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Episode 2: People Pleasing

Episode 2: People Pleasing

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 SURPRISE! Episode 2 is dropping early! And it’s a doozy.If this episode on people pleasing isn’t relatable, we might be a little jelly. Like a lot of you, both of us grew up trying to make everyone around us happy at any cost. From not wanting to make others upset to trying a million different ways to make sure they kept liking us (ever try taping your allowance into a card so your best friend would keep playing with you?… No? Only Rowan, then?), we talk about it all in this episode.Have a listen, then drop a comment and let us know how people pleasing has impacted your life. We’d also love to hear what you’ve done, if anything, to start putting yourself first instead of others.Things we mentioned in the podcastRowan’s book One Sunny AfternoonWe Can Do Hard Things Podcast episode - How do we identify our real needs and finally get them met?Transcript (AI-generated and might have errors)[00:00:00] Lara: That was a huge aha moment for me was when I thought to myself, why would everybody like me when I don't like everyone?[00:00:08] Rowan: Yeah. You said that to me once. You were the first person to say that to me.When you said it, I thought about it for like 572 hours.[00:00:41] Rowan: Hello everyone and welcome to unboxing it. I am Rowan.[00:00:46] Lara: And I'm Lara.[00:00:48] Rowan: And today we are talking about people pleasing and I know a lot of you will be able to relate to that.I certainly can relate to that. What about you, Lara?[00:00:58] Lara: Uh, yeah. I've spent most of my life trying really hard to do it.[00:01:03] Rowan: I just want everyone to like me,[00:01:05] Lara: right. What?[00:01:07] Rowan: What's so wrong with that? Other than the fact that it can destroy you mentally, emotionally, and physically and probably spiritually.[00:01:14] Lara: Yeah. It's so much work to try to get everybody to like you all of the time, and on the other side, it's so crushing if you feel like you haven't succeeded.It's just so much work. Well, because you, you're, you're[00:01:28] Rowan: putting all this effort in. let's talk about what people pleasing is. First of all. How, how would you define people pleasing , if someone was to ask you, what does that even mean?[00:01:38] Lara: Well, it's a lot of things, but the first thing I think is it's, it's really, to me, the biggest thing is it's nobody being mad at me or nobody being like, not mad, but also not unhappy with me.Really, a lot of it is about my fear. I also do like to keep people happy and like make them content and make them feel happy. But there is a huge part of it for me that's about the fear of how they're gonna think about me and whether or not conflict is gonna come up.[00:02:07] Rowan: Disappointment.I think disappointment is a huge one for me. Like, don't let anyone down. Don't let anyone down. Right. And, and just the idea that I might do something that hurts someone or makes them feel bad or makes them feel like I don't care about them. I mean, it's just, that could be all encompassing.But I, I think, you know, if I were to describe people pleasing, it's everything you said. And then you also said something really important there, which was. Of course I like to make people feel happy. I like to do nice things for people, right? And, and this is where the line is drawn between something that is, a more typical human experience , and a healthy one, and something that becomes problematic or disorderly.And, I'll use the example of, let's do anxiety. There's a difference between having, anxiety, being anxious sometimes that's a very normal thing to feel. we all, you know, anxiety can, drive us. It can alert us to problems, it can keep us safe. But when it goes off the rails and it's all encompassing and it really interferes with our day-to-day lives, that is when it becomes a disorder.We can say that about a lot of different things. Feeling down versus feeling, you know, versus actually being depressed and, you know, even something like, A DHD, we can think about a DHD and how, extreme that can be and how much it can get in the way. But a lot of people feel distracted sometimes, or, you know, have some energy to burn or something, right?and, and I think people pleasing is the same thing where, yeah, of course we wanna do nice things for the people we care about. Of course we want to be decent human beings, even to strangers. Like we just wanna be part of this fabric of society. But when it becomes this, All encompassing need to get everyone to like you and to never, ever let anyone down or make them angry, or you're gonna fall apart.That's the problem. And unfortunately, a lot of us live with it.[00:04:10] Lara: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's, comes up constantly, right? If you are afraid of letting people down, if you are afraid of doing something wrong, if you're. Like when it becomes that fear, it stops you from even trying some of the things you might do otherwise, right?Like how, what are all the things that we stop in our lives ...

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