How To Stop People Pleasing And Reclaim Your Power | Aaron Doughty

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0:42Aaron Doughty:One of the strongest things that I think actually holds us back is this one simple question right here. Who did you have to be as a kid to receive mom or dad's love? because whoever you had to be as a kid becomes the role and the identity that you live within as a survival mechanism in order to get by. So one of the things I think that makes people more in an energy of attachment and not magnetic is that there's an attachment to an old identity of who they had to be. That strategy was actually really effective because it helped you survive within your family dynamics. When you're eight, nine, 12, 16, you have to belong in order to survive.

1:29Yes. You had to simply perform if your parents needed you to in order for them to be happy with you or give you food and shelter.

1:37Aaron Doughty:Yeah. Like it was a, it was a coping mechanism in some ways, right? Exactly. And then it just became a identity into adulthood. It's not like we just let it go right away. Yeah. That's the challenge is that a lot of times people will have like an identity, they'll say like, oh, I am a people pleaser. This is who I am. Oh, I am a perfectionist. You really aren't a people pleaser or a perfectionist. You have a pattern that was a survival mechanism as a kid that allowed you to be who you thought you had to be to gain the approval or validation of mom and dad. Right. So don't ever say I'm a people pleaser or I'm this.

2:16Aaron Doughty:that's a pattern and then what's happened is you misidentified a pattern for an identity so instead what you look at is you look at what are the parts of myself that i'm attached to that are keeping this pattern alive inside of my body and for me one of the patterns that i had to shed a few years ago even was a pattern of people pleasing it was a pattern where i would catch myself feeling like other people's tension was something that I had to mitigate in order to feel safe. And part of it, I think, was just growing up, having in like a certain dynamic as a kid with a ex-stepmom in my life that was controlling.

2:59Aaron Doughty:There was an energy where I had to please in order to feel safe. I had to, that was my mechanism as a kid. So what happens is now as an adult, there's times where I'd find myself in that pattern and catch myself and then recognize that to be in that pattern is not magnetic because it's literally a survival strategy that also demands things from other people. So what we subconsciously do as adults, if we have unresolved stuff from childhood, is it's like this unresolved energy underneath the surface. We then try to go play that out with other people in our life because there's this unresolved energy that wants to be released.

3:43Aaron Doughty:So who do people pleasers tend to attract into their life? Takers. Yes. Takers and people you feel like you need to fix and people that are very hard to please and you don't want to disappoint them. Yes. So that's become a pattern that's familiar. So looking at that energy and recognizing it many times is about realizing that there's something here that I'm trying to gain from someone else by pleasing them, but there's something I'm not giving myself. What is the thing most people try to gain from other people by trying to please them? Approval. Approval. So when you think about it, like people, people that become people pleasers as kids were parent pleasers.

4:26Aaron Doughty:Yes. So the belief was that I must please mom and dad, because if I please mom and dad, they will be okay with me. and as a kid to get the approval of your parents feels like it's survival it's like death to not have that and what happens as a kid too is we internalize everything right so if mom and dad divorce or in an argument like as kids we there's something wrong with me it's shame and that's really a lot of times what people pleasing is it's like an avoidance of shame it's an avoidance of vulnerability and it's being afraid to disappoint people. Big part of breaking these patterns though is getting on the other side of actually feeling what's coming up inside of your body, but not being afraid to embrace what I call the dark side.

5:17Aaron Doughty:What is the dark side? The dark side of a people pleaser. Every, every person you meet that's a people pleaser or that has that kind of, or an over giver, there's a certain untapped energy inside of them that if they were to tap into would completely transform their lives. What is that? That energy is being in contact with the stored anger and resentment underneath the surface. Normally what happens is that anger that you're afraid to share towards other people by expressing yourself becomes internalized. So then you beat yourself up because you said yes when you really meant no. So there's this, this part of us that gets repressed underneath the surface with anger.

5:58Aaron Doughty:And the key is actually the thing that you avoid. If you can embrace it, you will start to become more free. So if you think about it in the form of a people pleaser, if instead you let it be okay that you express yourself and someone feels tension, the tension they feel in their body is not your thing to manage. You will feel tension inside of your body when you first start allowing other people to feel tension. And the key is to sit with it.

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8:17One crunchy bite of our Hershey's Cookies and Cream Bar, and I'm taken right back to college move-in day. I was a little overwhelmed by the newness of it all. Boxes were everywhere. I needed a break from unpacking. But just as I was able to take a breath and open my Hershey's Cookies and Cream Bar, my new roommate, Rachel, walked in. I offered her a piece, but she said no. Then after a beat, she said, actually, those are my favorite ones. We left. The ice was broken, and we've been friends ever since. Hershey's. It's your happy place.