8: life as a recovering people pleaser

Hello and welcome to Pseysike, a mental health podcast that used to be hosted by three friends But it's currently being maintained by one of them because the other two are fighting for their lives in med school In this podcast we talk about issues related to mental health that our culture is too shy to discuss as well as things I've learned in therapy where there is truly just in Daniel Hello and welcome to Pseysike with me just in Daniel Before anything else and before we start with this episode I'd like to point out that I am currently in the process of figuring out how to improve the quality of my podcast and It's been a ride. I am not the most equipped to handle the technicalities of a podcast like the mixing and the sounds and all that I've just been trying to figure things out with garage band and it's been a ride I'm trying to extend myself a little more compassion because this is a one-woman show now and I really have to devote more time into learning how to do things properly if I want quality work It's very tempting to just wing it and produce whatever I can with the resources that I have, but I know I can't do so much better But yeah, anyway, thanks to those who pointed out that my audio has kind of improved in the last few episodes I'm still working on it. I'm trying to figure out how I can reduce the background noise completely because I don't live in a subdivision and that means things aren't always quiet at night. So, yeah, that aside, let's get right into it. In my previous episode I talked about the basics of therapy, like what to expect during your first therapy session and think of this as kind of like a continuation to that. Basically in this episode I'll be talking about one of the prominent themes that I have uncovered thanks to my therapist and that is being a people pleaser. So, like I mentioned in the previous pod, I had my first session last year and it was a ride because I provided the PowerPoint presentation of all my issues and from that alone just shows how much I aim to please. I grew up an academic achiever. I always excelled in school and so it was natural to me to want to be the best the very best of them all. You know, like like Ash from Pokemon. But jokes aside, I always thought that that was normal like wanting to be the best, wanting to make sure that I was compliant that I was following the rules that I was a model student, but it turns out that it's dysfunctional. And I'm not saying that wanting to accommodate other people's needs is bad. I know that humans are social beings and there's a reason for our behaviors. It's just that some of us have normalized behaviors that are actually a bit too extreme. And this for me, one of the many issues that I have is being a people pleaser and I have been aware of this for quite a while. I think it was after college that I started to realize like, oh, I really seek the approval of other people and at the height of my internet cloud, the rawgatory, by the way, I was really thirsty for other people's attention and approval to the point where you know, I really participated in college culture in a really toxic way that instead of encouraging intellectual discourse, it was very close to bullying people, which I'm very embarrassed to admit. But I think a step to changing for the better is learning to admit that, yeah, back in the day, I did screw up and there were awful things that I said to people and I did harm others with the way that I treated them because I was so desperate to be liked by others. And it's now it's something that I try not to let get to me because there's really nothing I can do at this point, but to strive to be better than who I was in the past. So what exactly is people pleasing? Because a lot of people on the internet, they learn a therapy term and they like to overuse it. But let's just define the balance of this conversation. So if a quick Google search would tell you that people pleasing is a strong urge to please others, even if it's at the expense of oneself. So there's a difference between learning to listen to what other people need from you and going great lengths to accommodate others, even if you know that you don't have the capacity to do so. So people pleasing is the latter. It's spreading yourself thin and it is knowing that even if you can't meet their needs, even if trying to meet their needs will lead the resentment. You do it anyway because you're that deprived of love and approval from others, which is a sad truth. It's a sad truth for most of us. It took me years to admit that I had people pleasing tendencies. I want to say hi because I'm working on, you know, minimizing it as much as possible and learning to assert myself. So yeah, kind of an affirmation. But I want to clarify that people pleasing is not a mental illness. You cannot be diagnosed with people pleasing this order. It's not a thing. It's more of a trauma response. We define a trauma response as any kind of behavioral pattern that we use to cope with anything that brings emotional distress to us. So trauma is also another overused word, but I don't like gatekeeping trauma. So we define trauma as any experience that is emotionally stressful for somebody. So what may be shallow for one person may be very, very deep for you and the other way around. So it really depends on the person. So for instance, you go through heartbreak and for somebody who has been with a lot of people for a long time, that doesn't really hurt. But if it's your first time and you experienced it like at a later age, then that sucks. And that's gonna hurt a lot. So people pleasing, like I said, it's a trauma response. So it's a behavior that you learned due to the fact that you went through something traumatic in the past. It doesn't always mean childhood. When we say the past, it could mean during your teenage years, during early adulthood. Maybe it could even mean to like three months ago. Who knows? You're the only one who can answer that. And there are many reasons why people like to please others. And I've listed three reasons just to keep it short. First, we have the fear of abandonment. Yes, we will start with the abandonment issues. And the biggest reason, I think, why people are people, please, as a people, please are myself is because if I get to meet the needs of this person, even if that means that I work very, very hard to do that, they won't leave or they will have reasons to stay with me. And of course, when they respond with approval and affection, after you meet their needs, even if it was at the expense of your well-being, the behavior gets reinforced. Humans respond positively to positive reinforcement, especially if that positive reinforcement is intermittent. So intermittent reinforcement means it's not consistent. This is why people develop gambling disorders, like they develop a gambling addiction. It's due to the fact that when you gamble, it's not consistent. So when it hits, it hits hard. Like when you actually gamble and you get something in return. So same way it goes in how we treat our relationships. This is why I feel like so many of us are stuck in relationships that aren't fulfilling. It's because we always hold on to that one good thing that they do, that one good response that they have to whatever behaviors we show to them. And that's why many of us overstay are welcome. So basically you're just afraid of being left behind and being alone. And a lot of us are afraid to admit that because it's a vulnerable truth to admit. Another reason why people please just exist is because some of us may be conflict avoidant. I think in our culture where passive aggression is a huge thing like being passive aggressive in our language, we do not know how to engage in conflict properly. Compared to the West where people are more likely to express what makes them upset or what issues they have with other people here in collective cultures, in collectivistic cultures rather. We have this thing in Filipino called Pahikiram Dham where we try to feel what the other person is feeling. It's kind of like reading the room, you know, except that the room is the person's mind. And that's not always possible because your parent could say that yeah, you're fine, we're good. There's no issue here. I've forgiven you for destroying my mug or whatever, but deep down they actually resent you for that and they'll use that against you in future conversations. Hence many of us end up not knowing how to talk properly about our issues. Some of us shove it down and never confront it again. Some of us build the resentment. Some of us just like end up screaming and yelling and that's not healthy. So the reason why we end up engaging in people pleasing behaviors, why we try to appease the situation if we feel like tensions are getting high is because we want avoid conflict. We're trying to nip it in the bud when in fact, you don't have to nip it in the bud. You have to like open the bud. Does that make sense? Anyway, you get it. Like instead of hiding or like trying to stop it from happening, sometimes you have to let conflict happen so that you get to have the conversation that will help both of you improve in the relationship. Another reason why people engaging people pleasing behaviors is they have low self-esteem. I remember early on in therapy. As I was talking about my issues with my therapist, she told me, "Have you ever like thought about the fact that you might have low self-esteem?" That was like me. Low self-esteem, are you sure? And I feel like the reason why some of us have low self-esteem is because growing up, we've been made to feel like secondary characters to our own motion picture. Like right now, I like the bask in the main character syndrome that I have. But growing up, I always felt like I was always on the sidelines that it was other people's lives that I was witnessing. And for some reason, even if I was encouraged to grow up properly and to achieve things, I always felt like my worth was heavily dependent on how much I was able to achieve as a young child. Instead of being taught that, you know, your worth is innate. That no matter what you do, you'll always be worthy of love and affection. And yeah, when you feel like you're just a side character to your own story that just teaches you that, "Oh, everybody else comes first and you come later on." And some of us bring this tendency up until adulthood and this ends up with us thinking that, "Oh, in this relationship, I'm not supposed to assert myself because if I learn to assert myself, they might end up leaving," which again leads back to the first reason why people end up being people-pleasers because they're afraid of being left behind. I think it's very important for us to unpack all these reasons for why we engage in people-pleasing behaviors because when you know the motivation behind why you do certain things even if they're not good for you, you get to tackle the root cause of your issues and that's what we would like to do. But let's be a bit more specific. So if you highly relate to the reasons why people engage in people-pleasing behaviors, here are some signs of people-pleasing, which you may or may not realize. First is being a yes-man or having difficulty saying, "No, you like to say yes a lot, you like showing up a lot, you are very much available for pretty much everybody, and you always feel the need to attend to other people's needs, even if it's at your own inconvenience." Is that it? Is that it? It's the opposite of that. Anyway, so if you have difficulty setting boundaries, you will always say yes to things, especially if these are things that will make you feel needed, feel wanted, you will say yes to it. And that is probably one of the biggest signs. Next is you feel like your emotions depend on the other person's reaction. So the reason why you don't speak up, why you don't say what you need, why you don't communicate directly is because you're afraid of how the other person will react. Your thinking is always, "Will they like me if I do this, if I say this, instead of will I like them after they react to what they have to say?" So it's very external, your feelings. They don't depend on how you truly feel, they depend on how other people will react, and when you give other people that power, they're going to have more control over you, which will then reinforce the people pleasing behavior. Another sign of people pleasing is that you feel responsible for how others feel. I read the book recently, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. I forgot the author. I think it was Lindsay Gibson. I hope I'm right. And in this book, she talks about how there are emotionally immature parents, and it's not that they are to be blamed entirely, but you can blame them for a lot of things, truly, because if you believe in the attachment theory, our primary relationship going up, greatly influences the relationships that we have in the future. But anyway, in this book, she talks about emotional enmeshment, where you feel responsible for the feelings of others. Households that are dysfunctional always have at least one family member whose emotions are always felt by everyone. And it's not in like a, "Oh, it's because I'm an empath," kind of way. It's more like, "If I'm upset, everyone else will feel the effects of me being upset." As a result, the child feels responsible for the parents' emotions. And in people pleasers, this is a very common thing, emotional enmeshment. Like, you feel what the other person's feeling so much that you think you're responsible for how they are to get over these emotions. You end up acting like Jesus trying to save them from these emotions, when in fact, it is their responsibility and their responsibility alone. And you are out of it. And because other people are very immature, they allow you to save them. And you end up developing a very codependent bond, which is something you don't want to have. Another sign of people pleasing is that you avoid conflict. Like I mentioned, one reason why people engage in people pleasing behaviors is because they are conflict avoidant. And that's a big sign of people pleasing. You avoid conflict. You don't like conflict. You avoid it as much as you can. You don't like having fights with people. And that is good. It's good to strive not to have fights, but any healthy relationship will have disagreements, will have arguments. And it's very important to see it as an opportunity to grow. So people pleasers are very uncomfortable when they're attention, when they're tension rather. And it's something they try not to confront as much as possible. Another sign of people pleasing is that you aren't honest about how you feel. Going back to one of the earlier reasons, your feelings depend on how other other persons or other people react to how you feel. So when you aren't honest about how you truly feel, it's usually because you're afraid of the other person's reaction. Like, oh, this might not be the right script, something like that. And so you try to shrink yourself. You try to shrink your needs. You try to make them as small as possible. You try to ask for bare minimum. And sometimes you even take pride in that. Like, oh, I'm so low maintenance. When in fact, you just don't know how to speak up for yourself. And that's not embarrassing. I'm not here to make anybody feel bad because these are things I also have seen in myself in my previous relationships. And these are things I'm trying to work on as well. And it's difficult. It's difficult to admit that, wow, I actually refused to take up as much space as I should because I was so afraid of the other person leaving. Like, wow, I did myself such a disservice. But again, you know, we always act based on how much we know about certain things and their instances where we don't know any better. And we have to be more compassionate when that happens. And finally, another big sign of people pleasing is overexplaining. So for instance, you set a boundary and you feel bad about it immediately. And you're like, oh, it's because I'm working on myself. And I really, I know you're going to react badly to this. But I don't like to react badly on this because I want a relationship to improve. And for us to improve a relationship, we have to do something this and that blah, blah, blah. It, yeah, like you, you explain everything because you've gotten so used to being misunderstood that being misunderstood automatically equates to a person liking you less. And when they like you less, they're more likely to leave you and when they're likely to leave you, you'll be left with nothing else. So people who overexplain usually have had problems with communication in the past and they're trying not to experience that again. But it's also a people pleasing behavior because you focus so much on how the other person is reacting instead of focusing on how you feel about certain things and making sure that you speak your truth well. So these are just a few signs. You can google other signs. But if you have at least like, let's say two, three of them and it shows up in different aspects of your life, I'm not, I'm not going to scare you. Okay. I'm just going to say just be concerned and try to look out for yourself. Because being a people pleaser, it's not fun. Sure, at first, it's fun. Like everybody likes you. Everybody thinks you're easy to be around. Everybody thinks you're tolerable. Everybody thinks that, oh, this person's fun to be with. But in reality, the only reason why you're fun to be with is because it's easy to tell you what to do. And you don't want people to like you for that. You want people to like you genuinely for who you are. And I know it's difficult as an insecure person to believe that you're worthy of being like exactly the way you are, words and all. But that really is the mindset of confident person. It's believing that what you have to offer is good. Know what? Anybody experiences with you is good and they should be thankful. And if you have trouble believing that, you have to work towards that. Because I genuinely believe that the relationship you have with yourself, how you think about yourself, it will reflect in all other relationships that you have in life. And of course, you do deserve to have good relationships. So it's important to cultivate a healthy and good relationship with yourself. So now that we've defined what people pleasing is, why people engage in people pleasing behaviors, and what common science of people pleasing are, we now talk about how we can overcome people pleasing. And here are just some things I've learned along the way. So first, you'd want to look at your strengths and use them appropriately. People pleasing has its perks. You got to admit, you feel for people, you understand, and you can sense their feelings more compared to others, like as an empath. But seriously, there are advantages to all types of behaviors, both good and bad, and I think in being a better person, it's just really using all the behaviors that you have to make sure that you minimize harm and you maximize your strengths so that you can reach your full potential. Something like that, it's very cheesy, but it's true. And here are some perks to being a people pleaser. You're attuned to the needs of others. You'd want to maintain that. You know, you don't want to be very edgy all of a sudden. You're like, I don't care about anyone, I only care about myself. You don't want to be on the other side, right? You don't want to be too selfish. So you'd want to keep that trait of being attuned to other people's needs. Another strength that people pleasers have is that you care about others. You know, the reason why I care about their approval so much is because you care about them. But again, you have to limit the amount of care that you have and think to yourself that the most important relationship that you have is with yourself. If you're not satisfied with who you are, it's not that you cannot be satisfied with others. There will just be some difficulty in that. And you'd want to reduce the difficulty in finding meaningful relationships, right? Because you do deserve to achieve them effortlessly or at least with some effort, not too hard. And lastly, a good perk to being a people pleaser is that you have a high level of agreeableness. So the factor theory in personality psychology says that all the traits that we have as individuals can be summarized into five big factors. You have openness to experience, consensuousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. High levels, or it's also known as ocean, because that's like the acronym. High levels of neuroticism is also known as emotional instability, so you don't want to score high there. You don't want to score high in the first four factors. That's openness, consensuousness, extraversion, and agreeableness. So if you're agreeable as a person, you're easier to get along with. And that's something that you want to take pride in. You're easy to get along with, you're not that difficult. But again, you don't want to be agreeable, like doormat agreeable. You want to be agreeable, like I respect this person because they know who they are, they know their values, they know what they believe in, and they know their limits when it comes to certain things. People will agree with you regardless of how you see the world. Like let's say even if you have different opinions from them, if you know how to carry yourself with enough confidence, they're going to respect you regardless and still take an interest in you. Because I think some people, like people, pleasers in general have this feeling that, oh, I have to act a certain way in order for me to be agreeable or to be likable by another person. It doesn't have to be that way. My therapist has uses that line a lot when I have a limiting belief that I'm entertaining. He's always like, it doesn't have to be that way. And I'm like, wow, I immediately snap out of it. Okay, another tip to overcome people pleasing is that you have to learn to say no and avoid overexplaining yourself. No is a complete sentence and you have to use it more often. Yes, there are times where you have to explain yourself. I think this is reserved for your close relationships, relationships you do want to keep in your life for the long term, but you don't always have to do that, especially if you're not comfortable. And I think that the people who love you enough and respect you enough will understand that and they will give you time until you're comfortable to explain things. But for everybody else, you can just say no without going on this litany as to why you set this boundary, as to why you said no blah, blah, blah. Because if you want to be more assertive, you have to learn to reject other people, to reject other advances. Yeah, it hurts. But when you realize that rejection should not be taken personally and that it's just a boundary that a person is setting in order to continue your relationship, it hurts less. It hurts, yes, sure, but it hurts less. And that's important. Another way to overcome people pleasing is to pay attention to your needs too. Your needs exist and they deserve to be met. It's not just about the other person. Yeah, sure. It's important to make the other person feel seen, feel heard. That's that's a very green flag. But at the same time, you deserve the same amount of effort. Your needs too should be taken into consideration when it comes to decision making in the relationship. The relationship, at least a monogamous one, consists of two people and these two people really need to look at each other's needs and do their best to meet each other's needs. And you really have to remember what your needs are by asking yourself what is it that will make me fulfilled in my relationships? What do I need to feel secure and safe that the other person can do? Remember, people meet the needs that they are capable of. That doesn't mean they are substitute for you meeting your own needs. You have personal needs, which is your responsibility and you have relationship needs, which another person can provide. Do not interchange the two or do not think that one is a good substitute for the other. You will need both. And finally, you want to shift from the perspective of, I hope they like me to, I hope I like them. Because when you put yourself first, when you put your standards in a pedestal, when you think about yourself before what other people think of you, you teach yourself that what you think about other people, about relationships is far more important than what what other people will say about you. Because when you're familiar with your standards, you will be less likely to accept anything less than that. I encourage delusion here. I don't care. Like, you really have to believe that you deserve the best. Even if you don't feel like it, you do deserve the best because you are the main character of your life. And when you believe that you're the main character, everything will fall magically into place. Not immediately, of course, but you just really have to believe that it will all work out the way that it's supposed to. And in so much better ways than you imagined. And really, you have to put yourself on the pedestal instead of other people. Because when you learn to put yourself on the pedestal, other people become less intimidating. And you're going to be less impressed by wanting to please other people. Again, it's a big learning process. It's a big trial and error process, but it's very worth it. I have had to struggle recently in my relationships because I've been learning to be more assertive, particularly my relationships at home because I'm learning to stand up for myself. And, you know, with parents, it's difficult because they can't accept the fact that answering back can be respectful. And I think they're fed up of my quote-unquote mental gymnastics when it's packed. It's just me speaking up for myself and saying that I have needs to that deserve to be respected and fulfilled. But yeah, the funny thing about therapy and self-improvement is that when you make a conscious effort to doing so, a big part of you will break. And that's because this part of you was meant to be broken because it was created out of chaos. And it was created and maintained because of survival mode, like you were living to survive only. But when you develop an awareness that something has to change, if I want to experience better things, you're going to get rid of that foundation and replace it with better foundation. And I feel like I'm at that stage of building that new foundation. It's tough because I haven't built anything on the foundation yet. I'm still working on the foundation to make sure that I build a stable environment for myself. Again, it's difficult, but personally, I feel like the process is worth it because I do owe it to my future self to give her a better life than I have now. And I think I have a much better perception of myself now, because my past self wanted me to be better. And it's just really paying it forward, basically. So I hope this podcast was useful. It was informative in any way possible. I still apologize for any of the background noise that you might still hear, because really I'm trying to figure it out, but I do promise to deliver better quality audio in the future when I get it together. So yeah, if you have any suggestions for the pod, if you want to ask for advice, you can email me at [email protected]. That is PLS Seic. Yeah, so I'll hopefully see you next week. Or you'll hear from me next week, rather, this is podcast and it's not a video. Yeah, take care always.