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Welcome to episode 269 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shetama. Today's episode was spurred by an email I received from Maryanne Van Dyke. She has the website Cup of Empathy, and she works on non-violent communication. That is the approach developed by Marshall Rosenberg that helps us to better express our needs and wants, better express who we are as a non-anxious presence. Unfortunately, Van Dyke does not have a blog, so I can't really share the text of this email, but the title is the number one Misconception About People Pleasing. It made me realize that many of us in helping positions, helping professions in places where we're trying to make a difference in the world are people pleasers, and so this would be a great topic to cover in family systems terms. The first thing to understand about people pleasing is that it is a coping mechanism, just like avoidance or substance abuse or procrastination. It is typically developed in childhood as a response to some form of rejection or even trauma. It comes from the desire to get closer to people around us. That is, people pleasing comes comes from the desire for emotional connection.

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This emotional need to please others often comes at the expense of your own needs or desires. In short, people pleasing is a form of adaptivity that stifles self-differentiation. One of the major downsides of people pleasing is emotional and physical exhaustion. When you constantly put the needs of others ahead of your own, you feel overwhelmed because you have too much to do. You are over-committed. This means you need to put aside your own needs and put others' needs ahead of your own because you need to get everything done. A related negative effect of people pleasing is resentment. As you feel exhausted, you begin to resent others for making unreasonable demands of you. Of course, you are not taking responsibility for self, but instead you are blaming others for your inability to set boundaries. People pleasing can also make it difficult to make decisions out of fear of what others might think. This is going to make it harder to lead because you're That role as a leader is not to be right, but to know what you believe and to be able to express it to others in healthy ways. This provides a sense of direction that helps others to determine what they think and believe.

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I say it often, non-anxious leaders say what they believe while giving others the freedom to disagree. That's hard to do when you are a people pleaser. One irony of people pleasing that Van Dyke points out is that you may not seek to please the people you care about most, but instead, you will seek to please the ones who most scare you. Since you can't physically please everyone, you decide to please your boss or the most anxious person in the congregation or the donor who makes unreasonable demands. This has the double negative effect of stressing you out and can cause you to ignore those closest to you. Of course, self-differentiation is the opposite. It's knowing what matters to you and being able to focus on it even when there is surrounding togetherness pressure, even when there is pressure to conform to the demands of others. The question is, If people pleasing is not self-differentiation, what can you do about it? The first step to stop people pleasing is self-definition. Take the time for self-awareness and reflection so you can define your wants, your needs, your goals, and your values. If you are a people pleaser, it's likely that you've buried these because it's been too hard to express them.

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However, if you want to stop people-pleasing, you have to be able to define what's important to you. If you don't, you won't have the resolve needed to choose your own path when there is togetherness pressure, when people make demands or even just request of you. Defining what is important to you is essential if you are going to be able to make decisions in the moment to decide whether you want to do what is important to you or what is important to others. Second, and this is related to the first, take time to define your boundaries. Again, this is something you need to do for yourself before you even interact with others. Think about the ways that you adapt to others, then think about what a boundary might look like. For example, if the congregation you serve often has evening meetings that conflict with your children's school events, then a boundary would be that you won't choose the congregation over your children. This leads to the third thing that you can do to stop people pleasing, and that is to practice saying no. There are strategies you can use to do this, some of which I cover in episode 230.

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I'll link that in the show notes. One strategy that's not covered in that episode is to say, I don't, instead of, I can't. I can't make you sound helpless, while I don't is taking responsibility for self. For example, when asked to attend a meeting that conflicts with your child's school concert, you can say, I'm sorry, I don't miss my child's school events. The important part to understand here is that you can often anticipate situations where you have a tendency to people please. By practicing how to say no, you have a better chance of acting with integrity in the moment of choice. The fourth and maybe the most important thing you can do to stop people-pleasing is to learn to pause. This is self-regulation. Before saying yes to anything, in fact, before saying anything, stop yourself. Breathe deeply and ask yourself, what response will be in line with my goals and values? What response will express what I want and need? You won't always get it right, but you'll do a lot better than if you don't self-regulate at all. It's important to remember that surrounding togetherness pressure is a perception. It's not always a reality.

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Sometimes we feel pressure internally to respond to the demands of others when they're just making a request, when they're just asking us to do something, and if we say no, it's okay. You're never going to find out if the other is okay with you saying no unless you actually say no, unless you actually set a boundary. If they do get reactive when you say no, it helps you to understand that they are not taking responsibility for self, that they are being dependent on you to meet their needs. In reality, nothing you can do will actually please them. It may be hard at first to remain a non-anxious presence, but if you can do that over time, you will get better at being less influenced by the dependency needs of others. You'll also get better at not over committing because you want to people-please even when people are making reasonable requests. Finally, the most important thing you can do to stop being a people-pleaser to grow in self-differentiation is to do your own work. That is, do a genogram of your family of origin and start to unpack the patterns of anxiety and how they have influenced you.

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The point is to learn what's behind your own reactivity and coping mechanisms without blaming yourself or blaming others. As you do this, you can start to rework your most anxious relationships so that you can respond as a non anxious presence. You will find that when you do this, you will become less of a people pleaser. This is a life's work. It's a lot of two steps forward and one step back. But if you want to be a non-anxious leader, doing your own work is the way to get there. That's it for episode 269. You can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com. You can find a transcript in the show notes or at thenonanxiousleader.com/269. You can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. I love to hear your feedback, and I love to hear your ideas for new episodes. Until next time. Thanks, and goodbye.

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