In this solo YouTube episode, Dr. Zoe Shaw addresses the hidden chaos that stems from people‑pleasing and offers a faith‑informed, psychology‑based framework for reclaiming personal territory. She opens with a relatable “win” (a kind stranger at Trader Joe’s) and a “fail” (falling behind on work), then explains that chaos is self‑generated when we fail to protect our internal “doors and windows.” Dr. Shaw defines three categories of boundaries—personal (self‑care first), relationship (expect reciprocity and voice concerns), and professional (control response times and communication expectations). She argues that boundaries are not about controlling others but about drawing lines for oneself, and that excessive “yeses” lead to resentment and loss of life purpose. Practical steps include setting expectations early, mentally saying “no” to requests, and becoming comfortable with disappointing others, illustrated through a real‑life example of navigating a homeschool group’s volunteer expectations. She promotes her upcoming self‑care book, encourages listeners to take small, incremental actions, and invites the audience to engage via weekly shows, text subscriptions, and social media. The episode blends conversational storytelling, motivational encouragement, and concrete boundary‑setting tactics aimed at women seeking stronger, healthier relationships with themselves and others.
Chapters
Are you feeling overcommitted? Are you irritable sometimes? Do you feel like you find yourself taking on too much or saying yes and then feeling overwhelmed, like there's no space for you in your own life? Tune in as I talk about removing chaos from your life when you're a people pleaser. Hi there, I'm Dr. Zoe. I'm glad you're here. This is the place for developing your strength as a woman and helping you navigate difficult relationships in your life, including that sometimes difficult relationship with yourself. Being a strong woman is not It's not about what other people can see, and it's not about how loud you are about it. It's a quiet knowing. This isn't therapy, but you may feel like you've been to therapy after one of my episodes. Here, we also explore the intersection of psychology and faith, all with the purpose of creating a new kind of strong. Welcome to Redefining Your Superwoman. Welcome. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe, and today's topic is removing chaos from your life when you're a people pleaser. But first up, my win and my fail. The win is that I was at Trader Joe's this weekend, as I go every weekend, with my kids, and my kids were shopping and I was kind of shopping, and a lady came up to me and she said, I've just been talking to your daughter and she is so amazing. She's gonna grow up and she's gonna do great things. And then she asked if she could buy her a gingerbread house, which was very sweet of her, and I let the lady buy her a gingerbread house. And it was a win because it just feels good to have other people that don't know you, don't know your kids, They— how amazing they are, which of course we all think our kids are amazing. And it's great to get a little peek into what other people think about your own kids. The funny thing is right after that, and many of you moms might relate, my first thought was, I need to get my kids out of Trader Joe's before they start fighting and they totally demolish this woman's amazing view of them. So I didn't leave that quickly, but maybe a little more quickly than I usually did. But that was my win. My fail is that I'm a little bit behind on my work, and this has become habitual, which means I'm realizing that there's something I need to let go, and I'm not too thrilled about trying to figure out what it is I need to let go, so I'm in that space right now. Hopefully that will turn into a win very soon. Stay tuned. Removing chaos from your life when you're a people pleaser. Here's the secret: And I'm gonna warn you, it might be a little bit hard to hear. The chaos is created by you, my friend. Not the other people, by you. The chaos is created because you're failing to protect your territory. The more you allow everyone to encroach on your day, the more they're gonna do it the next day and the next day. It's no one's job to know your limits but your own. And no one has the ability or the time to try to read your mind. People are gonna keep asking, and especially if you say yes. They'll continue asking. So it's your job to take care of yourself. And it doesn't really matter what the issue is. Basically, you have a door to your psyche, your emotions, your time, and your energy. If you leave it open, you're inviting chaos. You also have some windows too. And sometimes when you close the door, that chaos will find a window, right? Your job is to protect your territory and monitor what comes in. The best approach to this is to have a filtering screen, but in the beginning, you might not know how to filter, and you may need to keep those doors and windows closed shut. Eventually, you'll learn to manage the filters because you're going to see that setting boundaries eliminates your chaos. What are your personal boundaries? My personal boundaries say that I must take care of myself. Caring for myself is at the top of my priority list, and this might sound selfish, but I know that when I do this, I'm able to care for my family and my people even better. What are your relationship boundaries? My relationship boundaries say that I expect reciprocity. I used to say nothing if I was feeling like things weren't fair. I would suck it up, and then I'd feel drained and resentful, feeling like I was doing all the things in the relationship. Now I speak the difficult things, even if my husband gets angry, because I know that if I'm upset or I'm bothered or I'm irritated, guess what's going to happen? Saying nothing creates a bigger issue down the road. So this is one of my personal boundaries. I invite you to think about yours. What are your professional boundaries? My professional boundaries are that I have no deadlines or pressure on myself for responding to messages, emails, texts, DMs, voicemails, all of them. I realize, of course, that I can do this because I am my own boss, and not everyone can or should have that boundary. I also realized that in creating this boundary for myself, I'm going to upset some people, and I have. People might feel that it's unprofessional, irritating, or disrespectful to take forever to respond or not respond at all, and you might be thinking that right now. If I request a message from you and I don't respond, I feel it's disrespectful and all of those things. However, there are only so many hours in a day, and I cannot allow someone's unexpected message to keep me from my work or my family. So I do read them all, and I get back when I can. This is my boundary, and I'm not suggesting it as yours, and it may not be my boundary for all the seasons of my life either. But I'm just giving you an example of it and how it frees me to live my life and be productive. If you can't answer right now what your main boundaries are, then you don't have them. You may be thinking, well, isn't that just a rule? How are these boundaries? Well, boundaries are lines in the sand that you draw for yourself. They're not a form of controlling other people. They're not a rule that you have for anyone else. They're a line you draw for you. I will not cross the line into anxiety or stress attempting to answer all the questions people pose to me on all the different modes of contact. I'm not ever telling anyone what they can or can't do. I'm setting a boundary for myself that allows me to respond from my best self and in a way that doesn't overtax me. I am naturally a people pleaser, and I like that about myself. I like to help, and I like to be useful, and I like to feel needed, and I'm also very well aware of that and the flip side of the coin. It's part of what makes me good at what I do, but I have to remember at all times, chaos in life is created by too many yeses. Too many yeses create resentment and damage relationships. The more you allow everyone to pull you and determine what's important in your life, the less of your own Life you get to live. And don't you want to live your God-given life? My self-care book is coming out in February, February 2nd, and I'll let you know as soon as it's available for pre-order. But in it, I discuss how saying no and setting boundaries is the most positive thing you can do for yourself and your relationships. You'll have more energy to say yes to the right things for you if you invest in the word no. So how do we do this? Set people's expectations of you early, and sometimes maybe it's low expectations. When I joined a new homeschool group earlier this year, I told the director immediately, I will not be doing any outside volunteering. I really wanted to join this community, but I heard this community was really big on requiring a lot of service from its moms, so I told her up front to make sure that I could still fit in there because I was okay if I couldn't. I just needed to be I needed to be aligned with myself, and I needed her to be aligned with where I was. And she was fine with it. But guess what? On the very first day of class, I raised my hand when she was looking for a MAP mom whose duties only took place during the day when I was already there. This might sound like a contradiction, but it wasn't that I didn't want to help out— remember, I'm the people pleaser— it was that I knew I couldn't healthily invest any of my extra time to do so because I knew it would hurt me. And this job just happened to be within the timeframe that I was already there, and so it worked out. And despite telling her that I wasn't going to volunteer, I ended up finding a way to work it in without any resentment on my part. And guess what? I love being Map Mom. I think I shared that in one of my wins. So first, set people's expectations of you very early. Next, just say no automatically. Literally just say nope in your mind whenever anyone asks you anything. I'm going to go back to the setting expectations early thing because you might be thinking, well, I've already set really high expectations for myself and everybody wants all these things for me. And I'm telling you, you can go back and change that. You can talk to your people and say, listen, these are your new expectations that you should have for me. This is what I am going to do and this is what I'm not going to do. Now I know you might be worried about disappointing people, and let me help you with this. You will. You will disappoint people, and it's important to start to get really comfortable with the uncomfortableness of this so that eventually you can get comfortable with it. Let me tell you why. Saying yes to anything is always saying no to something else, and when you can't harness in your yeses because you're so worried about other people, then you end up disappointing the very people you say are the most important in your life. Elaine Fluker came on my show and she spoke about getting over I got it syndrome, and I loved what she said about learning to make The intentional choices about who you're going to disappoint. And those people and scenarios are going to change over time, but it shouldn't be about trying to make everyone else happy anymore. It's about making sure that you aren't disappointing someone who is your biggest priority. Now I know none of these steps are super easy, and that's okay. It's good to do hard things, and this was just a little bit of encouragement for you. Just start with one. No need to do a crazy huge upheaval and rehaul of your whole system. Just take the baby steps and commit to getting Getting the chaos out of your life. You've got this. Thank you for listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. New shows go up every Tuesday. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and text the word strong to 38470 to get my weekly encouragement. I look forward to connecting with you amazing women on social media throughout the week. Have a super week.
