Ep23 How Being a Giver and People Pleaser is Learned Behavior

Are you a people-pleaser? 

Episode 23 of the Better Relationships Podcast with Dr. Dar is a game-changer for anyone who's ever felt the pressure to conform for others' satisfaction. 

Delve into the nine societal constructs that shape our people-pleasing tendencies and learn why this trait doesn’t deserve its negative reputation. 

Get ready to embrace your kindness without compromise and listen in for an empowering perspective shift!

Transcript

>> Speaker A: 1:28

Today, I'm talking about the nine ways you and I have been trained to be people pleasers. There is evidence that society creates and upholds the need for people pleasers. First, I want to say that being a people pleaser is not a bad thing. Today, I invite you to stop feeling bad about wanting others to be happy or wanting to have, a feel good, happy world. Because let's face it, when other people are happy, we're happy. It's a reciprocal kind of thing. Shaming you or blaming you for being too nice, too kind, a pushover, or worse, creates unnecessary mental and emotional trauma. The extreme form of people pleasing, where we sacrifice ourselves for others, is not the topic for today's show. I will share my thoughts about that at another time. But I do want to talk about how our systems and culture have created a damning picture of a, people pleaser. Here are ten ways, actually, nine ways you and I here are nine ways you and I have been trained to be people pleasers. First of all, in our parent child relationships, as a child, you're taught how to please your parents, and you're rewarded for it when you do. And when you don't, you're punished. So what do we do? We learn how to please our parents in teacher student relationships. In school, we're taught to be like everyone else because the education model is designed for conformity. It's one education model for every student. Regardless of your learning capabilities, your learning styles, the environment is the same. Everyone is put in this box. Students are taught to please the teacher, and those that do are rewarded and acknowledged. And those that don't, well, they get a bad grade or their parents hear about their bad behavior or lack of performance. And then the parents who hear good things for their child from their child's teachers are pleased. So, can you see how this instills a pleasing others mindset and behaviors, starting at a very young age? M welcome to episode 23 of the feel good Superpower podcast. I'm Dr. Dar your feel good alchemist, and today I'm talking about nine ways you and I have been trained to be a people pleaser, how that label was created, and evidence that society creates and upholds the need for people pleasers to exist. First, I want to say that being a people pleaser is not a bad thing. Today, going forward, I invite you to stop feeling bad about wanting others to be happy or wanting to have a feel good, happy world. After all, when everyone around us is happy, we're happy, and vice versa. it's a reciprocal exchange and relationship. And I'm going to share how most people have people pleasing skills. Shaming you or blaming you for being too nice, too kind, a pushover, or worse, just creates unnecessary mental and emotional trauma. The extreme form of people pleasing, where we sacrifice ourselves for others, is not a topic that I'm going to talk about today. I will share my thoughts about that another time. But I think your perspective about people pleasing in the extreme form is going to change after you listen to what I have to say. I do want to talk about how our systems and culture have created a damning picture of a people pleaser. So here are nine ways that you and I have been trained from a very young age to be people pleasers. Without going into too much detail, because I believe you'll be able to relate, and you'll be able to identify examples of your own from your own life and relationships. For each one, the parent child relationship. As a child, we're taught how to please our parents, and we're rewarded for it when we do and we're punished when we don't, which reinforces the behavior of wanting to please our parents. When parents talk about someone else's child's achievements or behaviors in a favorable way, their own child may try to be like that other child to please their parent, which then starts this need to prove ourselves to our parents or to authority figures, and that becomes a form of people pleasing behavior. Let's now talk about the teacher student relationship and relationships at school. In school, you're taught to be like everyone else. The education model is designed for conformity. One model for every student. So, on, the off chance on that one day that you don't fit in, you try to find ways to fit in just to survive that day. Fitting in is a form of people pleasing behavior. And then students are taught to please the teacher. And those that do are rewarded and acknowledged. And those that don't are ignored, dismissed or admonished or threatened by a phone call or a meeting with the parents. And then parents who hear good things from their child's teachers are pleased, which instills the pleasing others mindset in their children. It is costly to not fit in. So we conform m because it doesn't feel good to not belong. So we learn how to be pleasing to other students and the adults around us. So that we're not bullied, mistreated, dismissed, ignored, or criticized. Or we just withdraw completely. The next one is body image. I don't think I need to say anything about this, do I? Women have been objectified so much over the years that I don't know any woman who does not have some self critical issue with their bodies. If you're not pretty or thin or lean, or this or that, well, it's the end of the world. So what do we as women do? We try that fad diet, or that fad exercise program, or that fad pill, or that one treatment to try and make ourselves look like the impossibly photoshopped image of models and actresses plastered on billboards. That's how we're trained to be pleasing to others and want to be pleasing to others. The manager or boss to employee relationship. We're set up to please the boss or manager from the first time we meet them, starting with our job application and resume, then the job interview. And then once we get the job, we have to maintain that throughout the time we're in the job. It's a constant, please my boss, please my coworkers, and please my customers environment. Then there's the performance of appraisal. In a job situation, managers usually hold performance appraisals with their employees. Sometimes they're monthly, quarterly, or annually. This is another structure designed to ensure we please our managers and our customers. So now we have boss pleasing and customer pleasing. And your customers and bosses and managers are people. So it's people pleasing. This whole domain of customer satisfaction, it's a whole thing in the business, and corporate world. If a business's customers are not satisfied, then the employee is going to get feedback and be asked to improve or maybe get written up or fired. So customer satisfaction, those are just another word or a combination of words for people pleasing, in this case, customer or manager pleasing. The 7th one is the service based economy. We live in a service based economy, and the number one quality that is needed by those who provide a service is customer service and satisfaction, which I've already said are just other words for people pleasing. Family dynamics. Whether it's your sibling, aunt, uncle grands, or even a distant relative or cousin, we're all performing in a way to make them happy or have them have a good time so that we can too. The key is the so that we can too is also included. This behavior is so prevalent during holiday family gatherings, for example. There's so much energy and effort that's put into creating a taste good meal and a peaceful, fun, helpful environment for everyone. It's people pleasing. In religion, it's a structure for people pleasing as well. Where we're following a set of conditions and norms, conforming again. And if you don't agree with it all, or Lord forbid, you ask questions, well, there's judgment, criticism and gossip, and that gets fueled in the community. So we do everything we can to follow that set of conditions and norms so that we can please everybody. Meal preparation and providing meals and, supporting the community, all of that. We do it to please ourselves and feel good for ourselves. But it's also to give to others and to please them. It's unfortunate that it's common to be shamed for being motivated by pleasing others. You may be surprised with what I have to share. Next you're going to learn that people pleasing is not a medically diagnosed disease, nor is it a diagnosed mental or emotional disorder, yet it is treated as such. I found the origins of the words people pleasing or people pleaser to be disturbing because it's become so mainstream. It's become a label with which to discriminate against those of us who are empaths, sensitive, kind, caring, giving and compassionate. These traits are a good thing as long as we don't sacrifice ourselves and lose ourselves in any of our relationships or environments. In the 1970s, medical treatment for alcoholism as a disease was solely focused on the alcoholic. Once treatment centers started becoming prolific, they found that involving family members and partners of the alcoholic in treatment, in the treatment and support process, actually generated lower incidence of relapse with a higher periods of sobriety. So they created the term coalcoholic. Then in the 1980s, drug treatment programs formed the term chemical dependent from the perspective of being addicted to alcohol or drugs. To create a m. More publicly unifying term, the word coalcoholism was updated to cochemically dependent. But my gosh, that's hard to say, right? It was even hard for me to say cochemically dependent, so it was shortened to codependent. From then on, codependency was used to describe a person who is in a relationship with an addict and who enables them in some way with their addiction. But all of a sudden, the term codependent became a term to describe someone who attracts and gets into relationships with narcissists or addicts. In my opinion, it was at this moment that the term people pleasing came into being. People pleasing at that time was used to describe codependents who would automatically make sacrifices to care for others who were incapable of giving back or incapable of reciprocity. Codependents have difficulty in resisting getting into relationships with people who are addicts, controlling or narcissistic. But by the 1990s, the term codependent and people plays pleaser became mainstream. I see therapists and coaches using these terms, all the time, really as mainstream terms, and they're not. I am grateful to Ross Rosenberg, the author of the human Magnet syndrome why we love people who hurt us. He concisely and clearly defines codependency in his book as follows. Codependency is a problematic relationship orientation that, ah, involves the relinquishing of power and control to individuals who are either addicted or who are pathologically narcissistic. Codependents are habitually attracted to people who neither seem interested nor motivated to participate in mutual or reciprocal relationships. Hence, the partners of codependence are often egotistical, selfcentered, or selfish. Typically, codependents feel unfulfilled, disrespected, and undervalued by their relationship partner. As much as they resent and complain about the inequity in their relationships, codependents feel powerless to change them. Now, Ross Rosenberg states in his definition, and you really can't take this statement out of context, but I want to say that his sentence about typically, codependents feel unfulfilled, disrespected, and undervalued by their relationship partner. If we took that sentence just from the feel part, feel unfulfilled, disrespected, and undervalued. We feel that moment to moment in our lives and in some of our relationships, they're not always completely fulfilling and respectful and valuing. We have our m moments and they pass. So technically, we all have this people pleasing behavior. we can feel unfulfilled, we can feel disrespected, and we can feel undervalued. It just is not excessive and to the extreme. And it may not be that the person that we're in relationship with is an addicted person or pathologically narcissistic. They may be egotistical and self centered and selfish, or they may just have moments where they are. I know I have my moments when I am. So the key is these behaviors. They are constant, they are consistent, they are more often than not. So to me, it's inappropriate to be cavalier with labels like codependent, codependency, or people pleaser. These are medical and mental health terms and should be treated as such. But suffice as to say, I see these two terms being used by the general public all too often without fully understanding the origins, meaning, or ramifications of doing so. Nor are they or we qualified as medical or mental health professionals. So my invitation is to no longer use these terms in a cavalier way and start being more specific around the behaviors that we are questioning or that we're honoring and respecting. Because words have meaning and they have energy. They can be weapons of destruction or tools of immense love and self growth and self expansion. So I invite you to be honoring of these words going forward. Having said all that, I help people pleasers thrive in their life and relationships and their work or business, because being a people pleaser requires different models than what's been created for the world.