And then there's some space.

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So rather than people pleasing,

you can be really kind and generous

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and yet really clear with people.

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And that's a beautiful way to be.

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So

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Sal: that's one level.

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Now you might have heard of fawning.

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Fawning, uh, fawn like a baby deer is,

um, a term that's used now, as with a lot

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of terms, to describe complex behaviours,

but fawning is another one where it's

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really another term of people pleasing.

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What I think is interesting when we, when

we look at this angle, is really what

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we're saying is, I'm getting triggered

into a threat response so I'd rather

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say yes and I'd rather people please

and I'd rather do what other people

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want because they're more important

but that's because you feel a threat

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so we're getting triggered so we have

a neurological response fight or flight

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if it's fawning you're going into flight

you are wanting to get away from the

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problem and most of this is happening

below consciousness so we're not overtly

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thinking about this it's all very subtle

in our mind body system but you're being

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triggered You feel there's a threat.

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And

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Sal: of course, if you have a

high bias to flight response, you

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want to get away from the problem.

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And then if we think of our beautiful

form being chased through the woods

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by a predator, you know, that's scary.

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We don't want to spend

our life being chased.

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So if we're always in a flight

response, there's also the beautiful.

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Seemingly the beginning pattern

of people pleasing to avoid him.

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That works occasionally, but most

of the time it's maladaptive.

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Because what people pleasing does

is you're just avoiding the issue.

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Which is another flight response.

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So to solve that way of dealing

with potential challenges...

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It's about moving towards the

problem, A, a fight response.

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So not actually fighting, but

moving towards the problem.

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And this is a very different thing.

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So if you're asked to do something

and you don't want to do it, and

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you're getting triggered and you

think you're gonna form the whole

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thing out, oh, you're making excuses.

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Notice you're being in,

pushing into a flight response.

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Pause, breathe, feel your body.

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Notice that you probably are more

capable than you believe, and

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you can move toward that problem.

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which means you can find ways

and strategies to solve it.

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That immediately starts to

dissolve this fawning pattern.

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People pleasing as the strategy

will probably drop away because

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instead of people pleasing,

you'll be problem solving.

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So it becomes quite an elegant shift.

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And I know many people listen to my

podcast and many people that I coach are

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highly intelligent and very skillful.

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So if you can adopt the problem

solving behavioural stance, then

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you, by default, already transition,

shift out of people pleasing.

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So this is a really,

really, really big one.

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I've pushed this a lot because

when we don't understand our

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neurological state, we do patterns.

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Know your neurological state.

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Fight, Flight, or Flow or

Freeze, whichever one you're in,

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then you can work differently.

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So there's a really important one.

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And, and finally, it's, there

are other layers to this.

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So there's cultural layers, there's

family layers, depending on how you've

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been brought up in the world and what

kind of families you've been brought in.

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There are all sorts of learnings

that we've learned that mean it's

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not okay to speak up, or you have

to be subservient to another.

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And these are, these are, these can be

difficult, but recognize that perhaps

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they may also be past biased, which

means if you were brought up in a

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particular culture or family which said

you couldn't speak up and you had to

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always do what everyone else said, then

if you're an adult and if you're in the

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perhaps hopefully the free world where

you can be who you are, notice that

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that shadow doesn't want to be chasing

you down the road and all shadows.

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are just an absence of light.

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So bring light to your awareness

that you can make choices now.

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And catch operating from the

version of you are today.

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Notice that fight response

and flight response.

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But then come into the present.

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You know, be a, be a present person.

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And if those old past patterns are

still there, notice them gently.

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But realize that past lives in the past.

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It can only become present

when you bring it forward.

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So simple, not easy.

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As all this work I do is, is it's

often simplicity, which is elegance,

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but it doesn't mean it's easy.

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So with that conscious shift,

you can also let go of perhaps

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those cultural family biases.

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And last thing I want to say

is You know, low self worth is

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cited in people pleasing a lot.

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We don't feel good about ourselves.

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Um, I'm not good enough.

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Any of these kind of statements,

if you say them, it's kind of in

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there, it's the self, it's the low

self worth trigger point, you want

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to look at that, but is it true?

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You know, I find it fascinating that

we, including myself, have all these

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beliefs, which run our life, and we

sometimes don't stop and go, hang

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on a minute, is that actually true?

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And then you can start to almost like

I do, I kind of laugh at that belief.

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It's simply not true.

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I've done loads of great things.

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I've got a friendship group.

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I've got successful business.

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I'm a great parent.

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Whatever it is you are skillful and

good at, then we can start to challenge

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the I'm not good enough narrative,

which is also low self worth and

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start to find worth, find value.

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Look for where you have value.

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Guarantee you have plenty, but where you

put your attention is where it will show.

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So look at where you have value,

wherever you're doing well in your life.

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And it could be small stuff.

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You might think, Oh, you know, I'm,

I'm only a parent, which I would say

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is a huge job to bring up a child.

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It's an incredible job to do that.

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Well, Oh, I run a small

business, but you run a business.

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Look at where you have value and

own it because low self worth

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again can be a trick of the mind.

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It can be.

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Archaeology from the past.

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It could be someone else's stuff.

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Build the bank of you by knowing your

value, by looking at where you're doing

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well and even the small pieces, you

know, collect them up and aggregate them.

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Hey, that's what saving is about, right?

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So I hope these, uh, some, some

of the overarching points for

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people pleasing have been able to

be insightful, get you thinking.

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Get you freed up from it and maybe if

you're, if there's some area that I

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haven't touched on that you think, Oh,

you know, people pleasing and really

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think sounds kind of got my point,

reach out, you know, drop me a question

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because there are so many nuances in,

but the themes of this, looking at, um,

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Not wanting to upset people, looking

at the subtle belief of you think it's

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your fault, looking at that flight

response and trying to get away from the

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problem and looking at low self worth.

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These cover almost all of the

expressions of people pleasing.

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So then you can go around being

authentic and you can be lovely as

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a person and you can still say no.

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You can be a really effective

human being and you can turn down

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things without upsetting anyone.

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So people pleasing is

then starts to drop away.

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So let me know how you get on.

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As always, you can reach

out to me via my website.

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Drop me a message via email on

the, on the, on the contact page.

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You can contact me on the

socials, which if you're seeing

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this on, drop me a comment.

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Um, it's a big one.

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And I really hope that

this is helpful for you.

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So, um, please, uh, be

pleased, but not please others.

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Okay.

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I'll talk to you on the next one.

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Take care.

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Thank you so much for listening.

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If you enjoyed the

episode, please subscribe.

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And if a friend would benefit from hearing

this, do send it on to them as well.

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If you would like to get in touch

yourself, then you can go to my website.

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Which is Sal Jeffries dot com,

spelt S A L J E F F E R I E S.

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Sal Jeffries dot com.

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Hit the get in touch link and there

you can send me a direct message.

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If you'd like to go one step further

and learn whether coaching can help

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you overcome a challenge or a block

in your life, then do reach out and

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I offer a call where we can discuss

how this may be able to help you.

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Until the next time, take care.