How to stop saying “yes” when you mean “no”, with Natalie Lue

0:00Hello and welcome to Happy Place. I'm Fern Cotton and this is the show that helps you prioritize yourself. Today I'm chatting to Natalie Lu. We have these people-pleaser feelings. Anxiety, resentment, guilt, irritation, frustration, feeling low, helpless, powerless, overloaded, overwhelmed. Those feelings tell us that we said yes to something that for all intents and purposes is a good thing, but we've done it for the wrong reasons. I would say if you don't say yes authentically, you say it resentfully, fearfully or avoidantly. And that leads to more problems than if you just said no in the first place.

0:34So guys, welcome to my messy world today. I just want to remind you all that we're living through absolute mess always. And even when things look shiny and perfect on Instagram, they're bloody well not. I woke up this morning at half four because my daughter got in the bed with me. She was sucking her thumb really loudly in my ear and I couldn't get back to sleep. At five, I ended up getting out of bed because my brain was just racing. And I thought, I can't listen to this bullshit anymore. I'm going to get out. When I say bullshit, I mean the thoughts in my head, not my daughter next to me. I was just like, my head's being mad.

1:07Got up. Simon, one of my cats, had puked everywhere. Frank had a mouse. It was alive, running around, and he was sort of kicking it. So I had to grab a tea towel, grab the mouse, try and put it back out in the garden. I mean, it's absolute chaos. Then my son tells me he's got an exam this morning when he wakes up. he needs a clear pencil case, a protractor, an erasable pen, a pencil rubber and pencil sharpener, all of which apparently he doesn't own. Cut to me, texting my neighbours, begging people in the local area for a bloody protractor. Oh my God, I'm absolutely exhausted. But I know many of you will meet me there in that place of complete burnout from just the small little moments of life that wear us down.

1:51But look, we're in this together and we can do this. And today someone's going to help us. She's called Natalie and she's a brilliant writer, speaker, artist and founder of one of the longest running self-help blogs in the world, Baggage Reclaim and the Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast as well, which is hugely successful. Her most recent book is called The Joy of Saying No. I love that title so much. It's all about reclaiming ourselves from the cycle of people pleasing and I need that. Thank you very much. By discovering the joy that comes from being more of who we really are and listening to ourselves.

2:28We talk about how to realise you're saying yes when you actually mean no. We talk about how people pleasing is essentially connected to compliance and obedience which makes it much more sinister than we might first think. Also we talk about stress and burnout which seems very apt today and also how people pleasing can be deeply connected to self-loathing. Oh it's an interesting one, you might find it confronting in the best possible way. Me and producer Anushka definitely did. We took so much from this chat. Hi, this is Nox from the Popcast with Nox and Jamie. And maybe like us at the Popcast, you also know people who have been smokers or vapers.

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5:03To Natalie in just a moment. But first, a quick reminder that it's only four weeks until the Happy Place Festival comes to Gunnersbury Park. OMG, I can't believe it. So soon! And of course, we'll be in Tatton Park on August 30th and 31st too. Have you got your tickets yet? There is still time. Come and join me and loads of brilliant people like Millie McIntosh, Liz Earle, Davina McCall, Vogue Williams and loads more. You can get your tickets at happyplacefestival.com. All right, here we go. This is the show.

5:55um natalie i'm so happy to have you on the podcast you can drink your tea throughout we're like very relaxed around here it's all good um i mean we were just talking off mic because your brilliant book the joy of saying no was tipped off to me by susanna reed who your mates with and who was like you're gonna love this book you need to read it and my god did I need to read this book the joy of saying no which looks at people pleasing in such acute detail and I think brought to the surface many things that I needed to know about myself first of all I'm really intrigued slash pleased that the word joy is in there because sometimes when we talk about boundaries it's like you know learning the skill of saying no whatever but this is the joy Why the joy of saying no?

6:44I think it was because I'd always grown up believing that like no was like a dirty word. That's how it's often treated. Like, yes, it's so clean, so wonderful. And no is like this terrible thing. But what I'd seen time and again was how when you turn around and say no, that actually you can pave the way to so much better things. Because, of course, whatever you say no to, you're saying yes to something else. It just might not be clear at that moment. But I also saw just how often I and others had said yes. And it was so very far from being a good thing. We didn't feel good about the yeses we were making.

7:22When I looked around my life and how much it had changed over the last couple of decades, I was I could see the trail of no along the way. And I was like, yeah, there's a lot of joy in there. Yeah, there is a lot of joy in there. But I think so many people, and this is why this subject is so important, so many people feel like they are still people pleasers or they kind of know they are, but they're not quite sure. Because, you know, like you're saying, morally, it feels really jarring to say no to certain things that you're used to saying yes to constantly. You class yourself as a recovering people pleaser.

7:53I think I'd say the same, although I'm probably still leaning more towards people pleaser, but I'm very aware of those moments where I feel huge discomfort saying no. It isn't necessarily comfortable ever, would you say? Do you get to a place where it's just like, I don't care about saying no to things? I still find after all these years that I will have my moments where I'll say no and it feels like all my insides are clutching together going, what the hell are you doing? I think that we are socialized and conditioned into avoiding no because we're socialized and conditioned to be really compliant.

8:33yeah I always say that um we grew up during what I call the age of obedience where the disciplining interacting and communicating with children was about making us as excessively compliant as possible so like really obedient yeah children will be seen not heard oh my god thing yeah and I'll give you something to cry about yeah stop being a cry baby drama queen sissy you know all of these things and so we became disassociated from our know and it felt like you always have to do as you're told if you're around somebody who you perceive to have more power over you. And the thing is, is that in becoming disassociated from our no, we became disassociated from our needs, our desires, our expectations, our feelings and opinions.

9:12We forgot ourselves in the process. So of course, in the unlearning and starting to get a sense of where we need to say no, we're bound to feel uncomfortable. I always say to people, you know, when you get that awful feeling like, oh my gosh, like what have I done? And you feel really guilty. It's like, that's not because you're doing a terrible thing it's because it feels so foreign to your body for you to consider yourself for you to actually prioritize yourself and think about your needs that your body's going alert alert alert danger danger danger yeah I mean isn't it weird that we've conflated that we think that not looking at our own needs and desires or what we know is truly right for us we've conflated denying ourselves of that with being a good person yeah it's it's wild to me and the thing is it's like we're so like caught up in chasing this idea of good even though we actually feel pretty shit yeah and all the time like that's wild to me and what you were saying as well about how you can kind of have that sense that you might be a people pleaser or know that you are that's exactly why I wanted to write the book because I found that a lot of people were either like oh I'm a people pleaser as if it's like a really noble thing like a sign of how virtuous you are oh I'm just like a people pleaser oh I'm so giving and then at the other end there were a lot of people who were like oh well it means you're a doormat and it's like no it's not any of that I think it's we needed to take a closer look at what it was really all about because it's rife in everything it's like it's just part of the culture yeah and do you think certainly for our generations and above all of this starts in childhood like you say the age of obedience our parents our grandparents certainly it was authoritarian and you know we did as we were told and there was perhaps a bit of fear there about if we didn't do as we were told and compliance was seen as the only way the right thing to do you know even if you look at how parenting has changed over the years you know perhaps we're still unpicking a lot of this obviously it's not like Our generation are nailing it.

11:18We've got it all going perfectly because of course we haven't. We're all trying to fumble through the complexities of parenting and working out how to raise kids. And, you know, that could take generations and hundreds of thousands of years. But certainly we can look back and see, you know, I remember being a kid and, you know, if you were making a scene in public or having a tantrum, that was to be halted immediately. Whereas I think there is more knowledge today that actually it's OK if your kid's kicking off in public. It's OK for them to have big emotions, have big feelings. And we're trying to we're trying to parent that, but also not really allowing ourselves to do that still.

11:55You know, we don't allow ourselves to have tantrums or to be angry or to show emotions. Oh, my gosh. I mean, we managed to go through our entire childhoods and I didn't hear about boundaries, needs. I mean, they'd be like, we talk about needs for cop on. it's like when I was a kid I barely had shoes I didn't go to school so it's like oh okay then yeah you talked about your wants it's like stop being selfish you know stop being spoiled you know you talk things like the values and the boundaries it's like what are they we own your boundaries and you're so right that I mean I remember being a kid and seeing people like little kids have a tantrum and people would encourage you to slap your kids yeah it's just wild times it's so different now you know I've got teenage daughters now and it's been really interesting parenting them and then seeing my kid self through my eyes as a parent and realizing wow like I am way harder on myself than I am on my kids I don't expect and demand from them in the way that I still do myself and so parenting my girls really opened my eyes up to that and really allowed me to start being more patient with myself to be more curious about what was going on with me because I was a kid who was like, I had to shut down my feelings.

13:10As survival, I had to be always smart and wise and sensible and mature because anything else was like, no, you're letting us down. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a lot for all of us to unpick when we look back at childhood. And I'm sure most people listening to this will have dabbled with that to an extent and had a think about why am I like this? Why, if, you know, if people pleasing resonates, why am I a people pleaser? Would you say that one thread from childhood is most commonly seen with people that people please? Or are there other factors that create the tendency to people please? So I feel like actually, to some degree, we're all taught these people pleasing messages growing up because it's like, oh, this is the way to survive.

13:57This is how to be happy and successful. And when you think about what school's like, and then if you throw in that maybe you go to church, you could see how a lot of people could wind up that way. But I do think as well that if you grow up really in spaces and around people who intentionally or not, you're really discouraged from doing anything that differs from the status quo, you learn to be a people pleaser. If it becomes clear, oh, feelings aren't really the thing here. Nobody talks about anything. Nobody expresses any feelings. You're going to be a people pleaser. If you're encouraged and praised all the time for how much effort you make and the message becomes clear, even if they're well intended, that, oh, if you do well, if you get the A, we're going to be really proud of you.

14:49You were going to perform, do well, do your best. That can teach you to associate your worthiness, who you are, your identity with, oh, performance. And if there's, if you even, again, and I keep saying it's not necessarily intentional, although, of course, sometimes it is. But we can grow up and we might be around people. It's like this is what a good something is. You know, this is what it means to be a good Christian or a good girl or a good boy or a good person who comes from this place. This is what it means to be a good citizen, for instance. You know, something I talk about in the book is about how as part of being, for instance, an immigrant, in immigrant cultures, you know, where you move from one place to another.

15:29That actually teaches people pleasing because there is this real pressure, this need to assimilate. And so you're taught about, listen, you know, I was always told you don't leave the house without creaming yourself. Your hair has got to be like perfectly in place. I was told you're a black girl. You are going to have to like work a hundred times harder than your non-black peers. Don't have anybody coming around here talking about you because, you know, they're going to get the wrong impression of us. There was so much emphasis on various different things and that varies by culture, but it's all about this is how you be a good immigrant, how you be a good citizen in wherever you are.

16:06And it's like this is how you fit in. Do well, perform. Don't be like those others. whatever the negative idea is of us again all the ways in which we're taught do as you're told comply go along with things you'll be all right and of course we grow up and we discover it's not really the case no because life doesn't work like that not at all you could be the best person ticking all the good boxes and shit's still gonna go down life's still gonna life you know that's still gonna happen for you personally I mean that is complicated when you're getting that sort of messaging growing up? How have you personally unpicked everything that you got told growing up?

16:43Well, I think for me, a big turning point for me was, you know, I had this illness in my 20s called sarcoidosis, this immune system disease, and it really badly affected me. But I was kind of oblivious to that in a way. I just kind of did whatever I was told by doctors and then discovered I'd done all the things and still it was getting worse. And what that woke me up to is, hold on a seconds, you really need to start taking care of yourself, not in a surface way. You really need to figure out how to get well from this thing. And at the same time, I thought, well, hold on a second, how are you going to focus on your health and, you know, doing all of these things to improve it if you're not going to sort out all these dodgy guys that you keep going out with?

17:25And you're not going to basically figure out how to, you know, manage your relationships with your family. And so So through that sort of, you know, approaching my health that way, I suddenly thought, oh, I can actually speak up for myself. And gradually my relationships with family, I was actually pretty good with friendships, but family romantic relationships shifted dramatically. And then I was in remission, you know, from this illness. And I realized, you know, I wanted to stay well. and I knew that there had definitely been this this influence of my really dramatically changing how I treated and regarded myself because I'll be honest with you I used to hate myself yeah and it was so normalized to feel that way and then when you actually start paying attention to all this crap that's running through your head all day long and you start to notice all the ways in which you dismiss yourself you erode yourself the way you're dishonest about who you are I was like my life is short yeah I've got a change here and you know I'd met my now husband I'd had my girls and I I knew that aside from them I wanted to be more for myself what's interesting is we often think when we do you know a little bit of as we call it self-work that you know it's oh I've done and dusted it's all sorted oh yeah tick I've done I've done self-work that's not it it's like life forever coming uh bad news it's every day forever totally and so what i found it was just coming and coming family dramas all sorts of stuff and i had to keep showing up and i'll be honest with you know when he was talking about like sometimes you know we actually need to have a bit of a tantrum ourselves yeah honestly i've had that feeling because sometimes i was like you gotta be flipping kidding me like how is this how much more yeah how much more why have i got to do all this stuff but after a while it was like Natalie this is in service of your well-being it's in service of your emotional mental physical and spiritual well-being it's in service of you living a really good life you you face up to the stuff it gets on your flipping nerves but you live to face it I mean it's so interesting because yeah I've certainly had big periods of my life where I've really not had any self-worth and I've really not liked myself at all and I don't know if I can look back and see one moment where I've decided to not think like that or to certainly sift through those thoughts and question them I think incrementally maybe with a bit of therapy and I love having these sorts of conversations and I'm lucky I get to do it in my working life a lot I do feel able to challenge them not all of the time if I'm honest but most of the time and I'm certainly not in a big chunk of self-loathing like I have been through previously for you can you see obviously you know you had this wake-up call and you were 28 when this health issue happened that is always going to be a bit of a wake-up call when you've got a health issue going on you you're forced to look at life differently but what enabled you to stop that that negative voice or to at least challenge it because I think so many people struggle with this and that's where the people pleasing is stemming from they don't like themselves so they allow other people to treat them badly or they think they have to say yes to everything because they're undeserving of their own autonomy their own path in life and they just feel like this is just how life is I get treated like shit by everyone but deep down is that self-loathing how do we start to challenge that so it goes back to that thing of like it's ongoing yeah like in an ideal world we do this were kind of like yeah I love myself grand off we go yeah and what I realized is that I was in this constant dialogue with myself now I had the benefit of you know I was writing about my experiences sharing those I was having conversations with people around the world who were grappling with these feelings and so I was probably in a somewhat more self-reflective place as a result of exploring in these things.

21:30I was paying attention to all these patterns that I kept seeing in people, but I was particularly paying attention to what keeps coming up for me time and time again. And it was like, oh my God, what does this problem want? What does the same scenario that I was so sure I'd already passed that level before, why is that coming back around? And I guess it was coming from this place of before I used to ignore stuff. I used to be really judgmental of myself. It was like I always came last. Whereas now, alongside all the living, I was starting to pay attention to this thing is coming back. What does it want from me?

22:09Sometimes I found myself sitting alongside it going, OK, you're back. What do you want from me? What are you trying to tell me here? It's like starting to have these conversations with these issues that kept showing up, but also these recurrent feelings like, why do I feel like an outsider? even though it's like actually maybe the situation isn't that at all like why do these feelings of not being good enough of being quote-unquote worthless and good for nothing keep coming back around and I realize that the patterns the ways I've learned to feel and so I think that when we actually start noticing those recurrent themes those things that we keep returning to that we say over and over again about ourselves it's like hold on a second let me get curious about this actually because we often get so used to saying this stuff we don't even know it's there and we don't even interrogate is this actually how I feel about myself right now yeah and often it's old feelings an old pattern playing out again and again and what I found was that any time I was in a situation that brought up you know there's that vulnerability that fear of rejection that fear of abandonment it's like an old backing track would suddenly pipe up and i'd be like yeah natalie you know good you're unlovable you're not worthy all this stuff and it's like oh it's it's it's like it's recorded in us and when it's like when you start to realize that you can actually start to step back from and go hold on a second this is old stuff not actually it doesn't have to be how i feel about myself now do you think you have to understand the root of it.

23:48Is that important? Not always. You know, I didn't have the easiest of childhoods. And, you know, over the last couple of years, I found out things that I was like, oh, that kind of changes my entire understanding of certain things about my childhood. But the thing is, if you're waiting around for the answers to everything, whether that somebody has told you that or you go on this massive excavation, it's like you're putting off an opportunity to be present to yourself now and to make a very intentional conscious choice about how you want to treat and regard yourself. I think we find it very easy to be caring and compassionate and empathetic to others.

24:29But I always say that, you know, compassion, empathy, they're full circle gigs. How are you able to give out this stuff to everyone else, but you're not giving it to yourself? You're leaving yourself out of that. And if you're doing that, that's not really empathy and it's not really compassion. Yeah. Why are we like that? I find myself doing that all the time. You know, someone could tell me the thing they deem the worst thing about themselves and I would have zero judgment. You know, if it's like a great friend of mine, I would give them a big hug and say, oh, my God, you know, you mustn't worry about this or whatever.

24:58With my own things, I'm nowhere close to having that level of compassion with myself. And I know it and I still feel like I'm unable to exercise it. How do we start tapping into that self-compassion? Because I do think I can see with my own people pleasing tendencies or times when I've said yes, I mean no. It's all rooted in this and believing that I'm a bad person or, you know, all these other hang ups that I have about myself or things in the past that I just cannot find that compassion to apply to that situation. How are we cultivating that? So something that really helps in my understanding of people pleasing is recognising that people pleasing is a response to anxiety.

25:40Right. Right. So we're anxious about something. It's often out of our awareness. But when we reflect back, we go, oh, my gosh, I was anxious that I was going to be judged. I was anxious that I wasn't going to get the thing I was looking for out of this. I was anxious, you know, that there's going to be conflict or criticism or something. so it's a response to anxiety and then so what we try to do is soothe the anxiety with the people pleasing and of course just more anxiety comes back yeah so it's like a response to anxiety and an anxiety management tool that then creates even more anxiety so in recognizing this I was like oh a bit of a light bulb went off because now when I notice where the people pleasing was shown up, I was able to go, oh, I'm anxious about something.

26:27And that started to halt me in my tracks around certain things I was doing. The other thing then that I've also found really helps is that people pleasing is like creating a debt and expecting other people to pay it off. And when people realize this, they go, oh, because it's like we don't realize that we have a hidden agenda with people pleasing. We don't like to think of ourselves that way, but it's like we're trying to get or avoid something with the people pleasing and it creates deaths between us and the people around us. And if what we really want is, you know, that love, that intimacy and all those things, why am I trying to villainize people all the time by acting as if, oh my God, if I turn around and say, no, the most terrible things are going to happen.

27:07So these things started to make me go, okay, I can pause for a moment, check in. What am I doing here? Why am I doing this? And each time I was noticing, oh, there's anxiety driving this. I've got a bit of a dodgy intention here. That allowed that bit of compassion to start coming through. It felt like, oh, I'm getting into a more truthful relationship with myself. And, you know, I say we have these people-pleaser feelings, anxiety, resentment, guilt, irritation, frustration, feeling low, helpless, powerless, overloaded, overwhelmed. Those feelings tell us that we said yes to something that for all intents and purposes is a good thing, but we've done it for the wrong reasons.

27:53Yeah. So find the why, because this is where you can really have a gateway into that compassion and empathy. But sometimes actually we're perfectly fine doing the thing. It's not even a dodgy thing. It's just the approach. Yes. Like me, I go and do something. I have the best of intentions. I'm excited about it. Put my people pleasing, perfectionist myths all over that thing. And I take the fun. out of it. I'd have to notice where I'm pushing and striving. And so if we can be compassionately curious about how our people pleasing shows up for us and notice, oh, like for me, it's that pushing, striving energy.

28:32And sometimes, yeah, it's that resentment because I am pissed off after I realize, oh, I forced myself to go and do this thing and I'll not even get what I want out of this thing. And it's like, whoa, resentment's in the room. Hold up, Natalie. go check yourself and this has forced me into a more compassionate place because you know what I don't go around judging people for when they figure out that they've done something for the wrong reasons I don't judge people when they when they make mistakes I don't judge people for having various different reasons for why they're afraid of saying no because the only reason we don't say no is because of emotional baggage so once we understand this it's like oh okay well something about my past inhibits me from doing that but now that I know that's there what might present day me want.

29:14What does future me even want out of this?

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31:20I mean, that curiosity seems absolutely key. The why behind it seems absolutely imperative to talk about. Because I think sometimes when we talk about people-pleasing, like you said earlier on, it's in these really opposing extremes. And then some people go, well, of course, you've got to help other people and please other people. Yeah, of course you can. But that's when it's coming from a place where you really genuinely want to do it. And of course, we all want to be, you know, loving to the people that we adore around us. Or do you know, we get a dopamine hit from doing something nice. It's not like we're going to just say no to everything from now on.

31:55Exactly. Maybe we know the yes is a bit better because we understand where we want to say no. Exactly. Because the thing is, is that I would say if you don't say yes authentically, you say it resentfully, fearfully or avoidantly. And that leads to more problems than if you just said no in the first place. At the end of the day, of course, we love the people around us and we want to take care of them when we do things. Maybe we stay behind at work or we do that favor or whatever it is. There are people who do that and they know exactly why they're doing it and they feel good about doing it. And if they realize they don't, they pay attention to that and they make adaptions.

32:30For the rest of us who are still in that people pleasing, we do it not because we actually want to, but because we're afraid of what will happen if we don't. Or we do it because we have associated our worthiness with always saying yes. So each thing that we're saying yes to, it's like we're putting our self-worth, our self-esteem on the chopping block. That's not a healthy reason to do stuff. No, it's not. what I found utterly fascinating and I hadn't heard these terms before and I think this is really helpful I mean just going by the book because you need to properly read it but I found the five different types of people pleasers or people pleasing so interesting because not only could I recognize myself in actually three of them and I can see the one that I'm predominantly leaning towards but I can also recognize it in other people which is making me a lot less judgmental about those people too.

33:25Would you mind us running through these? Because I think they're really, really helpful terms to look at to break them down. So first of all, the first type of people pleasing is gooding. Tell us what that means. So this is where we go about our pleasing by always trying to look good to others. We're always trying to be a good something. Even if we're not necessarily always doing those things, we find it really important to manage our reputation, to always be seen to be doing the right thing. And we really, really want to be liked. Yeah. And that is the thing I think that a lot of people associate with people pleasing, that fear of not being liked and wanting to be the good person who's doing the good thing.

34:07And when that's your big driver and then when things don't go your way, you're like, but I had good intentions. I was a good something. You know that gooding is your style. Yeah. I'm really fascinated with this one because that fear of not being liked, I think is so debilitating for so many of us in a plethora of ways that impact us really negatively what's the root of that fear why are we so shit scared of not being liked by people well it can come from a number of places but we'll have had potentially something that's happened much earlier in life where it felt like we didn't do the pleasing thing and we were rejected yeah disappointed or even abandoned for that but it can also come from that sort of basic teaching and i think this is particularly aimed at girls and then women where it's be meek be mild be sweet be kind always help out be a good girl if you do all of that you know you you always you know please the teacher please your parents please your friends then you will finish school and then maybe you'll go and get like a job or you go to university and then from there you're going to get the relationship and then you're going to get this and you're going to get that as long as you're good all the time so anywhere where there's that really heavy emphasis we're going to get good good good we have to be good all the time when you ask people what does that even mean a lot of the time we don't even know we don't know it's almost like a weird superstition i've had moments of that where i think well i must do the good thing because otherwise something terrible is going to happen like it's a weird superstition it's abstract it's like what does that even mean and like we all understand to a degree that you know if we put good energy out there or I don't know this is so complicated because I might be then reinstating what you've just said but I think we all understand that sort of karmic balance of like putting good energy out there and things going our way or having a positive mental attitude about things and seeing the results but it's not this kind of situation where it's like you just do this and everything works out forever it doesn't work like that and And that's how a lot of people please the thinking because it's almost like you're trying to Jedi mind trick people with your goodness.

36:16Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it's like, but why don't you see that I'm being this good something? And it's like you're performing at your idea of whatever the good something is, but you're actually leaving yourself off the table. Yeah, totally, totally. And then you end up feeling like shit. So even if good stuff is happening, you're not enjoying it in the first place. Yeah, because the real you is not showing up. No, the real you is not showing up. Yes, that is also something I'm deeply fascinated about in my 40s is who the hell am I? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm seven, almost eight years into my 40s.

36:50And why it has been. Yeah, you're like, who am I? Because, you know, you've done decades of people pleasing. You've been conditioned in family life or school or just on a societal level. And I think it is that cliche thing. If you get into your 40s and you go, what do I what do I like? what do I what do I want what do I want to do how do I want to act and I think especially when you then throw not exclusively but when you throw like motherhood into the equation or other roles like that where you're caring for people obviously your needs are knocked down slightly on the priority list and you do start to just go I genuinely don't know who I am and what I want to do anymore yeah got no idea how do we I mean I've gone off on a tangent because we've got four more to look at but I can't it's too many exciting things to talk about how do we get in touch with our authentic self?

37:36Like who, who is, who's inside of us? How do we find if we want to say yes or no? What's the easiest way to do that? You know, I always say, make it a desire or say no. And so what I mean by this is think about what you feel is expected of you, what you feel obliged to do. Oh, I have to do this. It's important for me to be or do that. And then what do you want to do? And if there's quite a gap between those two things, that's not only where the resentment lies, but you start to get some clues about how you can move towards being a more honest version of yourself. It's like people say, what does it mean to be the real you?

38:17And it's like with all the things you'd be and do and have if you weren't so shit scared of what people would turn around and say about you. Yeah. And a lot of us know what the answers. Yeah. To that is. we've got to get quiet and work it out also you say in the book when you're saying yes or no see where that lands in your body like how does that feel when you're saying yes how does that feel when you're saying no I think we've all become so good at just disassociating from our bodies we're not feeling where these emotional moments are happening or like the painful stuff's happening or the good stuff's happening we're just so cerebral and it's just I've said yes to something I've said no and then oh I'm mentally annoyed about this I'm mentally whatever but actually if we tune into our bodies we can feel if there's tension or if we're feeling good about something saying yes it like our body is actually there to tell us the truth about what's really going on in our lives it's just that sometimes we are going at such a pace and we are doing our damnedest to try to shut that information down that we're not accessing that and that's when you start to get the burner and the breakdown and the lashing out because you our bodies have to go to greater and greater lengths to get our attention.

39:27I mean, I feel like that's what happened to me with the sarcoidosis all those years ago. So I was just rowing around, getting into shitty relationships with emotionally unavailable men, always trying to go around doing the so-called good thing. And that illness stopped me in my tracks. It forced me to confront myself in a way that honestly, we ideally shouldn't have to wait for those things to happen, but that's how it had to play out for me. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, I guess you do have that opportunity to look at whether it is a health ailment or circumstantially something's going down that it is always there's always opportunity in it to go.

40:05All right. Why might this be happening? Why might my patterns of behavior have contributed to where I've ended up? And we don't often do that. Sometimes we're just like this was unfair. This was a shit moment. I really hate that it happened. I wish it hadn't happened. And then you just carry on. but actually it's an opportunity for us to you know I can think of loads of moments where I haven't done that where I've gone well this is a big mess and and this isn't fair and then I just you know plow on yeah actually it's an opportunity for us yeah I've you know I hear from a lot of people who will be like they'll be navigating all sorts of stuff in their week family work friendships and they are just going going going all the time and they probably feel like they're treading water and they have no clue how they're truly feeling from day to day and then they get for instance to the weekend and they are ratty they're snapping they're exhausted all of this stuff and then they keep going going going because maybe they've tried to catch up on their sleep or whatever the weekend and the whole cycle starts all over again and it's only when I say to why don't you ask yourself start the day by asking how am I doing today and people say they are shocked that actually they very rarely ask themselves how they're doing.

41:20And sometimes they're really surprised by what they hear because it's like, actually, I'm really pissed off. Yeah. I'm exhausted. I feel like something's wrong with me. I need to stay home. But unless they'd asked, they'd have no clue and they just keep going and going and going. And then after a while, it all kind of becomes this gloopy soup of, yeah, we know something's off. We know we're pissed off about something. We just actually don't really know what. and then maybe the next thing that comes along that annoys us is like ah yeah it's this yeah and we have this really sort of outsized response to it and it's like yeah okay that thing annoyed us and also what else all the other shit yeah let's move on to number two which is avoiding that is a type of people pleasing talk to us about that so with avoiding it is really where we will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid discomforting others as a way of pleasing.

42:14So it's like going along to get along. I like what you like. Really avoiding being or doing anything that is going to invite criticism or conflict. And you learn to be an avoider. And this was probably the style that shot people the most, because you tend to have grown up in an environment where it was not the done thing to address stuff, you know, to express feelings, to talk about stuff. But also maybe on the flip side, you might have seen so much stuff and so much drama that it's like when I grow up, I'm just going to like keep it sweet, you know, play quiet in the corner and just hope everything kind of goes away.

42:50And of course, we go around avoiding, avoiding expressing our needs, desires, expectations, feelings and opinions, avoiding dealing with stuff. Then, of course, life does what life does. and then the person who has that avoiding style is pissed off because it's like hold on a second after all the lengths I went to to avoid doing anything to displease you avoid causing you any discomfort you're still criticizing me yeah or we're still having this conflict or you still don't want to be in a relationship with me I'm not getting what I want out of this and so this avoiding it turns out is really this avoidance of ourselves yeah but it's avoidance as well of having a more truthful relationship with the people around us all for the sake of being pleasing yeah because so often we do need to have a difficult chat with someone or tell someone I don't like what you're doing or it's so interesting because I think certainly in my job this one really resonates with me quite a lot I don't know if it's my predominant one I keep changing my mind now but this one really resonates because I think in my job people so often will walk away and go oh um yeah I just worked with uh Fern Cotton and she's so you know she's so lovely oh she was a right bitch and you get sort of labeled something quite quickly I think because you're in the public eye there's an assumption about who you are so I think I went through years of avoiding saying anything at work that would rock the boat in any way because I just wanted people to walk away and go oh my god she was a delight to work with even if I hated every second of that job even if I did things in photo shoots I didn't want to do or said things on camera that I didn't agree with I would do anything to not let people walk away and have any bad thoughts about me and I can see now that that is not appropriate and I care a lot less about it and I want to honor the work I'm doing in the way that I believe is going to bring out the best in what I'm doing but also has the best results so that everybody gets something from it rather than just what's going to make everybody feel happy the whole time and i think that's that feels like a real sinister people pleasing that one the avoiding one it's survival yeah like you know i have an element of that avoiding because i grew up in this chaotic environment where it felt like things very volatile and it's like oh the safe thing is don't deal with stuff and you know i've spoken to so many people particularly women who are like I almost blend into my relationships because I don't want to give them enough of an opinion that they could change their mind about me so they've just become whoever their partner wants them to be or who they imagine their partner wants and then of course when things don't work out and they skip off down the road to somebody else they're like What the hell?

45:40Even the version of me that was the fake me that was designed to please you is being rejected. And then they convince themselves, well, if I'm going to get rejected for this fake version, what's the point in being myself? So it becomes really quite sinister, as you say. Yeah, it is. It's a really sneaky one. That's why I liked reading about that one. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts.

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47:34Next up, we're going to talk about saving. Tell us about saving. So this is the one I think that a lot of people are familiar with. It's the fixing, healing, helping, rescuing. It's needing to be needed. That's the way that you go about pleasing, but it's also what drives you. This sense of, oh, I'm driven by these good intentions, but actually it also becomes problematic. I would say it's kind of a mixture of gooding that I mentioned earlier and efforting, which we haven't got to yet. But the driver is needing to be needed. And the thing about that is that for that people pleaser, whose identity is very tied up in being in service, you know, sacrificing themselves, it can feel like everything that they're doing is really noble.

48:17And then they can run into problems in their relationships where actually not everybody wants to be rescued. People don't want to be pitied. And something I always point out is that when something is so much a part of your identity, you're going to design your life around it. Now, if you need to be fixing, helping, healing, rescuing, then you have to keep aligning yourself with people who present problems. And do you think that one is also about not looking at saving yourself? Exactly. Using these relationships, these endeavors like, oh, I'll be I'll be needed by these people and somehow I'll get the backflow to me and eventually I'll be healed by that.

48:55And often people who have that saving style as sort of their dominant style, they were old before their time as kids where maybe they had care and responsibilities or they just had to be more grown up than the grown ups around them. Or they observed, you know, things going on, you know, with their parents or other loved ones. And it was the sense of, oh, my gosh, I couldn't save them no matter what I did as a kid, no matter how good I was, you know, the grades, what I did at home, you know, helping out. it didn't stop them for instance from being an alcoholic or having drug issues or you know disappearing on me and so they channel that energy into their adult relationships and endeavors and make it their personality when in actual fact yeah of course there are their good qualities mixed up in that but actually it's a misappropriation yeah yeah the saving one I you know definitely again that was a big thing for me probably throughout my 20s and 30s it was like it was so tied up in my identity and and how I moved through the world and it's only I guess again in my 40s that you can stop and check that behavior and like oh god I was really trying to save that person there and I don't know if my intentions were even good it's just like a habitual thing where I believe that's what I should be doing there's like an element of martyrdom to it and um and yeah like you say this sense of I'm being a noble person and actually that's much more attached to ego than than anything else it's um this is all fascinating stuff uh let's talk about efforting then because you mentioned efforting so that's my dominant style of people pleasing this is where really uh the way you go about pleasing is through effort it wouldn't be enough for instance for you to be like you know doing the gooding because you want the receipts so you're always trying to be the best doing the best you're the one who's most likely to engage in the perfectionism and you're also the one who's most likely to burn out, your identity is very intertwined with what you do with performing.

50:55And there is this sense of effort controls outcomes. So the more effort you make, the more likely it is that you're going to get what you want. Of course, when you don't get what you want, it's like, oh, I didn't make enough efforts. So let me throw some more effort at it. That's what people who have that style, if something goes wrong, okay, what can I do? What can I throw at this thing? with the efforting style that has come from picking up messages, you know, earlier on in life that your value really lies in what you produce. Yeah. So being productive, you know, making sure that you perform, always being seen to be giving the most amount of effort.

51:32So you're always afraid that you've not given a hundred percent and you'll find, you know, and this could of course happen with the other styles, whatever you are either praised for or where you haven't got that validation is going to often be the thing that drives you the most. And so I was always praised for performing, but also would get into trouble if I was seen to have not met expectations. And so of course it's like there's that hunger, prove, prove, prove yourself. And it's like, it doesn't matter how you feel. You're doing this. It doesn't matter that you're exhausted. Don't care about your limits.

52:06That's what the 40s has been about for me. It's like part of understanding who I am was realizing, Natalie, you went through an entire childhood never discovering what your limits are you just threw effort at stuff you demanded it of yourself and you just kept going until your body went okay fine I love this one because so often especially on Instagram and maybe it's coming from a more male place out in the sort of uh metasphere we see this messaging like move out of your comfort zone push yourself more try I love the eye roll try harder keep going push faster stronger better and you know maybe some people out there do need motivating or feel like they need someone to help give them energy to do the thing they want to do but I think most of us feel fucking exhausted yeah and actually are going I think my limits were like back there about a mile but people keep telling me I need to keep pushing harder and so not only are we dealing with our own personal habits and cycles and this you know reward system that we've learned in childhood we're also the messaging is everywhere and we're and we're sort of so confused with am I meant to be in my comfort zone out of my comfort zone yeah it's so confusing how have you personally learned if that's your one to take your foot off the brake and go do you know what it's all right that I don't achieve anything today because this one resonates with me again I don't know which one my dominant one is Natalie I'm massively I feel like it's saving but now I think efforting also it's like a strong one for me because I have that same thing of never stop never sit down and then I felt so burnt out the weekend I actually had a whole afternoon in bed watching tv and I've not let myself do that in years like so long I've just not allowed myself like nope you could be reading a book you could be learning about something my insecurity is always I didn't go to uni I'm not educated so I'm like you need to be learning more what are you going to learn don't sit down don't watch shit tv and it is that efforting cycle we get in how have you let yourself off the hook well it's a work in progress but the 40s I would say has been the undoing of my efforting ways because I was perimenopausal I worked out from about age 38 right and between being perimenopausal and then just that that natural shift in your body and also just I was all the things I was doing in life in parenting, work, life, all those things are sort of catching up.

54:32I was like, I can't keep up with myself. It was starting to annoy me that all the things I used to be able to do, I just did not seem to have the same stamina. I particularly noticed after my dad died, it was 2017. He took some time out. I feel like it was about six weeks or so. And you know, you start hearing that noise of, well, you've got to get back to things now. And I went back to things, And I did not fit back into my old life. I've never been able to go back to the level that I was at prior to his death. In fact, I wonder how on earth I did all of that. And what's been interesting for me is bumping up against my issue with limits and how I've demanded a lot of myself.

55:21Case in point, the winter after dad died, so it's 2018, I was offered a place in the London Marathon. The most I'd ever run was, I think it was like a mile. And they offered me a place because of the work I'd been doing. And I was like, well, you know, I'm taking this time out. Because at this point, I was like taking time out again because it's like grieving. I was like, what's going on with my life? I've turned 40. What's happening to me? Existential crisis. I was like, you know what? This could be a fun little project. And I decided to train for a marathon in the space of four months. Shit.

55:55Right. And it's it's what I discovered is I can demand a lot of myself. If I've decided that I am doing something, I'm going to drag that out of myself. The three weeks before the marathon, I couldn't even run because I had an injury because, of course, I had gone from zero to this sort of intense training. But I did actually manage to complete the marathon. I had to drag myself the last five miles. Anyway, a few weeks after the marathon, it's like a crash and burn. I was burnt out and I felt depressed. And I remember going to see this guy like it was like it's like for acupressure and something else.

56:34And he was like, you have a low battery. You have the equivalent of a low battery. And he said, you have a very strong mind. It's nothing to do with capabilities, what you're going through in life. He says you demand too much of yourself. and because you have a strong mind and you will force yourself to for instance train for and run 26.2 miles your body has gone okay fine she won't listen and it was such an eye-opener for me because I actually I felt this grief for myself and what this episode of a modern family one day where I love modern family. The girl who's super bright. Yeah, the daughter.

57:16Yeah. Yeah. And she's basically struggling with her exams. You know, it's her birthday. She's freaking out because, you know, she pushes herself really hard. And, you know, Claire, the mom, comes to pick her up one day after her therapy session. And she goes, oh, my gosh, I finally realized how much work you're having to do for these exams. Fern, I'm not even kidding you. Next thing, I found myself sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. And I was like, what the hell just happened here? And I realized that I had managed to go through my entire childhood and nobody had ever expressed an understanding that I have limits.

57:56And so it didn't matter if I was tired. It was always like more could be done. And I had then transferred that attitude towards myself. I mean, imagine going for you and nobody said, hey, that's your limit. So I just had this idea. It didn't matter. It's like, no, you're just being lazy. You keep going. And I broke down and I was like, oh, my God, I need to give myself limits. And so my big thing, I noticed where the pushing, striving energy shows up. Yeah, that's my dead giveaway. I'll be perfectly happy doing something and then something just get a little bit carried away. And I'm just pushing, striving.

58:34And I'm like, stop. What's going on here? And that means that I have to recheck in with my why. I have to notice where I'm overdoing things, where I'm trying to be perfect, where there's anxiety about something. But that's my big signal because I push and I strive because it's my default setting. Yeah. Oh, my God. And that's how you like I always say you can always figure out what your dominant style is by asking yourself, what's the first thing I think about when something pisses me off, when life lets me down, you know, when I feel like I didn't get things despite all the things I did. And if it's like, I was so good, you know, I had good intentions, gooding.

59:13If it's like, but I made so much effort, I tried my best, efforting. If you talk about whatever you avoided, it's avoiding. If it's like, but you know, after everything I did for them, it's the saving. And then of course, we've got the last one suffering yeah let's talk about this guy so you know suffering is the sense of the more you suffer the better that makes you as a person so it's like i bleed for you now often we might have cycled our way through some of the other styles and then kind of fallen on our sword with suffering it's like we're trying to call attention to a need by putting ourselves in dire straits when you have the suffering style and you've actually had it you know maybe all your life It's because you were maybe the scapegoat, the black sheep, you know, and you're trying to catch the attention of someone.

1:00:03So like, for instance, you'll be, for instance, in a romantic relationship and the person is, you know, trodding all over your boundaries and carrying on. But because you're trying to prove, you know, I'm the right one for you. I love you so much. You keep doing it. And it's like, can't you see I'm suffering here? Can't you see I'm bleeding out? And then the person keeps going and it's like, oh, well, I've clearly not suffered enough. Okay, let me keep going. And the thing is, like what I was saying earlier on with that identity thing, if you believe that you have to suffer in order to prove that you are good or to call attention to a need, you're not going to allow yourself to be in a situation or do things that completely contradict that.

1:00:42Yeah. So you will gravitate to people who allow you to please them by suffering at their hands. Yeah, you use the term suffering Olympics, which I liked in the verb. Oh, yeah. I wrote that down. I was like, I like that. Suffering Olympics. I know those people. Without judgment, obviously, because I know my own patterns. But we can see it. I think that's why it's so handy to have this index of terms and the understanding because we can get to know ourselves better. And in turn, in our relationships, which is, of course, a key, a cornerstone to our well-being is having dynamics that work in our life and relationships.

1:01:17They don't have to be perfect or like jolly all the time, but they're relationships that we know work. work that is so important and I think all of this how it's the underbelly of all of it we can see how other people are working we can see why we're reacting in certain ways we have more compassion for ourselves more compassion for other people these terms for me just broke everything down so brilliantly if people are listening to this today they might have identified with one of these terms that we've used the cogs might be whirring like oh god yeah I definitely do that oh I definitely know that I'm saying yes a hell of a lot when I want to say no.

1:01:52If they wanted to try saying no this week, it might be for the first time ever, but certainly there might be one dynamic in their life where they always say yes. How might you approach saying no for the first time, feeling shit scared, feeling petrified that everyone's going to hate you? I always say don't go for the big guns first unless it's unavoidable and the situation absolutely calls for it. Because the reality is somebody listens to this, I'm not expecting to roll out of bed tomorrow. I'm like, fuck your Lord, I am healed. I'm no longer a people pleaser. Because the reality is this is stuff that we have been carrying for a long time.

1:02:27So I always say, first of all, pay attention, just observe with as little judgment as possible, how you spend your yes, no, and maybe each week. Notice who or what, you know, brings up those sort of anxious feelings, who you dread seeing their name pop up in the email or on the phone or whatever, you know, who's bringing out those people pleaser feelings in you? Observe that. I would say try it for a week, but some people, even in just like a couple of days are like, oh my gosh, I have so much intel on where I need to say no. And then I say, if you imagine cutting the amount of yes in half, pick something that's at the lower end of what feels scary.

1:03:08Because the reality is, is that if you go for something big first, as I said, unless it absolutely warrant it you're probably going to get pretty triggered by that and then you're going to be like oh my god oh my god what have I done track whereas try something a bit smaller and then I want you to go outside or just like look out your window open your front door and you notice the world is still turning the Armageddon is not happening outside and this is a really good reality check because inside you're like you know life is exploding terrible things are happening but actually if you take in your surroundings look at it's like oh I'm still okay so pick something so like an example I hear from a lot of people their people pleasing even extends to not returning things to like wherever you know they've done the online shopping or whatever and it's like there's a simple no return the item yeah like don't make it complicated no another way is like a simple way is if you're very reflexive in saying yes make an agreement with yourself you know what when people ask me to do stuff next time I'm gonna say let me come back to you that way then you have a chance to check in what am I being asked how does that feel do I have the bandwidth for this like what's my schedule like you know what else have I have I got going on all the rest check in with that and what a lot of people discover is yeah sometimes they're absolutely perfectly fine about saying yeah but actually when they give themselves time to think about it they go hold on a 15 seconds I don't even want to do this thing no and it's an easy way in yeah you got to give yourself that time yeah sign up for my benefit yeah I always say if you turn around to somebody and you're like um can I come back to you and they turn around and say no then I say then your answer is no yeah if they can't give you time yes to write whether you can do it then yeah the answer's no i love that i love that that's that i'm gonna practice that one this week i think giving myself like pressing pause rather than saying yeah yeah of course fine you know like you know yeah this very reflexive as you say yes because i just want everyone to be happy just going let me think about it give myself that time press the pause button you know the world's still turning as you say yeah because you're worthy of consideration like check your schedule check your existing commitments because we're constantly over scheduled and we don't leave ourselves with any margin.

1:05:26I mean, none, zero. It's wild. This is fascinating. I urge people to buy the book because we've really dived into it. But I think there's so much more for people to discover about themselves if they really get into your own storytelling, but also the details of how it impacts our lives. Because it's, you know, it's everything we've talked about and more. So I think go buy the book if you've loved this chat. I would love to know, Natalie, where is your happy place? Oh, you know, I was thinking about this. And until recently, you know, I've been officially in medical menopause now. So I'm like, I'm all about the heat.

1:06:03Well, happy places normally, wherever it's hot. I'm getting to be out in the sunshine. Well, I'm bursting into flames recently. So that's been interesting about whether that is still my, but yeah, I feel it's like summer's almost here, heat's here. I'm like oh that's like I feel like I kind of come into my own I'm a right in the middle of summer baby so I feel like that's my happy place where I kind of come into my own failing that because I'm never very good with favorites home is Ireland and so I always think it's like Dublin is my happy place as well I love Ireland it's it's fantastic it's so beautiful though it's so gorgeous well I'm so grateful for your time today I love reading this book I needed to read this book and it's been fascinating talking to you so thank you so much Natalie oh thank you Fern Oh, bloody hell, I love that.

1:06:50Do you know what I loved? The five different types of people pleasing. That one just sort of still continues to blow my mind because they're so niche and so nuanced, but so accurate. And I know that every one of you listening will have nodded along to one of them, or at the very least, recognise someone else in your life who has those attributes. It's so fascinating. God, Natalie, thank you so much. Her book's called The Joy of Saying No, and I urge you to get it. By the way, there's also a Happy Place episode called Saying No, More Boundaries, Less People-Pleasing, and one called The Good Girl Rebellion.

1:07:27Both of those are collections of loads of different Happy Place guests and their words of wisdom on all the stuff we've been talking about today. I reckon you're going to like those ones if you enjoyed the chat today with Natalie. There'll be links to the episodes in our show notes if you fancy it. And I want to say a big thank you to all of you for listening. I'm back here next week. Huge thank you again to the brilliant Natalie, to the producer Anushka Tate at Happy Play Studios and to you, go and say a big old joyful no this week.

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