Ep. 107 – No More Hiding: Being Authentic and Stopping People Pleasing

TRANSCRIPT

Caroline: [00:00:00] welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking about people pleasing, and I have Carolyn Jos, who is a PhD in molecular pathophysiology. She’s a researcher with vast experiencein health and wellbeing in autism. But most importantly, she’s a 47-year-old single mom of two teenagers. She’s lived through death, separation, her own son’s autism diagnosis, illness, burnout, career dreams collapsing, financial insecurity, and the feeling of being a stranger everywhere she goes. And yet people describe her as easygoing, fun to be around, always smiling, strong, and hardworking. From her own words, she says that most of her life she tried to please everyone, her husband, her parents, her employers, her colleagues, her friends, because she thought that she was a natural pleaser. [00:01:00] She said yes to everything, believing that it was helping. Underneath, she had a deep need for love, safety, and belonging. Please join me in welcoming Carolyn. Hi,

Caroline: Hi, Gissele. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me

Gissele: Yeah, for sure. I, when I heard your story, I really wanted to talk to you ’cause there were elements of the story that I really resonated with. I wanted to start by asking you, where do you think you learned that people-pleasing was the way to get more attention and love?

Caroline: That’s a good question . It’s hard to tell. I guess it was when I was pretty young. I have an older sister, she’s three years older than me, and she had some mental issues pretty early on, and it was tough for my parents, and my parents had rough times at that point too because they weren’t employed and they were struggling financially.

Caroline: So I used to hide , I used to be the one that for each of my parents would have no concerns. I was doing good at school, I was pretty easygoing [00:02:00] and I, yeah, I had no trouble at all. So I started k- I make myself a bit small and say yes to anything because I didn’t want to add to their burden already.

Gissele: So I guess that’s when it started, Yeah, and that’s often very common, right? With children when there’s one sibling that is suffering, the other one usually doesn’t want to add on to the suffering and, but also at the same time then is saying, “My needs are not as important as other siblings’ needs,” right? Which we internalize that messaging.

Gissele: We do internalize it because you don’t even realize it that you have some unmet needs. You just, you think that’s, it’s what you get, and you don’t think about it really

Gissele: Yeah, and you tend to derive value from taking care of other people’s needs, in particular your parents, right? Especially if you know that they are not coping well. But that’s not really the role of a child.

Caroline: Shouldn’t be.

Gissele: Have the emotional girth, yeah to take care of your parents’ needs when you’re just learning how to take care of your own needs, right?

Gissele: And so I think [00:03:00] that’s where difficulties arise. I wanted to

Gissele: read something that you had said to me, which is “No matter how hard I worked, I was never given the same opportunity as those who challenged, complained, or behaved poorly. I watch many of them climb the ladder effortlessly with resumes far thinner than mine, keep devoted partners while being constantly oppositional, or act like divas an