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The Hidden Cost of Yes: The Personal, Professional, and Emotional Prices We Pay When We Can't Say No
16 Plays1 month ago
This is the people-pleasing wake-up call that shows you exactly what saying yes is actually costing you. The moment when you stop thinking "just because I don't have plans doesn't mean I'm available" is just a nice idea and start understanding the real personal, professional, and emotional prices you pay when you can't say no.
Here's what nobody talks about when it comes to people pleasing:
- The personal cost: time bankruptcy, physical exhaustion, and identity dilution from constantly prioritizing others
- The professional cost: diminished work quality, reputation damage, and career stagnation from overcommitment
- The emotional cost: resentment, validation addiction, and the depression that comes from living in an authenticity gap
- Why saying no to others is actually saying yes to yourself and your priorities
- Practical strategies: the pause technique, value alignment checks, and graceful ways to say no
- How to reframe boundaries as necessary, not selfish
From the client whose people-pleasing contributed to depressive episodes to women who become their boyfriend's manager instead of pursuing their own careers, this episode exposes the hidden costs that no one talks about.
Because here's the truth: every time you betray yourself by saying yes when you want to say no, you're not just giving away time - you're giving away pieces of your life.
No is a complete sentence, but yes to yourself is a complete life.
🎧 Related Episode: Why Your Friend Group is Shrinking: The Burnout and Relationship Connection - Here's what nobody talks about when it comes to burnout - it's why your relationships suffer too. Three strategies for staying connected when you're barely surviving.
Subscribe. Share. Remember that boundaries aren't selfish - they're necessary for sustainable relationships.
Small steps, big healing. Keep growing! 🌱
Join the conversation! What's the hidden cost of saying yes that you've experienced? DM me your stories on Instagram @YourCoachMari
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Send in questions: contact+podcast@marisolmoran.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Growth and Healing
00:00:00
Speaker
and Hello, beautiful souls, and welcome back to another installment of the Growing with Sol podcast. My name is Marisol Moran, and I am a certified life coach specializing in self-esteem and confidence.
00:00:11
Speaker
The Growing with Sol podcast focuses on continual growth and healing, especially in the small steps that we can take every single day. If you are looking to heal, to grow, to connect with your true self, this podcast is definitely for you.
00:00:25
Speaker
And if you are looking for a little bit of extra assistance, some support, some accountability, i am currently accepting clients. So you can definitely schedule your very own discovery call through the link in my show notes.
Understanding People Pleasing
00:00:37
Speaker
So today's episode, we are revisiting the topic of people pleasing. But this time around, we're going to look at it through a different lens. We're going to look at it in a, from a different perspective, a little bit of a lens to shift here.
00:00:51
Speaker
And i feel like often we talk about people pleasing and we recognize that it's not healthy. We recognize that it's not coming from maybe a healthy place and that it is ultimately detrimental to the self and detrimental to building strong relationships with other people.
00:01:12
Speaker
But I want to dig into that part a little bit more. and Okay. Because I feel like often with all of that, it's with people pleasing. There's a lot of a like, we don't have a healthy relationship with self and therefore we end up people pleasing and kind of putting ourselves in the back burner.
00:01:34
Speaker
So let's look at that a little bit more deeply to see what exactly is going on when we can't say no. What exactly is going on? What are the ramifications of saying yes when we don't want to?
00:01:49
Speaker
So in terms of three major areas that pop up that are negatively affected by that, I would say there are that there is essentially a personal cost, a professional cost possibly, as well as an emotional cost.
00:02:04
Speaker
To dig into the first one about the personal cost. One thing that I personally have seen, especially with one of the very first clients ended working with, was a personal cost in regards to your time.
00:02:20
Speaker
So you become essentially bankrupt to with time because you're saying yes and committing yourself to other people and other things that you would rather not be committing yourself to. And it is eating away at your time.
00:02:33
Speaker
And the thing is, every single time that you say yes to something or to someone else, it takes away from time for yourself. It takes away, ultimately, one of the most precious resources that you have, which is time itself. I mean, there is only so much time you have on this earth.
00:02:54
Speaker
So when you are giving it away to other people, especially when you don't want to you are giving away of your life to other people when you don't want to.
Consequences of Overcommitment
00:03:05
Speaker
And the thing is, like when I worked with this particular client who was the giving away of his time, it was almost almost like there was this this misconception that if he didn't have somewhere else to be, if he didn't have a prior commitment, then he was free.
00:03:25
Speaker
But just because you don't have plans doesn't mean that you're available. Your time to yourself is just as important as if it were committed to being with someone else or at an event or something like that.
00:03:41
Speaker
So if there is nothing on your calendar that you still have the ability to say no to something because you deserve some down time. Additionally, the personal cause can very much include a physical toll.
00:03:55
Speaker
This can be the stress, the exhaustion, potential burnout from overcommitment. We just talked about burnout recently. So if you missed it, go check out that episode. think it was about like two weeks back.
00:04:08
Speaker
But burnout is a very real thing. It affects so many aspects of our lives, of ourselves, our health, our well-being. So if you have this physical tool where you are exhausted, you are burnt out, you've reached your max, like, it's going to impact your health.
00:04:27
Speaker
So overextending yourself, people-pleasing, constantly saying yes has this unforeseen physical toll on ourselves that Either the people that we're saying yes to know that that's happening and they don't care, other people just don't realize it.
00:04:45
Speaker
So if you are experiencing a physical ramification, the physical toll, some exhaustion from constantly overexerting yourself, constantly saying yes to things, take a time to pause and really assess.
00:05:00
Speaker
Another thing that can be, or that is often a personal cost of people pleasing is identity dilution. So this is losing sight of yourself, losing sight of your own priorities, losing sight of your own values, especially because you are constantly prioritizing others.
00:05:19
Speaker
I feel like I've seen this a lot, especially in like relationships and romantic relationships where you're constantly putting the other person's need of needs above yours, constantly prioritizing thes the other person's, maybe their job, maybe their own projects, their goals, whatever it might be, you're prioritizing that person's life and their ambitions more than yourself and your own.
00:05:42
Speaker
And that level of people pleasing is where you lose sight of yourself, lose sight of who you want it to be. And that's something to really take a step back and consider because I've seen where people, especially women in this particular regard, have a certain goal, maybe be a career goal, and they get into relationship and they basically become the boyfriend's manager.
00:06:07
Speaker
And then what happened to their career goals? Nothing. Their career became manager instead of being the thing that they wanted to be.
Impact on Work and Relationships
00:06:19
Speaker
That kind of segue is very nicely into actually the professional cost. So that very much can be part of the professional cost as well. But additionally, if you are constantly people pleasing, constantly saying yes to things, even in the workplace, the quality of your work will diminish.
00:06:36
Speaker
There is only so much you can have on your plate before things start to crack and fall apart. So if you are spreading yourself thin, there is no way that you are excelling at all of these things.
00:06:49
Speaker
And with that, youree your reputation is at risk. So if you constantly are making promises and not delivering, your reputation is at risk, your credibility is at risk.
00:07:01
Speaker
And when that happens, it's going to have a snowball effect. You're not going to get promotions, you're not going to get raises, you're not going to have good references if you want to move and theyll apply to other jobs.
00:07:13
Speaker
So when you are constantly overexerting yourself, overextending yourself so that you are giving to others, in the workplace as well, maybe in the workplace especially, since it is your livelihood here, it can have some pretty significant ramifications.
00:07:30
Speaker
And if you are unable to maybe get the promotion, if you are unable to get the raise, if you are unable to leave and get better job, you're going to stagnate.
00:07:43
Speaker
So that is another thing or that can happen we are if we are constantly people pleasing, even in the workplace. You're going to get stuck saying yes to all these things.
00:07:53
Speaker
Your quality, your performance is going to decrease. And maybe you're also going to get stuck saying yes to low impact tasks instead of more strategic opportunities as well.
00:08:06
Speaker
So what about that emotional cost? Because I feel like a lot of the things we we've already touched on are very, know, like emotionally, not emotionally driven, but I would say that they have emotional impact. We care a lot about ourselves. We care a lot about our jobs, our careers.
00:08:25
Speaker
But what about that emotional, that emotional aspect, that emotional cost to people pleasing? One of the first things that comes up for a lot of us people pleasers, and I'm going to put myself right there with you, keep people pleased for a long time, is resentment.
00:08:42
Speaker
It's that quiet anger that's like festering underneath it all. That icky feeling, that part of you that just wants to rage. That's when you go to the rage room. 100%, that's when you go to the rage room.
00:08:54
Speaker
But to this quiet anger that's there, growing, when you just are consistently betraying yourself. Because that's what's happening. When you're people pleasing and you so badly want to say no.
00:09:07
Speaker
You so badly want to say no. You don't have the time. You can't be bothered. You don't want to do anything. You deserve some time to rest. But somebody's asking something of you. So you say yes.
00:09:20
Speaker
You are betraying your own needs. You are betraying yourself. So you get angry and you get resentful. And that is not healthy.
00:09:32
Speaker
Additionally, a lot of us and do people please and say yes to things because it does bring some sort of validation. So you then get caught up in this cycle of saying yes to things because you get this validation from people.
00:09:49
Speaker
So you get caught up in this loop of saying yes, feeling validated, and then feeling kind of icky, and then you run out of that validation, so you go back to saying yes to something, and it's a whole mess.
00:10:02
Speaker
It's a whole mess. But that is also this like cycle, this high and low kind of a thing that you can get stuck in. And then, like I mentioned before, if you are constantly betraying yourself, if you are constantly saying yes when you don't want to, essentially,
00:10:20
Speaker
It's inauthentic. You are being an inauthentic individual. I've heard some people when talking about people pleasing say that you like you're basically lying. It's a form of a lie. and And I'm not fully on that vibe.
00:10:36
Speaker
The same way a lot of people are like, oh, people pleasing is manipulating. I'm not fully on that vibe either. I can see why they say it. I can see why they say people pleasing is a form of manipulation.
00:10:48
Speaker
at the same time, i'm not i'm not on that vibe either. However, when you are people-pleasing and you are portraying yourself and you are not staying true to what your maybe true wish is, it is an inauthentic way to be.
00:11:10
Speaker
So when you are constantly having this disconnect between your actions and your desires, it leads to this gap that can be a bit contentious on the inside.
00:11:24
Speaker
And it is not a fun thing to deal with. One of the clients that I worked with who experienced this it actually contributed to his depressive episodes.
00:11:37
Speaker
And in working on building his self-esteem, in working on building his ability to say no to people, building his ability to stand up for himself,
00:11:54
Speaker
Eventually, we were able to reduce the amount of depressive episodes that he had. But essentially, he was living in this inauthenticity gap of what he really wanted to do, what he really wanted to say, and then doing the opposite.
00:12:13
Speaker
And that was feeding into his low self-esteem and feeding into his depression. Additionally, this can really impact your relationships.
Techniques for Managing People Pleasing
00:12:22
Speaker
So in terms of the emotional cost, that is a part of it.
00:12:27
Speaker
Because if you are constantly saying yes and overextending yourself when you don't want to or when it's detrimental to yourself, one, if the person that you're doing this for actually cares about you, actually loves you,
00:12:42
Speaker
They're going to be upset that you're doing this because they care about you and your well-being. They want you to be happy and healthy and lovely and wonderful and all the beautiful things. But by overextending yourself, you are not in a good and healthy place.
00:12:57
Speaker
So they're going be upset. And then it's going to lead to whole thing, which is other people it's the last thing you want. So it definitely will affect your relationships. And then, okay, if you then choose to no longer people-please and that affects your relationships negatively, let those people leave.
00:13:15
Speaker
They never cared about you anyway. So if we're going to talk about some practical strategies in order to really combat this and combat people-pleasing,
00:13:27
Speaker
Like we mentioned recently, the pause technique is a really wonderful strategy. So let's say somebody asks something of you and you don't want do it, but your instinctual response reaction is to say yes or find a way to make it work.
00:13:46
Speaker
Take some time to pause. between what they're asking and your response. One of the things that that client and I that I mentioned did to work on was if someone was asking you to help them with something or to do something, you could just be like, hey, I need to check my calendar.
00:14:03
Speaker
That can give you enough of a pause, enough time to find a comfortable way for you to say no. Another way that you can strategize around no longer people pleasing is a value alignment check.
00:14:21
Speaker
So you can just choose some quick questions to ask yourself if what they're asking of you is truly aligned with what you want to do, what you value, what you are working towards.
00:14:34
Speaker
And if no, then you don't do it. If yes, then you can do it. We just take a moment to pause to see if it is aligned with what your comfort level is, with what whatever it is for you.
00:14:50
Speaker
Additionally, you can start to practice graceful ways to say no. You know, what are some ways that you can say no that are comfortable for you?
00:15:01
Speaker
And this is really something that you can use if you are just starting to heal from people pleasing and you're starting to say no. Because i think it's just good practice that no is a full sentence in every situation.
00:15:17
Speaker
But I also know as someone who was a big people pleaser, sometimes saying no just off the bat is uncomfortable. So you need a more graceful way to say no.
00:15:31
Speaker
So it just take some time to think of ways for you to say no that are going to be comfortable for you to say, a little bit more seamless for you to say, and that'll maybe save everybody a little bit of face as well.
00:15:46
Speaker
Ultimately, it's really important to reframe no as a concept, especially as people pleasers, because essentially every time you're saying no, you were actually saying yes to yourself and your own priorities.
00:16:01
Speaker
And you deserve to emphasize and highlight and spend time on yourself and resting and recuperating and whatever it is that you want to work on that is just as valuable.
00:16:14
Speaker
So remember that boundaries are not selfish and that they are necessary in order for you to have a sustainable contribution to your relationships and to your own life.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:16:29
Speaker
If this episode resonated with you, I definitely appreciate that and let me know how it did. don't forget to subscribe as well as to like and share this out with your friends, social media. It definitely helps the podcast grow.
00:16:44
Speaker
You can also follow me. I am at yourcoachmari on Instagram, TikTok, and even threads. And if you are looking for some extra support, if you were on a healing from people pleasing journey, you can schedule your very own discovery call in the show notes.
00:16:58
Speaker
Until next time, keep growing.