In this episode:
In this introspective episode, I dive deep into the core of our desire to please others. Is this drive a subtle quest for control, or is it rooted in age-old survival tactics? I challenge you to consider the possibility of deeper truths lying beneath the surface of people-pleasing behaviors. Before you cast judgment on yourself for seeking approval, pause and reflect with me: “What else could be true?”
This exploration isn’t just about understanding why we act the way we do; it’s an invitation to view ourselves through a lens of compassion and curiosity. Welcome to a space where self-discovery and empathy converge.
Resources:
Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops
Transcript:
So for today’s episode, I wanted to have a conversation about the idea or the importance of asking ourselves the question what else could be true? The reason why this is coming up is because, you know, probably a few weeks ago, both in conversations and meetings that I was facilitating, but also in my email list that I write, you know, I was reflecting on the idea of people pleasing in particular, right? So I’ll kind of use people pleasing as an example as to why we should always ask ourselves the question what else could be true? Right? Basically, you know, a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago, dr Nicola Pera, on her Instagram account and probably her other social media accounts as well account, and probably her other social media accounts as well she wrote that at the end of the day, you know, people pleasing is about ourselves and not wanting to feel uncomfortable emotions and working with people. There’s always an aha moment when someone understands that they’re not really people pleasing, that they’re actually controlling, they’re trying to control how someone perceives them and how they feel right, and that once you understand this, you can start to break the pattern of people pleasing. That did resonate with me, right.
01:32
And there was a discussion that I had when I was reflecting on back when I was secretly struggling with alcohol addiction. There was a time that I spent the winter holiday break in a treatment facility and literally nobody knew, because school was closed so I wasn’t absent, right. And when I had come back from that winter break, I was sitting in a faculty circle and I had this abrupt moment of just tears flowing down my face and nobody understood why I was crying, right. All I could say was all that I felt safe to say or comfortable to share with my colleagues at that time was I had a really hard break, but there was no way in hell that I was ready to say oh, actually I had been hospitalized because I’m addicted to alcohol and I needed to go to rehab over winter break. There was no way that I was going to admit that, right. And so when I connected that story back to what Dr Nicola Pero was sharing on people-pleasing, it was true for me I was ashamed of being addicted to alcohol, right, and I also wanted to keep my addiction to alcohol a secret because I couldn’t bear the idea of being viewed differently in the eyes of my professional colleagues. You know I was a teacher at that point. I was already the state teacher of the year. So if I’m the number one teacher in the state and I’m battling an addiction to alcohol, I couldn’t put the two together, like the two couldn’t exist at the same time as truths in my heart. And so there was no way that I could allow that to be spoken out into the universe and for other human beings to think that or know that about me as well. And so I needed to control the narrative and therefore I kept quiet in that faculty circle when I could have potentially opened up and said what happened. But my truth was I didn’t, because I wanted to control that narrative. And, going back to Nicola Pera’s point, I wanted to be in control.
03:36
Now there’s other times that I hear people talking about people pleasing and how people pleasing can be a manipulative act. Right that very often, when we hear people talk about people pleasing, we make it sound like it’s such a selfless thing. Well, I just want to make everyone happy and I just want to make sure that other people are uncomfortable or are comfortable, even if it is at my own expense, right? We hear that a lot, and oftentimes that is shot down by well then you’re trying to be manipulative because you want everyone to think that you’re such a good person, because you want everyone to you know, just think that you’re you’re the bee’s knees, that you’re just so self-sacrificing and so kind and so loving when you’re. When you’re not, you’re just trying to control that narrative.
04:21
I was really leaning heavily into that, and I recently received an opportunity to ask myself what else can be true, and really just a strong reminder of needing to ask that at all times that just because I see something in so-called you know, like pop psychology, social media I mean Dr Nicole Appiah. I love her and I adore, like everything that she puts out. I really enjoy her content, but obviously there’s only so much that you can capture in a social media post, right? And so I think that that’s what’s important for us to remember. As we look at things that people share, as we look at ideas that are shared in meetings, as we look at anything, all we’re getting is a snippet, right? We’re never getting a whole picture when someone is just tossing an idea out there casually, no-transcript, take what we need and then also ask ourselves what else can be true, right? Because here’s the thing I am in the middle of facilitating this book study, which is still open for anybody, any woman who’s interested in learning about how her relationship with her mother has impacted her, right?
05:30
We just started reading Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel and there was this part of the book that really jumped out at me and so I’ll read it to you. It’s from pages 85 to 86 of the book and I’ll just kind of jump around and pull a couple of quotes. But Kelly McDaniel wrote that appeasing behavior for women may just be less risky, right, than fighting or running. And so, as children, many of us learn, say, to appease our mothers, you know as a harm reduction tactic and you know, pleasing and appeasing that it’s similar to a trauma response and it’s an automatic, unconscious reaction that can become an ingrained personality trait. And so I pull this to in honor of what else can be true, right?
06:20
I share this to highlight that the same behavior in one person can have a totally different origin, story and purpose that it serves right. So maybe one person, to be fair, they might be wanting to control what other people think of them and that they think that they’re amazing and these martyrs, and they’re doing all you know, doing it all for everyone else. But for some people, right, depending on the individual, depending on their identity, depending on how they grew up and things that were happening to them over time that were out of their control, for some of these individuals they may have been working on people pleasing, on appeasing others to be safe. And that’s what is so important to remember here about the people pleasing thing that people pleasers are not automatically like these controlling, manipulative assholes which can sometimes be what is made up on socials, right. That people who people-please or might automatically fall into those people-pleasing tendencies. They may have had to learn to people-please at a certain point in order to adapt. They may have learned people-pleasing behaviors from, say, their mothers or the people before them, right? Because those people before them had to people please in order to create safety for themselves and for their loved ones. And so, again, the next time that we hear someone talking about people pleasing and how you know, maybe they’re like shitting on themselves for being people pleasers or shitting on people pleasers I think it’s important to slow down and be like well, you know what else can be true. What else do you know about this situation? I’ll give you a couple of examples.
08:09
So in the book, specifically mother hunger, the, the people pleasing, right the appeasing others for the sake of creating safety is brought up in the context of women having to protect themselves. Content warning for sexual assault. So I’m going to pause for a second. So, if you need to like, stop listening, you can. But in the context of sexual assault, kelly McDaniel writes that some women comply, so to speak, with someone who is sexually assaulting them because to fight back right, especially if it’s someone who’s already in your home to fight back can create a massive backlash from the person committing the sexual assault, especially if it’s a man, right, and so, like they may be, risk getting beat.
08:58
They may risk having their children get hurt, right, they may risk getting kicked out of their home. There’s so many things at risk when it comes to that power dynamic that sometimes the safest thing to do is to please the other person, even if it’s without your consent, right, even if that’s not what you want to do. So that was the example of people pleasing that came up there. Another example of people pleasing was, say, if you have a home where you have a man and a woman in the home and there’s children and again maybe it’s not specific to sexual assault, but in this case it’s towards physical abuse and intimate partner violence and again, that the woman in that home may be choosing to please and to appease the abusive man in the house, not because she wants to, not because she doesn’t want to fight back, not because she doesn’t want to flee right Like fight or flee. Those trauma responses aren’t an option for her because she might be protecting her children, right and so to fight could risk her getting beat, the children getting hurt, and to flee could risk unstable housing for her. And so what’s the third option here? The third option is to appease others.
10:07
Now I wanna move out of that and I want to move, and I can speak to this from experience as an individual of color. Right, my mother was undocumented when she first came to the United States and one of the biggest things that I was taught by her and my father was, no matter what the police are doing, to always be super kind and respectful to them, because in theory, they can just snatch you up and take you away, right, like that’s our experience as a family of immigrants that the police can easily come, snatch you up and then you away. Right, like that’s our experience as a family of immigrants that you know the police can easily come, snatch you up and then you’re gone and we like, never see the person again. Because we have had a few family members get deported right now and I’m obviously the family members who got deported, I’ll be honest, they weren’t doing great things and so I recognize that. But there is that fear there, right, and there is that fear in a community that in communities of color, that police can be massive sources of harm. Right, I don’t have to ask you to Google. You know news stories from the last couple of years, right, for for that to be like a fact for us in our experience. And if, if you’re listening to this and you’re bothered by what I’m saying, I invite you to unsubscribe. If you’re listening to this and you’re bothered by what I’m saying, I invite you to unsubscribe.
11:23
But, with that being said, so for communities of color, right to people, please, may mean having to create a sense of safety in systems where we can feel like we are targets, right, and so people pleasing can be ingrained in us, also in terms of just behaviors that maybe our parents or the people before them had to do to create a sense of safety. It may involve eye contact, it may involve how you speak to authority figures, how you speak to people in uniform. Things like that we are taught. And it’s not because, again, we’re not trying to control the narrative here, we’re not trying to be manipulative assholes, right, but this happens to create a sense of safety so that we can stay alive, so that we can stay in our homes, so that we can stay with our families, right. And so, again, it’s so important to just talk about this people-pleasing concept and ask ourselves what else can be true, because the person who is appeasing others may be doing it to control the narrative, right?
12:24
Again, my example of me being that classroom teacher who was addicted to alcohol and didn’t want to talk about it. A big part of that was controlling the narrative. I didn’t want to be seen as an addict. I didn’t want to be seen as a so-called alcoholic. That was not the story that I didn’t want to be seen as an addict. I didn’t want to be seen as a so-called alcoholic. That was not the story that I was ready to be out there about me, and so I had to be in control of that.
12:44
But there are times, like when my mother learned to be quiet, right. When my mother learned to not stir the pot, she was doing that so that she could stay in this country, right, and so everyone has a different purpose behind why they have people pleased, and so for you bringing it back to you and your opportunity to like, reflect and sit with this right, I have a couple of questions for you to think about in terms of your possible people pleasing. So like number one, if you did used to appease people, to protect yourself or others, and you’re noticing that, like, you’re still doing that today the honest question that only you can answer right is are you still in need of protection, right, like, is this still protecting you from something from, like a real threat? And, with that being said, what threats are you facing, right? Are these threats real or are they perceived? And that’s an important question to ask yourself? And then I’m going to add how might your identity impact this right? So I do want you to think carefully about this one, because people from historically marginalized groups they do face real threats, right, and so sometimes the people-pleasing behavior is a method of survival, a method for safety. So again, I want you to think about it Like if you are a woman and you are dealing with people-pleasing. Well, there’s probably some history there that things that you saw with your mother or family of origin, right as to where that came from. But the question is, whatever you saw, say, in your family of origin, is that still the case for you today?
14:22
Question two if you used to appease people, to control others’ perceptions of you, what was the story that you want to live in other people’s minds about you? So, let’s say, maybe you were the one that wanted to just control that narrative, right, and you wanted to control how others viewed you. What was that story that you’re aiming for others to carry about you? And the follow-up to that is what’s the worst that could happen if that story falls apart, right? What is the worst that could happen if you allow yourself to disappoint these? So, is this the worst thing that can happen? Is this something that you can live with, right? Like, let’s say, if you do disappoint other people because the story that you want out there about yourself, if that falls apart, can you live with that right, and would you be safe if that story were to fall apart?
15:42
So, again, I really want to bring this back to a sense of safety and if you are noticing that you are safe, but mentally and emotionally you don’t feel that way, I would encourage you to maybe speak with a licensed mental health professional at this point right, because we might be talking about some trauma that is ingrained in your body that you might need to work through.
15:47
Again, an excellent resource is Bessel van der Kolk’s. The Body Keeps the Score, but if you’re noticing that, as you’re like reflecting or journaling on these questions, that you feel genuinely threatened and your threats are perception only, that would be a great opportunity to bring that to a licensed mental health professional. So I just wanted to put that out there. So, anyway, so curious to hear, like, if you stop and sit with these questions and anything comes up for you, like send me an email, reach out to me through social media, I would love to hear what has come up for you. But, yeah, thanks so much for listening you all. And again, just remember, just remember, always ask yourself what else can be true, what else can be true, what else can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomlesstosober.com. See you then.
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