Brian D. Smith explores the disease to please, a pattern where people seek approval at the cost of their own needs, leading to burnout and resentment. He shares a client story of an over-extended business owner and offers concrete steps: identify a trusted person, communicate boundaries, set limits, and use self-praise as reward.
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Hi there, welcome to Grief to Growth Podcast. Your host is Brian D Smith, spiritual seeker, bestselling author, grief survivor, and life coach. Brian believes that the worst tragedies of life provide the greatest opportunity for growth. Brian says he was planted, not buried, and he is here to help you grow where you've been planted by the difficulties in life. In each episode, Brian and his guests will share what has helped them to survive and thrive. It is his sincere hope this episode helps you today.
Hey there, everyone. Um, thought I'd give you a little bonus today, if you want to call it that. Someone asked a question in the group, um, I think it was yesterday, about how do we deal with the disease to please, which I think is pretty common among a lot of us, especially as more empathetic types. And frankly, it's more common probably among women than men. And I don't think that's a gender thing. I think it's a socialization thing. So please don't take offense to that generalization. But anyway, someone asked about this disease to please. What is it? Why do we have it? What do we do about it? Well, with the disease to please, first of all, let's talk about where it comes from. It's a natural evolutionary thing to be social creatures. That's— human beings actually depend on society to survive. So we actually socialize each other by rewarding, rewarding what we consider good behavior or beneficial behavior to the group, and by punishing behavior that's not good for the group. And as social beings, we absorb this. So we want to please others. That's a natural part of evolution. You can say it's God-given, you can say it comes from evolution or biology, but we can understand where it comes from. And it's actually a healthy thing to want to please other people. But like a lot of other things, a lot of other biological urges that we have, if it gets out of control, it could become harmful. And it becomes harmful when people please others at the detriment of themselves, where we start to not take our own, uh, needs and wants and interests into consideration. And we want to please other people over that. So that comes from more getting your self-esteem from other people, and a lack of self-esteem in yourself. And what we do is we actually, a lot of times, we'll work for praise. We want other people to think good things about us, we want other people to say good things about us. So we'll do things to get that feedback. And ironically, what happens, a lot of pleasers, is we can become resentful when people don't give us that feedback, when people don't praise us. So we actually are setting ourselves up into a very negative cycle, because other— actually, people start to take advantage of us and will actually not value what we actually— what we do for them. And I was working with a client. This had happened to her. Everybody around her just depended on her to do everything. She was— she owned her own business. She had a husband that depended on her. She had grown children that she was still supporting and paying for things for them. And hardly anybody ever said thank you. People did not acknowledge her. She was totally burned out. And she came to me and she's like, I can't do this anymore. And she was actually resentful to these people. And the thing is, we have to do at that point, we have to break the cycle. And what people— what happens, people get very uncomfortable with us breaking the cycle, because they put us in this box. And they say, oh, you're a pleaser, you're going to do everything I want you to do. And they just kind of accept that. So what I did with her is I said, why don't you find one person in your life that you can actually break the cycle with someone that that you trust and tell them that you want them to come over for lunch because her kids are always coming over for lunch and stuff. So tell them you want to come over for lunch, or you want to take them to lunch, and explain to them what you're going through and how you feel and how you're doing all this stuff. And you're going to have to, you're going to have to stop doing it. And just, you know, give— that'll give you permission to kind of break the cycle yourself. We have to set some boundaries at some point. And when I, when, you know, I'm a pleaser myself, to be honest with you, and, um, to be frank with you, A lot of times people will call me for help. And I'll drop everything to help them. I, if I'm, if I'm done working for the day, I'll go back into my office. If it's a Saturday, and I'm watching football, I'll put the game on pause. And I'll come into my office, and I'll do whatever they want me to do right at that moment, because I want to please people. And I've actually been breaking the cycle lately. It's like, you know, if I'm done for the end of the day, and it's not an emergency, and it can wait till tomorrow, then I will do that. I'll just let it wait till tomorrow. And for most people, it'd be like, that's not that big of a deal. But for me, it kind of is. And what I've done is I kind of set up a reward system for myself. So, you know, instead of me getting praise from the other person about how, you know, I dropped everything and did stuff for them, which they probably wouldn't appreciate anyway. What I've done is I start praising myself. And I'll say, you know, you did the right thing for yourself. That was self-care for me. And I give myself a pat on the back for setting that boundary. So this is a matter of balance, right? We still want to be sociable, we want to be helpful, we want to be, we want to be seen as that, and we want to play our part in society and help people out. Nothing wrong with that. But if you feel like it's coming at your detriment, then set that boundary and say, I'm going to take a little bit of a break here, I'm not going to do so much to please other people. And when you do that, reward yourself, give yourself a pat on the back. And that'll help you break that cycle. So I hope that helps and have a great day. Hi there, I'm really excited to tell you about my latest ebook. 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