In this episode of Aaron’s Kitchen, Aaron Doughty frames people‑pleasing as a “recipe” that mixes childhood trauma, a core belief of unworthiness, and a compulsive need for external validation. He explains how early emotional abandonment creates a belief that one is not worthy, leading to a habit of seeking approval from others, which becomes an addictive drug. Doughty illustrates this with his own experience of chasing YouTube views for validation. The core cure he proposes is inner‑child work: meditations that reconnect with the wounded child, give it the love and validation it missed, and release stored emotions. He also teaches a candle‑flame visualization that helps distinguish one’s own energy from others, fostering safe boundaries. Practical steps include asking oneself what truly excites them, learning to say no, and adopting a mantra—“that’s your stuff, not mine.” He differentiates people‑pleasers from narcissists, noting that people‑pleasers often attract narcissists because of their self‑abandonment. By filling their own “cup” first, setting boundaries, and stopping the external‑validation loop, individuals can become whole, worthy, and free from the need to please.
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Welcome back to another episode on Aaron's Kitchen. Today we're going to be in the high vibrational vortex of Sedona, Arizona, and I'm going to be cooking for you and showing you the ingredients that go into what we call a people pleaser. A people pleaser is somebody that's going to please you or please somebody else at the expense of their own values and at the expense of themselves. So very common. This is what happened. Now, when we're talking about this, I'm on allrecipes.com right now looking this up. It says that the vibration of approval seeking and somebody becoming a people pleaser needs one part seeking of validation. So this is very interesting. Now, the thing that I think is so interesting about this is that when we want validation from other people, one thing we're willing to do is we're willing to do anything we can to get it. So in order for us to have this though, we need some type of childhood trauma. Without this childhood trauma, we really wouldn't be seeking something that is outside of ourselves so much. So a lot of times this is what happens. Now I'm just reading the recipe book here, and what it says is that in order for us to have some type of validation-seeking behavior, we need to not feel internally validated ourselves. So what, we do is we have this that stems from some childhood trauma. So let's say we have some bitter childhood trauma. Let's say what happens is we have our parents and maybe one of them doesn't really approve of us. Maybe we are afraid that one of our parents is going to abandon us. And if they're gonna abandon us, then we decide that we have to be a certain way or we have to not be a certain way in order to not be abandoned, to not lose their love. Now, even if it wasn't a physical abandonment, this is the crazy thing. It could have been emotional. It could be some type of a, one of your parents is emotionally not there. You're wondering where the hell did they go? And what happens is you're like, well, maybe, just maybe if I am a little bit different, then I can gain their love and approval. Then they're gonna love me more. They won't leave me. That is why one of the most important ingredients of that of a people pleaser is a feeling of not worthiness. So let's say we just put a little bit of not worthiness in here. Now this is a little bit ironic because I actually really like lemon water and lemon water is delicious, but it's bitter. I don't know. This is what allrecipes.com says. Now there is a, Another aspect of being a people pleaser is very important to understand, and what it has to do with is realizing that at the expense of yourself, your own values, how you feel about yourself, you're willing to give that up in exchange for validation, for approval, and for a feeling of worthiness. The problem is this. What happens is when we have this perspective that that happiness or that seeking or that validation is outside of ourselves, we're going to seek it. And when we seek it, it then becomes a drug. You guys wanna know a good example of this? My YouTube channel. When I first started on YouTube, I was making videos every single day. I was getting a lot of, honestly, I was getting a lot of like validation from other people paying attention to my videos. What would happen is, people would watch my videos and I would start to feel like, oh, I'm really doing something great in the world. I'm helping people wake up to more of who they are. And part of me was like, oh, a lot of people are paying attention. And back in the day when I went through my awakening, one thing that happened is a lot of people didn't understand what I was going through. So now that I'm putting out content and people are listening and people are finding value in it, I started to feel worthy. So I started to associate my ability to make videos and to get people to pay attention to them with my sense of validation. So in a way, I was people-seeking all of you. But here is the thing that I've had to learn. I've had to learn to draw my source of validation not from the outside. So the key to realizing this whole people pleaser thing is that the reason we're a people pleaser is because at a certain time in our past, what happened is something happened and we decided we're not worthy. So maybe if I can be a little bit different, then I will get that worthiness. Now, this also is related to the seeking of significance, the seeking of that, of approval and validation. Many times you may have parents growing up that didn't validate you, that didn't make you feel comfortable, confident, or you then were seeking it on the outside and you thought, well, there's something wrong with me, which is a core belief. Think about that too. There's a core belief that says I'm not worthy. Worthy, the word worth has to do with value. I don't have value. There's something wrong with me. There's really a belief that it says there's something wrong with me. And when there's something that's wrong with me, what hap— that's when that's the belief. We then try to mitigate and we try to be differently so that people will accept us, love us, and approve of us. Now, then that remains on autopilot until we begin to question that initial belief that we had, that there's something wrong with me, and that I'm willing to give up and exchange my values. I'm willing to give up my own authenticity in exchange for that validation, which becomes a drug. There are a lot of people that will look on Instagram or on YouTube for likes, and when they get the likes, it literally becomes a drug. And many of us are addicted to the drugs of attention, appreciation, and approval. And unless we become aware of this drug and that we're trying to literally, we're trying to get something. Imagine you drink this drug. Imagine that this is the approval and validation. And then you become addicted to this. You become addicted to the lemon water, which is delicious. But imagine that then you're trying to draw that source from outside of you. Now, what is the cure to people pleasing? What is the cure to this process? Well, one of the most powerful things you could do is inner child work, which means you go into yourself and you do meditation and you heal your own inner child, the inner child part of you that may have felt emotionally abandoned when you were a kid, the inner child part of you that feels like there's something wrong with you, that maybe wasn't approved of, that maybe didn't get that validation. And what you do is you then do a meditation and you feel and you connect to that inner child. What happens is when you connect to that inner child, you begin to, you begin to heal. You begin to feel a lot of emotion that may have been stored and not like felt back in the past. So I have a meditation for this. If you guys haven't seen it yet, if you go to aarondoughty.com/child, S-C-H-I-L-D, 'cause it's a child meditation, or click the link below. It's a free meditation. We energetically go to Kauai, Hawaii. And what we do is we connect to our own inner child and we give our inner child what we need, whether it's to be seen, heard, validated, loved, listened to, and it's a very powerful meditation. It's a meditation that changed my life and I literally have overcome a lot of things in my life from doing inner child type work and healing my own inner child because a lot of our stuff in this life, it stems from childhood. So when we cure and when we heal the childhood, we then aren't addicted to the approval, the validation, and that's something that, um, that really begins to change a lot. The other aspect of this that I really want to talk about is that when we are people pleasers or when there is the making of a people pleaser, what we do is we are giving up ourself for other people. So the key to this is actually going back to the self. Ask yourself the question, what the hell do I want to do? Who the hell am I? What am— what, what excites me? What do I really wanna do in this situation? People that are people pleasers have hard times saying no. They have hard times causing or having other people feel tension if they do something that somebody doesn't want them to do. Here's the reason. They've literally lost their understanding of what they want, what their self wants, and they've given it away in exchange for the validation, not knowing that actually the key is to do what the hell you wanna do. You guys wanna know the most powerful part of this whole video is this idea right here. You guys ready for it? Here it is. People pleasing comes from a fear of abandonment. The irony is that if you feel this fear of abandonment, which may come from some type of situation growing up, what you have done is you have abandoned yourself. At the expense of giving away yourself in exchange for validation, for approval, for appreciation. And what that causes is a lot of pain, a lot of inauthenticity. You ever heard of a nice guy? A nice guy is somebody that's also a people pleaser. And what they're willing to do is to give up themselves in exchange for that validation too. And they're willing, and it's very manipulative in a way, A lot of people pleasing is manipulative. It's saying, if I give you this, if I'm nice to you, if I please you, then you're gonna give me that validation. So the key to this is actually becoming not a narcissist, but going within yourself to ask, you're not gonna become a narcissist if you're a people pleaser. A narcissist is somebody that is so much themselves, like so much taking and putting people in their own frame that it's like unhealthy. And that's why a lot of people pleasers attract narcissists. But the key to this whole process, you guys wanna know what it is? It's becoming and doing what the hell you wanna do and not being afraid of other people feel tension 'cause it's not your stuff. Here's a mantra for all people pleasers. Oh, that's your stuff, not mine. That's your stuff, not mine. Meditation that I've been doing, if you guys want me to share the meditation in a different video, like this video below, let me know, high vibrational, like it, just boop, like that. You just push that little like button, you go boop, it's high vibrational, boop, raises your vibe. And I might make that meditation, but there's a meditation I've been doing where basically what I do is I stare at a candle flame and I feel the separation between me and the candle flame. And as I do, I feel safe in my own body. And then I'm able to delineate and see what is mine versus what is someone else's. This has been key for really healing in a very powerful way. So if you wanna heal, one of the things I recommend you do is a meditation where you stare at a candle flame and you actually feel the separation between you and the flame, between you and the room, you and wherever you are. When you start to feel the separation, you start to feel safe in your own body, you can then say, what the hell do I wanna do? You can give yourself the validation you're seeking. You can stop abandoning yourself. When you stop abandoning yourself, guess what's gonna happen? You're not gonna be a people pleaser. You're gonna be okay if you make other people feel tension. If you say no to doing something, you start to draw boundaries that you would normally feel guilty setting, you're not gonna feel that because you're gonna realize that I have to fill up my own cup. I have to fill up my own cup before I can draw or give other people from my cup to please them. But this is the thing, now you're not giving to get, you're not giving pleasing in order to get validation. You see what I mean? You fill up your own mop and cup. That's what you end up doing. And when you do that, guess what happens? You're not approval seeking. You feel 100% worthy, whole and complete. You're in your own frame and you're not abandoning yourself at the expense of authenticity, at the expense of significance. You know, you're not giving up that. So here's the thing. If you want more videos on Aaron's High Vibrational Vortex Kitchen, learning the vibration of these different things, like this video below and I shall do more. With that being said, I hope you guys like this video and that meditation is below, aarondoughty.com/child. Other than that, I'll see you guys in the next video. Peace, much love, and namaste.
