Special: Stop Being a Doormat

0:00Through 25 seasons, 4 ,561 episodes, I believe The Oprah Winfrey Show is one of the greatest classrooms in the world. I really never thought of it that way. The aha moments, the breakthroughs, the connections, the occasional ugly cry. I miss him so terribly. I miss him every single minute. The LOLs. The moments that mattered. The eye-opening life lessons. Never allow them to take you somewhere else. I'm bringing them back. It's time to open the vault. I've personally chosen these classic episodes to share with you again. Every single person you ever will meet shares that common desire. They want to know, do you see me?

0:47Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you? You are listening to The Oprah Winfrey Show, the podcast. It took me almost 40 years to learn how to do this, and now I just do it all the time. I love doing it. I'm talking about learning to just say no, which I have found in my travels around the country is still one of the most difficult things in the world for women to do. Dr. Bartha Beck is here today with a cure. Really, if you will listen to her, if you pay attention and get it, you can cure your disease to please, or at least take big strides towards curing it beginning today. Dr. Martha Beck is a regular contributor to O!

1:33the magazine where I'm wearing the hat this month, in June. And actually, Martha, I've never told you this, but you are the first thing I go to in the magazine. Oh, my God. You are the first. I love your column so much. I think you have such... I go to yours. You go to mine. Yeah, what I know for sure right away. You go to what? I already know what I know for sure, so I don't... I already wrote that. So I go to you every month because I think you have such solid, sound advice. She's in O! magazine every month. And she got her Ph.D. from Harvard while raising three children. She works as a life coach and has really sound, sensible advice that you can just, in the instant that you read it, know, oh, that's the truth.

2:08I'm going to stop doing that. She says, every woman in the country is socialized to act like a doormat. We all have been socialized that way. And today, you all agree, right? Yes. Today she is going to begin to teach us how to say no. Kelly desperately need Martha's help. Kelly says she is so eager to please that she spends thousands of dollars a year trying to buy people's love. Look at this. I'm a 29-year-old single woman. I'm very, very hardworking in the real estate field. I own my own home. I drive a very nice car, and I make very good money. and I feel like I have to buy other people's love.

2:52I am a doormat when it comes to money. I just cannot say no to my friends, family, or any type of relationship that I'm in. I just broke up with my boyfriend of 11 years, and basically I paid for everything to keep him in my life. I even found out that he was using my credit card to go to strip clubs, and it was hard for me to even confront him about using my money to pay other girls to take their tops off. I finally got the courage to kick him out, but I am still paying for him to stay in a hotel until he gets some money to get his feet on the ground. I'm a pushover with my friends. I typically pay for dinners.

3:34They don't ever ask me. I just feel like that's just my job that I need to pay to keep them in my life. I always buy the most expensive gifts for my friends, baby showers, wedding gifts, birthdays. Three years ago, I loaned my friend about$3 ,000, and I haven't even gotten$5 back. I'm a very visible person around town. I get compliments all the time saying, Kelly, I've never seen you upset. I always am seeing you smiling. But the real fact is that when I get home, it's a very lonely time. I'm not happy. I wish I could find somebody to give me something. I don't think I've ever had that.

4:23I don't...I haven't even had a boyfriend that could afford to take me to McDonald's.

4:31Well, Dr. Martha says that Kelly is just like a man who sleeps with prostitutes. Not exactly. How so? It's more like she's a man who has decided at the beginning that no woman can ever love him, that he's not good enough. And so he only pays prostitutes because he figures that way he can't lose. He pays people to pretend to love him because he does not believe that he can be loved without that. Do guys think prostitutes love them? No, no. That's...they want the prostitute to pretend to love them. Okay. But of course they think she's doing it for the money. Right. And basically what Kelly's doing is, have you ever tried making a friendship or being in a relationship where you didn't offer money?

5:13No. So what you're doing is you're starting with the theory, I'm not lovable. Therefore, I will buy people's love. But you're always conscious that it's bought and paid for, so it doesn't feel like love to you. Now, what I suspect is that these people really do love you, you know? I know that I have several friends that love me. You're keeping it away. You know, you say in the tape, I wish that I could find somebody that would value me, that would give things to me. Well, guess what? You got a mirror? You're the only one who doesn't value you. And you...that's the bad news. The good news is that means you have the power to become the someone in your life who loves and cares for you.

5:50Okay? So that's what we've got to work on here. Okay. And how do you do that? Well, pragmatically speaking, here's what I want you to do. It's like you've got this theory, nobody can love me unless I buy stuff. But you've never tested the theory. It's like saying, my dog can fly, but I keep him chained down, so I've never... Has he ever flown? No, no, I keep him chained up. You know, in fact, the dog wouldn't fly anyway. So it's like you're saying, no one will love me unless I pay them. But you've never tried not paying them to see how they react. Right. So it's going to be scary for you. But I really want you to go on a buying fast for a week.

6:24I want you to leave the house every morning with$20 in cash and no credit cards. Okay. Okay? And make sure your car is gassed up or whatever. And make a point of being with friends, being with people, and you will not have the money to pay. You'll get the impulse. But, you know, one of the things that Phil says is that you teach people how to treat you. Absolutely. So if you have been the person who, every time you go out to lunch or dinner, you're the one who's paying, you go out to lunch, people are all, like, going, okay, Kelly. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. The bill is here, honey. What you gonna do?

6:55Right. And what's gonna happen is, Because financial doormats attract people who take and take and take, some of the people in your life are going to go away. And it is going to hurt, but they were never really yours. They were just being hired. And what happens is you'll see who really loves you and who doesn't. It's like you haven't, you've never had a boyfriend who could afford to take you to McDonald's. Why? Because you stayed with one guy for 11 years, you know, and he wouldn't do it. Right. It's not like there were hundreds of men and none of them would buy you anything. Right. Is that you're with one guy who couldn't go to McDonald's.

7:27Exactly. Who couldn't take you to McDonald's. Exactly. So then you think no man can take you. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You weren't available for all the guys who could have taken you. That's right. Dr. Martha Beck is with us and says that she once had the disease to please and found the cure. She says she had to learn how to kick men in the crotch before she could erase her welcome tattoo. Martha, explain that. I don't kick all men in the crotch. All the men are going, hmm, interesting. No, I was doing a model mugging thing with a friend where he was going to pretend to attack me, and I was just supposed to hold up my hands and say no.

8:01And I could not make myself do it. I couldn't. I mean, we tried like 20 times, and I thought, I got a problem. So I went and learned martial arts for a few years, just so I could learn that it's okay to have an actual fight, not just an argument, but a fight, and you can still be friends, and things are still okay, and it doesn't kill you. And that really helped me. Well, in this case, Martha also says that the key is to reverse your own psychology, correct? Yeah. This is what you were saying about women being socialized, especially moms. You know, when you have a baby, they're like, okay, never bend his little fingers back and never, like, you could wrench his arm right out of the socket.

8:40And when I went to karate, the first thing they said is, well, you grab the guy's fingers and then you wrench his arm out of And it was like everything I had been socialized to do was to take special care, never to hurt, never to be aggressive in any way. And I had to learn to do the opposite under some circumstances. Well, Rhonda says she has a serious case of the disease to please. Her husband, Brian, says that their marriage is doomed if she does not stop being a doormat. Brian and I have been married for 15 years, and I am a stay-at-home mom with three boys. I really have the disease to please.

9:16I just do whatever people want me to do. I want my wife to learn how to say no. A lot of times people drop their kids off at the last minute at my house. And whether I have plans or not, I cancel them. I'm mad because it takes up a lot of our family time. I wish Rhonda would spend more time focusing on our family instead of other people's problems or needs. She asked if I could go ahead and watch the dogs. And you said? I told her most likely I could. Brian gets upset because he can tell people no. I just can't. And I don't want people to be mad at me. She's constantly wondering, worrying, you know, is somebody thinking that she's a bitch?

10:03The other day, my husband and I were headed out the door to go to my son's baseball game. And the phone rang and it was my friend that wanted to borrow a purse. and I told her that sure, we would drop the purse off before we went to the game. It's fine. I hate when she does that, you know. We're already late, and then she says, sure, we'll drop it off, no problem. If somebody asks me to do something, and I say yes, and I really don't want to do it, I end up taking it out on my family. Can't you pick this stuff up when you're done with it? She just vents all her frustrations out with me. You won't believe what kind of day I had today.

10:41You know, I've got kids running around. I've got people calling. Everybody wants something. Not hello, not nothing. I'm very frustrated that my wife can't say no to people. It has gotten way out of control. It will ruin our marriage if Rhonda keeps us up. Martha says Rhonda has an addiction and her husband Brian has to treat her like a, like an alcoholic, like an addicted person to pleasing. In fact, three of the criteria for an addiction are the substance or the activity in this case is taking up a lot of your time. You try to cut down, but you can't, and it interferes with other aspects of your life.

11:22You're meeting all the criteria for an addiction. And what's happening with you, Brian, is you need to try to fix this. So you're playing the codependent in this. And here's the thing that is tricky about it. Whenever you say to Rhonda, you should set boundaries, what she's hearing is, someone else wants me to do something. So if that, that kind of communication is just teaching her to remain a doormat, but just be your doormat, you know what I mean? So what you need to do is start, instead of saying should or shouldn't, you say, I feel this, I feel that, I feel neglected, I feel angry, and then she gets to decide what to do.

11:57Now you, okay, you've got to sort of hit bottom and bounce with this thing. So if he stops, you know, being the one to set boundaries in your life, you're going to find yourself getting more and more and more exhausted, and at a certain point, you're going to hit bottom. And that's when we change things a little. Okay? What does this mean, this disease to please? I mean, what does it really say about a person? It basically says that people do not value themselves. If you're afraid that you're not worth enough to own your space on earth, you're constantly trying to buy the right to exist. And you do that with service, with labor, with money, with whatever it is.

12:34And so, and you think, and you, and you think that saying no to people is going to make them not like you, and they're going to be mad. Yes. Right. And then if they're mad at you, then what happens? I don't... They won't like you, and they'll think you are a bitch. I, I just, I worry about it. Like we all are so afraid of the B word. Right. We're just so afraid that somebody's going to say that about us, and then what's going to happen? I, I just, I worry. I worry myself to death. Mm-hmm. So, Rhonda, you're turning yourself inside out. But you know, if everybody said, this is what I learned. Because lots of people, I mean, I'm sure they think, call me that word all the time.

13:06And if they do, so what? I don't know about it. Mm-hmm. So what? So what? Rhonda, let me ask you this right now. No. What about so what? Sorry. What about so what? What about so what?

13:22Okay. Suppose the person who wants you to keep their dogs, and you say, you know what? I really can't keep your dogs. And they say, that Rhonda, she's kept my dogs all this time. That bitch, she didn't even keep my dogs. So what? Exactly. I mean... So what? So, so what? I don't know. I guess I just don't have that. I get, I just get so nervous. So what? I don't want, I just don't want people to be mad at me. Is it working? I mean, I... He just said he's very angry and frustrated. But you don't care about him being angry and frustrated. No, I do. I do worry about that. You know, you've just, you've been saying, I can't, I can't.

14:01The truth is you can. And I, what I'd really like you to do is take two things out of your vocabulary, okay? One is the phrase, I can't. The other is the phrase, I have to. Whenever you say those words and they're not really true, I can't go with you. I have to go see my mother. That's not actually true. But what it does is portray you as a victim and you feel helpless. Instead, I want you to use language like, I'm choosing to or I'm deciding to. I'm choosing not to go with you because I've decided to go see my mother." You can still make the choices, but you're going to become more conscious of the fact that you have the power in your life.

14:35Even if all you're doing is giving it away to other people, you have the power. So even if you're scared, it's one of those cases of feel the fear and do it anyway. But change those two parts of your language, and you're going to see some interesting changes in your own internal world. Now let's meet Haunen. She's an exhausted people pleaser who lives in fear of upsetting anybody.

15:23profusely for being a pain. I am a piano teacher and I have never been very good at collecting money from people and they sometimes forget to pay me or even show up. I have never been able to confront any of them. If I hear someone is struggling I volunteer to bail them out. I pick up their kids from school, babysit on the spur of the moment, make dinner for them and bake cookies last minute for school functions. My husband gets frustrated that I put myself last. I'm overworked and drained and my family is paying the price. Help! A doormat in distress. Well, Martha says it's time for Haonani. It's Haonani, right?

15:58Right. Haonani to snap out of it and stop being a bully to herself. Haonani is here with her husband, Craig. Yeah. I mean, what a lot of doormats don't know is that doormatism is just the flip side of being a bully. So let me ask you something. When you are sitting there and the waitress is giving you an alcoholic daiquiri and you're afraid to say no, how old do you feel? About eight. Right. And so there's an eight-year-old in there saying, I don't want that. Tell her to take it back. And what are you saying to that kid inside you who's tired, exhausted, doesn't want to say yes? I'm telling her to be quiet so she doesn't make anybody upset.

16:34Exactly. You're saying, I'm not going to listen to you. I don't care about you. You don't matter. You know, get back wherever you came from and don't interfere with my life. You're bullying that kid. So doormat energy is incredibly hard to change because it's so limp. But if you think about the bully side of it, and you stop yourself and say, wait a second, instead of attacking that kid inside me, I'm going to say, honey, I hear you. Isn't there a lot of anger, too, going on with people-leasers? Oh, tremendous amounts of anger. Yeah. Yeah. You see, you scratch the surface of a doormat, and you get a volcano of rage.

17:06It's amazing. Yeah. So you need to start taking care of it. Mind beneath the surface, because everybody is so ticked off that they've let people use them for years. Aren't you underneath the surface mad as hell? Yes, I am. Absolutely. Yes. Because you're just sick of it. Aren't you sick of people just taking advantage of you? I sure am. Are you allowing yourself to be taken advantage of? Yes. Yes, because I can't say no. I mean, if I could... Yes, you can. You choose not to say no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I choose not to say no. You don't want to say no. Right.

17:38Well, I have learned as a person who's been cured of it, I have learned that it takes teeny, teeny steps. Mm-hmm. You can't do the big thing all at once. You have to start with the smallest little thing, like that purse. You start with that purse. When she says, you know, I need the purse, you can say, you know, I can, you can come by and get it, or I'll leave it on the doorstep or whatever. Just the tiniest little things. It's about really, I think doormats, having been one, I think I was about 42 when I finally got cured. But having, that's a long time, isn't it? But I think with doormats, because you end up doing everything everybody wants, you haven't asked yourself really in life, what do I really want?

18:16You haven't even taken the time to say, what do I really want? So in every situation, it means you have to go inside yourself and say, now what do I really want to do in this, to do in this situation? Do I want to drive all the way over there and make the whole family late? Do I want to do that? Or do I really want her to use the purse? Do I want to, do you want, even do you want her to use the purse? If I want her to use the purse, what would be the best way to do that? You see what I'm saying? Yes. But you have to stop every single time and say, what do I want? What do I want? And say to that part of the inside, I am going to stand up for you.

18:51We're hearing confessions from women who suffer from the doormat syndrome. Dr. Nancy Snyderman is joining us being, via satellite, and she once suffered from the disease to please and says that it can actually kill you. Nancy's deed to be nice actually caused her to vomit in the Lincoln Bedroom. First of all, what were you doing in the Lincoln Bedroom? My first big advice, my first big invite to a White House party, and I never made it out of the bathroom with the worst migraine. I never even got headaches before. I came back to San Francisco and said, you know, this big debut at a White House party, I should have been great.

19:29And a friend who's a doctor of mine said, how much stuff are you doing? And I said, oh, not too much. He said, how many boards are you on that you really don't care about? How many people have you said yes to that you really don't want to help? And I said, not many. He said, go home and write down a list and bring it to me tomorrow. and I was flabbergasted to see, pencil on paper, how many things I'd committed to that I had no intellectual nor emotional investment in. And he said, by tomorrow, I want you off all but three. And it changed my life, and I got well. And I'm convinced that stress component that we belittle too much is a huge reason why most of us who are doormats don't feel good physically nor emotionally.

20:10Really? Yeah. And what does—it can literally kill you, is what we've been saying, Nancy. Sure, because it increases your stress hormones. If you don't, you have a responsibility to put yourself first occasionally. That's not selfish. That's self-preservational. You put yourself first. You have more to give people when you want to. But when you give to everyone else first and you have nothing left for yourself, you have that anger and that stress. And that increases hormones, cortisol, things like adrenaline. And all that does is make your heart beat faster. It makes your blood pressure go up. It makes your blood vessels narrow, increases you, I believe, for heart attack, stroke, cancer, all the things that can put you in an early grave.

20:54Well, when you can't say no, I heard you told the producers, it means that you have taken pieces of yourself all carved up. You give out pieces to yourself. Look, if you consider yourself a pie, you've carved up a piece and you've given it to everybody. And you know what hurts? A lot of the times you give yourself to people, they don't really care. They don't care. They're takers. They may not be givers themselves. And then one day you sit down and you go, how come I'm all spent? Why don't I feel good? Because you have nothing left. It's analogous to sitting on an airplane. And when the flight attendant says, if there are cabin pressure problems, put your own mask on first and then pass around to everyone else.

21:35We go, uh-huh, uh-huh. And in real life, we pass that oxygen mask to everybody until we are gasping for air. And I do not think women can afford to do that. We are the nurturers. We are the providers. But until we take ourselves off the back burner and put ourselves on the front burner and make ourselves our own epicenters, we will not be able to live successful and fruitful lives. And I've been on a plane where the mask came down. And I tell you this, that if you don't put your oxygen mask on first, you won't have enough air to give to anybody. You won't have enough air to even, you know, put the mask on your child.

22:12That's why they tell you to put yours on first. Absolutely true. That's right. Tell us about your chew and stew theory. Well, you know, it's interesting. And I got this from a friend of mine, and I think she's right. In the old days, thousands of years ago, when we were primal and we were being chased on the Serengeti by wild animals. There was a fight or flight syndrome. You stood and you fought, or you flew, you ran as fast as you possibly could. And those stress hormones allow you to do that, to escape danger. Well, we don't do that anymore. We sit at our desks. We do very sedentary things.

22:48And as we get stressed, and as we give too much of ourselves, we sit there and we stew and we fret and we think and we worry and we reach for potato chips and we chew everything that's unhealthy for us. Yeah. Olive oil potato chips preferably. That's right. Yeah. And what's really weird though is that we tend to crave then things that aren't good for us. We do crave high carbohydrate, high fat foods. Right. So we stew and we chew and we get heavy and we don't feel good about ourselves and we don't exercise. Just getting out, if you think you're stressed, go run up and down to a couple flights of steps.

23:24It will help release those very primal hormones that are always in our bodies and will make you feel better about yourself. But to sit there and eat things that are unhealthy for you just makes you feel worse about yourself at the end of the day anyway. Well, you're looking really good, Dr. Snyderman. Thank you so much. Ah, you're a sweetheart. Thank you. It's good to see you again. Okay. Well, Charlene is a perfect example of the physical effects of the disease to please. She was in the hospital just last week suffering from chest pains caused by her pushover personality. I come from a long line of disease de-pleasers.

23:55My home, it's become a zoo because I cannot say no to my children. Come on in. I live here with my five children, my son's girlfriend, their baby, and my husband. We also share the home with our 13 pets. Can you believe it? But we have four dogs, four cats, two iguanas, two green nulls, and a bunny. This is where the dogs eat. You'll notice it's empty. That's because I haven't filled it in the last hour or so and nobody else will. It's always been a big joke in my family that I had Rubbermaid Welcome Mat written across my chest because I could never turn anybody away. If I say no to my kids about anything, it's a complete production number from hell.