Welcome one, welcome all! It's Therapy Natter's time, the podcast series where two psychotherapists, sometimes with a guest, have a lovely little natter for half an hour or so on the off chance that what we say is interesting to you in some way. If it is, feel free to leave us a review, if you like. Feel free to find something else to listen to if you don't. We can't please everyone, can we? Hello Fiona! You're not much of a people pleaser, are you?
Oh no, I hate people pleasing. No, I don't want to please people. No, that didn't work, did it? That didn't work. Yeah, it did. Sarcasm. That was a very quick segue into our topic today, Richard. You usually take a little bit more time than that.
I know.
But, that's okay.
Just straight, in there. Slap! You're having the subject. Here it is!
And I wasn't ready. I was not prepared. But there we go. That's alright.
Did you want a tangential natter first then, is that what you're saying?
No. We did enough tangents last week, I think. So, we do have a guest today to talk about people pleasing. And that is Andrew Turnbull. Who is a hypnotherapist, psychotherapist based in Cheadle, Cheshire. I've got that right, haven't I?
You have, yeah. That's why my practice is Cheadle Therapy, yeah.
Ah. Does what it says on the tin, then.
Correct.
Okay, so welcome, and thanks for coming along and joining us.
Thanks for the invite. I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah we, when we first started Therapy Natters, back in the day, about 18 months ago, I put a message out to all of my favourite listeners, and said, look, if there's any topics you'd like us to talk about, do let us know, and so many times, different questions have come back to us that have revolved around the topic of People pleasing, in some way, shape, or form.
Even if it starts off looking as if the question was about something else, as with clients face to face, they'll come in with an issue, and then when you play around with it, you go underneath and go, Oh, it seems like you've got a great fear of judgment or criticism, and you want to make sure that everybody else is okay, even at the expense of yourself, and you're losing who you are! That happens again and again inside and outside the therapy
I think it is a phrase that some people might not have come across. I think it's a relatively new phrase to be bandied around a lot. So perhaps, Andrew, the reason, obviously, well, maybe it's not obvious, but the reason we've got you here is because this is something you specialize in not being one, but working with people who have this as an issue. Could you just, perhaps, define how you see people pleasing as a thing.
Yeah, absolutely. I see myself as a recovering people pleaser. So it's topic that I've taken a real interest in it's a very common occurrence because probably most of my clients have anxiety fear of judgment, fear of criticism, for example, as part of their presenting issues and linked with that is People pleasing. In terms of what it is, It's a strategy to keep ourselves safe.
So I'd love to normalize it for listeners who might be feeling really awkward or embarrassed about it and just don't know how to themselves out of, that habit. Now, keeping ourselves safe is essentially our brain's number one job. And it happens when there is either a real or a perceived threat from another person. So, growing up, I was bullied in school.
It's probably why I got interested in therapy and people pleasing but at the time, I think I took on board and soaked up like a sponge, the criticisms and the judgments from other people. And when we're little, we simply don't have that filter that we have as an adult to analyze and sift nonsense from people, which is sometimes why in therapy sessions, I might give a client in hypnotherapy.
who's, gone back to a time where they're in the playground and they're having not very nice comments said about them aged five, I might give them a nonsense o meter, in which case they can, sift and sort and reevaluate. Actually I didn't need to accept that as being true.
Ah.
Very often.
I remember the comedian Dave Gorman.
I love Dave
live. Yeah uh, great chap. Very clever. Very smart. Hard worker. Oh my god. Dave, if you listen to this podcast, slow down, man. Don't work so hard. But he described an experience where, I think it was on social media somebody said something along the lines of... Your mother is a whore! And, he had to recognise that that wasn't true, because obviously if he didn't, if that wasn't nonsense, he'd have to go, Oh wow, well thanks for letting me know that, that's news to me, goodness me, wow!
And, but of course he had to recognise, that, that comment, It's nonsense. It's irrelevant. it can be filtered out. I can sift through my life and that doesn't need to enter into my head. That's irrelevant. Just as somebody saying... I don't like you, or I don't think you're funny, or whatever comment somebody might get. It might be unimportant information. I don't need to retain that. And I remember back in my early days of podcasting, I mean really early days.
We're talking about 2012 or something like that, so going back a long way. Somebody left me a review that said something along the lines of... Oh, this guy seems nice, but seems to go off on a tangent a lot, and a lot of it seems to be a bit waffly. It's not as if there's a script or anything. Two stars. Two out of five. Thank you. And, genuinely, when I read that review, I started to change the way that I podcasted. Oh, I better make sure I make more notes. I can't trust myself, can I?
I can't just put the mic live with a couple of topics in my head and go, Yeah, I trust myself to waffle and natter. I couldn't. And for a good 12 months, probably, of monthly episodes, I scripted everything pretty much word for word to make sure that nobody said anything bad about me again. Now, that was one review. Out of 20 that I'd had that said, Five stars, really love this guy. Really engaging, really interesting, just fun to listen to. I love everything about what this guy does.
But I didn't listen to them, did I? I listened to the one review where they went, Eh, two out of five, this guy's a bit waffly. And you know what? I am a bit waffly, that's okay.
It's a good job now, isn't it, really, doing this?
It seems to be human nature, given what you just said Richard, that we will do more to avoid pain than gain pleasure.
Ta da!
a survival instinct again, isn't
Yeah, and I think it's worth pulling apart. There's things that people might say that are true, but don't matter. Or, or things that they say that aren't true. So, the, your mother's a whore one, presumably for most people, that is not true. So it can be discarded on the basis that it's a false statement. But then, you also use the example of, I don't like you, or I don't think you're funny Now those could be true, but they don't matter.
I mean it might matter if somebody said they don't like you, if it was your wife. Or your children, or somebody saying they don't like you, but generally speaking, in the world of social media, at least, it doesn't matter that somebody doesn't like you. And, even Dave Gorman will have people who don't find him funny.
I think that's what he was saying, because His comment was, you might as well have just have said, your dentist is a Libra. Okay, and? You don't you don't find me funny, your dentist is a Libra. It's information, but it's not important.
But it's the tone of voice in some of these comments. We hear the tone of voice and we interpret it as a judgment because of the nature of the intonation. If you could say the same sentence. But it could be the words might not be very kind, but it could be said in a really loving way. So we pay much more attention to nonverbal communication and intonation than we do about the actual
Yes. And that's one of the problems with social media and any electronically mediated communication. So, I use emojis, I think probably most people would say too much. But I'm using them to ensure... That my tone is conveyed. Because it can so easily happen that you put something and somebody says, Oh, that was a bit abrupt, that was a bit rude. No, I'm saying it in a kindly tone. Tone really, really matters.
And this is about making sure that other people don't misunderstand us. People pleasing happens when we don't feel comfortable and safe enough and good enough in some cases to express our own ideas and preferences. And it's possibly due to just not being treated very kindly in the past.
Yes, I think for us To have that filter that filters out all the good stuff and means we shine a spotlight on the bad For that to become a habit. I could pick myself apart I've had enough therapy over the years to know myself well enough that For me to get That review, which was only two stars out of five, with something negative in it. Somebody Burford? The guy was called Burford. Still remember. It's been over ten years, but I still remember that person's called Burford.
I recognize that, that's because of other stuff. Not because of Barry Burford or, or whatever. It was because of a million other experiences that I had growing up, when my personality was being developed, when I was figuring out who I am. And at some point I must have made a conscious decision that eventually became unconscious that says, I know my place. And in those three characters of John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett.
I've always been the Ronnie Corbett character who looks up at everybody else, while everybody else looks down on me. And I hear that, even now, all these years later, age 47, 20 years being a therapist, I still hear that. But the difference is now, I understand myself well enough to be okay with, Oh, okay, that's just that tape playing, is it? That's okay, I get it, I understand, but I'm still gonna keep my shape. When somebody says, could you babysit?
Not that anybody's asked me to babysit for a long time, but I mention that because there was a time, well years ago, I must have been 18, 19, something like that a friend who I guess I cared what they thought, rang me up one day and said, hey what are you doing on Saturday? And I thought, oh that'd be quite nice, yeah, I'm not doing anything. What are you up to? Well I was thinking of going out. Great! Could you babysit?
Oh,
Alright, oh okay. And they were a young mum. They were probably similar age to me. And their kid was quite little and didn't know me. And I got no experience in babysitting and I still said yes. Still did. Then I got a phone call from somebody else two days later that says, You know she's taking the mick mate. Yeah, I
Oh dear.
I never saw them again. Because I kept my shape.
What's interesting there is you can shine a torch on that moment where you said yes and Just reflect on how quickly did you respond because people pleasers, the serious people pleasers for whom it's a real issue, tend to respond very very quickly It's like an automatic instinctive survival response from the back of the brain. Whereas if we were to just give ourselves a few moments to just pause before we jump in and say yes. So we might not get that immediate dopamine hit. Oh, yes.
I've said yes. Now that means I'm not going to get, criticized. Oh, phew. But if we were to just take a few moments and allow our prefrontal cortex to just gather some more information. then we can basically make a more rational judgment as opposed to an emotional, panicky judgment.
which is one of the advantages of electronically mediated communication, because you can.
Correct.
Take some time. And I do find it mildly amusing sometimes when you see the people who haven't taken the time. There was a, fairly minor celebrity, I happened to see a reactionary tweet from the other day and I thought oh, I bet you later wish you'd taken a few moments and I did Because I don't do much on twitter at all, but I somehow saw this and I saw later I want to apologize for that tweet that i've taken down So, giving yourself time to respond is a good thing.
There's another element I'd like to bring in, which is generally along the lines of being a sensitive person.
Yes.
I was talking to somebody before a meeting a week or so ago, and we just knew that... It was going to be a tough meeting, and one of the people there said it was along the lines of, I don't find these things easy. It hurts when, blahdy blahdy, blah. I felt it was really important to highlight the fact that it's okay to be sensitive. In fact, in my value system, it's a good thing to be sensitive.
But what you need to be able to do then is take that little bit of time and to evaluate, did that person intend to hurt you? Well, if they did, well, they've got a problem if they're intending to hurt you. So, it doesn't need to hurt. And if they didn't intend to hurt you, then it doesn't need to hurt you because it wasn't intended. So, whichever it is, by taking that time to have a little look, it's okay. But being sensitive, well, yeah, I generally think it's a good thing.
And going back to what you said just now about knowing your place, Richard, I feel that everybody knows their place. But, some will be the John Cleese character, So everybody finds their place, and everybody needs to be able to challenge their place. And sensitivity goes along with that, because whichever place you take, if you're sensitive to it and to the others, then it sort of negates the issue, doesn't it? If everybody's kind to everybody.
Doesn't matter, just using that analogy, whether you're, I know it's not what it means, but if you're small, medium, or tall, everybody's sort of the same.
we can be kind and sensitive and put emojis on our texts, so we give a good impression. But we can also maintain rock solid boundaries.
Yes.
that's the difference. Some people just feel as though they've got to almost abandon their own preferences, their own opinions, and not speak up because what other people say, what other people think matters more than them in their kind of map of the world, and that's, that's unhelpful. It's unhealthy. Because then you can live your own life rather than other people's lives.
So I'm wondering if you can give any examples without going into too much information that would be breaking any confidentiality. But any sort of typical scenarios where this phrase, people pleasing, becomes... A problem that needs therapy.
very often clients come to me because they want to reduce alcohol or resolve drug related issues as well. And then when we dig down to what's behind that, very often it is people pleasing.
It's because someone that they're living with could be a parent or a partner, for example, and they're just difficult to live with, and therefore, in order to cope, then someone might drink more in order to just forget, switch off or to try and relax because they don't know about the hypnotherapeutic, relaxation techniques that you know many therapists will know.
So people always tend to do the best they can with the knowledge that they've got and what I might ask them after with we've understood actually what the the motivation is behind the alcohol or the drugs Is it to keep the peace or something like that? I might ask them, well, are there some occasions in different contexts of your life with different people where you don't people please? When in your life can you really easily say no or express your own opinion?
And so we can gather lots of information in either happy, healthy contexts and useful relationships or in more stressful conversations, they're both fantastic. If we approach this with a sense of curiosity, the clients have got gold nuggets in both their, happy relationships and their stressful ones,
I saw it was a social media joke from something to do with being British. Can't remember the channel. And it just had a list of statements. Things British people say when they mean... No, and things like let me check my diary and get back to you equals no
Yes. Yes.
I'm not quite sure at the minute. let me have a think means No. And there's just so many of them that we just don't in our culture very easily just come out and say No, I don't want to do
and no can be a complete sentence in itself.
Oh yeah, absolutely. I think it's really important that when somebody says No, there doesn't need to be a because. Like, can you babysit? No. Well, why not? Are you going to come on holiday with me? No. Why not? I don't need an excuse.
I think it's nice to, and I don't think that, no, this is interesting. I think it's, context dependent, isn't it? Of course.
Yeah, there's a difference between being assertive and being aggressive. Yeah.
There's no need to go from, people pleasing to people displeasing.
Yes. In happy, healthy relationships, then of course we can say yes or we can say no and we can just follow it up with, oh, it's because such and such, but what people pleasers tend to do is they'll quickly justify it in being on alert on edge, walking on eggshells. And then they'll, they'll feel as though they've got to justify themselves so the other person doesn't criticize them or think badly of them. So it's coming from a place of kind of scarcity, lack, and panic.
And that's, I think, the big difference.
And that's a really, really important point to make. So thank you. Yeah.
I'd love it to become a habit that, a bit like with the ability to use technology to have that bit of a gap between responding to a request. Because there's a call and you respond. If it could be a habit to immediately say, I'm not going to say just yet, but I'm not going to say no either. Leave it with me, and I'll give that some thought.
If that could be a habit, to have that sort of response each time it's appropriate, then you've got that time to let your frontal lobes kick in and actually think about it and go, Actually, yeah, I do want to do that. I am willing to do that. I'm happy to do it. As opposed to just automatically saying Yes every time. Because in that Yes, every time what you might be saying is please like me. Please respect me.
Please love me and actually somebody who says yes all the time, even when they don't want to, they're actually gonna lose people's respect if they're not careful
And very often there is, there's a few different types of people pleasers, the people who say yes straight away. There's people who say yes and will be quite kind of chirpy about it. Just think of The Vicar of Dibley. When she was invited to four Christmas dinners. So, so that's a really good example of it in comedy of a, people pleaser. So she kind of did that and she just kind of wore a smile on her face.
Now you get a different type of people pleaser, who's more like Muttley from Wacky Races, who's kind of mutters under their breath, for example. So if, anyone's sensing a sense of, well, I said yes to that, but I'm, now I'm feeling a sense of resentment and frustration about it, then that's really good information, isn't it?
Yeah, I love that. The idea that when you listen to what's going on for you, you've got information. And that's something that I bring that up in therapy a lot with people. They say it's great, you've got some data, you've got something to work with, you're getting to know yourself better. Because then, you're not going to live with a locus of evaluation that's always external, that I only exist in other people's minds and it's there that I have to focus my attention.
We need an internal locus of evaluation where it's what you think about yourself that counts. And that's where a lot of the problems lie, of course, is self esteem. If somebody doesn't like themselves well enough...
Then they're desperately trying to prove to themselves that they may be likeable, lovable, maybe I'm projecting here boys and girls and everybody in between, but This is what it is to be human, and the more you can understand about yourself, the more data you've got, the more opportunities you're gonna have to be able to have that space in between the call and the reaction to be able to say I'm not going to say yes just yet. Let me give that some thought and get back to you. I love that.
What a great habit to get into.
I did just want to raise the fact that some people do automatically say No as a default position as well, which can be problematic if the default is no it's coming from a very different place, but it does occur. People who will not try anything new
mm.
and respond from the fear of doing it place. So just wanted to add that into the mix that sometimes does.
And that could be fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of success in some cases, but again, they're, they're related.
Yeah. Hmm.
There's a phrase that pops into my head a lot, which is, when you say yes to somebody else, make sure you're not saying No to yourself. And I think that takes a little bit of time to think about before you make a decision on what you want to do with your life. Because you have to think. What do I want to do? And if the answer is, I want to make sure they're okay, well, that's not the right answer. Or it might be. It's context dependent. But we should still have our boundaries and keep our shape.
Who am I? What are my values? And if my values are, I want to make sure the world is a happy place, then that's great. But you are part of the world. Making sure that the world is a happy place and everybody gets on and everybody's in a good mood, that includes you. That includes making sure that you, as part of the human race, because the Declaration of Human Rights, says that everybody deserves to be happy, that includes you. And I think people forget that.
they forget to include themselves in that. I want everybody to take away that. I really do.
Yeah. And it's really clear for people to if people get really clear about their boundaries and their values and who they are, which you mentioned at the start of the podcast, Richard, and their goals, then they can essentially live their life and they'll be much happier as well, because the alternative is chronic stress. Health problems. I had a kind of bad back for a long, long time. And forking out lots of money for osteopathy because people take on board, lots of stress, for example.
And I have lots of clients with digestive problems and it's almost always related to people pleasing. In many cases,
yeah, as far as our muscles are concerned, our body is an extension. It's not even an extension. It's part of us. We feel our emotions in our body. As I sit here, I'm holding myself tightly. If you hold yourself tightly, you're going to tighten up your muscles. And then the weaker muscles of the lower back, where it's at it's thinnest, they're going to rip. And you're going to have a bad back and go, oh, I've got a bad back. Yeah, because you're holding yourself so tightly all the time.
And I've got Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Yes, because you're under stress all the time.
And one of the things that a lot of people do, and I do this, is hold my stomach really tightly, as if you're going to metaphorically get punched in the stomach. I mean, I should have a washboard stomach given how much I do that, and unfortunately I don't. If I did, it your struggle there to find the words, I think really actually explains the issue. We don't have the words to explain how the mind and body work together. Because it's so, I was going to say it's new.
It's not, of course, you know, Aristotle was talking about it, and not my cat, the philosopher.
We are what we habitually do. Yeah,
yes, he was, he was a very wise cat, but the mind body connection is not new. But I don't think there's any western society, at least, who's ever really got to grips with it terribly well.
We're doing the best we can.
We're getting there, we're moving.
But it means having these natters, doesn't it? And it means exploring who we are and talking about more than just the weather or Love Island, which is fine. We live in England. The weather's nuts. We're gonna talk about it. Have you, have you been to England lately? What the heck? And we talk about Love Island because we're all voyeurs. But there is more to us than that, isn't there?
But in order to have these conversations, we've got to be okay with being vulnerable and being vulnerable means we're opening ourselves up to the idea of criticism for somebody to say, Hey, I, I, I really struggled to say no to people. And I'm shining a spotlight on that because that's going to ruin me and I want to work on that. If we're in a group of friends that are trusting and safe, then they'll support us.
If we're in a group of friends who, oh great this person's a people pleaser, we can take the mick. Then you need new friends. Sorry.
I suppose that is a really crucial part of it, is the fact that people will be taken advantage of. And I don't think many people actively take advantage of people pleasers. They don't sort of sit there in the morning and think, Ooh, who can I take advantage of today?
There are some team leaders in offices that do. But they're few and far between.
I don't think many people do. Some people, yes. But it's more that we all sort of take advantage of the situation that's offered to us. Unless we also have the chance to reflect on it. So, another side of this is to think about, if there is anybody in your world, for any listeners out there is there anybody your world who is a people pleaser, that you could help by not exploiting them? That sounds really, sort of, a bit black and white.
But, just, if you're wanting something from somebody, talk about it, and not put it on them.
absolutely. It's it's worth people doing an audit of their lives. And like you said, review your friends and do I feel safe and comfortable with them? But also is there anyone who kind of hesitates around me
Ah,
in other words, is there like Fiona said, is there a people pleaser who just needs a little bit more reassurance? I remember when I was about 10 or 11, and I think we were in the kitchen of a family friend who was sort of like a pastoral manager in a school as a teacher. So she had lovely interpersonal skills. And she asked me, with a kind of a kettle in the kitchen, Do you want a cup of tea? She just wanted to know how much water to put in the kettle. And she noticed that I paused.
And I was really grateful when she said, it is okay if you want a cup of tea. And I remember that moment for some reason, because she just it feel safe. She obviously noticed maybe it was, it's like a kind of a freeze response, isn't it? I was probably thinking age 10 or 11 is what's the right answer? Is it okay to actually have, a cup of tea, for example, but she had the interpersonal skills to be able to just notice and reassure me, really clever.
And in that situation, it could have been that either was right and the other one was wrong. So your pause makes sense, because you didn't know which was the acceptable one. So, so good on her that she recognized that.
That's a, great takeaway If people can look out for their friends that do those pauses and recognize, oh, there, there's a conflict here. 'cause the question, for example, do you want a drink? Do you want a coffee? Do you want a cup of tea? Do you want a pint? Or whatever it might be, if there is that pause to make sure that they hear the question properly because what you're asking is do you want to drink but what they're Questioning in their head is what's the right thing to say next?
What do they want from
what's the right thing to say? And also, are they going to be resentful? Am I an inconvenience? So it's all coming from a place of kind of low self esteem. Not, yeah, not, not great.
And self esteem is a, is a big topic, it is, and it's one that we'll continue to chat about, natter about, chip away at, and make sure that the general public can boost their self esteem so they can be assertive without being a dick about it.
I've got one anecdote from a program that I saw a couple of weeks ago on Cool Britannia. So it was sort of Britain in the 1990s. And the episode about British values, for example. And this is about kind of modeling excellence. So we can, we can ask clients if there's someone who they don't people please around and kind of, we can, we can learn from that, but also we can look to other people who just don't people please. In other words, they keep going no matter what happens.
And what Anthony Gormley was describing was he's the the sculptor who designed the Angel of the North, which is this kind of iconic statue that sits on a massive hill in Gateshead. Newcastle, which is originally where, near where I'm from, and it's right next to the A1 So picture this 20 meter statue with a wingspan of 54 meters. Basically longer than a Boeing 757 and it's seen by 300 million people a year. So you've probably seen it.
Some starts of TV programs, etc. It's become a really iconic statue And he described in this interview the process by which he built it and He got so much flack and criticism from the good people in the Northeast who just didn't want their council tax being wasted. So there was criticisms of, it's going to look like an eyesore and it's apparently it's going to cost 800, 000 pounds, what a waste of money, for example.
And he just kept going and kept going and he built it because he was really clear about identity. He knew what he wanted and he knew why he wanted it as well. So, What he wanted to build was the biggest angel statue ever made. And that's what the Angel of the North is. But he was also really clear about three reasons in terms of values. He knew what the Angel of the North was going to stand for. So he wanted it to be a warm welcome to visitors to the Northeast.
So like I said, 300 million people see it a year. And that 54 meter, outstretched, that's a warm welcome. It's an impressive sight. So secondly, he wanted it to showcase the technical engineering and construction talent that exists in the Northeast. And because this is made of steel, it's 200 tons of steel, then it doesn't budge an inch, in the wind. And the reason it doesn't blow over, or even move an inch, is because it's anchored 20 meters into the ground.
So it's the same height below the ground, within this hill, as it is above ground. And these 200 tons of steel above ground are anchored in place by an additional... 500 tons of steel below ground inside this big hill. And the third reason is it stands as a respectful tribute on the site of a former coal mine to remind people of the thousands of coal miners who worked in the dark for 200 years to provide the fuel to keep people warm and to keep industries flourishing, for example.
So imagine if we got really clear about what we stood for. Imagine if we all felt grounded by 500 tons of steel below our feet that enabled us to stand firm and say no when we wanted to and yes when we wanted to. Imagine if we could openly welcome people but that nothing and no one could get us to be a pushover. Like Fiona mentioned earlier, we don't need to intimidate anyone if we speak with grace and knowing that we have a vision for our time, our energy and our money.
So if we get really clear about who we are, what we want and why we want it, then we can live our lives rather than people please.
With some solid foundations. Love it. Good stuff. Excellent. Thank you. Well, let's wrap up for today, because we can't keep nattering all day. If anybody's got any... questions or any comments about what we've spoken about today or about anything that we've spoken about in other episodes, do get in touch.
There is a form with a link in the show notes where you can go and submit us some topic ideas if you've got something you want to say, and I'm sure we can shoehorn what you've asked into an episode somewhere. Right, let's love them and leave them as always. We'll be back next week. If you need anything, you know where to find us. Have a good one, everybody. Take care, folks.
Thank you.
Bye! Bye bye!