The Therapy Edit - On people-pleasing less and living more

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

If you exist at the bottom of the priority list, and find that 'yes' rolls off the tongue a little easily, this episode is for you!

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Therapy Edit. I did a coaching session the other day and this little phrase kind of popped out my mouth and it stayed with me. Do you ever do that? You just say things. They just come out of your mouth from somewhere inside the back of your mind and then you take notice and you think, oh, that's really interesting. I'm going to think about that further. Anyway, it was a little sentence that kind of surprised me because it doesn't sound like something I would say. So it was less giving

more living. I said how about doing less giving more living? And I think the reason it kind of jarred with me in one way is because historically I am a people pleaser. I call myself a people pleaser in recovery. My knee-jerk reaction with pretty much everything is to do what will make someone else happy. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with wanting to please people and wanting to give of yourself. But I think what my client in this coaching session and myself had in common was that in living where your first response is just to give, almost to give unquestioningly. Almost, you know, just the saying yes. The giving without question. The giving without boundaries, it's actually taken and robbed from us in ways that kind of stop us

living. And actually, I think that's what people pleasing is. It's the giving without the boundaries. So when I say less giving, more living, it's just about building that awareness of what are you giving? what is it costing you if your knee jet reaction is just to say yes and give of your resources what are those resources what else might you need them for i think over the last couple of years i've become so starkly aware of the cost of my resources in a in a fresh way in a way that i was never really that aware of them before i think because before i was a mum the cost of my resources, the cost of giving something I often didn't have to give, be it time or emotional energy, you know when you're just giving beyond what you have. It's really hard to give what you

haven't got. It costs a lot to give what you haven't got. I think when I gave without boundaries pre-kids, it was mainly me that paid the price. It was me that probably had less energy to fight there's anxious thoughts or just found socialising hard because I was just so burnt out or me that I don't know found it hard to rest sometimes because I didn't have enough energy to wrestle with that guilt that might have come and to challenge that identity of I'm someone that does does does does does does it's really hard to challenge habit when you haven't got any energy we need energy for all of these things so before I had kids I think it was mainly me that paid the price of the giving without boundaries. It was me that was just burnt out. I wasn't, you know,

I wasn't really overly snappy with anyone or irritable. It was normally just me that paid the price. I might have felt a bit low, a bit empty, a bit tearful, perhaps. Whereas I've realised since I've had kids, especially having been confined with them, such a close proximity for the past two years, considering everything we've been through and how home-based we've been, I've realized quite how important and expensive my energy is. Wouldn't it be funny? If our energy and our resources actually had a financial cost attached, I think we'd be so much more wary of how and where we spent it. But over the last couple of years, I've recognised that if I'm giving without boundaries, if I'm giving in other areas of my life,

if I'm filling up my diary, if I'm saying all these yeses, often who I'm saying no to as a result is myself, it is my family, I'm often more burnt out and resentful because I've given myself away. Imagine having a massive, amazing chocolate cake. And it's so good.

You want to give it, you know, everyone wants a slice. You hand out those slices and then you look down at your plate. and all you've got left for yourself is crumbs. I've done that so often, where I've given and given and given, that when I've actually fancied some of myself for myself, I've needed off myself for something for me to enjoy

or something to me to benefit from or some energy for a curveball that comes into my life, I find that I've just got crumbs left. And you can't do a lot with crumbs, they're not going to fill me up. And I think this is the question really for those of us who spend a lot of our energy, filling other people up, when actually we deserve to feel full and satiated too. So what does that mean for you? The more giving, no, the less giving more living.

It's not about suddenly starting to say no to everyone. It's not about suddenly becoming a mean person. I know that us people pleases. often fear that actually what would it be like to go in the opposite direction, would everyone think we were mean? Now I love this phrase of those who will struggle with you putting boundaries in healthy places are often those who just benefited from you not having any. And actually those people in your life and those places that you give your energy to,

if you were just to adjust or amend or just be a little bit more intentional, actually those people that you care about in your life, be benefiting anyway because they get more of you. Less of you in your burnt out state. They get more of you because you've eaten more than crumbs. So less giving more living to me just means being a bit more aware and intentional, maybe adopting a pause. So as our social lives are picked up again and it's so easy just to say yes to everything

and then we find our diaries full and our energy levels low and then those moments you do get they're less about enjoyment and more about just collapsing into a heap so I encourage people and I try and adopt this pause technique so when someone asks the view of anything you don't have to give them a response straight away

often that very first response that will rise up in us tends to be the one that comes out of habit and maybe it even comes out of self-preservation and fear. You know, if I say no, what will they think of me? If I say no, will it damage this relationship? So often that first response that we have, that is the more knee-jerky one and that is the one that we want to just try and hold back for a moment to give ourselves time to think. So what kind of pausing technique can we use? I often say, oh, let me check my diary. Now I may know that that night is actually free, but what it does, it gives me an opportunity to, you

to think, how am I right now? Have I got it in me to do this and offer this authentically? Or I'm going to offer it resentfully because they don't know how much it's actually costing me behind the scenes. Let me check my diary and I'll get back to you. Is an opportunity just to put a little bit of space between that knee jerk? Yeah, I'll do it no words, yeah, absolutely reaction. And consider your needs and consider the wider picture of your reasons.

sources because when we give out of an authentic place, it puts that little space between that knee-jurkey reaction which is often based in the people-pleasing and the fear and the actual authentic reaction that takes into account what we can do and what we have got to give in a really healthy way and it enables us to make an intentional decision that is healthier for us, that is more honest for them because it's going to be less tainted. with resentment and exhaustion. And it's so much nicer, isn't it, to give what we're willing and able to give?

And yes, of course, sometimes giving is sacrificial. Sometimes we do give of ourselves as something that actually is costing a bit because we've chosen to, but that's the difference, is the choice. Because when we're people-pleasing, we just don't feel like we have that choice because we're trying to protect something.

We're trying to protect a relationship, but we don't believe perhaps can withhold a healthy boundary. So I think as I say, less giving, more living. What might that mean for you? What boundaries might you start to want to put into place just to test the water with the people that you know well and the people that you feel safe with? And what benefit might it be to you at the moment

if you had more of yourself left over than the crumbs, what would you do with that? What would you do with that extra bit of energy and the extra bit of resources? How might you reinvest that into yourself? So there we go, one little phrase that popped out of my mouth in that coaching session, less giving, more living. Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Therapy Edit.

if you enjoyed it please do share subscribe and review you can find more from me on instagram an am arthur you might like to check out my two books called mind over mother and know your worth i'm also the founder of the mother mind way a platform full of guides resources and a community with the sole focus on supporting mother's mental and emotional well-being it's been lovely chatting with you speak soon Thank you.