Welcome to Breakdown to Breakthrough,
The podcast that empowers you to transform your life by awakening to your true authentic self.
I'm Lisa A.
Romano,
Your host.
As an award winning author and certified life coach,
I've dedicated my life to helping others understand the incredible power of an organized mind.
I believe that true empowerment begins with awakening to our false self.
I created the Conscious Healing Academy,
A three part coaching and brain retraining program designed to help individuals triumph over trauma and turn the breakdowns into powerful breakthroughs.
My mission is to support you on your journey toward mental and emotional regeneration through conscious and deliberate awakening.
In this podcast,
I'll share insights,
Tools,
And transformative stories that illuminate the path to healing and self discovery.
Namaste,
Everybody.
So today we're going to be talking about the People Pleaser Trap.
I'm getting my notes up so I don't miss anything.
So if you came from a,
Let's say an emotionally neglectful home,
Or if you came from a home where there was alcoholism,
Addiction,
Even mental health disorders that when undiagnosed,
If you were raised by a narcissistic parent,
Even a codependent parent,
A parent that was aloof,
Or even if you came from a home where This type of neglect wasn't on purpose.
Your parents were preoccupied,
A sibling was sick,
Or there was financial worry,
Something that was happening in their life that was also outside of their control.
But nonetheless,
There was an emotional toll on the children in the family in which they grew up feeling invisible.
They grew up feeling unseen.
And when children grow up feeling invisible and unseen,
What ends up happening is they aren't able to develop a healthy sense of this is who I am.
So here's the thing.
When you're a people pleaser,
Oftentimes you people please out of a fear of feeling unsafe.
So you people please at the expense of yourself for the sake of a connection outside of yourself.
Why?
Because as a child,
You didn't have that connection.
You didn't have that safety.
And you learned that you had to abandon yourself and you had to please others in order to connect with others,
Even if they were unsafe.
Children don't have the luxury of being able to pick their parents out at Walmart.
They get what they get.
And it's up to the child to adapt.
To what's happening in their environment.
In healthy homes,
The parents are attuned to the child and the parents make sure that they're attuning to their child.
In unhealthy homes,
Parents are not aware of what's happening inside of their children emotionally or mentally.
And what ends up happening is the parents focus on the child's behavior or ignore the child completely or worse.
And no one is attuning to what's happening inside the child.
So thus,
The child has to attune to its environment.
And if it is an environment of lack,
The child will disown the self and contort itself to becoming what it is that environment requires of them just to feel safe.
It's a brilliant design by whoever the hell created us,
Because it does work.
It does lessen the chances of being criticized.
It lessens the chances of being banished from the kingdom.
People-pleasing does work.
Once the nervous system gets a hold of this idea that,
Wow,
All I have to do is disown myself,
And figure out how to be what someone else wants me to be,
I can gain a connection.
Then that's what the nervous system learns to do,
And that's what the developing psyche learns to do.
It becomes our belief system,
And then we act it out.
Now,
In the real world,
We manifest people who generally exploit that.
Because when you're a people pleaser,
You need people that need to be pleased.
When you're a people pleaser,
You're going to look for people that fit that pattern.
And you're not even looking consciously,
It just happens.
And so you're not attuned for people who are going to love you for who and what you are right out of the box.
You might even feel like that's weird,
There's something wrong with them,
This is boring.
What's going to float your boat and tickle your funny bone and get you excited.
Is the same pattern that you grew up with as a child.
Doesn't matter if it's dysfunctional.
It only matters if your nervous system says,
Wow,
This is familiar.
So I remember when this started to come into my conscious awareness,
When I started to wake up and live above the veil,
I was like,
Oh my God,
What have I done?
I never ask for help.
I am the helper.
I am the rescuer.
I am the fixer.
Not have any need.
I am just here to do and to do and to do and to do.
I don't ask for help.
I don't tell people I'm drowning and my nose is barely above the waterline.
I just keep doing and doing and doing.
My mom modeled that.
And I learned to take that on.
And so as a child,
I wasn't taught that I had a self and my feelings mattered.
So I had no data in my subconscious mind for I matter.
You mattered.
The neighbor down the block mattered.
Whoever,
Whoever was in trouble mattered.
I did not matter and it was my job to fix it and take care of it.
Okay,
So part of the people pleasing trap is that one day you run out of steam.
And if you get to a point where you're able to observe how you got there,
It is like a,
Oh my God,
What the F have I done moment,
Because you have to take accountability.
For the idea that you've essentially trained people.
To ignore you.
You've trained people to discount you.
You're not the person that people think,
Oh,
How is Lisa doing?
No,
No,
No,
Lisa is the person that's supposed to be checking in with me.
And you will attract people into your life that expect you to be what they expect you to be,
Which means you can't be who you are.
And you will become so attuned to who they expect you to be that you forget who you really are and you just become what they expect you to be.
That's a trap.
Now,
What happens when a people pleaser starts to come to get more conscious?
What happens when a people pleaser wants to heal inner child trauma?
What happens when a people pleaser wants to address the codependency that keeps them feeling enslaved in these slave master relationships where in order to be in a relationship,
They have to be what other people want them to be.
What happens when that person starts to awaken?
Well,
They go through a deep,
Dark night of the soul,
And they're going to run through at least six different symptoms that I want to share with you.
Why?
To prepare you.
It's the same reason why Marines go to boot camp before they go to battle.
Because when you start addressing your people pleaser stuff,
It feels like a battle.
You're battling the rumination,
You're battling the guilt,
You're battling your nervous system that's gonna beg you to just acquiesce,
Subjugate,
And renege on your boundary.
You have to be mentally and emotionally prepared for this.
And that's what I want to offer you today.
So here are six signs that will affect you as you start to awaken as a people pleaser.
I call it the people pleaser traps.
The first thing is you're going to experience,
Be prepared for it,
Guilt after setting a boundary.
So you say no,
Just reading from my notes here,
You honor,
You say no,
Honor your needs,
And immediately feel like you've done something wrong simply because someone else is disappointed.
Someone else's disappointment in your no is going to feel like you failed.
And it is going to trigger that part of you that is,
It's not ancient,
Well,
Sort of ancient,
Because if we didn't get along with our tribe members,
We didn't survive.
So there is some primal fear here that's going to get activated,
But certainly your early childhood fears in which if you didn't figure out what mommy needed and daddy needed,
And who the big person in your family that you were afraid of,
If you didn't figure out what they needed real fast,
There was a chance that you were gonna get punished,
Or criticized,
Or worse.
And so there's a part of you that's going to get very,
Very activated when you set a boundary.
So you feel guilty after setting a healthy boundary.
You say no to someone.
You try to honor yourself.
And immediately,
You feel like you've done something wrong.
And you know that person is disappointed.
You're going to start to feel guilty.
Just be prepared for that.
The next thing that you might experience is rumination and overthinking.
You replay the interaction where you said no repeatedly,
Analyzing their tone,
Their words,
And reactions,
And you struggle to let the conversation go.
So it's 2 o'clock in the morning.
You're washing the dishes,
Perhaps,
Or taking the dog for a walk.
All of these innocuous moments where your mind wanders,
And it's going right back to rumination in your head and the overthinking about you finally setting a boundary.
Your nervous system has been activated,
This is not something that you ordinarily do.
It's the opposite of what you ordinarily do.
Because what you ordinarily do is abandon the self with a sense of connection to someone else.
The third thing is you will over explain and you start defending yourself.
So you feel compelled to justify your decision or your boundary,
You provide lengthy explanations,
You go back and forth with texts or emails,
Or you call them,
And you convince others that your boundary is reasonable and acceptable.
I have fallen into this trap so many different times,
It's mind boggling.
And you wanna be aware of it,
And it's so sinister,
It happens so quickly,
And if you don't catch what you're doing,
You really are giving that other person your power.
You're asking them to please give you permission.
To have your boundary,
And that puts you in a very negative position in relationships and in life.
So that's going to happen as part of the people-pleasing trap.
So you also have the urge to reverse or abandon your boundary completely.
So you consider changing your answer.
You consider sacrificing your needs,
Like,
Oh,
It's no big deal.
What if I just go ahead and do that?
Or fixing the other person's emotions so you can get a sense of peace.
So your sister asks you to walk the dog.
You tell your sister,
No.
And you know that she's disappointed.
She gets really quiet on the phone.
She says,
Oh,
That's disappointing.
Or,
Oh,
I thought you loved me,
Or some guilt-provoking statement.
And you might feel the urge to abandon your boundary.
And in that moment,
You really want to be aware that that's actually what's happening.
You're being triggered by the people-pleasing trap.
And this is where you really want to hold yourself accountable and just hold the line.
Line,
Hold the line,
Hold the line,
Because this dynamic is shifting.
It takes a lot of courage and grit to do this.
The next thing is that you're going to possibly confuse your self-respect with selfishness.
So you question whether honoring your own needs makes you a bad person,
Rather than recognizing that healthy self-care and selfishness are fundamentally different.
So your sister is abusing your relationship.
You don't have a dog because you don't want to be tied down.
She's on her second dog and she likes to travel with her boyfriend.
And she uses the fact that you don't want to be tied down with a dog and you're not tied down as justification to come watch her dog so that she can go and flitter around.
And so in these moments,
If you're not careful,
When your sister comes back and tries to guilt you,
And say,
Well,
You're selfish.
You have the time.
I don't have the time.
The time,
I'm tied down,
So I can't do this.
You can go on vacation whenever you want.
She's trying to manipulate you into doing something that you just don't want to do.
So in that moment,
You've got to be really careful that you understand that you have a right to not own a dog,
For example.
You have a right to spend your time the way you want to spend it.
And you are under no obligation to take care of someone else's dog,
For example,
Who took on the responsibility of taking care of that dog.
But you,
If you're a people pleaser,
You will struggle with,
Am I selfish?
And you won't understand that this boundary really signifies and signals self-respect,
Because that's going to be different for a people pleaser.
And the last thing,
The sixth thing that you might experience is your nervous system activation and physical distress.
Freezing,
Anxiety,
Racing thoughts,
Stomach tension,
Sleeplessness,
Or moving from fawning to fighting when someone expresses disappointment or disapproval.
That is actually nervous system activation because again,
People pleasers move through life by figuring out what other people need and they actually mold into what other people need.
And they're not doing this because they're bad people and they're not doing this because they're defective,
We really wanna understand that this is a survival adaptation.
And it could have been no other way based on how you and I or whoever you know as a people pleaser grew up.
The great thing is that as I see it,
As I am aware of it,
Then I can change it.
So one of the things that you want to do is,
If you really want to break this pattern,
Is you want to make a list of the people that you feel that you subjugate to.
Very simple.
Who are you afraid of?
Who are you afraid to say no to?
Start with one,
Two,
Or three people.
Get really,
Really clear of the people that you have a very difficult time saying no to.
Then make a note of what happens or what has happened in the past when you said no.
What was their reaction?
Did they get cold?
Did they get distant?
Did they guilt you?
Did they accuse you of being selfish?
Did the put downs come?
Did they blame shift?
What happened?
You want to understand that.
The third thing that you want to do is you want to see this understanding that it could have been no other way.
The more conscious you become of the people in your life that elicit this people pleasing in you.
The more you can go into situations honoring your no.
Than if you were not aware of it.
So then the fourth part of this would be,
Well,
The third part is knowing that you have to change a pattern,
And the fourth part would be you actually changing the pattern.
So.
.
.
The next time one of these three people or one,
Two,
Three people ask you to do something,
First,
You want to ask yourself,
Is it a feasible question?
Is this something I can do?
Is this something I want to do?
And if the answer is no,
If you would feel,
That if the person just reneged on it,
Took the question back,
You would feel relief.
That's a sign that it's a no.
If there's something that you want to do for them,
And it is possible for you,
You want to be willing to do that too.
But if it's a no for you,
And you're only saying yes out of fear or obligation,
What is on the other side of that is resentment,
Which is negative emotion.
And negative emotions are inflammation.
So you want to ask yourself,
Am I willing to say yes when I mean no to this person?
At the expense of possibly creating resentment and inflammation and truly dishonesty in this relationship.
Or is it more feasible for me?
Or do I desire more to be more honest in this relationship?
And am I willing to risk their disappointment knowing that their disappointment does not signal my failure?
They're disappointed and that's okay.
Am I willing to withstand someone else's disappointment in me?
For me to be able to break this pattern of codependency and people pleasing so I can show up the real me.
These are the metacognitive questions that force you to think about the way that you think that are going to help you break the people-pleasing trap.
Forever.
They work.
But like everything,
You have to work them.
A fork and a knife can't cut your food unless you use them.
And it's the same thing with these types of tools.
I so hope that this has been helpful.
Until next time,
Everybody,
Bye-bye.
