Why you’re a People Pleaser & how it might not be your fault

In this episode, Kate & Eric dive into understanding and managing people-pleasing tendencies in relationships.

Topics:
➡️ The origins and emotional roots of people-pleasing, including societal influences.
➡️ Understanding and managing the fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and fix responses.
➡️ The importance of setting boundaries and holding space for genuine connection.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Eric MacDougall
So today, we're jumping into this kind of whole idea around people pleasing tendencies and it's not to say like people pleasing is bad. But what we want to talk about today is really understanding where it comes from. And we actually want to tie it, that it's actually sometimes an emotional response. And this is really important knowledge. Because sometimes we don't want society right now, people are crapping on men for being people pleasers, right? And it's like, oh, I mentioned men over backwards and what you're willing to manage for you, and you're not masculine. And anyways, the whole nice guy movement, I get this, I get this, right. And yes, I think women want to be in relationship with men who have boundaries, who have clarity, who have strength, we're not just like bending over backwards, just giving you whatever answer they think you want. Like, they want genuine connection with a separate human being who's not just like a servant, feeding you, whatever you, you know, they think you want. And this is where we fall into these challenges, right, is that that creates, you know, that doesn't create genuine connection with another. If they're, they're just trying to people please you all the time.

Kate MacDougall
Absolutely. I agree with that. I think that a guy has most men, not all, but a lot of men have this tendency of, if I do everything she asks me to do, then I'll get XYZ or then she'll, you know, be happy. Yeah, she'll be happy. And and that is something that has been instilled in us for a long time. I mean, I can promise you that on your wedding day, or when somebody found out they were You were you were engaged, you had some old uncle come up to you and say Happy wife happy life. And as much as we laugh about, and we're like, Oh, I do believe some people still have that mentality to think like, if I do everything for my wife, if I just bend over backwards for her, she'll be happy. And then I'll be happy. And like, we won't have a problem. Yeah.

Eric MacDougall
And I get like the whole movement of like inclusion to then go to like happy spouse, happy house and whatever. But in the end, what we want to tap into here is understanding that your people pleasing tendencies are not always helpful. They do not lead to genuine long term intimacy. And also we want to help you understand kind of where they come from. And so the foundation of kind of what we talk about here is oftentimes when you think about responses to panic, right? So I'm sure you've heard this all the time, the fight flight or freeze response, right? These are typically the three responses that we talked about. And so it's like when you feel panicked when you feel backed into a corner, or when you have kind of your default. Some people do the fight, they get loud, they get big, they get intense. They go in, some people do the flight, which is the piece they run, disappear. Yeah, they avoid they do everything they can not to be close to it. And then some people freeze up, which is essentially they don't know what to do. So they don't run in, they don't run out. They just kind of freeze, right? Yeah, they can't make a decision. Exactly. Because there's so there's so debilitated by fear. Now, there are two of the responses and we're gonna talk about, you know, we're going to kind of marry them together because they come from the same place. And the most common one now has been what they call fun, right? But there's also fix which is very close. And I don't want to say that it, you know, essentially goes hand in hand with different sexes. I think men can fix or fawn and women can fix or fun, right. But it's really important understand that this is a response to panic. So oftentimes when men, and this is like the whole thing we talked about with men and like I stopped fixing stuff fixing, fixing, yes, you should flex your muscle and not try to jump in and solve every problem in your life, not every problem needs to be solved. So you need to take responsibility of that, right, your tolerance for allowing other people to be themselves to express suffering pain, without the need to fix anything. So that has to do with you dealing with your own inner work and being able to hold space for another without freaking out. So we're talking about here, this idea of, from a place of panic from a place of I don't really know what to do, your emotional system takes over. And you either go into fix it mode, or fawning mode. And these are two ways that we people, please the fix and mode is, I'm feeling so panicked. What do I need to do here? How do I do it, I'm going to do all kinds of crazy stuff, to try to essentially move through the situation. And so when you think about it, it's a very active, like arrow pointed way, right? I see this in you sometimes when we talk, and I'm trying to express myself. And immediately as I'm espresso, I really, you know, today what happened was really tough. You know, it made me feel so and so and so. And your response in that moment, because you want to move away from this discomfort, right of Eric, being vulnerable to talking about her feelings of maybe expressing how something you did cause me pain. You're like, Well, why don't we just do what I should have done then? So let's just do that right now. Yeah.

Kate MacDougall
Or even in a situation trying to fix the way you feel in the moment. Before you even finish a sentence, I often find myself interrupting you and saying, Oh, don't feel that way. You don't have to feel that way. You know, oh, I, I think I did it on our last podcast. You said Oh, I feel like I'm not not such a good dad. I feel like a bad dad right now. And right away. It was like, Well, you're not you're not about Dad, do you don't feel that way? You're really good dad. Yeah. And I didn't say it in those exact words. But that was the intention behind it. Like don't feel that way. I don't want you to be to think that. And what happens is if you don't let a person sit in their emotional state, their emotional experience experience. As soon as you go in, and I do with the best intention, and I'm sure a lot of people when they're fixing is the best intention. It might not even be cognitive. It just happens. Yeah, it just happens. It's an automatic response. And oftentimes, it's a response that your own parents gave you. You know, like when I hurt myself, they're there. You're okay. Yeah. And that's not necessarily a good thing to say to a child who hurts himself. Yeah.

Eric MacDougall
Let's frame this. I just wanted to fingers let's frame this is really important. If you grew up in a home where being sad was unacceptable. being mad was unacceptable. Like every time you're sad, you like you stop crying, you Buck up, and not

Kate MacDougall
even in that way. It's just like, okay, okay, that's enough crying now. Like, it's okay to be sad. But that's enough. Like, you start to learn that my emotions, make other people uncomfortable, my emotions should be kept inside. And I shouldn't talk about these because other people can't handle my emotions. I am too much. I am overwhelming. I am a burden. I am this and that. And so you start making these ideas of yourself. So your parents, your spouse, yourself, me myself when I do it. I'm not trying to tell Eric like, you know, shut up. But in all honesty, when he's like, Oh, I feel like a bad dad. I feel like I'm not really showing up whatever, whatever. It makes me uncomfortable to see him hard on himself and sad. So I just want to squash that feeling like no, don't feel that way. Or you're wrong. You're Not You shouldn't feel that way. But on the contrary, he's feeling it, whether I want him to or not, he's going to feel that feeling just like that kid who fell off his bike and hurt his knee is going to feel that scratch for a couple days. Yeah. And

Eric MacDougall
it's, it's, it is very invalidating for a partner. And again, I don't want to like try to shame or guilt the person who's trying to help somebody feel better. That's not the intention here. It's acknowledging that that is like a response based on their own discomfort. When I see you suffer as my wife who I love, and when I see my kids suffer, it's extremely hard for me to create space for that suffering to be like, Oh man, like kids just in a funk. But I want to do everything to serve. We're here to fix I'm here to feel better. Yeah. And it's hard

Kate MacDougall
because you also don't want to seem like the asshole who's like, all right. Yeah. And then I'm like crying and crying and crying. You're and you're like, they're they're like, where's the middle? Yeah. So what is the middle

Eric MacDougall
and that's kind of the practice right is you have to empathize, hold space connect, allow that to happen. But also be there to offer help. Right? So there's a simple sentence like, How can I help is better than jumping in and fixing? Yeah, right. I asked today it happened with our son where he was losing his mind. He was talking about all the things that went bad previously in the day, and then, you know, the sink came in, he talked about all the stuff that's going on his life. And so I said, Hey, Francis, I see you're really struggling, how can we help you right now. And he just stopped. He didn't know what to say. And then he said, I just need some love right now. Right? And so I got down, I hugged him, we went to a quiet space, we sat together. And so as you can see, that is much more helpful than me jumping in and trying to explain to him like, Hey, don't be so look at your great life. Look at everything amazing is because I'm experiencing this. Good. Yeah. And so not to go too deep on this one, because I do want to talk with the next one. But this is the fix response. So when you think about it, you know, some of us go fight flight freeze. If you feel like you're none of those, you might be the fixed response, which is like, I'm going to dive in, I'm going to try to remove all the pain here by taking some sort of action. Okay. Oftentimes, what's happening is you want somebody to feel a certain way, because it regulates you. Yeah, we call that borrowed, functioning, right. And so if I can get Kate to feel happy all the time, I feel happier. But when Kate does not feel good, if Kate was like, you know, really struggling for weeks on end, that would drain me, and therefore I need her to feel good. And if I see long periods of time, where she's not feeling good, I dysregulate. And instead of learning to regulate myself, and figuring out how to help her, I try to create systems where I can get her to feel better. Yeah,

Kate MacDougall
and sometimes a lot of people will say, Oh, I do the freeze response, I leave, you know, I want to give them the space to to deal with their emotions and things like that, when I when I get uncomfortable, I leave situations that make me uncomfortable, that is fixing. And it also kind of falls into fawning, which we're going to start talking about in a sec. But be very wary of how you're responding to something that makes you feel uncomfortable that makes you start panicking that makes those red light red sirens go off like, ooh, something's wrong. There's danger coming up, like somebody might yell or somebody might get mad at you like, so if you're running away, because you think it's going to help another person that's fixing and possibly falling into funding. Yeah,

Eric MacDougall
and so when you think about funding, so fixing is like, going all in trying to like kind of move through it as quickly as you can. fawning is about kind of sacrificing yourself the rendering at the altar, right? You're essentially what you're trying to do in that situation. And this is like the chameleon effect, right? You see a lot of people be chameleons in relationships. That's because they probably have a lot of this fawning reflex, which is, whenever your partner gets mad or angry, oftentimes, this is something you learned in childhood, right? If your partner gets mad, or big, or maximizes, the idea here is you're almost going to be like a deer to the bear. You're like, oh, here, I'll be whatever you want me to be. You want me to be the person who created all the wrong and it's horrible, and oh, you're gaslighting me. You're right, I'm a horrible way from the worst. But you're what you're gonna do is essentially, kind of sacrifice yourself, just yourself in the victim mode. Yeah, whatever you think your partner needs in that moment, you're going to give to them to try to get them to calm down, right. And so in this case, it's not about like, actively trying to engage, it's actually instead about losing yourself and kind of molding yourself to be whatever your partner needs you to be in that moment to regulate themselves. So the example I'll give is, you know, if you have a partner, who's very critical of you, who comes in, and maybe you know, you took out the trash, or the trash is there the next day, and you're supposed to get out, and your partner comes, you haven't taken out the trash, yet, you're such a useless pig, you know, bla, bla, bla, and starts going nuts. You know, this is when aggressive spouse surgeries happen. What I'm saying is, if they're critical like that, sometimes, you know, instead of being like, Hey, I'm actually going to take it out later, you know, the garbage will be out in time for pickup tomorrow, I promise and I make a commitment to that. Also, don't call me a pig, right? That would be a really great response as well. And so but in that moment, what you might do instead of finding is like, you're right, like, you know, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't take the garbage out. I don't do anything. Yeah, you're lazy. And you're re like, I have been lazy. Yeah, you're right. Like, um, and you're essentially giving them whatever you think they want. So you're kind of like feeding it to them thinking that it's going to calm them down. You're like, oh, yeah, I You are a lazy pig. You know, you are lazy. You agree with me too great. I'm gonna go away now and chill out.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah, and something that's not as obvious but something that came up in our relationship and still sneaks in once in a while, but is because you're such a maximizer. Right? In our relationship. You're the one who expresses himself and speaks loudly and yeah, like the fight or flight response. You're like, rah, I'm angry. I'm gonna get big. And I as the fawn would allow you to continue talking even though I was shut down. Yeah. So I would sit there and listen to you. And you would go on and on and on about, oh, and this happened. And this happened. And I'm so angry about this. And now this and now this, and let me give you 10 different examples of the exact same thing I'm talking about. And I would just sit there. And even though I'm not necessarily saying anything, I am still sitting there condoning the fact that you are continuing to talk about the same thing over and over and over. And that's not healthy for our relationship, we learned that that was very detrimental to our relationship. And we learned that in order to, you know, have more healthy discussions, it was important for me to let you know, and kind for me to let you know, like, Eric, I'm done listening to you. I don't have any bandwidth left for this for this conversation. So I'm going to step away now.

Eric MacDougall
Yeah. And I think it's really important to say that, from my perspective, like, that's actually helpful for both of us. Because one thing is important recognize in the moment, that takes a lot of courage on your part. That's scary, right to say, like, essentially put up a boundary. And a lot of us were boundary lists, because putting up a boundary is scary, right? In that moment, saying like, Eric, I know, you're talking a lot. I'm actually done listening. So I'm just gonna walk away. I'm going to come back in 10 minutes. If you want to wrap this up after that. That'd be great. Okay, so I'll see in 10 minutes. That's incredibly scary. I'm saying analogous nothing. But that's scary for some people,

Kate MacDougall
right? Especially if you're finding as a trauma response. Yes.

Eric MacDougall
100%. And so, as you can see, in that situation, what's happening, and you could tell me, but what's most, so sorry, I just want to go back here that it's unhealthy for you to continue to find, because what it leads me in the end is I go through this, and then I feel good for in the moment. And I'm like, Yeah, I got my point across. And then I realized, like, I just spent 30 minutes, just essentially talking to ya. Yeah, like, I hate that about myself. Yeah. And so whether or not I'm, you know, saying that out loud to people and saying that to you, like, I'm sorry, what I did, or it's just internalizing is this deep shame that I'm not talking about. It's not healthy. Yeah. And so in those moments, you know, we've talked about this where, like, I actually need you to stop me, because, like, this doesn't end well for me, where I'm like on my soapbox, and I feel great. And I told you, I told you how it is. And now you're like, huh, 100%? Eric, I never leave. That'd be like, ya know, I'm like this. That felt horrible, right. And so I really want to people to understand that their fawning response is not helpful. But in that moment, I assume what's happening for you is almost like, if I sit here and continue to give Eric what he wants, he'll eventually exhaust himself. Yeah. And that's why I use the bear, right? Because it's almost like, if you're a bear, and what's happening is the phone is like, if I just keep feeding the bear, eventually, he'll be satiated. Eventually, he's just gonna say, Oh, I've eaten enough and he'll just go away.

Kate MacDougall
And then he won't eat me. Yeah.

Eric MacDougall
And they will go back to quiet. Yeah. And this. This is the fawning response. So if you had a parent all your life that like yelled at us and tense, eventually, Yeah, Dad. Yeah, you're right, dad. You're right, dad. You're right. And he's like, yeah, yeah, exactly. Get out of my face. Yeah, Dad, I'm so sorry. Then you walk away. Then you create this response where fawning giving people they want all the time to appease them makes sense to you.

Kate MacDougall
Right? So oftentimes, you know, I'm like, we've heard a lot of people say, how, you know, well, I've, I've been kind I've, I've heard you say this too, I give her space, I let her talk, I let her do her thing. I try to create a create a safe environment. But these responses, so whether you're fixing fawning, fighting, flighting, whatever, they're automatic responses, they're part of our system that we cannot control. It is something that our body does without us even thinking about. And the reason it's innate. And the reason it's inside of us is because something from our past something from our childhood, it can even be you know, past relationships, you know, as as young adults or teenagers or whatever, something created this in you to think this is what's going to be safe. This is what's going to bring you back to safety. Because our responsibility as humans is to keep ourselves safe. That is all we do. That is the only focus we have that is what our brain is designed to do. Everything Our brain does. Every single sense in our body is there to keep us safe. And so whenever your body feels a response, panic response feels like this, like uncomfortable feeling like woof like unsafe, I'm feeling unsafe, safety is fleeting. It will go into one of these responses automatically. There is no way for a person who funds to in the moment when they're about to start funding be like don't do this. That's it. takes a lot of practice, it takes a lot of professional help. And it takes a lot of time. It takes building safety with a specific person, and you might stop finding for one person, but you'll start finding for somebody else, it's, it's something that's so deeply ingrained in you, you have to create new neurological pathways and all of these things to, you know, recreate those those thoughts. And to, you know, try to respond differently to something that might not be that big of a situation, but you've made it huge. Yeah.

Eric MacDougall
And I love that because as we're kind of wrapping up, you know, the one thing that I often tell people when we're working together, and they feel like they're constantly in this fight or flight, this panic, is to really learn to slow things down. So, you know, connecting to your nervous system, breathing, slowing everything down, sometimes even like, not responding. And you know, so acknowledging and engaging but not responding right away, is important. Oftentimes, what you know, especially in the beginning, what helped us overcome a lot of our conflict dynamics, which were so unhealthy was that we're going to slow this down. So okay, well, I can see running a conflict, my panic is going up. Now everything slows. So we talk slower, we respond slower, we take breaks. Yeah, exactly. And so, and at first, this seems weird, right? Because maybe that's something your partner's gonna be like, Why aren't you answering how come, you know, maybe you have, like a shoot from the hip partner can, you know, talk really quickly. But in the end, you need to be able to take control of your side of the street. And that means that if you have to slow things down, slow things down, allow yourself to stay in your adult brain, right? Don't go into that reptilian brain, but allow things to slow down. So I totally agree with what you're saying, you can never totally get rid of the fight flight response. But you can slow yourself down so you don't fall into it as easy as quickly.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah, and you kind of build that tolerance to it. And we talked a lot about about the window of tolerance. And like, you can build the tolerance so that you don't fall into it as quickly. But I think it's very important that your spouse is also aware of this. So if this is something you find yourself doing, like, hey, like, when you talk, like I go into fun, and let me explain to you what that is, and what happens inside my body and what happens in my head. I just think that if I go into this, like pleasing mode, you're gonna, you're gonna eventually just like stop talking or like, it just, it's what makes me feel safe. And I think as a spouse, knowing your spouse, your your person's response to panic, it helps you understand them better. And it helps you be able to see like, Oh, she's going into fun mode. And you can help your spouse at that point, slow it down, you can start seeing the signs. Yes, in yourself, I think it's definitely work you need to do for yourself. But if you can start seeing it in your spouse, because some people aren't ready to work on it. Some people aren't, you know, you might have a spouse who's like, I'm in I go into fight mode all the time. And that's what I'm going to do and but if your fight, if your spouse is going into fight mode, and you've spoken to them about it, they're not open to working on it. It's okay for you to notice the response. And to just you then slowing it down. Hey, I can see you're getting angry. I'm going to take a few minutes step away. I understand this is going to be hard. I will come back. I promise you here. Look, I'll put an alarm on my phone. I will be back in 10 minutes. Let's take some time to calm down. Yeah, I think that as a spouse, you have as much responsibility to help your partner get out of it, as they do noticing it, especially if they're not at a place where they're ready or willing to work on it. Yeah, yeah. And

Eric MacDougall
another last use cheat code, right? Like, if you think about it, if you feel like your partner is really struggling, and you're able to slow it down, sometimes just keeping the spotlight on them and noticing them and labeling them, not labeling them labeling their emotions is going to be important. So even in that moment, if you feel like your partner is getting angry and stuff like that, it's not always like your response to say, hey, like, I'm going to take 10 minutes because I have a boundary. So that's just like, hey, like, I can see that you're angry. I just want to slow this down. So I can actually be deliberate in my responses. Because the way that I respond is important. And I really want to understand you as well. And so if it seems like I'm a little bit slower on the uptake during this conversation, just know that I'm very intentional and thinking about it, because I want to make sure that I understand you. Right, and then just that context, then allows your partner to be like, Oh, he's just taking his time to be more intentional. And so think about the small tips and tricks as you're going into this. But again, think about slowing down your panic response in those moments so you can understand what you fall into, and choose to stay in your adult brain as you continue you to go into these tough conflicts.