Today, I’d like to talk about the stickiness of people pleasing and how to get unstuck.
Recently, I got a phone call from a relative during my work day. Normally I wouldn’t pick up while I’m working, but we’d been trying to get in touch with each other for a while, so I decided to take a short break for their call.
We talked for fifteen minutes or so, and then I told them I needed to get back to work.
Their tone immediately changed. Responses were clipped, the warmth drained from their voice.
When we hung up, I was pissed.
This is a family member I’ve been setting more stringent boundaries with over the last year and being more direct with when it seems that they’re withholding connection or guilt tripping me when I’m not able to give them what they need.
You might be unsurprised to hear that few of these efforts have gone over well, but today, I want to talk about what makes it all worth it, even when it’s scary and uncomfortable.
For starters, it delivers opportunities to look at my own baggage that floats to the surface (more like—is violently catapulted to the surface 💥) when someone is angry/disappointed/unhappy/etc. with me.
This has been super useful. There are so many parts in my psyche organized around the urge to people please that we’d be here all day if I tried to list them, but here are just a few.
I have an inner part (in Internal Family Systems language) who is hypersensitive to other people’s disappointment
(and my own, too, but that’s a topic for another time). It’s so sensitive, in fact, that it can perceive disappointment even when it’s not present.
Point being, when this part is active, I am more likely to think people aren’t happy with me and that I need to do something about it, even if they’re just having a bad day and it has nothing to do with me, or they have indigestion, or who knows what.
And yes, sometimes they really are upset with me, but either way, this part doesn’t know how to cope with these situations with anything but compulsive people pleasing.
Cultivating an ability to be with and take care of this part, instead of letting it run the show, has been nothing short of
life changing.
It’s helped me press pause before jumping into tired ol’ people pleasing patterns, so I can choose differently. This creates space for me to explore what I want and need, something that previously was buried under other people’s wants and needs.
This is incredibly valuable information to have, not only because it helps us navigate relationships, but because it helps us understand what is personally meaningful to us.
Before, I’d never seen the direct link between an awareness of my own wants and needs and my level of happiness, but in hindsight, it’s pretty obvious. I mean, how can we possibly cultivate happiness if we have no idea what our own needs and desires are?
We’re aiming for a goal without knowing what the goal is.
Even worse, life is more than happy to tell us what our needs and desires “should” be, through the voices of family and societal conditioning. And then we’re off, pursuing someone else’s (or more likely, no one’s) idea of happiness. Is it any wonder when it’s less than satisfying, even if we achieve these supposed markers of success?
When our top priority is making sure nobody is ever unhappy with us, we leave precious little room to explore what genuinely lights us up, and that really, really sucks.
I met another inner part who has a very specific response when someone is upset with me, and this part was running full speed ahead after that phone call with my relative.
I had a general sense of unease that made it difficult to concentrate on work, and when I looked more closely, I saw an image of a great, big space filled with people. We’ll uncover what that means in a moment.
This unease was driving an urge to “fix things.” Maybe to send them a text offering another time to talk (even though I felt tired even thinking about that) or apologizing and making sure we talked as long as they wanted to next time (again, even the thought was tiring).
*By the way, it bears mentioning that, in this scenario, I didn’t actually know what the other person was thinking or feeling. I inferred it by their tone of voice. Sometimes those inferences are accurate, other times not so much. It’s just useful to remember that our impressions aren’t infallible!
The idea of doing either of those made me feel tight and constricted (and tired), so a different part then jumped in to rescue me from those feelings by kicking up anger and resentment instead. “How dare they get angry at me when I can’t talk in the middle of my work day!” this part raged. “If I were to call them during their work day, they’d be livid!”
These thoughts, too, only left me feeling tight and constricted (and tired), now with a sprinkling of self-righteousness.
But when I explored this image of the great, big room packed with people, I could feel what it meant—it was the fear that this person’s opinion of me was now held by EVERYONE in the entire world. In other words, I have a part who globalizes other people’s negative opinions of me.
I hadn’t expected this, but when this belief came to light (“Now EVERYONE hates you!!”)…I laughed.
It was actually hilarious to me, thinking of this relative—what? Taking out a full-page ad in the Times, detailing their disapproving opinions of me? Hiring those planes that fly around with the banner thingies?
In reality, they might tell other family members, which: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Or, I don’t know, perhaps friends of theirs whom I’ll never meet? Again: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When the impetus behind the need to fix things became clear, its power deflated.
I don’t actually value this person’s opinion of how I’m running my life. We hold very different values in most areas, but certainly when it comes to relationships. If they disagree with or disapprove of what I’m doing, to quote the Dude:
But to simply say, “Stop caring about what people think!” is a platitude
One that, most days, I find downright annoying. Like, okay, sure—I’ll get right on that. 🙄
But if you can create a little bit of space when panicked, people pleasing urges arise—just a few minutes, even, during which you commit to yourself that you won’t take action—this can interrupt the pattern.
Maybe the first dozen times it’s a brief interruption followed by people-pleasing business as usual. But that interruption is working its magic under the surface.
Perhaps next time the pause stretches a little longer, and this allows you to spot a belief driving that urge to “fix things.”
And maybe, just maybe, once that belief is standing in its underwear under the stage lights…it will seem amusing—hilarious, even.
The imagined consequences of abstaining from people pleasing are often far worse than the reality.
And even if the reality turns out to be uncomfortable AF, we might surprise ourselves with how resilient we really are.
Ask yourself 👉 What are you afraid will happen if you [fill in the blank]?
The answer to this is often very illuminating.
Happy New Moon! 🌑
