Episode #139

People Pleasing & CBT

Are you a people pleaser? If you are, WHY are you a people pleaser?

How can understanding the reasons for your people pleasing empower you?

How can you be a balanced people pleaser?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as I share with you the simple CBT tools that can help you be a healthier people pleaser.

Click to listen now!

Full Episode Transcript

Hi, it's Dr. Julie from My CBT Podcast. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

So I hope you're all doing well. Thanks for taking the time to join me. I hope you're enjoying your summer. And I wanted to start off sharing an email, as I always do, with a listener. He gave me permission to share. It says, Hi, Dr. Julie. I discovered your podcast a month ago after I began therapy. My therapist mentioned a term I hadn't heard before. Faulty cognition. Research in that term led me to your podcast, and I was searching for tools to overcome the very hot thoughts that have left me anxious, stressed, and preventing me from living life fully. I've been listening to your podcast for the past month now, bouncing around listening to episodes that are most relevant to what I've been experiencing. Minute Months ago, I finished listening to episode 127, and it took me over an hour to finish because I kept pausing to celebrate how affirmed I felt. It felt so good to hear you speak about the different ways a person can feel lonely.

I resonate with that so deeply. I don't want this email to be long-winded, but the point I was making is that listening to your podcast has given me the boost and the reminders I need to supplement my therapy sessions. I love your mantra, make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel. I'm curious how to discern between the two when comes to instincts. Sometimes my hot thoughts aren't rooted in made up insecurities, but they're prompted based on past negative experiences. How do I know if what I'm feeling are my instincts or hot thoughts that are keeping my guard up? If you record an episode on this already, feel free to direct me to it and I'll give it a listen. Thanks again for the work you've put into this podcast and behind the scenes. I hope to hear from you soon. Sincerely, Oothman. So that was interesting. I I appreciate it, again, all the kind words. And I wanted to read to what I responded in case you guys were thinking the same question that he shared with me. So I just said, Hi, Oothman. Thank you for your kind words and insightful email question.

I'm so happy you're finding them helpful along with your therapy. Remember that hot thoughts are thoughts that are not 100% true. So your thoughts are not about made up insecurities, but negative situations like you said. You need to figure out what the hot thoughts are your experience, then challenge them for a balanced thought. I would listen to the podcast called The ABCs of CBT. If you're using the Mind Over Move book, work on chapter 7 through 9 to really master the thought record. The thought I am keeping my guard up may be a thought to start with. And Chapter 7, you can ask yourself each question in column three to really get your underlying hot thoughts down. Also, it's important to listen to your instincts, although you do not want to generalize what happened in your negative experience to all experiences in your life. I hope I've answered your question. Then I just asked to be okay to share this because I felt it might be helpful to others. So I hope that helps you guys, too, that when you're thinking, Well, this really did happen, or this is my insecurities, all of that's true.

And I'm not minimizing things happen in our lives because we all have situations every day, right? But we want to be able to hone in and say, Okay, what are my thoughts that I'm having right now? Are there ones that are true? Which ones are hot that are getting triggered from my past insecurities so I can work on changing them? So I thought that was a really good email. Again, I wanted to Share that with you. And hopefully you can use those tools as well. So today I want to talk about people-pleasers. I have a lot of clients that come in and say, Oh, I'm a I'm a people pleaser. I just want to do this for people. I want to do that for people. But then I end up not feeling very good because of it. So I thought that might be a good topic to talk about because I think a lot of people can relate to this and to balance that term out on people pleasing. So people pleasing behavior, let's get to that first, is a strong desire to be liked and to avoid conflict at all costs. And CBT can really help with this.

Because it can help you, again, identify and change your unhelpful thought patterns and the behaviors. Because people pleasing starts with the thought that I need to please everyone so that they will like me and I can avoid conflict. And then the behavior is doing what everybody else wants. Sometimes doing things for people when they don't even ask you to do them because you're thinking five steps ahead. And you're definitely not honoring yourself. Now, I have a podcast called Are You Honoring Yourself? I'd really suggest everyone listen to that because that's a place that I go too often when I'm in a situation where I'm feeling uncomfortable or have any negative moods and say, Am I honoring myself? And I'm able to answer that right away and be able to make better decisions, identify what my thoughts are, why aren't I honoring myself right now, and what do I need to do to change that? So that would be a really good podcast I would suggest in conjunction with what I'm talking about today. So are you a people pleaser? So if you are, because a lot of people seem to be able to identify that for themselves.

I don't say it as often as clients tell me that that's who they are. So to think, why am I a people pleaser? Why is that my behavior? So remember, most people live off of their moods and their behaviors. Within the cognitive behavioral theory is that your thoughts create your moods, which affects your behaviors and your physical reactions. And then within all of that is your environment, homework, school, social, whatever environment that you're in. So most people don't get well in the world, this is my theory, is because they just go from mood to behavior. So Feelings and moods are the same things. So I feel uncomfortable, so I'm going to pick a behavior to make that go away. So I feel uncomfortable because if I'm feeling a little guilty that I didn't do something, then I'm just going to make up for it. That's that people-pleasing. What can I do? What can I do? What can I do? If I'm feeling anxious because I think there's conflict going on, what can I do to make it go away? Is it addressing the conflict or even figuring out if there's really a conflict because it might just be coming in your head based on your hot thoughts.

So that's what you want to see. What's going on that I'm people-pleasing? What am I avoiding? Is it my feeling? Is it conflicts in my life? Is it working for me? Most likely it isn't. And what I was saying earlier about balancing it out, it's not that you never do anything for others. It's not that you're not being of service. That's a great value and characteristic about who you may be. I don't want you to stop doing that. But people-pleasing is when you don't honor yourself and you're doing it to avoid conflict. And you're doing it because you want everybody to like you. And I also tell everybody, I don't like everybody and everyone doesn't like me, and that's the same for all of you. Our job is not to get everyone to like us. That is just exhausting. And we are just going to screw ourselves over for trying to get everyone to like us because we're going to do things that we don't even want to do. Right? If that's something that creates anxiety for you when people don't like you or when conflict comes up, that's what we really want to look at.

And that's where your CBT tools can really help. So the first step here, or the second, but first step is acknowledging this is what's What's going on with you. The next step is identifying these cognitive distortions. So once we can identify our half thoughts that lead us to the people-pleasing behavior, such as, as I said already, I must make everyone happy. Or another thought might be, if I say no, they will dislike me. If I don't do what they want, they won't be my friend. If I don't do what this person wants, they'll break up with me. If I I don't know why on this report, I'll get fired. I don't want to take the podcast giving you all the examples, but just giving you an idea of look at your environments that you're in, whether it's work, at school, professionally, intimate relationships, parenting, friendships. What's the environment I'm in that I'm people-pleasing? What's making me anxious in these environments that I'm doing behaviors that maybe I really don't want to do. But I'm thinking that everyone will be upset with me or I have to make everyone happier. That's my job. And maybe that was your job growing up.

Maybe you were the kid in the house that learned, if I please everybody, I don't get in trouble, I don't get hit, right? I won't get yelled at. A lot of kids that grew up in any type of adult... If you're an adult child of an alcoholic, any drug addiction, things like that. A lot of times, one of the roles they talk about is the clown in the family, the person that made everybody laugh. That was how that kid coped, right? So where did this come from? And the majority of us, until we get some help, take on whatever roles we had in childhood into our adult lives until we realized this isn't working because the environment has changed. So being a people pleaser as a child maybe really kept you safe, and was what worked for you, but now it's not working anymore, and now you're not happy, and now people take advantage of you, and now you have people in your life you don't even want around. But they keep dragging you in because they know that you're going that you're a people pleaser, and you're going to do what they ask, and you're too anxious about having them upset, and you're going to say yes instead of saying no.

So lots of layers here, right? Lots of layers. Not just like... Because when people say this to me, they laugh. Oh, I'm a people pleaser. But then I'm like, Okay, let's dig into that a little more. And that's where therapy could be so helpful instead of just laughing it off and not changing and saying, just because I acknowledge it doesn't mean that there's any change coming with it. It's good to identify it, but we need to do something about it. And when you're with a professional that can say, Well, what does that look like? What does people pleasing mean to you? What do you do? What is it you don't like? How's it affecting you negatively? So there's a lot of stuff. You can journal on all of this and just start writing things down. And hopefully what I'm saying to you starts coming out on paper so you can be like, Wow, this isn't good. I'm creating this, but I'm also bringing people into my life that take advantage of it. And I need to set better boundaries or maybe not even be friends with that person. Or what do I need? Do I need to change things at work or have conversations and let people know, maybe, people that are going to be in your life still, I know I've been a people pleaser and I'm going to own that, but I'm not going to do that anymore.

And if you even notice me doing that, I would love if you will point it out, and I will be open to that and hear what you have to say, because it's not going to be an easy behavior just to change, especially if you've been doing it for a long time, and if you think it's been working for you. You are going to relapse. We all relapse, but we want to catch ourselves and get back on track. So the first thing, obviously, is what are my cognitive distortions? What are my hot thoughts? A lot of cognitive distortions, which also have a podcast down. I talk about all 10 of them from Dr. Burns. One of them is all or nothing thinking. So what does that mean, actually? It means that you're believing you must always be agreeable to be liked. Another distortion you might be using in the situation is mind reading. So that's where you're assuming you know what others think about you. And another one connected to that is fortune telling. Like, Oh, if I do this, they'll like me. If I do for them, they'll see that I'm a good person. They'll want to hang out with me.

They'll want to be with me. They'll like me more than that other person. So these are the cognitive distortions that might be playing a role here in the behavior that's going on with the people-pleasing. So again, yeah, that's another really good podcast. Listen to your cognitive distortions. Sometimes you're doing all 10 of them, believe it or not. But to be able to identify and going, Yeah, all or nothing thinking, black or white thinking, that doesn't work here. I can't live my life in all or nothing. That's really, really stressful and difficult. And I'm not going to honor myself if I'm doing that. And I can't really read anybody's mind. I've told you guys before, even as a therapist, sometimes I'll be going, Oh, I know what they're going to say. I know what they're thinking about this. And then they say something, and I'm like, I would have never come up with that. And I have learned, I do not know what people think, no matter if I even think I know what they're thinking. I I can't do that. I cannot do that. And none of us can do that. And that's a distortion that gets us in trouble because we make decisions based on the assumptions that we know what other people think.

You also want to challenge your unhelpful beliefs. So my core belief that might be going on is that my worth is determined by how much I do for others. People-pleasers tend to have very deep-seated core beliefs. I talk about my core My core belief was that I was bound to be abandoned. So thinking I needed to be the greatest girlfriend ever, so then nobody would leave me. So that was my people-pleasing behavior. And I settled in the past for bad behavior from others, and I didn't honor myself for sure. So you want to be able to identify what are my core beliefs that are playing a role here. I'm unworthy, I'm not lovable, I'm not likable. So then I talk about your behavioral strategies. So People pleasing behavior is a strategy. That's a behavior strategy. I don't want to think that I'm unlovable or unlikable or unworthy. So I'm just going to be a people pleaser, and then everyone will like me and love me and show me that I'm worthy. And then that fix it. But it's not. It's just a bandaid because then when people don't treat you well or people leave you or your people pleasing behavior doesn't work, you're going to go right back to that core belief and still feel terrible because you got to really change that.

Core belief that you have and know that you are lovable, you are likable, and you are worthy. Some reality testing can help, too. This is where you examine the evidence, part of the thought record, for and against your beliefs. So this helps you see that saying no to someone doesn't necessarily lead to rejection or disapproval. So let's test this reality. I'm going to say no to what somebody is requesting of me. You can start small. It doesn't have to be a big no, just a little no. And see that they're like, Okay, just wanted to ask, or I understand. I would have said no to if you asked me this. Might be a reaction. So you want to have some reality testing, a behavioral experiment, which I'll talk a little bit more in a second, some other ones. But that's like a behavior experiment to say, I'm just going to say no when they ask this of me. And see that I'm not getting rejected. I'm not even feeling disapproved of, I'm not feeling unliked. I'm showing respect for myself, I'm honoring myself. And when I do that, I actually get that back from others.

People that do reject me or disapprove of me are probably not the people to have in my life. So that might be a red flag for you to notice. So some other behavioral experiments that you can do, because remember, I I always tell everybody, C-B-T, behavioral, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. We want to know what our thoughts are, change our thoughts, balance them, but we also have to take that action to really believe them. So learning how to be more assertive is really important, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy includes practicing assertive communication. This allows you to express your needs and boundaries without feeling guilty and not fearing rejection. I talk about this in another podcast as well, but you have being assertive or you're passive or you're aggressive, or you can be passive-aggressive. And in general, you want to be an assertive person. This is where you're sharing your needs, your thoughts, feelings, without trying to get the person to agree or change, but just sharing where you're at, right? And expressing what you need, and again, having healthy boundaries, and you feel good about it, and people will respond to you. It's really the opposite of what you think if you've been having people-pleasing behavior your whole life, okay?

You may end up with that more passive-aggressive, right? You don't say anything, but then it comes out in an aggressive way because you're not expressing yourself and you're not honoring yourself. You're not respecting yourself. So the people-pleasing behavior can definitely be more on the passive side. And that does not work. People will take advantage of you. And I tell people, I'm not being negative, but the reality in just the human condition is if you let people take advantage of you, you will find people to do that. It's just how it is. So you have to take responsibility and say, I need to be different. I'm not going to be a people-pleaser anymore because it's not serving me. And you also, which is the hard part, one of the harder parts, is exposing yourself to feeling the discomfort. Gradually, when you can practice saying no or expressing different opinions, You'll see that the consequences, if there are any, are not as catastrophic as you fear. Your thoughts are very... Again, that all or nothing, that cognitive distortion. It's not like it's either going to be great or it's going to be terrible. And I'm avoiding conflict, so I got to figure out how for it to be great because I can't deal with the terrible.

But once you gradually expose yourself to discomfort by saying no, by setting boundaries, by not mind reading, doing for people more than you need to or more than they're even asking of you, right? And things are okay, you can breathe. Take a deep breath right now. Just see like, Oh, that was a lot easier than I thought. What I'm telling myself the outcome is going to be is just not true. And I'm unhappy, and I don't want to be like this anymore. So I'm going to use my tools, Dr. Julie is talking about, and I'm going to have to create some exposure experiments to prove to myself that everything's okay and I'm good enough. Also, you can practice saying no or expressing different opinions to experience that consequences may happen, but you also can deal with them. So first it's like, Okay, they're not as bad as I thought they were, but maybe there is. Maybe there is somebody in your life that decides that they don't want to be friends with you, or it affects you moving up in your company because you have healthy boundaries in your honor in yourself, and you're not willing to lie or do other things just to move up.

So there are going to be consequences in our lives, but I can handle it because I have really good tools, and I have strong core beliefs, and I know how to identify my how thoughts and have balanced thinking. So it's not just like, Oh, I don't want to say, Oh, there's not going to be any consequences. There could be for sure because you might have some unhealthy people in your life or you might be in some unhealthy environments, but I can handle it. That's the other part that's really important. It's not just like, Oh, okay. Dr. Julie is saying, Just deal with it. I'm not saying, Just deal with it. I'm saying that it's not probably going to be as bad as you think it is, but whatever it is, you can handle it because you have tools to use. And we want to reframe our negative thoughts. So for example, you want to change... If your thought is, If I don't do this for them, they won't like me. A new thought based on your evidence is, I can't make everyone happy, and that's okay. And that's an alternative thought. I can't make everyone happy, and that's not even my job to make everyone happy.

Those are some really good new thoughts to come up with through your thought record. Also, having some self-compassion. I know that I say this a lot in my podcast, but it's so important. Cognitive behavioral therapy encourages you to develop more compassion for that inner dialog you got going on. And this is going to help you recognize your worth is not contingent on pleasing others. That's a relief. Just saying that out loud feels really good. My worth is not contingent on pleasing others. Because if I make it that, I am screwed. Because if I don't please everyone, I will never feel good about myself. And you can't please everybody. And it's not your job because you don't have control over people, places, and things. Your job is seeing your own self-worth and honoring yourself is your job, right? And respecting yourself and setting healthy boundaries. That's your job, right? And when you treat yourself in that the way other people will treat you as well. And you will attract people in your life that want to be around someone like that, someone that does have good values and character and have that in common and can honor themselves.

I don't want to hang out with someone that doesn't respect themselves. Oh, what can I do? What can I do? Or someone that says sorry all the time. That's not attractive to me. I want somebody that feels good about themselves and has healthy boundaries and can say, Hey, Julie, that wasn't cool or how you said or when you didn't come through, that was upsetting. Can we talk about it? That's attractive to me because that's how I want to be. And that's how I am most of the time. That's who I bring it in my life. And I can look and say, My good friends, that's how they are. And that's why they're my good friends. You also want to improve your self-esteem if you're a people-pleaser. So as I was saying that people-pleasers understand that their self-worth is intrinsic, or they don't I understand that. I'm sorry. I wanted you to change to see that your self-worth is intrinsic and not dependent on other people's approval. It is nice. I'm not saying it's not nice when people approve of things you've done, but that's different than someone just saying, Thank you. I appreciate that. If you're like, Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. They're upset with me. I hear this all the time, too. They're upset with me. I don't think they like me. I think they're going to be upset. I don't know why I didn't hear back from them. Why didn't they text me back right away? That's all that. People, please Oh, my God, what's wrong? What's wrong? And the distortion of the all or nothing. They're either happy with me or they're not. If they don't respond to my text right away, something's wrong. You can just really get yourself upset, and then you It's just going to relapse back into that people-pleasing because it's just more comfortable for you, but it doesn't make change. So improving your self-esteem means improving your self-worth, and again, setting boundaries, and learning to maintain healthy boundaries is really key in reducing your people-pleasing behavior. Because if you follow your healthy boundaries, you won't be practicing people-pleasing behavior. Healthy boundaries is going to stop you from doing too much, doing things you don't want to do, saying no when you want to say no, and saying yes when you really want to say yes. And to help not relapsing, you want to also recognize the triggers to your people-pleasing behavior.

You want to identify situations that trigger that behavior in you and then develop strategies to cope with them. So I know that when my boss just runs in my office and says, Oh, my God, I need you to do this for me right away, right? And that could trigger that people-pleasing. Oh, I want to please my boss. Okay, okay, boss. Instead of pausing and saying, Okay, can you explain to me what it is you need me to do? What's the time frame? Yeah, I can get that done this morning, this afternoon, tomorrow, and talk it through, but pause and don't just react. I think that's so important when you get triggered, because what happens is we get triggered and our brain is like, People, please, people, please, people, please. And you just react, and then you're like, Damn, I did it again. And then especially with the boss that sees that you just react and just jump, when they say jump, you're like, How high? That they're going to, Oh, I can go to that person. They're going to do it, they're going to do it, they're going to do it. And maybe your boss is chaotic and they don't have healthy boundaries, and their boss is giving them stuff, and they're just reacting, and then they put that on you.

And it could just go on. And then you're exhausted and stressed and have headaches and all those things that happen because you're not having healthy boundaries. And you're trying to people please, but it's like what I call a bottomless pit, right? That what you do feels good, but it goes right out the bottom, right? It doesn't get filled up. It doesn't stick. People keep coming to you and taking advantage, and you keep acting in the same way thinking maybe it's They're going to change. Maybe they'll see I'm a good person. Maybe they'll like me. But they just suck everything out of you, but you're allowing that to happen. So you got to practice your CBTools ongoing, forever, right? I say CBTools forever. The more you practice them regularly, it's going to be more solid, and it's going to create new, healthier patterns of thinking and behavior. We have to practice. We have to practice. It's like working out. You don't just work out you get the muscles you want and then say, Okay, I've met my goal. I'm done. The muscles are going to go away. Creating that muscle memory that they say, practicing your CBT tools is going to become more regular for you, more automatic.

I still have negative moods, but I'm in my thoughts a lot quicker. Most times I don't have to say, Okay, let me stop and do a thought record. I realize I'm already thinking and say, Okay, what are my thoughts that I'm having? What are my health thoughts? What's going on? Am I behaving the way I I want to behave? Am I doing what I want to do or am I doing that because I wanted just to avoid conflict? Or this person's a headache and I don't want to deal with them. So I'm just going to give in and people please her. I don't feel good about that. That's not honoring me. I need to pause. I need to evaluate the situation. Why am I being triggered? I'm not willing to relapse for this other person. So I need to just take a step back, do my thought record, figure out how I want to communicate with this person, what boundaries do I need to set, and be consistent with. Because I'm telling you guys, I see it all the time. It's happened in my life. When I am consistent with boundaries, people do respect them.

Sometimes I have to with the same person over and over and over again, but they get it. When you're not consistent, they will take advantage. And when you're not consistent, you won't feel good. Okay? So again, people pleasing. I'm going to give you that definition again because it's really important to understand what that is. It's not just about being a good person and doing people favors and being kind, but it's when you have a strong desire to be liked and to avoid conflict at all costs. That's a people pleasing behavior. And that's the first thing to identify. And then we can go through all of the things I talked about today to make changes, and that behavior can change. Now, if you've done this your whole life, just like I say in core beliefs, your negative core beliefs, you can change them. It It doesn't mean you're never going to be triggered. I want to just give in. I want to avoid that conflict. I want that person to like me. No, that's my old stuff. What's my new core beliefs? I am worthy. I am likable. I am lovable. I can just be me and everything will be okay.

So I hope this was helpful. I think there's a little bit of it we can all probably relate to, or we might have people-pleasers in our lives. And when you're a healthy person, someone is a people pleaser, it's annoying, to be honest, because you see what they're doing and they're not being authentic with you and you want them to be. So you can even share this with others that you think are people pleasers if they don't see it themselves. And I think that could be really helpful.

So as always, you can find me on my website at mycognitivebehaviouraltherapy.com. You can find all my podcasts and lots of good information.

You can follow me on Facebook at Dr. Julie Osborn.

Instagram is MyCBTPodcast.

I have some really fun merchandise on my website that helps you on your journey, that has lots of T-shirts and different things that have my mantra on it, which is what I will leave you with, make decisions based on what is best for you, not how you feel.