When the Cost of People-Pleasing Becomes Clear
Cuando el costo de complacer a los demás se hace evidente
A student undergoing medical treatment describes how reduced energy has forced a withdrawal from draining relationships, and asks how to navigate this transition with grace. The teacher explores what truly lies beneath the fear of conflict: the pain of not being seen.
When the Cost of People-Pleasing Becomes Clear
A student undergoing medical treatment describes how reduced energy has forced a withdrawal from draining relationships, and asks how to navigate this transition with grace. The teacher explores what truly lies beneath the fear of conflict: the pain of not being seen.
I'm going through a medical treatment at the moment that has made my energy levels very low and my anxiety worse. In a way, it's a really interesting thing, because I'm being forced to drop people-pleasing. I can't actually do the things I was doing before. I'm pulling away from people where the dynamic wasn't really great. I was going along with people who are quite angry and demanding, and I hadn't been pushing back before. Now, the way I am at the moment, I've just pulled back.
I don't really know what I want to ask. I was thinking: is it that I just want to be more peaceful with this process and not care so much? Because in a way, I feel like I'm coming into more alignment. I can only really do what I truly want or need to do, because my energy is so restricted. In the past, I was giving lots of energy away to people, and I'm noticing now that I don't want to do that anymore. There's more space for what I actually want. I feel clearer, but I also wonder: is there a more elegant way to pull away?
What's the challenge? What's the problem? What would you want to be different?
I've just pulled away from a few people, not responded to their messages. I feel like that's not a very elegant way of doing it, but I also feel that if I actually say what's true, it will just escalate, and I don't have the energy for any kind of conflict. So I'm asking myself: what's the most self-preserving and kindest thing to do when I'm not particularly well?
But I also have this urge to speak my truth. To say: if you want a relationship with me, you can't just be so demanding and angry all the time when I don't necessarily have the energy to give, or when I've got lots of things going on that are priorities, like an ill father. I want to say these things, but I also want a peaceful resolution, and I don't know what that looks like. I think that's what I'm trying to say.
The real fear beneath the conflict
The challenge may be how to navigate what you're going through and avoid a certain intensity of conflict that you anticipate would be hard for you. Is it the conflict itself? Or is it the worry about not having the energy to deal with what you need to deal with?
I'm trying to work it out. I think it's a feeling that I'm not going to be heard. If I do speak up, it won't be listened to or taken seriously.
Not being seen, not being understood, not being respected. So there would be a form of rejection: not being seen, not being understood. And perhaps there would be real pain in that.
So it may be less about the conflict and more about the pain of not being seen and not being understood. Let's suppose that is exactly what happens. What's the problem with that?
The cost of mental and emotional backflips
Because often we do a lot of mental and emotional backflips, spending enormous energy trying to make things go the way that would feel easiest. We want everything to go well, exactly how we would want it, exactly according to plan. But we become so focused on controlling the outcome, doing all these backflips, that we miss an easier path: learning how to be okay with things not going how we want them to.
This doesn't mean planning for things to go badly or working toward a negative outcome. It means having a direction or a preference. I would prefer to be understood and heard. But it might be more important to simply say what is true, or to back off and say nothing, rather than to expend too much effort trying to avoid being unseen or misunderstood.
And there is also the exploration, through practice, of actually arriving at that point where you are not seen and you are not understood, and then discovering what the actual problem is. You may find there isn't such a deep problem. There will be a form of sadness or pain. But if you believe that the sadness or pain should not be there, that something is wrong about you or your reality because of it, then that has to do with how you are misinterpreting the situation, making it not okay through a belief, through a misunderstanding.
For example, if you are not seen and understood, does it signal anything negative about you?
Yeah. In a way, I think the feeling of freedom is coming from a softening of that caring about how I'm seen, or needing someone to like me. It definitely feels like less of a priority now.
The door that opens
And because of that change, you now have the possibility to explore this more fully and deeply. When we are really involved in the dynamic of pleasing, of wanting to be seen, of doing everything in a way that is less natural in order to be perceived a certain way, we are trapped. When we become strong enough and free enough to walk out of that way of being, that is a first step. But there is still a journey ahead: how to be in a more free way, how to relate differently.
The door opens when the cost becomes too visible. The cost of trying to be liked, the inauthenticity, the energy poured into those mental and emotional backflips. When the cost starts to be seen as having very little trade-off for the gain it brings, we begin to prefer a deeper freedom, a more authentic way of being.
The pull of belonging
This is what every person on this journey has to go through. There are energetics that pull us into consensual social realities: in our families, in our friend circles, in our countries, in the culture we inhabit. They pull very strongly. There are deep instincts telling us we must belong in order to survive. We all created those bonds to some degree from a very young age. And then we have the option, the opportunity, to undo that, to be free from it, and to be more natural and authentic.
That is what I think you're describing. You're connecting to this sense of freedom, this feeling of: now I can go there, I can explore this. I'm not sure how, but there is a new sense of freedom. I don't need this anymore, at least not in the way I did.
Hmm.
One of the ways to really accelerate that process is to look at what all of this was helping you avoid, and rather than keep trying to avoid it, see how you can relate to it and be okay with it. For example, being misunderstood. Not being seen. Whatever comes up as the challenge you are trying to solve. If, no matter what happens, you are completely and totally okay with it, then the challenge evaporates.
Think of it like playing a board game. Sometimes we are not okay with losing, even in a board game. But if you are truly okay with losing, you can still want to win. You can still do everything you possibly can to win. The wanting and the effort remain, but the suffering around the outcome dissolves.