People-Pleasing As Survival: Inner Child Healing

A talk-style meditation for those who struggle with chronic people-pleasing, saying no, and prioritising their own needs. This meditation offers a different approach than typical boundary-setting advice. We'll explore:

- Why people-pleasing is a nervous system adaptation, not a character flaw
- How your body learned to override its "no" to stay safe
- The cost of being "the easy one" in your family
- Meeting the inner child who believed love was conditional
- Somatic practices for witnessing without fixing
- Family constellation perspective on inherited patterns

BEST FOR:
- People who've been called "too nice" or "too accommodating"
- Those who struggle with guilt when saying no
- Anyone who feels resentful about always putting others first
- Those healing codependency patterns
- Anyone whose inner work hasn't addressed why people-pleasing developed

Transcript

So welcome and thank you for joining me.

So today we are going to explore something that affects millions of people but is still deeply misunderstood,

People-pleasing.

If you have spent your life reading the room before you enter it,

Adjusting your personality to fit what others need,

Saying yes even when every fiber of your being wants to say no,

Apologizing for things that weren't your fault,

Maybe making yourself smaller so others could feel bigger,

This exploration might help you.

And if you've been told or if you've read that the solution is simple,

Just set boundaries,

Just say no,

Just prioritize yourself,

Just love yourself more and yet you still can't do it and you may feel ashamed about that.

I need you to know right now that there's nothing wrong with you.

What we are going to do today is different from most teachings on people-pleasing.

We are not going to give you any scripts to be more assertive,

We are not going to practice boundary-setting exercises and we are not going to tell you just to love yourself more.

Instead we'll try and understand where this pattern actually came from.

We are going to try and meet the younger part of you who learned that love had conditions and we are going to witness without trying to fix why people-pleasing made perfect sense as a survival strategy.

Find a comfortable position,

Sitting up,

Lying down,

Walking or whatever else you're doing.

We'll spend the first part of this meditation just talking and understanding and then I'll invite you into a gentle guided journey.

So just let yourself settle in and receive what resonates.

So let me share with you what I've observed in my experience of working with people through the pattern of people-pleasing.

Now the mainstream narrative around people-pleasing treats it like a personal weakness.

Like you're too nice,

You're too accommodating,

You're too concerned with what others think.

And the advice is usually some version of this,

That you need to toughen up,

You need to set boundaries,

You need to stop caring about what people think and you need to learn to say no.

But in my opinion this completely misses what's actually happening.

People-pleasing is not necessarily a character flaw,

It's not lack of self-respect and it's not failure.

It's just an intelligent nervous system adaptation that developed when you were young and when your safety,

Your belonging,

Your worth genuinely depended on keeping other people comfortable.

So let me just paint a picture of how this develops.

Imagine a child growing up in a home where one or both parents are emotionally unpredictable and maybe there's a parent that swings between warmth and rage.

Maybe there's a parent who withdraws love when they are disappointed.

And maybe there's a parent who's so fragile that the child learns my feelings are too much for them to handle.

And sometimes it's more subtle.

Maybe the parents are good people,

Loving people,

But they are overwhelmed,

They are stressed or they may be struggling.

And the child picks up on this and thinks,

If I don't add to their burden,

It may help them feel better.

Or maybe there's an addiction in the family,

Mental illness.

Trauma that hasn't been processed.

And then the child becomes the stabilizer.

The one who monitors everyone's emotional temperature,

Who knows how to shift the energy in the room,

And who may have learned to sacrifice their own needs to keep the system from collapsing.

So that child then has two options.

They can be themselves and risk losing connection,

Safety,

Or approval.

Or become whoever they need to be to maintain that connection.

And this is not a conscious choice.

It's not the child sitting down and deciding,

I think I'll become a people pleaser.

It's a nervous system adaptation.

Your body,

In its profound wisdom at that time,

May have figured out,

If I make myself pleasing,

If I anticipate needs before they are spoken,

If I suppress my own wants,

I stay safe,

I stay loved,

And I stay valuable.

So that child becomes an expert.

An expert at reading micro-expressions,

At sensing shifts in energy,

At knowing exactly what to say or do to prevent conflict.

And to make others comfortable.

And this works for that child in that environment.

It absolutely works.

It keeps them connected and it makes them useful.

It gives them a role,

An identity,

A way to learn,

A way to earn the love that should have been unconditional,

But somehow felt like it came with conditions.

Now the problem is that adaptation may have worked brilliantly and saved you as a child,

But it may now be limiting you as an adult.

So let's talk about what this pattern may be costing you now.

You probably notice that you don't actually know what you want anymore.

And someone will ask,

What would you like to do?

Where do you want to go?

What do you think?

And I may feel a blankness because I've spent so much energy sensing what others want,

That I may have lost touch with my own desires.

You might notice that you feel resentful,

Even though no one's forcing you to do anything.

You say yes,

You show up,

You help,

You accommodate,

And then you feel bitter about it.

But you can't express that bitterness because it feels like it would make you a bad person.

So you may swallow it and then it turns inwards.

You probably also struggle with decision making.

Not because you lack intelligence or clarity,

But because every decision feels weighted with,

Will this disappoint someone?

Will this create conflict?

Will this make someone uncomfortable?

So you freeze,

You procrastinate,

And you defer to others.

And here is one of the deepest limitations of this pattern.

You don't actually let people close to you.

Because if your entire identity is built on being what others need,

They never meet the real you.

They meet the version of you that's been carefully curated to be acceptable,

Non-threatening,

And pleasing.

So even when you're surrounded by people,

There's a loneliness because nobody actually knows who you are.

Your relationships might feel exhausting and one-sided.

You are always the one giving,

Accommodating,

Compromising,

Sacrificing.

And when you finally can't do it anymore,

When you hit your limit and say no or express a need,

You may feel like you're being selfish,

Difficult,

Or demanding.

You might also notice something strange happens and someone is genuinely kind to you without wanting anything in return.

You don't trust it.

Your body doesn't relax into it.

Because your nervous system learned love and approval must be earned.

They don't just exist.

So when someone offers care and love freely,

It feels dangerous.

There must be a catch.

Like you haven't done enough to deserve it just yet.

Now this is the legacy of people-pleasing.

Not just that you say yes too much,

But that you've lost access to your own internal compass,

Your own yes and your own no,

Your own worth that exists independent of how useful you are to other people.

Now before we move forward,

I want to address something.

And when people hear this,

Often the response is,

Okay,

I understand where it came from.

Now tell me how to fix it.

Just give me the steps to stop people-pleasing.

Okay.

Now you can't think your way out of a nervous system pattern.

You can't just say no when your body believes that saying no equals danger.

You can't set boundaries when your nervous system reads boundary setting as abandonment or rejection.

What has to happen first is that your body needs to have a different experience.

Your nervous system needs evidence that you can exist as yourself with your needs and feelings intact and still be safe,

Still be connected,

And still be worthy.

That starts with witnessing,

Not fixing,

Not changing,

Not transforming,

Just seeing clearly what's true.

Now one more layer,

Which I would like to bring in,

And it comes from my work with Family Constellations.

Many people-pleasers are not just carrying their own adaptation from their childhood.

They may be carrying a family pattern,

A generational legacy of self-sacrifice,

Putting others first,

And believing that your worth is measured by how much you give.

In family systems,

Children instinctively try to balance the system.

If there's too much pain,

Too much dysfunction,

Too much unresolved trauma,

Children will take on roles to stabilize things.

The people-pleaser is often the one who becomes the emotional caretaker of the family.

They might have had a parent who was themselves overburdened and the child learned,

If I'm easy,

If I help,

If I take care of them,

I'm being a good child.

But what they're actually doing is reversing natural order and parenting their own parent.

Or,

Maybe there was a sibling you got all the attention because they were struggling,

Because they were acting out.

And you learned,

If I'm the good one,

The easy one,

The one who doesn't need anything,

Then I have value.

My role is to not be a problem.

Sometimes people-pleasing is an inherited pattern.

Your mother was a people-pleaser,

Your grandmother was.

I'm,

Of course,

Just giving examples.

There's a lineage of women or men who learned that love must be earned through service,

Through sacrifice,

Through making yourselves smaller so others could be comfortable.

And you,

Without even realizing it,

Absorbed that pattern.

Not because you consciously chose it,

But because it was in the air that you breathe,

The dynamics that you witnessed,

And the unspoken rules of how to be in a relationship.

So from this holistic perspective,

Your people-pleasing is not just a pattern.

It's personal.

It's systemic.

And healing it is not just about learning to set boundaries.

It's about recognizing the larger pattern first,

Seeing how it served the system,

And slowly,

Carefully,

Choosing to relate differently.

You don't have to heal your entire family lineage to change your relationship with this pattern.

But understanding that it's bigger than you can actually be liberating.

Because it means there's nothing wrong with you.

You're not weak.

You're not flawed.

You are just caught in a pattern that's been repeating.

And you now have a chance to see it clearly and respond to it.

Differently.

So now,

Having talked through the origins,

The cost,

And the family context of people-pleasing,

Let's practice something simple,

But profound.

We are going to meet the younger part of you who learned that love had conditions.

The one who figured out that being themselves wasn't enough.

They had to be useful,

Pleasing,

And easy.

And we are not going to rescue them or fix them,

Or tell them they should have been different.

We are just going to witness them.

To acknowledge this adaptation made sense at that time.

You did what you needed to survive and to stay connected.

This is the beginning of something different.

Not boundary setting,

Not assertiveness training,

Not affirmations,

Not self-help books,

But a fundamental shift in how you relate to this part of yourself.

Moving from shame to understanding.

Take a moment now.

Adjust your position if needed.

Eyes open,

Eyes closed.

Just letting your body settle in.

Just let my words guide you now.

Let's begin by dropping into your body.

Not searching for anything.

Not trying to fix anything.

Just noticing what's here.

Bring your awareness now to your belly,

To your solar plexus.

This is where we hold our sense of self and our awareness.

Our internal yes and no and our gut instincts.

For many people pleasers,

There's either a chronic tightness here,

A holding,

A bracing,

Or there's numbness,

A sense of nothing at all.

Because when you've spent years overriding your gut instincts,

Monitoring what others need instead of what you need,

This area can go quiet.

If you find tightness,

Just acknowledge it.

This is your body still bracing still vigilant.

And if you find numbness or emptiness,

That's information too.

Not a problem to fix,

Just evidence of how your system learned to be.

Now bring your awareness to your throat.

Now this is where people pleasers often carry most tension.

And your throat is where you literally swallow your own truth.

Swallow your no,

Swallow your anger,

Or disappointment.

Notice if there's a tightness here or a sense of something stuck.

Perhaps your throat feels open,

But disconnected.

Like the words that come out don't match what you actually feel inside.

Your throat holds all the things you learned were not safe to say.

All the times you said I'm fine when you were not fine.

All the times you agreed when you wanted to refuse.

All the times you apologized when you did nothing wrong.

Let your throat be exactly as it is.

Those swallowed words were not weakness,

They were protection.

Now slowly move your awareness to your chest.

To your heart space.

For people pleasers,

This is often where the deepest wounds live.

The belief that your love,

Your presence,

Your very self isn't enough.

Unless you're doing something,

Giving something,

Or being useful.

You might notice heaviness here or tightness.

A sense of armor around your heart.

Or perhaps there's an ache,

A longing for someone to see you,

Really see you,

Without having to earn it.

If you notice protection around your heart,

Honor that.

Your heart learned to guard itself because it wasn't safe to need freely,

To want openly,

To simply be without performing.

And finally,

Notice your jaw.

Your face and the muscles around your eyes.

People pleasers often carry tension here from ears of smiling when they didn't feel like smiling,

Being agreeable when they wanted to object,

Keeping their face pleasant while their body was moving.

Screaming no.

See if you can soften just slightly around whatever you find in your body.

Not releasing it,

Not changing it,

Just making a bit more space around these patterns.

Now staying connected to the sensations of your body,

Whatever sensations you're aware of.

In your awareness,

I want you to notice now if an age arises.

A sense of a younger version of yourself.

Nothing has to make sense to the conscious mind.

You don't need to see anything clearly.

Just get a sense,

An energy,

A presence.

A time in your life when you first learned that love had conditions.

A time in your life when you first learned that love had conditions.

Just let that come to you now.

Maybe you're 5 years old,

Trying to be good so your parents don't get angry.

Maybe you're 8,

Learning that when you help you get praised and when you need you're a burden.

Maybe you're 12,

Already becoming the emotional support of your family,

Of your mother.

Already learning that your role is to stabilize others.

More important than what you see is what you feel right now.

As you sense into this younger part,

Notice what you discover.

Are they exhausted?

Hyper vigilant?

Trying so hard to read what's needed?

Afraid of getting it wrong?

Now here is what we are not going to do.

We are not going to tell them they don't have to do this anymore.

Because in their reality,

In that moment that they are holding,

They absolutely have to.

Their survival,

Their connection,

Their worth depends on it.

We are not going to promise them that it gets easier.

We are not going to tell them just to be themselves.

Because being themselves did not feel safe at the time.

Instead,

We are going to offer something simpler and more profound.

Acknowledgement.

If it feels comfortable,

Place your hand on your heart or your belly.

Or you can simply rest your hands in your lap.

And see if you can offer these truths to your younger self.

You can repeat them,

You can receive my words,

Whatever feels right for you.

I see you trying so hard to be good,

To be easy,

To be what everyone needs.

You thought that was how you earned love and given what you've experienced,

That made sense.

You are allowed to feel like this.

You learned to read the room before you entered it.

To sense what others needed before they asked.

To make yourself small so others could be comfortable.

That wasn't weakness,

That was intelligence.

That was survival.

You are allowed to feel like this.

You became so good at pleasing others that you lost track of what you wanted,

What you felt and what you needed.

I am not going to shame you for that.

You were doing the best you could with what you had.

You are allowed to feel like this.

If you're still afraid of disappointing people,

Please stay afraid.

If you're still scanning for approval,

Keep scanning for approval.

I am not asking you to be different I am just acknowledging this is what you learned and it made perfect sense.

I see how exhausting it has been to always be vigilant,

Always be performing,

Always earning your place.

You shouldn't have had to work so hard to be valued.

I am so sorry this was your experience.

You are allowed to feel like this.

Just notice what happens in your body when you offer this kind of witnessing instead of fixing.

Maybe there's a softening.

For some of you there may be more resistance because your inner child doesn't trust this yet.

Maybe there is absolutely nothing.

Just numbness.

All of that is welcome here.

Just trust that this part of me is listening.

Now as you stay with your younger self,

Notice if there is a weight they are carrying that feels bigger than just their personal experience.

Notice if there's something they took on that belonged to a family system.

A role,

A responsibility,

A pattern or self-sacrifice.

Maybe they learned to be the caretaker because someone else in the family couldn't be.

Maybe they absorbed the unspeakable unspoken message that love must be earned through service.

Maybe they inherited a pattern of self-denial that's been repeating for generations.

If you sense that,

Just offer this acknowledgement with me.

You were never meant to carry this alone.

This pattern didn't start with you.

You tried to help the family by taking it on and that was an act of love.

But it was never yours to hold forever.

And as you exhale now,

Imagine that what your younger self is holding begins to return to where it came from.

Not forcefully,

Just a gentle acknowledgement that some burdens belong to a larger story and you don't have to carry them forward.

Some burdens belong to a larger story and you don't have to carry them forward.

If you are in the middle of a process right now,

You may choose to pause this recording and spend more time in this space.

As we begin to complete this practice,

I want you to know you might not feel healed.

You might not feel suddenly able to set boundaries or say no and that's not a failure at all.

What we have done today is we have created spaces for witnessing.

Your people-pleasing pattern doesn't need to be rescued or fixed or transformed overnight.

It needs to be understood and seen for what it is.

A very intelligent survival strategy that made sense at some point.

And that understanding,

That witnessing creates the possibility of something new to emerge.

Not because you force it,

But because your nervous system finally has evidence that you can be seen just as you are without having to perform.

Let's begin now to deepen your breath and start to bring gentle movement back.

Fingers,

Toes,

Shoulders and neck.

As you return to full awareness,

Please carry this with you.

You don't have to stop people-pleasing perfectly or immediately.

You don't have to suddenly become someone who says no without any guilt.

You are allowed to be where you are in the process.

You are allowed to be where you are in the process.

Your inner child is allowed to still be cautious still be afraid of disappointing others and still be scanning for approval.

That's not failure.

That's the wisdom of someone who learned that connection required performance.

If you had your eyes closed,

You can open them now.

Just take a moment to orient the space around you.

And before you move back into your day or into your night,

Offer yourself this.

I don't need to be fixed.

I don't need to be more assertive or stronger or better at boundaries.

I just need to understand why I became this way and that understanding is already a fact.

It's already a form of healing.

Now,

Carrying with you the permission to be exactly where you are,

Exactly as you are,

Even with the parts of you that still want to please.

Those parts are welcome too.

Now,

Thank you very much for joining me and practicing this inquiry with me.

Namaste.