Breaking The Cycle of People-Pleasing
Has this ever happened to you? You are having a great day, everything is going well, you feel fully present and excited for the day ahead even though it’s busy. And then you get a phone call from your mom. She says she needs you to go take the mail to your grandma because your mom’s busy and no one else lives near grandma.
You start to feel a gnawing in your stomach, you feel anxious because you tell yourself you “should” help your grandma out, and you feel frustrated because this request is last minute and you have a busy day. All of a sudden you hear “sure, of course” come out of your mouth before you realize it and now you’re committed to bringing grandma the mail. You feel so angry at yourself because you know this is going to exhaust you on top of an already busy day, but you felt like you didn’t have much of a choice. Who can say no to their mom about helping out their grandma?
This is such a hard situation to be in! Of course you want to help out the people you love but at what cost to yourself?
Now I want you to imagine if that same scenario happened and instead of going on auto-pilot and saying yes, you said something like… “hey mom! I wish I could help grandma out today but unfortunately I can’t. I hope you find someone who can!” Short, sweet, and to the point. You don’t give excuses, you protect your time and energy, and genuinely hope she can find someone to help grandma. You feel relieved that you can set boundaries when necessary and you feel empowered because you chose your own well-being without feeling guilty! Now you get to feel calm as you go throughout the rest of your day because you set boundaries that help keep you present for the other things you need to get done today. Instead of feeling guilty and down on yourself for setting boundaries, you feel proud of yourself for putting your needs first.
You deserve to protect your time and energy too.
This can be a nasty cycle many of us find ourselves in, where we want to help out the people around us but if we say yes too much it can build resentment within ourselves. And if we say no to helping out, we can start to feel down on ourselves, telling ourselves that we’re not a “good enough partner/parent/child/friend”. So either way it feels like a lose/lose. How do we get out of these cycles?
First, what is the cycle?
This pattern can play out in many different ways depending on who you are and what you’ve been through in your life. Here’s a common one that can play out:
-someone asks something of you
-you feel anxious because you need to say no/frustrated that they even asked
-you say yes anyways because it feels “easier” than dealing with the shame of saying no and their disappointment
-you feel exhausted, frustrated, and resentful as you move through the task because you really should have said no but didn’t know how
-you start to feel burnt out because you are giving too much of your time/energy away and not getting much in return
Rinse and repeat.
So why does this happen?
There are so many reasons why this shows up! Here are a few:
-having to take care of your parents either physically or emotionally growing up
-having people stop being friends with you if you say no
-authority figures telling you you “aren’t good” if you set boundaries with them/said no
-being raised in a home where you weren’t allowed to say no
-being raised to ignore your own needs/body intuition in order to do what an authority figure wanted
Now how do we get out of this pattern?
The first step to getting out of this pattern would be to outline what that pattern is for you. This helps you identify the different thoughts, feelings, and beliefs you hold around this pattern which will help you eventually do something different.
After you notice and outline your own pattern you can start to interrupt that pattern by doing something different. This could be as simple as saying “no” instead of “yes” or it could be trying to convince yourself that your belief about not being a “good enough person” isn’t true.
Of course you can try these on your own and see if they help! Maybe you’re thinking, I’ve tried that and it helps but I need a little bit more support. That’s where I come in!
I specialize in helping women break these cycles of people-pleasing by…
-going back into people’s childhoods to explore where this pattern began to help us understand how to move through it now
-helping people navigate the current pattern as it unfolds so that they can process what this pattern looks like now
-using Brainspotting to help them experience and process the emotions that come up around this pattern
-using attachment theory to connect these patterns and emotions with underlying needs that didn’t get met as a child