Struggling to say 'no' and feeling burnt out? You're not alone. On the latest episode of Codependent Doctor, I, Dr. Angela Downey, get candid about the tightrope walk between kindness and compulsion. We take a look at why 'yes' might not always be the golden word and how our ancestral need for acceptance can morph into a modern-day trap of people-pleasing. With humor and vulnerability, I share tales from my own life, including a childhood sleepover fiasco, to illustrate the sometimes-hilarious lengths we go to for approval.
Join me as we navigate the challenging path to setting boundaries and recognizing our own worth, especially in high-stress fields like medicine. Hear how the relentless pursuit of pleasing others can spiral into burnout, impacting not just professional but personal lives as well. This episode isn't just about identifying the problem; it's about taking steps to reclaim your life. So, let's embark on this journey together, shedding the weight of constant accommodation, and moving towards a more authentic and satisfying existence. Remember to engage with us by subscribing for more episodes that promise to enlighten, entertain, and empower you on your path to personal growth.
Struggling to say 'no' and feeling burnt out? You're not alone. On the latest episode of Codependent Doctor, I, Dr. Angela Downey, get candid about the tightrope walk between kindness and compulsion. We take a look at why 'yes' might not always be the golden word and how our ancestral need for acceptance can morph into a modern-day trap of people-pleasing. With humor and vulnerability, I share tales from my own life, including a childhood sleepover fiasco, to illustrate the sometimes-hilarious lengths we go to for approval.
Join me as we navigate the challenging path to setting boundaries and recognizing our own worth, especially in high-stress fields like medicine. Hear how the relentless pursuit of pleasing others can spiral into burnout, impacting not just professional but personal lives as well. This episode isn't just about identifying the problem; it's about taking steps to reclaim your life. So, let's embark on this journey together, shedding the weight of constant accommodation, and moving towards a more authentic and satisfying existence. Remember to engage with us by subscribing for more episodes that promise to enlighten, entertain, and empower you on your path to personal growth.
Welcome to the Codependent Doctor, a weekly podcast focusing on all things codependency. Are you struggling to love yourself, feeling burnt out or having trouble forming loving and meaningful relationships? I can help you heal from the past and move forward with healthier selves, healthier relationships and healthier, more fulfilling lives. Join me as we reclaim your authentic self. I'm your host, a family doctor and fellow codependent, dr Angela Downey. We can do this together. Hello to all you podcast listeners out there and thank you for joining me for the second episode of the Codependent Doctor. I'm Dr Angela Downey and I am your fellow codependent. So last week's episode we learned what it was to be codependent. We discussed that it was the loss of one's authentic self and having difficulty with relationships because of this. These unhealthy coping skills often start when we're children and we carry these interpersonal skills with us for most of our lives, but they're no longer serving us.
Speaker 1:
This week's podcast is going to focus on people pleasing. I've been a people pleaser for most of my life and it's a topic that I've been working on for the last year and a half. I suspect it's going to be a little of a long podcast, so I think I'm going to split it up into two. I'm going to do this first part, which is what is people pleasing and what it entails, and next week I'm going to address how to overcome people pleasing. So what is people pleasing? Don't we all just going to address how to overcome people-pleasing? So what is people-pleasing? Don't we all just want to be nice to each other? Being nice to each other can be really rewarding. It's a way of giving back to society. So how can people-pleasing be bad? If we look back on society in the prehistoric age and please keep in mind that I'm not an anthropologist, so I'm not really sure what age this is but we depended on tribe unity for survival. If you weren't nice and a productive member of the tribe, you would likely get kicked out and die from either starvation or being eaten by some animal. Your ability to fit in well with the tribe was essential and could be a matter of life and death.
Speaker 1:
We've even seen in studies that children are naturally inclined to want to please other people. There was a study done through the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences that showed that babies responded to a person who showed negative emotion. In one study they separated two groups of children. In one group they would react negatively to a toy and the other group. They would react very neutrally. The researchers said that babies who saw an angry outburst were less likely to play with the toy. Even when the person came back at a later time and didn't show any anger towards the toy, the babies were still reluctant to play with the toy. In a separate experiment, a person who was either showing anger or acting neutrally asked for a turn with the toy. The babies gave the toy to the angry person 69% of the time, compared to the neutral person.
Speaker 1:
I enjoy doing things for other people, but let's look at some of the motivations behind doing these nice things. Are we really doing it selflessly? Some of the positive reasons for doing nice things to people would be that we do nice things to others because it can produce oxytocin and serotonin, which are the happy hormones. It can make you more energetic. It can lower blood pressure. It can give you a sense of purpose. But sometimes we're not always doing it selflessly.
Speaker 1:
Some of the negative reasons for doing nice things for other people is that it makes us feel like a better person and makes us feel somehow superior to others and worthy of our spot on earth. It validates our thoughts that we're a good person. So you're doing it not because you want to be nice, but because you want to look good. Maybe you're doing it to buy someone else's love and attention Things like showering someone with gifts or compliments. Sometimes we're hoping that people will do something nice for us in return. In fact, when people do something nice for me, sometimes I feel indebted, which is a little bit ridiculous that I can't let someone do something nice for me without feeling like I owe them something. I've struggled with that tit-for-tat behavior in the past and it's something that I try to remain cognizant of. There is a difference between people-pleasing out of kindness and disordered people-pleasing. People-pleasing can be very harmful when it comes from a place of fear Fear of consequences, fear of punishment or fear of trauma.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes we do things for others because we're scared that they're going to be disappointed in us if we don't. Examples of this would be let's say, a friend asks you to move his apartment over the weekend, but you're exhausted from your long week at work. But you do it anyway, not because you want to or because you think it'll be a nice thing to do for your friend, but because you're afraid that he's going to ghost you if you don't. In this case, you're afraid of the repercussion, as opposed to doing it because you want to. Another example would be your partner wanting to have sex, but you really are not in the mood and you don't want to do it. But you do it anyway because you don't want them to be disappointed. You don't want them to find someone else who will give them what they're looking for and potentially they might punish you or somehow make your life miserable for the next week because you didn't give them what they wanted. It doesn't really matter if these things actually happen or not, but you believe that they could, and that's enough to motivate you to do something that you don't want to do.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes we might do things because we're scared of the repercussions. As an example of this, a boss asks you to work on the weekend, but you're supposed to go camping with the family. In this case, you're afraid that you might lose your job if you don't go to work. So you say yes, even though you've been really looking forward to this camping trip and you know that your kids are going to be disappointed. Your boss might ask you to take on an extra project, and you say yes because you don't want to look like you're not a team player. People can sometimes take on so much work that they physically can't do it anymore. It can lead to burnout and unhappiness in the workplace.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes we people please for fear of trauma. This would be the case for a spouse who's being physically abusive towards their partner. The partner will try hard to please the other just to avoid trauma. If this is the case for you, I would suggest that you contact the local emergency services or aid shelter for more advice. If you didn't please this other person, there would be some kind of consequence Loss of love, avoidance, punishment. These are all reasons why we might want to please another person. This fear really stems from us not feeling safe to be who we truly are. It's not safe to be ourselves. It's not safe to say no. It's not safe to ask for what it is that we really want. There's something stopping us from being our true, authentic selves.
Speaker 1:
As a child, you might have felt powerless over someone else's needs and wants and you didn't trust that you would be kept safe. And you did it to survive because you were young and you needed someone else's protection. You felt that the only power that you had, and the only way that you could stay safe was to make other people feel happy, and that would make you feel safe and wanted. My earliest memory of dysfunctional people pleasing was when I was eight years old. I was in the third grade and I didn't have any friends. I didn't do well in class and as a result of that, I had to repeat the third grade. I was really embarrassed that I had failed a grade and I was really ashamed. I started peeing in the bed, mainly because of stress, and I spent most recesses alone because I assumed that none of the other kids would want to play with me. It was a horrible feeling and even to this day I get sad thinking about it. As an adult, I'm now able to grieve for that little girl who felt so alone, but at the time it just it was a really, really terrible feeling.
Speaker 1:
It took me about a year to start getting to know some of the kids in the class. I probably would have been friends with anyone who paid me any kind of attention and I would do whatever I could to maintain that friendship. I think that I would kind of attention and I would do whatever I could to maintain that friendship. I think that I would kind of mold my personality to be who that person wanted me to be. I would adopt their interests and I would do things that they wanted to do. I would focus my attention on their needs and I would. Everything that we talked about was about them and I found that as long as people talked about themselves, they liked me and they kept me around because I made them feel good. I'm quite lucky actually that these kids weren't drug addicts or bullies, but I can see how someone who is desperate for friendship might fall into the wrong hands and get stuck in some destructive behaviors.
Speaker 1:
I had a lot of trouble asking for what it was that I needed and as a result, I kind of got really good at manipulating people to do the things that I wanted without having to come flat out and say what I wanted. In my teenage years I discovered that doing really well in school, being the teacher's pet and a good child at home would often gain me accolades and gave me a good sense of worth. I got a lot of attention when I had good report cards and good grades, and that made me feel good. Unfortunately, that meant that failure just felt horrible. It felt like I disappointed the whole world and I wasn't worth anything. I became a perfectionist who couldn't let other people see me struggle. I couldn't let other people see me fail. Starting this podcast was terrifying for me because it's putting it out there. It's putting my dirty laundry out there for everyone to see, not to mention fumbling at times with knowing what to say and letting people see some of those imperfections that I might have. In the past, I've struggled to put my thoughts on paper. I've struggled to even put posts on Facebook because I'm scared that people are going to say something negative about what I wrote.
Speaker 1:
Eventually, people-pleasing can lead to you feeling very resentful. You might feel used or angry. People-pleasing really boils down to ignoring yourself and ignoring your needs. So being in constant people pleasing mode can be exhausting and you feel devalued. This only reinforces the people pleasing circle, because now you just you feel even worse about yourself and you try to seek validation from other people to try and feel better.
Speaker 1:
So I felt safe as long as I did things for others, but I had no sense of self-worth. I had no idea who I was, what I liked, what it meant to be me. I always saw myself as being a really, really nice person. Sometimes I would tell people I'm just too nice. I remember I did an interview I forget what it was for, but I had to give them one of my flaws, so a negative attribute about myself. I told them that I was too nice to people. I was trying to say something that was negative but actually could be seen as a positive thing, or that I'd be able to put a positive spin on it, but at the time I didn't realize that it was true and that it actually was one of my biggest flaws. This really became apparent in the last two years or so, when I became burnt out as a doctor.
Speaker 1:
People are going to ask you for all sorts of things. Appointments are typically 10 to 15 minutes long, and during that time you're expected to find out what the problem is, take a thorough history, do a physical exam and come up with a plan, but oftentimes people have more than one issue that they want to address. In addition to filling their prescriptions or making sure that their blood work is up to date, they might want you to take a quick peek at something. Either way, we end up going over the 15 minutes that's allotted for that person. So, as a result, you start cutting corners, so you shorten the history, maybe, or skip the physical exam, which would often make me feel terrible and really incompetent at my job, and then you wouldn't really be able to get to the bottom of things and nothing would get resolved at the end of the visit because there were so many things that we tried to squeeze into there.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes I would tell patients that we didn't have time to address the other issue, but then I'd feel terrible and I'd carry that with me for the rest of the day. Sometimes I'd carry it home with me. And what happens if that issue was something serious that I could have missed? So it did end up causing me quite a bit of anxiety, even when I tried to reschedule them on a different day to talk about that issue. Or sometimes I would end up addressing all of the issues that that patient wanted, but then I'd be running behind two hours making everybody else angry with me and at the end of the day I still wouldn't have completed charting. So it ends up coming home with you and it cuts into dinner with the kids and it just overall starts becoming just so overwhelming.
Speaker 1:
I was unable to set boundaries, and when I did set a boundary. I felt terrible Even when I was sick. I was still trying to go to work, mainly because I didn't want to disappoint my employer. I didn't want to disappoint patients. This led to me being completely burnt out. I see this with patients all the time. They'll come into the office and tell me that you know they're struggling at work because they've just taken on too many projects, too many responsibilities from other co-workers. They take on too many responsibilities at home, with the kids, with their partners. They end up saying yes to every activity that might come their way Baking cookies for the bake sale, they're doing laundry, they're buying gifts for birthday parties and driving kids to the birthday parties and going to dental appointments and doctor's appointments. It just piles on and sometimes you forget that there's other people that you can ask for help or you can just buy store-bought cookies.
Speaker 1:
You develop these expectations for yourself and you don't feel like you're a good person if you don't deliver or if you don't feel like you've done good enough. Being unable to say no and doing everything for other people can lead to burnout and to anxiety and depression, just feeling very, very overwhelmed and you're chugging along and coping for the most part. But then you hit a wall and suddenly you just can't do those things anymore and you realize that things need to change. But you're just you're not sure how being a people pleaser can really affect your personal relationships. When you don't know who you are and you don't know your value, it's really hard to feel confident when you're seeking out a romantic partner or when you're forming personal relationships or seeking employment.
Speaker 1:
There are definitely some people who are going to really like that you're so agreeable and they are happy to take advantage of it. Some people are going to love the fact that you're a people pleaser. People pleasers are going to work very hard to make you happy. They're going to take on the lion's share of the work. They will sacrifice themselves for the gain of other people. People pleasers feel that their value as a partner stems from what they can do for you. They need to feel needed and they feel like that's where their value as a partner comes from. People pleasers will agree with all of your beliefs. They will avoid conflicts at all cost. They'll use compliance, humor, making other people feel safe and flattering other people just to deflect any kind of negative attention and although they don't like it when you walk all over them, they'll let you do it anyway because they're convinced that they have no other choice.
Speaker 1:
I'm not telling you all of this to make you feel bad about yourself. I have just seen how bad it can get. I've hit that wall. I know what it's like to be so overwhelmed that you just can't continue anymore. It starts affecting you physically and emotionally and you start wondering where it all went wrong. As starts affecting you physically and emotionally and you start wondering where it all went wrong. But as I start feeling more and more confident about myself, I start having the courage to voice my opinions and to feel comfortable with who I am. I never thought I'd announce to the world that I peed in the bed, but here I am. And, danielle, if you're listening, that girl who peed on the floor during the sleepover in the fifth grade it was me and I'm really sorry. Please tell that to your mom. I've decided to do this podcast because, even if I only help one person overcome their codependency, then it was worth it.
Speaker 1:
It is possible to overcome people pleasing, and that is going to be the focus of next week's episode. For this week, I would like you to pay attention to what's going on around you and maybe different times where you were people pleasing, when you did something for somebody else, even though you didn't really want to do it. How did it make you feel? Did it make you feel resentful? Did it make you feel sad, angry? Feel free to write these feelings in a journal and try to be curious as to why you said yes when you didn't want to. What kind of pressures were you feeling at that time?
Speaker 1:
Join me next week for the third episode of the Codependent Doctor, when we are going to talk about overcoming people pleasing. Thank you for joining me and I will talk to you next time. Thank you for joining me and I hope today's podcast resonated with you. Click, like and subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes and to help others who might benefit. This podcast is not meant to provide medical advice and should not replace seeing your doctor for mental health concerns. If you're having a mental health crisis, please present to a hospital called 911 or your local crisis helpline. I'll talk to you next week with another edition of the Codependent Doctor. We can do this together.