77. What Happens When You Finally Stop Pleasing Everyone

Dr. Vanessa Calderón: There's a moment right before you say the word no. The email is drafted, the hand's about to go up in a meeting where your whole body just sort of tenses up for maybe a fallout. Here's what the research shows us: that most of the time that fallout you're bracing for is much smaller than you think it is, or maybe isn't coming at all. Today on the podcast, the fear of disappointing other people, where it actually comes from, and why chasing the opposite can cost you your sense of self. Welcome to The Authentic Path. I'm your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon, Harvard-trained physician and healer. I integrate science and ancestral wisdom to support you in creating the success you desire in all areas of your life. I'm so glad you're here. Let's get started. Hi friends, welcome back to The Authentic Path. I'm Dr. Vanessa Calderon, and I am just so thrilled that you are all here. Those of you who have been listening to this podcast for a while, you know my background. You know I come from medicine, I'm a neuroplasticity trainer and executive coach. And before any of those things, I come from a long line of indigenous healers from Mexico and El Salvador. And I was raised with this understanding that our sense of worth was never supposed to be earned by how well we managed everyone else's feelings. what's so fascinating about that is that even though that was in my sort of cognitive consciousness, it wasn't something I embodied because it wasn't something that I saw modeled to me. And in 20 years of this work, here's something I have never at all seen, even once. I have never seen a person, not a physician, not any of the leaders I coach, not even the most devoted parent in the carpool line has figured out how to never let anyone down. So I just want you to know that it doesn't exist, that trying to live your life to not disappoint anyone else is going to be a very hard life to live. And even though that's true, so many of us are living as if that's the goal, that our goal is to never let anyone down. And we are essentially exhausting ourselves, contorting ourselves, trying to manage other people's feelings, other people's expectations, other people's disappointment, often at the direct expense of our own needs, our own truths, our own body. So today we're going somewhere that I have not been before on this podcast, and it's somewhere I know lot of really high-functioning, high-achieving, big-hearted people avoid. that's talking about what it actually means to disappoint someone else. So, we're gonna look at why some of us carry this fear more heavily than others and why it can create this huge chasm inside of our own bodies. then I'm gonna give you a couple of reframes and a couple of practices that I'm gonna invite you to start using today to really release yourself from this hold that this might have on you. Okay, so what does it actually mean to disappoint someone? What does that actually mean? I wanna start by separating the fear that we hold inside of ourselves of disappointing someone. From the reality of actually disappointing someone. Okay, and I want to do that using real data. So there's this kind of feeling that we get when we're about to say no to something, when we know we need to maybe back down on something, we know we can't say yes to something, we have to say no to a request or tell someone a truth that they don't want to hear. That feeling is not information about how bad the outcome is gonna be. What it is is a prediction. And that prediction can be wrong, especially for many of us high achievers. So many of us high-functioning high achievers, we live in this world of what I call black or white thinking, all or nothing thinking, or also known as catastrophic thinking. And what that does is it creates this prediction where I do this, it's gonna be the absolute worst thing in the world and the world is gonna come crumbling down on me. But that is that is not exactly what they're gonna be feeling. That's just our own fear. So that fear of disappointment that we feel that feels so heavy in our bodies that keeps us stuck is actually our own fear that we have in ourselves because we have no idea what the other person's gonna experience yet. There's a Cornell social psychologist that has done really interesting research. Her name is Vanessa Bones, and she spent years studying what she calls the underestimation of compliance effect. So she studied over 14,000 people, and what she has found is that. People consistently underestimate how things will actually go with others. They misjudge reactions to requests, they misjudge what's gonna happen if they refuse to do something, they usually misjudge it by about half, by about 50%. So, what's interesting about this is that her work shows that this isn't about being naive or overly optimistic about people. It's that we're so consumed by our own discomfort in the moment. We're so concerned how about how uncomfortable it feels to even perceive that we might be disappointing someone we completely lose the ability to accurately predict what's going to happen on the other side. we tend to imagine a much bigger, longer lasting reaction in the other person than what act than what is actually going to happen. So what I think is really interesting is what we are actually feeling is the fear of disappointing someone else, which lives in our body. So the fear of disappointing someone else, that's our own feeling. We're afraid of that. And that happens before anything has happened, the fear of disappointment. The actual disappointment that lives in the other person. And this is the part that we can't measure. We don't know. And it's almost always, from what we've seen in the data, it's almost always smaller, shorter, and more survivable than what we predict. People may feel disappointed for real sometimes, but when they do, they're often able to get over it so much faster than we imagine or expect because humans are resilient and they're gonna be okay. And it's so interesting because if you can think about, let's think about an example of when you were afraid to disappoint someone. I'll give you an example in my life. remember there was a time where I was really afraid to disappoint my kid. They wanted something, I don't even remember what it was. They're in the backseat complaining and crying because they really wanted it. There was a part of me that felt so Horrible disappointing them. And I finally was like, I'm sorry. I and I held the boundary with love and compassion. I said, I'm so sorry. We're not gonna be able to do that today. Period. That was it. And then like seconds later, they totally shifted their com they totally shifted. They weren't crying, they weren't yelling, they were talking about something totally different. Hey, can we play, can we play music? Can I listen to this on the radio? And in my mind, I was like, my gosh, that is so fascinating. I was so afraid to disappoint them. In my mind, I was going back and forth. I was having all these emotions in my body, and they're over it. And this has happened not just with my kids. I remember once I got asked to speak at this conference, and they wanted me to, this is like right after COVID when everybody was doing sort of a mix of virtual and in-person, and they wanted me to come in person. And I didn't want to go. I was doing a ton of traveling. I had a lot of clinical shifts and I didn't want to travel. And I was feeling so horrible saying no. I had so much fear that I was going to disappoint them, that they were relying on me, that I'm the expert in this area. Of course they're asking me to come speak. And I finally was like, okay, I can't do it. And I said no and felt horrible that. And then they were like, okay, thanks for letting us know. And they found somebody right away to go and speak at the thing. And so, of course, like we want to believe that they're going to be so disappointed, but people figure it out. They always figure it out. People are resilient. So, why is it that we're so afraid to disappoint other people? So, I want to talk here about the fear that we're feeling and how it's both a nervous system and developmental pattern. It's not necessarily a character flaw. There's not something wrong with you because you're afraid to disappoint somebody else. It's essentially a lot of what we've inherited or what we've learned. So if you were raised on praise, so being the good one, being the easy one, the Quiet one, the one that never causes any problems, the responsible one, the one who always gets everything done, whose early sense of safety and belonging got tied to performance and also to managing how other people felt. You are more likely to hold on to this fear of disappointing others than others. And this is me, by the way. I was always praised for being so quiet. I remember my grandmother telling me. That I was such a good girl because I never got my white dress dirty. It also meant I never went outside and played because I was so afraid of getting my dress dirty and disappointing my grandmother. And so I was praised on all these things, and that's how I learned to feel love. And so for me, I never wanted to disappoint anybody else because I had made it mean that if I did, they wouldn't love me. So psychologists call this contingent self-worth when your value as a person depends on external outcomes. on approval, on grades, on being needed, rather than it just being a given. Of course you're worthy. And I just want to pause there for a second because I think sort of cognitively we all know that we're quote unquote worthy. But we most people, and I'll tell you, I've been doing this work for a long time. And in the 20 years of doing this sort of line of work, I know that there are still many people that cognitively know that they're worthy but have not fully embodied it. There's still little parts of them Where there's kind of a chasm where they don't think that part of themselves is good enough yet. And so just to name, if love and safety once felt conditional for you on pleasing others or you know being the good one or the needed one, then disappointing someone doesn't just feel uncomfortable. It can feel unsafe. There's a trauma therapist, his name is Pete Walker, and he named the fourth survival response. We all know about fight, flight, freeze. But he was a person that named fawning as a survival response. So fawning is the nervous system strategy of essentially people pleasing or pleasing others. Fawning is when we accommodate to manage other people's emotions in order for us to stay safe and kind of keep the relationship intact. And for many people, especially those who grew up needing to read a caregiver's mood to stay safe. So if you came from a upbringing where Maybe your parents were doing their best, but they were not attuned to your emotions or they would have outbursts or they had a lot of unhealed trauma of their own. Then you grew up learning how to read what it is that they needed and attuned to their needs. So, what that did is essentially teach you how to be really good at pleasing others, to keep relationships safe. So you learned how to fawn really well. And so fawning itself is not necessarily a personality trait, it's more of biology that was learned so that you could stay safe and alive. And this pattern gets wired very, very early and reinforced every time it works. And most of the neuroplasticity happening in our brain, most of the development is happening between zero and twelve years old. And so between zero and twelve, think about your upbringing and how you were raised and what got reinforced early and often, because every time it gets reinforced, it strengthens the idea that that's the truth, that's the belief. Many of us also inherited this pattern. So this could be something that came through to you through your epigenetics from ancestral or generational patterns that we got passed down to us. around ideas of self-sacrifice or keeping the peace or being always responsible. I want to just name that because the problem here isn't necessarily that we may disappoint someone. The problem is what we have made it mean if we perceive we do disappoint someone. Because what we make it mean is not just that I disappointed them, we make it mean. That I must be selfish, that I must be unreliable, that I must be not good enough, that I should be able to handle it all, that I'm a bad person. And that right there is the identity conclusion that's masquerading as just one tiny little thing that happened in one moment. We've made it mean all these things about ourselves, which is why the feeling of disappointing others can feel like a prison. It can feel so hard. So, underneath almost every one of these fears of disappointing someone else is this sort of older fear of being unloved or unwanted or not being good enough or useful enough. So the fear really is not necessarily about how somebody else is going to react. It's more about what they might think about us or what we have made it mean about ourselves when we do disappoint someone else. So I'm gonna just spend a tiny little amount of time here talking about people pleasing because People pleasing tends to show up a lot in folks that are afraid to disappoint others. Again, I am raising my hand here because this was me. And I want you to understand the chronic cost of people pleasing because a lot of people think people pleasing is just a way to be nice, but really people pleasing is a fear-based trauma response where we're so afraid that people might not think that we're kind or they may not think that we're a good person. And so we try to do everything we can to get them to like us. It's essentially a survival strategy. And it does become a way of essentially abandoning yourself because you're doing all these other things to make other people happy you forget about what it is that you need. So the trouble isn't necessarily that in people pleasing that you're nice or that you're helping others. The trouble comes in when saying yes to other people means saying no to a deeper part of yourself, such as a core value of yours or a legitimate need that you have. So the cost of being afraid of disappointing other people a pretty deep cost. And I want to just spend some time here for you to know when you are choosing to make decisions out of fear because you're afraid to disappoint someone else, you're never going to have results that in the long term that are going to make you that are in integrity, that are in alignment with who you are. Because the cost of being afraid of disappointing others and making decisions based off that fear. Will lead to things like chronic overextension, saying yes to a bunch of things that you really want to say no to can eventually lead to burnout. It will mean that you start shrinking yourself so that you can be what you think other people need you to be, can lead to you kind of avoiding your own desires, your opinions, your ambitions, because you don't want to trigger anyone else. You don't want anyone to think that you're selfish or that you don't care about them. And it Will eventually lead to this resentment that starts to build inside of you, like an internal sort of chasm, because you are now acting out of integrity. So I want to give you a few ways to reframe this and think about this differently, and a couple of actions for you to take if you want to start practicing how to have the courage to make decisions that are in alignment with who you are, with your integrity, as opposed to making all these decisions because you're afraid of disappointing other people. The first reframe is this: I want you to practice holding two truths at the same time. You can be a good person and you might still disappoint people. So I want to just name that first because I think that's really, really, really important. I think a lot of us hold again this like black or white thinking. I'm either a good person, reliable, loving, or I disappoint people. And most of us are living as if only one of those can be true. But that's not that's not at all a fact. The truth is two things can be true at the same time. You can be fully capable, fully good, fully devoted to the people you love, and you still might let someone down. It's like I might still let down my kid because I can't get him the dessert that he wants at this time of the day because it just doesn't make sense. So you might still let someone down. These things are not opposites, they coexist in every human life, every single day. Two truths existing at the same time. And holding that tension, being able to hold that tension, that's a sign of evolution. Because there are times in our lives when we're younger, we don't see that there's gray in life. Because the world is not bimodal. It's not this or that. It's all the gray in the middle. And we know from decades of research, from so many really incredible people, including Kristen Neff, who I love. That shows us that the way to sort of hold these two truths at once is to really offer ourselves self-compassion. That self-compassion is a protective factor that's gonna help us recover when we feel like we have let somebody down. We can say, okay, that's okay. And two two episodes ago, I did a whole another podcast on self-compassion. So take a listen to that. I think it's number 72 or 73, but I'll link it in the show notes here for you to listen to. So, why I name that is because oftentimes when we're afraid that we've disappointed someone, there's this like little soundtrack that turns on in our brain where we start beating ourselves up for disappointing them, where we tell ourselves we're not reliable, we must not be good, there must be something wrong with us. And all of that self-criticism is not helpful. It doesn't make it better for us, it doesn't make us less likely to not disappoint somebody in the future, although our brain thinks it does. But that is not true. We know from decades of research that all of that all that is doing is just making this experience much more painful. It's not teaching us a lesson, it's not doing anything useful. The real protective factor here is self-compassion. That's going to allow us to move through this a little bit with a little bit more ease, a little more grace, and really hold ourselves to be present for what it is that we need in those moments. There's also a wisdom that is shared in many indigenous traditions, which is That your wholeness was never about being flawless or endlessly self-sacrificing. Your wholeness includes a contradiction, that there's a limitation. And the humility of being human is incredibly powerful. Cause when you are human, you have to understand that that comes with the good, the bad, that comes with not being perfect. And that is just part of Bowing down to the human experience and being grateful for the human experience. For example, healer who chooses to never rest, to never say no, to never disappoint anyone, that is not a wise healer. That is a healer that will eventually head towards collapse because they will eventually have nothing left to give. And nobody wins when a person burns out. Nobody wins when someone is resentful. Nobody wins when someone is burnt out. No one wins. We all lose when someone doesn't take care of themselves. So I want you to essentially release the belief directly. And I want you to name it as a belief, not as a fact, but as just a belief. The idea that a mistake or disappointing someone makes you bad, makes you inadequate. All whatever story you're holding on to, I want you to name it for yourself so you can witness and say, hold on a second. That is just a story that doesn't make it true. Because the more you can name it as a story, the more you will realize that it's something that you can release. It's not a universal truth, it's just a story. Another reframe that I think is just really important for you to think about. So one is you can hold two truths at the same time. The other is you cannot be everything to everyone. I know that's something else that we sort of like cognitively believe, but many people haven't embodied that. And I want you to essentially. Think about just like if we were to put this in numbers, the math of being one finite human being that like can be everything for everyone. You are just one person. You're one person, one body, one set of hours with your own values, and trying to be everything to everyone isn't necessarily a higher standard or trying to come from a place of excellence. No, it's physically, mathematically impossible. So as a human being, you're definitely. Definitely going to disappoint other people in this lifetime. And it's not going to feel good again because of the stuff you've made it mean. Even me, even saying that out loud. Even when I was drafting this podcast episode, I was like, my gosh, I'm giving pro people permission to disappoint other people. That doesn't feel good in my body. But it's because that is still a wounded place for me that I am actively healing every day to know that I am worthy and kind and loving just for existing, not for what I do for other people. And so it's something that I'm still healing actively as I'm essentially like going through my own human experience. And I share this with you because there's only one way to avoid disappointing other people. And that is essentially contorting yourself every second of the day. Always contorting yourself to meet everybody else's expectations around you, to be who you think they need you to be, to say what you think they need you to say, to wear what you think they need you to wear. When you do that, what ends up happening? You don't even know who you are anymore. And the more and more you do that, the more you lose touch with your authentic self. And we are here to reconnect the journey we are in life is to reconnect with who we are at our core, with our highest self, our soul self, our authentic self. And the more and more we are contorting ourselves to do that, the more we are living out of integrity. And every time we make a choice that is out of integrity with who we are. We create this deep chasm inside of our own bodies, inside of ourselves, inside of our our soul self. We're creating this chasm because we are making choices that are out of integrity with who we are. And that is just pulling us apart of what we're trying to do. This when the soul evolves in this human experience, you become one with your soul self. What I mean by that is your wounded self continues to heal and evolve and heal and evolve. And eventually you become one with your soul self. That's the journey of the soul. It's it's really, really beautiful. And when you become one with your soul self, it's a place of compassion, of unconditional love, of kindness. It's an incredible, beautiful place. And that is really hard to come to. It's a really hard place to be when we don't even know who we are, when we keep trying to contort ourselves to be who we think other people need us to be. So I want to end with just a quick practice to help you create a little bit of space for how you respond to something instead of just reflexively saying yes. How to essentially make space for potentially disappointing other people. Number one, you get to know and trust what your come from is. If you are listening to the podcast right now, the odds are you are a good person, you have a good heart, you want to do good things in the world. Those are the people that I call into my world. And so I want you to be able to trust yourself and know that you're a good person. So your come from is probably coming from a grounded, kind place. Even if the come from, even if the response is no or not right now, or maybe later, doesn't make you a bad person. Just means that you're trying to focus on staying whole. And that's okay. That's okay. So I want you to know and trust your come from. The second is I want you to get clear on your values. Because the truth is when you say yes to one thing. You are essentially saying no to something else. Because as you know, we function in this linear world where we have 24 hours in a day, which means if I say yes to this, that will take time and that means I will have to say no to something else. So what are your values? What is it that you want to always make sure you have space in your life for? Maybe it's to meditate, maybe it's to exercise, maybe it's to spend quality time with your significant other or your kids. Maybe it's for this special project that you're working on. Maybe it's just to read for fun. Whatever it is, get clear on your values. What is it that you always want to protect and make space for? That way, when you get a request, it's easy for you to know ahead of time. If I say yes to this, that means I'm saying no to this. And sometimes you're going to choose to say yes to that. That's okay. Just make sure you check your come from before you just reflexively say yes. Because when you reflexively say yes, it's usually coming from a fear response. It's unintentional. You haven't thought it out. I'm just saying yes because that's what I'm used to, because I always want to say yes. I always I never want to disappoint anybody. I always want to show that I'm a team player. So just pause for a second when you get asked. Create some space and just check in with yourself. And maybe you're maybe the space is of you you give them a talking point like, let me think about it, I'll get right back to you. Let me look at my calendar and get back to you. Or you can ask some questions. Can you tell me by when you need to know the answer to this? maybe it's a speaking gig and you can ask questions like, is there is there a honorarium, a speaker honorarium for this? Get the information that you need so you can make a good decision. But also when you ask questions, it gives you a little bit of space between you having to reflexively say yes so that you can pause and say, Is this decision in alignment with my values? And the way you will know sometimes is number one, knowing your values, but also Does this feel restrictive or does this feel expansive in my body? That's another way for you to check in on yourself. Okay, friends, I want to leave you with a reflection prompt today, which is what might be possible for you? What might become possible for you if you gave yourself permission to disappoint other people? What might become possible for you if you knew that disappointing someone else did not make you a bad person? If you knew that Maybe that just pointed to where you needed to come home to yourself. Just check in on that for you. And I just want to remind you that again, I have never met in the 20 years of me doing this work, I've never met one person that's figured out how to never let anyone down unless they are essentially abandoning themselves every time they're doing it. And every time you contort yourself to avoid disappointing someone else, you're essentially risking disappointing the one person that I would hope you don't want to abandon, which is yourself. So the invitation today is just to pay attention to this, see where in your life you can start maybe making a little bit of space to say yes to yourself without making it mean all those things about you, and just noticing that it's safe. It's safe for you to choose you because you can be for yourself, and that does not mean you are against anyone else. You can be for you, and that doesn't mean you're against anyone else. All right, sweet friends, I will see you all next week. Adios.