We believe in functional mental wellness, a holistic approach to mental health. We know that there's hope for those of us who have experienced trauma, even profound trauma and that's why we created the universe is your therapist podcast, we believe whether you call it God, the universe, source, unity or love that there is something much greater than us that conspires for our good, we envision a world of healing and connection, and we teach you simple but powerful practices that integrate your mind, body and spirit so that you can come home to your highest self and your truest identity. You are not broken, you are loved, and you can heal. My name is Amy Hoyt, and together with my sister, Lena, we will take you on a journey of healing and self discovery.
The internal state is the clue for me as to what my motivation is.
Welcome to today's episode, we're going to be discussing people pleasing. And we hear a lot about people pleasing in pop culture, we're going to look at what it is, if it's problematic, or if it's simply a nervous system response, as well as how it shows up for us and what we can do about it. If we see people pleasing in our lives. How are you doing today, Lena?
Good, thanks. How about you?
I'm doing well, thank you
got a very exciting weekend with a child graduating,
I did our oldest graduated high school this weekend. And so we've been in party mode all weekend. Sober party mode. Of course, our listeners, you know, it's been really, really fun, really, just great to see him accomplish that and get ready for his next phase in life. So today, we're talking about people pleasing. And I used to think I was not a people pleaser, because I can be a little more blunt and a little more to the point. And that was some of my ego covering up some of my sensitivity. And then the longer I've been on this journey, I've realized that my people pleasing just looks different. Oh, so I would love to know, how you define people pleasing and how it shows up for you.
I am an expert in people pleasing. In fact, if it were an Olympic event, I would win a gold medal. Because that was my role. And childhood in our family growing up was making sure that everybody was okay, and that nobody was mad and nobody was going to get in trouble. And nobody was going to be hit that sort of thing. So people pleasing is actually an autonomic nervous system response. And it is a response that's designed to reduce tension in the relationship or reduce tension and the experience or the event that you're observing. And the reason why it happens so automatically is because your nervous system or my nervous system senses danger with discord or with anger or frustration. And so my nervous system automatically will jump in to try to smooth the way.
I really liked that explanation. And it reminds me of something we talk a lot about in our program, which is the whole health lab. But we talk a lot about the brain has two imperatives, it's constantly battling, or at least trying to figure out the the need for safety, and the need for connection. And so people pleasing really is trying to stay safe while connecting.
Yes. Beautifully said.
Thank you. Um, how does it show up for you specifically with behaviors?
What I realized as I've gotten older is that there's something that occurs inside of me that actually is not apparent to anybody outside of me. You and I have talked about this a little bit about how when we're having a nervous system response, we think it's so apparent to everybody. How it shows up for me is more internal, where I start to feel a lot of anxiety and tension in my body. And I will if I'm not mindful or aware of it, I will jump in and try to fix something for somebody. How does this show up for you? Because you said it shows up a little differently.
Yeah, so for me, it's more about modulating my behavior to not upset the other person. So it's, you know, like for instance, with my child During, they all have different personalities, obviously, they all have different quirks and triggers, if you will, and so modulating my own style and behavior so that it's not ruffling their feathers. Okay. And I don't know, I don't think that's clinically people pleasing, because I think that's parenting where you're trying to help them regulate, and so you're co regulating. But I think that in a social setting, I'm so used to doing that than in a social setting, I'm also doing that. And it reminds me a lot of the mirror neurons we talked about where I am marrying someone else's level of engagement or level of interest, or even topically diving in deeper into a topic that may not be as interesting to me, but I can tell that they are really interested in it. And so it's super subtle for me. And I honestly feel like the term people pleasing needs to be interrogated a little bit. Because what we know about CO regulation and mirror neurons, it kind of begs the question, is it people pleasing? Or is it a nervous system trying to regulate?
Well, and I, I love your your word, interrogate the concept, because it also can be, we are engaging in a set of social skills. And so teasing this all apart. For me, what I see is that, for me, the people pleasing is a reaction, because I'm having a lot of tension or distress inside. That's different than engaging with somebody socially and listening to what they're interested in, because you have good social skills. And that's different also, then, meeting your child where they are emotionally, and being aware that if you have a child with special needs, there are certain things that will create problems in the child's reactions. And in learning how to mitigate that.
I appreciate that distinction. I think what happens for me is I want people to like me. And so for you, you're feeling from what I can tell you're saying you're feeling like a sense of anxiety or tension in your body. So does it show up in your chest or your stomach or your shoulders or your jaw? Where do you feel that sense of anxiety,
it's in my jaw, and then you're the one who pointed this out to me years ago, when I'm really stressed, I do this thing with our fingers, my fingers, dad does it too. But I did this thing where I rub my my thumb in between my fingers. And until I lived with you for a while and you pointed it out? I have no idea. I did that when I was tense.
Okay, so for you, it's very physical. For me, it's not necessarily I'm feeling a lot of physicality. I'm more I hope they like me. So it's some insecurity, which is getting less and less as I get older, and which is such a relief. Isn't it? Lovely wondering it. For our listeners? The clue is how do you know if you're people pleasing, or just simply co regulating, and having emotional intelligence? And perhaps the clue we've just identified is how you feel in your body?
I believe so for the work that I've done over the years, both as a clinician and as a coach, and as a person who's on their own journey. I see that the internal state is the clue for me as to what my motivation is.
Okay, so that that's a great takeaway for our listeners, how does your body feel everyone has that anxiousness or tenseness differently in their body? And so for you, it's your job for me, it's typically either in the pit of my stomach, or it's a tightness in my chest. Uh huh. And I'll often find myself without realizing it either doing this, or I've just kind of crossed an arm and it's like a protective stance, subconsciously. Or I'll actually kind of rub right here are my legs.
Yes.
And so paying attention again, being very aware of our body. And that is going to be a clue whether we are engaging in people pleasing or not.
And if I can AMI out a little bit about this. We have seen people pleasing in recent years as being pathological. And that doesn't match up with CO regulation, it doesn't match up with the concept of mirror neurons. It doesn't match up with an autonomic nervous system response. And, and I want our listeners to understand that whatever behavior you engage in autonomically, which is also automatic. Instead of being angry with yourself, it's important to understand that your brain helped you develop that coping mechanism to help you survive. And that if you engage in people pleasing behaviors, it's something that you learned, most likely as a child. And it kept you from being hit as as often or it kept you from being disregarded or rejected as often, that type of thing. And I really want us to start as a whole human race just to stop pathologizing. All these things that our brains did automatically, to help us get through difficult times in our childhood.
I absolutely love that. And I know we've talked about that with other topics, such as codependency, and this need to recognize our resilience and our survival, and that all of these maladaptive practices were practices to get us to this point, and they weren't great. And they're not serving us anymore, right. And so if they're not serving us anymore, then it's time to take a look at them and get curious.
And I love that you said that, because that is very agent of taking a look at something and deciding consciously whether or not we want to address it. That is always what we're looking for, for our listeners, that they will understand that awareness offers you a choice. And it's okay to choose something different than what you think other people want you to choose. The key is to have awareness so that you're making a choice that's not shadowed by denial or by other things like that.
Absolutely. And I'm aware of that. The other way people pleasing has shown up for me is the inability to say no, to certain commitments, because I want to be the good mom, or the good friend or the good sister. And so you know, we've talked in other podcast episodes about just creating some space between the time we volunteer for something, or commit to something that space between being asked and answering. And so what that looks like for me is if someone says, Can you do this? I say, let me get back to you. And I genuinely genuinely think Will this be within my bandwidth that day? I had that happen this weekend, I had someone text me and say, I understand you're coming to the meeting. Can you please do this, and I got back to them. At first I was gonna say okay, but I didn't know I was supposed to be at a meeting. The person forgot to ask me. And so I was gonna go ahead and just do it, because that's what uh, you know, quote, unquote, good friend does or a good mom or whatever. But I, I took a couple minutes. And then I just said, Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't know about the meeting, I won't be able to make it. And I felt so much relief. Normally, if you know, if my husband had been in town, and we weren't graduation weekend, I probably that would have not been hard for me. And I could have easily done it. And I would have gladly done it. But that particular day, it was stretching my bandwidth, to the point where I knew what would happen is I would be taking it out on my loved ones.
Oh, I love that. I was just thinking, right when you said that, that what we tend to do in situations like that is we tend to want to please the people outside outside of our immediate circle. And so then the people inside our immediate circle, get a person in ourselves that's less resourced and has less capacity. And so they end up paying the price so that we can look good.
Absolutely. And my commitment this year above anything is to not yell, not raise my voice to my children. And I'm doing so well. I'm so proud of myself. I am I can tell that my my bandwidth is expanding in terms of my parenting skills. Were going to family counseling, and that's really helping me and I don't want to jeopardize my relationship with them because I'm, it's really going so well. And that's hard when you have a lot of teenagers. Yes or no.
And you have three Yeah,
yeah, to think they're teenagers. Yeah. Yeah, so I just wanted to let our listeners know that sometimes people pleasing may show up differently for them. And there are times where you think, well, it won't hurt if I just say yes to this, but there are consequences and it's typically taken out on our loved ones. Beautifully said. Okay, thanks for listening to today's episode. If you feel like you're struggling with people pleasing, go to mending trauma.com and take our quiz do I have trauma or toxic stress and that will help you understand some of the patterns in your childhood or even in your recent past that could lead to people pleasing. We have a lot of free resources, including the podcast and we would love to help you along this journey. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you want to go deeper on this subject or any other subjects we've covered in the podcast. We are so excited to be launching our signature membership program at mending trauma.com This is a trauma informed mental health membership where we combine clinically effective practices courses and mentoring while putting you in the driver's seat. We teach you how to heal your trauma with the latest research combining mind body and spirit we want to walk you through a healing journey while also empowering you if you have felt this episode is helpful. We would absolutely love if you would go to Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your pods and give us a review. We'd also love it if you would share it with someone you think it might help tag us on social media at mending trauma.com Or at Amy Hoyt PhD, we would love to reshare and also if there's anything we can do to help we would love to hear from you email info at mending trauma.com Give us your suggestions or topics you want to hear about. We would absolutely love to be of more service to you. We're so excited because we have so many good episodes coming up in season two, and we can't wait to go on this journey with you
