Latest / No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women / People-Pleasing "Nice Girls": How High-Functioning Women Learn To Abandon Themselves

Transcript

People-Pleasing "Nice Girls": How High-Functioning Women Learn To Abandon Themselves · No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women

• 0:00
  Ludovica: If you have been repeatedly exposed to situations where your boundaries have been crossed and you were at the same time in danger if you set boundaries, so your mind was like, okay, we feel anger, but right now we're not gonna look at it.
• 0:14
  Ludovica: We're gonna pretend it doesn't exist.
• 0:17
  Ludovica: So just suppress that.
• 0:22
  Mary: For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek.
• 0:29
  Mary: But in nature, violets are anything but weak.
• 0:32
  Mary: They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem.
• 0:36
  Mary: Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist, and each week I sit down with women who remind us that being compared to a violet isn't an insult.
• 0:44
  Mary: It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature.
• 0:50
  Mary: If you're ready to stop shrinking and start thriving, you're in the right place.
• 0:55
  Mary: Hey Violets, welcome to the show.
• 1:00
  Mary: When I left the world of higher education and was contemplating what to do next, starting a podcast was definitely on that list.
• 1:08
  Mary: But why?
• 1:09
  Mary: Well, I knew my core theme would be topics that give insight and knowledge to women so they can expand to fill their full space in the world.
• 1:17
  Mary: To stop shrinking emotionally, cognitively, and quite literally physically.
• 1:24
  Mary: And my passion for this came partly from the recognition of the ways I've done this in my own life, but really what drove my desire was working with young women.
• 1:33
  Mary: Because repeatedly I saw them make choices to abdicate their power, the right to say no to physical intimacy, the right to take up their space in a classroom where they were the obvious minority, the right to feel and express a full range of emotions, including anger, and to set boundaries.
• 1:51
  Mary: I would venture to say that there was not one day out of the week when I did not bear witness to a young woman who was shrinking, and she didn't yet have the realization that she had another choice.
• 2:02
  Mary: She also was quite far from recognizing why she seemed to naturally sink into this role, not just from her own experiences, but from the narrative she was fed from birth, the socialization of gender.
• 2:15
  Mary: Often, my guests and I talk about issues that are topic adjacent to this social narrative, but I could draw a line from probably all 160 episodes to date to the gender roles that contributed to each topic.
• 2:27
  Mary: My guest today goes right through the front door of this topic.
• 2:31
  Mary: No beating around the bush, no sneaking through side windows or side doors to get to the point.
• 2:36
  Mary: Women stay small because they were taught on some level, often from some traumatic experience or simply through a behavior concept called shaping, to lower their voice, soften their emotions, and smile.
• 2:49
  Mary: And often, as we get older, we do know we do it, but yet we still struggle to stop.
• 2:55
  Mary: My guest today is Ludovica Kolela, and her core question is why do intelligent, self-aware women keep repeating the same patterns even when they know, and I'm going to say, even when we know, exactly what we should do.
• 3:10
  Mary: Today we're going to delve into this and sift through the whys and hows of our limiting narratives as women.
• 3:16
  Mary: Ludovica is a CBT cognitive behavioral therapy trained, psychotherapist, and confidence coach specializing in people pleasing, fawning, and self-abandonment.
• 3:26
  Mary: She works with high-functioning women who are exhausted from overgiving and living for everyone else's approval and helps them build boundaries that actually hold.
• 3:36
  Mary: Welcome to No Shrinking Violets, Ludovica.
• 3:38
  Mary: Thank you for having me, Maria.
• 3:41
  Mary: I'm really looking forward to all of this because what you really work with and talk about is at the heart of this entire podcast.
• 3:49
  Mary: So I want to start though, I always ask my guests to kind of give us the their path to where they are now.
• 3:57
  Mary: So what is your why?
• 3:59
  Mary: What has you do in this work now?
• 4:03
  Ludovica: Well, when while you were talking and during the introduction, I thought, wow, the reason Mary started her podcast is exactly the reason why I do my job.
• 4:12
  Ludovica: But obviously it wasn't, it didn't start like that, right?
• 4:16
  Ludovica: Exactly because as women, we are taught that we need to be in a certain way to be acceptable and lovable and nice.
• 4:22
  Ludovica: That's a big word, right?
• 4:23
  Ludovica: Nice.
• 4:24
  Ludovica: Um, and so initially I actually just wanted to help people, right?
• 4:29
  Ludovica: Being a therapist meant helping people, which is fantastic.
• 4:33
  Ludovica: I mean, that's a great, a great job, it's a great goal.
• 4:37
  Ludovica: But then as I went forward, um, I realized there are way too many women that are keeping themselves small.
• 4:45
  Ludovica: And I actually was one of them.
• 4:46
  Ludovica: I was one of those people.
• 4:48
  Ludovica: Um, I think it all started when I moved away.
• 4:54
  Ludovica: So I I went to uni um in Italy, because that's where I'm from.
• 4:58
  Ludovica: I studied psychology.
• 5:00
  Ludovica: Uh, and then after I finished my bachelor's degree, I realized that's you know, this place is way too small for me.
• 5:09
  Ludovica: I need I need a bigger audience, I need a bigger arena, I don't know, I wanted to travel.
• 5:14
  Ludovica: Um, and unfortunately, I came from a family where there was a lot of conflict.
• 5:18
  Ludovica: So my parents were separated, divorced.
• 5:22
  Ludovica: Um, and I even when they were divorced, actually, after they their divorce, they kept fighting.
• 5:29
  Ludovica: And there was always, you know, lots of screaming, lots of shouting in the house, respectful conversations were not really were not really a thing, to be honest.
• 5:38
  Ludovica: So I didn't really learn how to communicate properly, what I feel, what I need, what I want.
• 5:44
  Ludovica: Um, and so this showed up in my relationship.
• 5:48
  Ludovica: And why I'm talking about this when I talk about moving away from my country is because I was kind of running away.
• 5:54
  Ludovica: I wasn't really moving away.
• 5:56
  Ludovica: Uh, I was running away from this environment, you know, from my family basically.
• 6:02
  Ludovica: Um, but then when I actually established myself in London and I started meeting people, you know, had my first more serious relationship.
• 6:12
  Ludovica: Actually, I noticed that I was replicating exactly the same communication patterns as my parents.
• 6:19
  Ludovica: And I by that time I didn't um I mean I knew about psychology.
• 6:24
  Ludovica: Obviously, I did my bachelor's degree, and as I was saying, and this is kind of in line with the podcast uh theme, I knew stuff, right?
• 6:32
  Ludovica: So I was knowledgeable about stuff, but still it would not in a transformative way, not in a way I could apply this knowledge to my day-to-day life, to my relationship.
• 6:41
  Ludovica: So I after a few months, I broke off this relationship, actually just disintegrated because it was very toxic.
• 6:49
  Ludovica: You know, that was a good thing that that ended, but it destroyed me.
• 6:53
  Ludovica: Uh, it sent me into a deep depression for many, many months.
• 6:57
  Ludovica: And that's that's actually the time that I I completely changed myself and my life because I was able to go deep into what these patterns uh were.
• 7:08
  Ludovica: Um, to my in, you know, having like really time to reflect on my communication strategies, my fear of abandonment.
• 7:17
  Ludovica: Why was I actually reaching a point in my relationships when I wasn't actually coming off as my um authentic self, but I was hiding myself in an attempt to manipulate the other person to like me, to want me, you know, to be always the person who was actually, you know, the soul of the party and always funny and always happy, always like trendy, like with a perfect outfit.
• 7:40
  Ludovica: Like I had a social mask uh and I was exhausted.
• 7:44
  Ludovica: It was really tiring to have that social mask.
• 7:47
  Ludovica: And I think often when I felt tired, I didn't realize it just came off as anger.
• 7:53
  Ludovica: And so in my relationships, you know, when I tried to communicate, it just wouldn't just happen normally, it would happen with a lot of anger.
• 8:02
  Ludovica: Uh so from that moment onwards, I started reflecting on you know, women and social roles and how communication shapes our relationships, and how actually we all our relationship patterns are obviously influenced by the first relationships that we witness and we see in our life growing up, which is the relationship of our parents and with our parents.
• 8:26
  Mary: Yes, so true.
• 8:28
  Mary: So, what I one of the things that I think is interesting because so many of us have this socialization, and obviously it extends beyond where I am in the United States.
• 8:40
  Mary: You know, it's it definitely is, I'm gonna say, more Western culture overall.
• 8:45
  Mary: But I'm curious, what do you think makes it sort of invisible when we're growing up?
• 8:54
  Mary: So let me put that in a little bit of a context.
• 8:56
  Mary: I think that when young girls are growing up, they know exactly what they want.
• 9:00
  Mary: Maybe they use their voice, they, you know, they play the way they want, maybe they're, you know, what we would call a tomboy, they like sports, or you know, it's sort of like they figure out what they want, but then they hit a point where they're start, they start to get the message, you're too loud, you're too needy, all of those things.
• 9:20
  Mary: So when you work with women, do you find that that is also kind of we we just sort of go along with it because we're shaped by not not wanting to stand out, not wanting to be the weird, unpopular kid.
• 9:39
  Ludovica: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 9:41
  Ludovica: Uh I think that at some point, maybe it's a little bit less like that so today, fortunately, but at some point, what was a good woman considered, what was considered a good woman was a good woman for a man.
• 9:53
  Ludovica: So it's like if you talk too much, then you no one is gonna like you, you know.
• 9:58
  Ludovica: If you're too opinionated, no man is gonna take you.
• 10:00
  Ludovica: So I think that the education of women was more around becoming a good wife rather than a good woman, you know, developing their actual uh their own personality.
• 10:13
  Ludovica: And then there is that what this is what I call the good good girl syndrome.
• 10:18
  Ludovica: Like when you are taught that love is basically self-sacrifice, and this is a kind of is a very, I think, religious view, like it's extreme, like love is self-sacrifice if we look at divine love, right?
• 10:33
  Ludovica: Uh, but as a woman, I can sacrifice for my son because I created my son, but I certainly don't sacrifice for my husband, right?
• 10:40
  Ludovica: So there are boundaries there.
• 10:42
  Ludovica: We need to set boundaries where we can sometimes sacrifice, sometimes to count, but it doesn't have the only way we have to relate to other people.
• 10:49
  Ludovica: And I think that at some point that was the that was the gist, you know, that a love was self-sacrificed indeed, specifically for a woman, and she didn't really have she really didn't need to be her own person, but she needed to be someone for other other people for the other, right?
• 11:07
  Ludovica: Whether the other person was the husband or the other person was the child, or the other person was at some point their parents, even like the rest of the family, you know.
• 11:15
  Ludovica: And there is that idea that women are more wired for uh to care for other people differently, like compared to men, which that's absolutely not true.
• 11:25
  Ludovica: Care is not gender, caring is not a gender behavior.
• 11:30
  Ludovica: Uh, but there was that idea, right?
• 11:32
  Ludovica: That women are more wired for caring for other people, and therefore they should.
• 11:37
  Ludovica: Simply, that's just just that simple.
• 11:40
  Ludovica: So if someone is annoyed by your opinions, then you should consider that and you should be nice and you should maybe quiet your voice to make space for the other person.
• 11:49
  Ludovica: So that's when people like women learn to shrink themselves and to put the other person, whoever the other is, at the same time.
• 11:58
  Mary: And you brought up something really important, and that is that really this role for women was designed by men.
• 12:06
  Mary: And I don't know, we don't really blatantly go there a lot, especially on this show.
• 12:12
  Mary: But interestingly, and it's probably not a surprise, in the United States right now, we are seeing a total regression in the role of women because of what is sort of being put out there by a lot of leadership.
• 12:27
  Mary: So, you know, I think that that is something that, you know, people that already, women that already recognize that there was a role of both men, and I'll say white men, and religion in creating this role for women, they see this happening.
• 12:47
  Mary: And I think there's still a lot of even young people that don't recognize where it comes from.
• 12:52
  Mary: But of course, we don't want to be that person that stands out.
• 12:56
  Mary: So a lot of it falls into people pleasing.
• 12:59
  Mary: So I think where women can get confused is they think, well, I don't want to be a bitch, right?
• 13:07
  Mary: So, but there's a big continuum from being like cruel mean to being a people pleaser.
• 13:15
  Mary: So can you sort of help tease that apart?
• 13:18
  Mary: How do women figure out, well, I want to be kind and I want to be helpful, but how do I know when it's tipping over into people pleasing?
• 13:27
  Ludovica: Yeah, I think that people, if I had one panel seriously, for all women who during a session tell me I'm a little bit a people pleaser, and I don't want to be selfish.
• 13:36
  Ludovica: That's why I'm a people pleaser.
• 13:38
  Ludovica: Uh, I'd be rich.
• 13:39
  Ludovica: Um, there is a continuum, obviously.
• 13:41
  Ludovica: One hand, one hand is people pleasing, the other end is let's say being very selfish.
• 13:46
  Ludovica: And people are confused with what's in the middle, because in the middle they can't assess an objective criteria for what's selfish and what's people pleasing.
• 13:56
  Ludovica: So if I'm selfish all the time, then this is who I am.
• 13:59
  Ludovica: If I have people please all the time, then I'm sure that I'm basically doing things where the external compass are other people, so it can be bad, right?
• 14:07
  Ludovica: That's that's the mistake.
• 14:08
  Ludovica: Yeah, it can be actually quite bad.
• 14:10
  Ludovica: Um, what's in the middle is a little bit more of a gray area.
• 14:14
  Ludovica: And so people struggle with that because in the gray area they don't know, they don't have a lot of experience of the gray area, they become more anxious in the gray area, and they become all more guilty in the gray, they feel more guilty in the gray area.
• 14:29
  Ludovica: So, what did I what why did I say no to this person?
• 14:33
  Ludovica: Am I bad?
• 14:34
  Ludovica: What are they gonna think of me?
• 14:35
  Ludovica: You know, am I gonna um yeah, am I gonna be seen in the in the wrong way?
• 14:40
  Ludovica: Do I need to make up for it?
• 14:41
  Ludovica: Because then there's also like the back and forth trying to get out of this social mask, but then getting back right right back into it when we feel unpleasant feelings, which is not necessarily a sign of doing something bad, but we'll get there.
• 14:55
  Ludovica: So it's difficult to for people to, I guess, find who they are outside of people pleasing.
• 15:01
  Ludovica: And that's actually also a big thing because for someone who has been a people pleaser for most of their lives, all their lives, then their big question is who am I if I'm not important, if I'm not needed by my kids, if I'm not helping other people, if I'm not fixing their problems.
• 15:18
  Ludovica: Who am I outside of all of this that I thought was my personality?
• 15:23
  Ludovica: You know, and then people pleasing starts becoming that's something else, right?
• 15:27
  Ludovica: It starts becoming something that we do find ourselves with.
• 15:31
  Ludovica: So I am a people pleaser.
• 15:33
  Ludovica: It does, it's not I people please this person because essentially I'm fearful that they might hate me, and that's a big threat for me.
• 15:40
  Ludovica: It's never that, it's never that, because in order to get to that, you need to start therapy and you know exploring that this is this is your pattern and why it's happening.
• 15:51
  Ludovica: But usually people don't come to therapy necessarily saying I am a people pleaser, I want to change that.
• 15:58
  Ludovica: They come with relationship issues, uh, they come with repeatedly failed relationships, failed friendships, feeling used, feeling undervalued.
• 16:08
  Ludovica: Even in the workplace, sometimes they feel overworked and undervalued.
• 16:12
  Ludovica: They come with these kind of problems, which we know they come straight from that people pleasing patents, but they cannot make necessarily the link.
• 16:21
  Ludovica: You know, usually I help them to make the link to the MS.
• 16:25
  Mary: Yeah, that's a really good point because also as a therapist, it's they come in and they say that often.
• 16:32
  Mary: I'm a people pleaser, but I feel like they want to keep people pleasing, but they don't want to feel crappy anymore because they're exhausted.
• 16:39
  Mary: And but they want to somehow maintain that action.
• 16:45
  Mary: And you're exactly right, they haven't yet made the link.
• 16:48
  Mary: Well, I need to actually shift my way of being in these relationships to feel better.
• 16:55
  Mary: And you brought up a really important point, and it's part of their identity, this identity of I'm a caring person, but I think you're you can be a caring person and still set your own boundaries.
• 17:09
  Ludovica: Absolutely.
• 17:09
  Ludovica: You have to, I mean, uh, being kind is also means being kind to yourself, you know.
• 17:16
  Ludovica: Uh caring means also self-care.
• 17:18
  Ludovica: Like you can't just embrace one volume, one side, you need the whole all the side, right?
• 17:23
  Ludovica: Um, but people um I I think that most times people don't have enough experience of being assertive enough to see that they can be kind, but still being transparent, still being authentic, and the word doesn't hint.
• 17:39
  Ludovica: But also what what they don't have experience, what they might not have experience of is healthy relationships or relationships that feel healthy or safe enough for them to experiment around their boundaries.
• 17:52
  Ludovica: And so they may feel like, oh, if I say no to this person, if I set a boundary around this person, then the relationship might go, you know, might go bad, or they might be upset, and therefore it's gonna cause an argument.
• 18:03
  Ludovica: Which I'm not even I'm not there to say no, it's not gonna, because it might, right?
• 18:07
  Ludovica: You know, it might.
• 18:08
  Ludovica: And sometimes we need to also give the benefit of the doubt to people like you have known me for years, and I was this person, and suddenly I'm not this person anymore.
• 18:19
  Ludovica: I mean, other people might feel even scared that they see that change and confused, they don't know what's happening.
• 18:25
  Ludovica: So sometimes it's just a matter of people getting adjusted to someone's change.
• 18:30
  Ludovica: Other times it is actually that you are keeping the relationship alive and the boat afloat, so to speak.
• 18:36
  Ludovica: And when you stop and when you start setting boundaries, when you stop overfunctioning, overaccommodating, overgiving, that relationship falls apart completely.
• 18:45
  Ludovica: Probably that's a good thing.
• 18:47
  Ludovica: I know it's not easy to accept, and it's not easy even to say in a therapy session, because obviously that's the big fear, right?
• 18:54
  Ludovica: Um, but in my experience, personal and professional, good relationships improve with boundary setting.
• 19:02
  Ludovica: Uh, bad relationships end will change a lot.
• 19:05
  Ludovica: Yeah.
• 19:06
  Mary: Yes, 100%.
• 19:07
  Mary: And you brought up fear.
• 19:10
  Mary: I really believe that is one of the biggest key emotions in keeping women small, because it's almost like when you shrink, you hide.
• 19:21
  Mary: Like you're sort of like, I'm just gonna stay small down here.
• 19:24
  Mary: And yeah, I have to give up some stuff, but it's way safer.
• 19:28
  Mary: And I almost feel like when you stop shrinking, you're actually it's almost like you're walking out onto a stage because now you are saying what you want, you're starting to advocate for yourself.
• 19:41
  Mary: And when the spotlight is on you, it can really feel very scary.
• 19:48
  Ludovica: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:50
  Ludovica: But partially, this is what I always say to my clients about partially it's this is always the case.
• 19:56
  Ludovica: Every time you're leveling up in life, new fears are will come up.
• 19:59
  Ludovica: Okay.
• 20:00
  Ludovica: So the process of change is obviously not completely comfortable, otherwise, you would have changed already.
• 20:05
  Ludovica: So we are here to navigate this change in the best way possible.
• 20:09
  Ludovica: And we wanna create a plan for change.
• 20:13
  Ludovica: I mean, I'm a C BD therapist, so we're quite, you know, um, quite structure, we're quite structured with the kind of um experiments and uh making even a plan for change.
• 20:23
  Ludovica: And we want to start with very low-stakes situations, not with risky situations.
• 20:28
  Ludovica: Yeah, you're not gonna set a boundary with your toxic partner if that's you know the first experiment we're gonna do together.
• 20:34
  Ludovica: Probably you're gonna start with saying to a to a restaurant, uh, to a waitress at the restaurant, you're gonna say, I don't like this dish.
• 20:41
  Ludovica: You know, that's gonna be probably some the first step.
• 20:44
  Ludovica: And sometimes that's very scary for people anyway.
• 20:47
  Ludovica: So we're gonna start with small situations and small boundary settings, even just basic assertion with eye statements, like I want to go to the cinema tonight.
• 20:57
  Ludovica: For some people, that's that's the first the good first step.
• 21:01
  Ludovica: You know, I had a client once and we were working on boundary setting, and her first experiment, I remember, was cooking what she wanted for dinner without asking her husband first.
• 21:10
  Ludovica: She was always used to ask her husband because the husband was quite fussy.
• 21:14
  Ludovica: But after years of marriage, more or less, you know what your husband likes or doesn't like, you know, you don't need to ask all the time.
• 21:20
  Ludovica: So the first experiment was to actually cook something she liked, and it went amazing.
• 21:25
  Ludovica: Everyone enjoyed the meal, and you know, nothing bad happened.
• 21:28
  Ludovica: So we know that fear is an overestimation of threats and an underestimation of dealing, of um, our abilities to deal with threats, right?
• 21:37
  Ludovica: So if we start setting small experiments and we kind of you know expose ourselves to this fear a little bit, it doesn't have to be a huge thing, right?
• 21:48
  Ludovica: So a little bit.
• 21:49
  Ludovica: If we start step by step, then we increase our confidence in our abilities to deal with danger, with the so with the perceived danger here we're talking about.
• 21:58
  Ludovica: Yeah.
• 21:58
  Ludovica: So That's what we want.
• 22:00
  Ludovica: That's what we want to challenge the fear also by increasing our um confidence in our abilities to deal with it.
• 22:08
  Ludovica: So it's it's not just, oh, let's talk about how boundaries can improve your life.
• 22:13
  Ludovica: It's also let's see how they work in practice.
• 22:17
  Mary: Exactly.
• 22:18
  Mary: Yeah, because starting small is very important.
• 22:20
  Mary: And I love how you said that.
• 22:21
  Mary: Fear is overestimating the threat.
• 22:24
  Mary: And I will typically say if you feel a little bit afraid or a lot afraid, you're probably moving in the right direction because it's going to feel threatening.
• 22:34
  Mary: And so I want to talk about fawning because I feel like we've talked about socialization, but the deeper issue sometimes is, and we'll go back to family of origin, women learn to survive in certain situations that maybe were dangerous, or they had to stay small because not staying small could end up having them be hurt.
• 22:59
  Mary: And so, first of all, I want to talk about what fawning means because I think there can be some misunderstanding.
• 23:05
  Mary: So when we think about um reaction to a threat, we used to just talk about fight or flight, but now we have fawn as one of the options.
• 23:17
  Mary: And so can you describe a little bit what that looks like?
• 23:22
  Ludovica: Yeah, and I even can, you know, say something about my experience here because as I said, my family, there were lots of arguments.
• 23:29
  Ludovica: So I always, as a as a child, obviously don't challenge your parents.
• 23:33
  Ludovica: And also you always feel like it might be your fault, like you could say something that a child would say, and that would trigger like a big argument.
• 23:40
  Ludovica: You don't often realize the uh real um cause or consequence behind an argument.
• 23:47
  Ludovica: You just think that you might be the cause.
• 23:48
  Ludovica: Um, and so shrinking it at the form response in that case means basically doing mainly three things.
• 23:55
  Ludovica: The first thing is hypervigilance.
• 23:57
  Ludovica: So I am very attuned in that moment to uh I would say I was very attuned to my parents' moods, right?
• 24:04
  Ludovica: So I wouldn't know exactly how my mom felt in every second of the day, the way she walked, the way she opened the door, the way everything to me, I could assess how she felt based on microexpressions on or small behaviors that she had.
• 24:20
  Ludovica: So that's the first thing.
• 24:22
  Ludovica: Second thing is obviously lack of boundaries.
• 24:25
  Ludovica: In that moment, you're not really allowed to be you, right?
• 24:28
  Ludovica: So you just have to avoid saying no if you want to say no, or avoid saying your opinion if you want to say your opinion.
• 24:35
  Ludovica: If you when you learn that as a child, it will change your whole life because you learn very early on that you can be a problem, like your personality, your persona, your yourself can be a problem.
• 24:47
  Ludovica: And then there is this idea of pleasing the abuser, or let's say the perceived abuser in that moment.
• 24:53
  Ludovica: So I make you happy, so I'm sure I make sure that I'm safe.
• 24:57
  Ludovica: And that moment, nothing bad can happen.
• 24:59
  Ludovica: So that's the phone response, which repeated for many, many years in many different situations, will cause something called people pleasing, which I think we should change the the words because the wording feels too light for what it is, because it can actually change your life, it can change your whole personality.
• 25:18
  Ludovica: But yeah, um, then obviously a pattern like that can be very easily can can be very easily applied to work situations to relationship to parameters situations.
• 25:28
  Ludovica: It's so difficult to change that in the realm of family dynamics, and it can change all your life and can um impact on the quality of relationships that you choose to have.
• 25:40
  Mary: For sure.
• 25:41
  Mary: When we talk about fawning, and I think that realization starts in our clients that they go from this label that you rightly point out is a little light to say, Oh, I'm a people pleaser.
• 25:52
  Mary: Well, it's a little bit deeper and maybe more damaging to your relationships than that.
• 25:58
  Mary: But when they start to recognize it, I think because that can feel like a very weak stance, there can be shame.
• 26:06
  Mary: When when we really start to look at that, there can be this sense of shame of why did I allow this to happen?
• 26:12
  Mary: But I tend to reframe that sort of like you're saying, like you learn when you're a kid what is safe to do, what is going to keep the boat from tipping over?
• 26:22
  Mary: And sometimes that's tiptoeing around, sometimes it's seeing what the heck is happening and just saying, if I, you know, if I approach this to my parents, uh yeah, it puts me in danger, it destabilizes the house even more.
• 26:36
  Mary: And we are observers, we do pick up on those microexpressions.
• 26:41
  Mary: And so it's like we're holding our breath, we're tiptoeing, we're saying just the right thing.
• 26:46
  Mary: I'll make dinner, mom, or you know, whatever the thing is that's gonna just smooth the path.
• 26:51
  Mary: But later, instead of seeing that as wow, that was really resilient to just do that at the time, but later it doesn't work.
• 27:00
  Mary: It just blatantly doesn't work, it's very unhealthy, but we pull shame along because we think, why are we doing this?
• 27:08
  Mary: It's so weak.
• 27:10
  Ludovica: Yeah.
• 27:11
  Ludovica: Yeah.
• 27:12
  Ludovica: And um I mean, again, in being a CBT therapist, we'll learn, particularly early on in training, that behaviors that are positively reinforced are behaviors that will be successful and repeated in the future.
• 27:27
  Ludovica: So positive reinforcement can be also the absence of a negative stimulus, right?
• 27:31
  Ludovica: So if I make someone happy so I feel safer, that's immediately something my brain is happy with.
• 27:37
  Ludovica: And so I will repeat it, I will do it again to the point that that becomes my again, personality or the main pattern of behavior that I use for relating.
• 27:45
  Ludovica: But also when I realized, oh, maybe why did I allow it to get it too far?
• 27:53
  Ludovica: You know, it can be something and make me feel shame even more nowadays, it's all over the place, like all over the social media that people think is a controlling manipulative strategy.
• 28:04
  Ludovica: Again, people can feel even more like I'm not this person, I don't want to control people, but in fact, uh sometimes it's what happens, right?
• 28:14
  Ludovica: Because you're trying to control control their perception of you to feel safe.
• 28:17
  Ludovica: So safety is your main goal.
• 28:20
  Ludovica: That's what you want.
• 28:21
  Ludovica: That's that's I mean, how can you blame yourself for wanting to feel safe?
• 28:25
  Ludovica: And clearly back in the days, that was something that you needed.
• 28:29
  Ludovica: Now you don't need it anymore.
• 28:30
  Ludovica: So we can start to discard some of those behaviors or you know, change them.
• 28:36
  Ludovica: Um but but back in the days you needed them, and then the more you used these behaviors, the more actually good things also started coming for to you because of these behaviors.
• 28:48
  Ludovica: So there are some advantages that people pleasing can give you, that people can actually like you.
• 28:53
  Ludovica: You know, that can happen.
• 28:55
  Ludovica: Um even in the workplace, if you are like people pleasing slash perfectionist and you want people to see you know as the best worker, the best employee, then of course you're gonna get promotions, you're gonna get more money.
• 29:08
  Ludovica: That could be actually very concrete benefits that you can get from acting in a certain way.
• 29:14
  Ludovica: Um so at some point, we need to analyze the behavior for what it is, like as if we were you know external observers, observers, like scientists.
• 29:24
  Ludovica: What is this?
• 29:25
  Ludovica: What's causing me?
• 29:26
  Ludovica: What's the impact?
• 29:27
  Ludovica: Positive and negative.
• 29:29
  Ludovica: Because the fact that you had positive impact over the years means that your brain didn't just consider that this was a behavior that you learned a long time ago when you were in a threat, a threatening, dangerous situation.
• 29:42
  Ludovica: It's something that your brain carried on because it was actually giving you something positive to hold on to.
• 29:49
  Ludovica: So this is how the mind works.
• 29:51
  Ludovica: The mind doesn't care about happiness, it cares about survival.
• 29:54
  Ludovica: That's all it wants.
• 29:55
  Ludovica: So it's not gonna challenge something that keeps you safe, right?
• 29:59
  Ludovica: Yes, and so that's that's what it is.
• 30:01
  Ludovica: And this happens with so many other behaviors, it's just the way the mind works.
• 30:06
  Mary: And I think that looking at it that way, how we're wired and talking about behavioralism, like talking about what what I mentioned in my intro, shaping.
• 30:15
  Mary: Like there are things that even right now, we're training a puppy.
• 30:19
  Mary: So you basically you don't yell at the puppy, right?
• 30:22
  Mary: You want it, you want to reward it for the things you want it to do.
• 30:25
  Mary: And so, at exactly as you're saying, when you're young, you learn, oh, this has had a good impact overall.
• 30:32
  Mary: It's gotten me out of trouble, it's kept, you know, the household a little more stable.
• 30:38
  Mary: And when that is reinforced, it it's you're gonna do more of it.
• 30:42
  Mary: And so I love that because it's really just looking at it from sort of science, pavlov, you know, BF Skinner, all the behavior stuff.
• 30:52
  Mary: It just that's how it happens.
• 30:54
  Mary: And so to be able to look at it through that lens, there isn't no reason to feel the shame.
• 31:01
  Mary: And I don't want to discount it because it's a very real thing, but I think to look at it like, well, my gosh, I was learning my amygdala was freaking out, and it needed a way to calm itself.
• 31:12
  Mary: So I really like that.
• 31:14
  Mary: And the last part I want to circle around, because you mentioned this, is anger.
• 31:18
  Mary: And I think for women that are in the situation you're talking about, I think often we do feel anger, but we also clearly have the message that anger is not an acceptable emotion for a woman.
• 31:30
  Mary: We're out of control, we're hysterical, we're way too much.
• 31:34
  Mary: So, how do we bridge that?
• 31:37
  Mary: Sort of in the same way we talked about figuring out how to be kind versus, you know, not just pleasing people.
• 31:44
  Mary: How do we figure out how to allow anger to have a role, but not allow it to take over or not feel embarrassed or shamed for actually feeling an emotion like that?
• 31:58
  Ludovica: I think when someone comes to me with you know, people pleasing patterns and successful relationships, problems in the workplace because of people pleasing, the first thing that I notice is that they struggle to even recognize anger, even recognize it as an emotion.
• 32:13
  Ludovica: Obviously, it's one of the basic emotions, and we want to recognize it because why?
• 32:18
  Ludovica: Anger shows up when your boundaries are crossed, obviously.
• 32:22
  Ludovica: And so if you have been repeatedly exposed to situations where your boundaries have been crossed, and you were at the same time in danger if you set boundaries, so your mind was like, Okay, we feel anger, but right now we're not gonna look at it, we're gonna pretend it doesn't exist, so just suppress that.
• 32:42
  Ludovica: And we suppress lots of, you know, as people pleasers can suppress anger a lot, and that can show up in other ways, that can show up even in the body, and that's a totally different topic.
• 32:53
  Ludovica: But the first step is recognizing it.
• 32:56
  Ludovica: What kind of things make you angry?
• 32:58
  Ludovica: Why do you think you felt anger in this situation?
• 33:01
  Ludovica: How does anger shows up in your body when you feel it?
• 33:04
  Ludovica: What kind of physical triggers can you identify?
• 33:07
  Ludovica: You know, it's just literally socializing the person to the emotion.
• 33:11
  Ludovica: And anger can be very complex as an emotion because it can also be a secondary emotion.
• 33:17
  Ludovica: So let's say you feel you feel sad, okay, because something happens, but you don't want to feel sad.
• 33:23
  Ludovica: And so you start saying, Oh, that's that's not fair.
• 33:26
  Ludovica: And so anger also shows up, right?
• 33:28
  Ludovica: So it wasn't exactly the primary emotion caused by a certain trigger, but also it came up as an emotion.
• 33:35
  Ludovica: And so sometimes it can be, it's not that easy to identify what's anger, what's not anger, because it kind of comes, it becomes the tip of the iceberg of many other emotions that are that sit underneath.
• 33:47
  Ludovica: And to be honest, I think I love when anger, I love when women come up in the session and say, I feel so angry today.
• 33:56
  Ludovica: Because that to me is success.
• 33:58
  Ludovica: That's to me success.
• 33:59
  Ludovica: And then we can look at how you express anger, we can look at how you process anger, but then the fact that you are recognizing that you're angry and you're verbalizing it and saying it to me, and you're not justifying the other people to who hurt you anymore, that's fantastic.
• 34:14
  Ludovica: Sometimes this even shows up when we talk about people's past, you know.
• 34:19
  Ludovica: Sometimes group people pleasers uh struggle to kind of look at their parents' behavior as a behavior that was actually wrong.
• 34:29
  Ludovica: Okay, so a behavior that the thing, the behavior of what it is.
• 34:32
  Ludovica: Um, so they tend to justify that parents, or they have to say, I feel very guilty for talking about my mom this way, like she loved me.
• 34:39
  Ludovica: We know that, we obviously know that, but she's a human being, she apart from being your mom, you know.
• 34:44
  Ludovica: And as children, we tend to see our parents as these heroes who can't fail, but then actually, if this person wasn't your mom, what would you think of them?
• 34:54
  Ludovica: So, again, take yourself away from your social role.
• 34:59
  Ludovica: How do you what do you think about this person?
• 35:01
  Ludovica: Can you assess their behavior in a more objective way?
• 35:04
  Ludovica: Well, that's not obviously a question I asked, but that's the idea, right?
• 35:07
  Ludovica: Yeah, what would you say about this person's behavior?
• 35:09
  Ludovica: And sometimes they can say, you know, that yeah, that behavior was clearly wrong, and um it was my fault.
• 35:15
  Ludovica: So that's also, you know, when anger is felt, shame is released a little bit because they start understanding it wasn't my fault.
• 35:23
  Ludovica: Yes, not had nothing to do with me.
• 35:26
  Ludovica: They didn't know any better.
• 35:27
  Ludovica: Although they loved me, they didn't know any better.
• 35:30
  Mary: So yeah, and I think that's where the word and come in, comes in.
• 35:34
  Mary: My mom loved me and she failed me sometimes, and she wasn't always a great parent.
• 35:39
  Mary: So, yes, I think starting to allow yourself to feel those things and acknowledge what you knew even as a kid.
• 35:46
  Mary: As a kid, you knew this is not right, but you just, you know, again, try to stay safe.
• 35:53
  Mary: So someone's listening to this, and as you tend to say, we do know we're doing this, it's just very difficult to start to change the script.
• 36:02
  Mary: So, how would you tell someone to start?
• 36:05
  Mary: What would be a first step in kind of stepping away from the people pleasing role and stepping into something that's more authentic?
• 36:12
  Mary: What would that look like?
• 36:16
  Ludovica: I would start with it because as I said, most times people come in the session saying I have very unsuccessful relationships because people take advantage of me, for example, right?
• 36:26
  Ludovica: Um, so people pleasing, the the issue here is that people pleasing is not it's rarely seen as a problem per se, right?
• 36:35
  Ludovica: It's seen as a problem after a while, after we explain why and everything we said during this podcast session.
• 36:43
  Ludovica: Uh, but initially they usually have a problem.
• 36:45
  Ludovica: So my first question is, okay, how do you show up in your relationships?
• 36:49
  Ludovica: And they say, Well, I'm actually really good, I'm really kind, I always think about the other persons first.
• 36:54
  Ludovica: You know, I I even change my plans.
• 36:57
  Ludovica: I always check with them what they want to do before I make decisions.
• 37:00
  Ludovica: That's it.
• 37:01
  Ludovica: That's it.
• 37:02
  Ludovica: So probably you're doing a little bit too much of that.
• 37:05
  Ludovica: And how much of that is the other person doing?
• 37:08
  Ludovica: Sometimes the answer is none.
• 37:10
  Ludovica: So, where is the balance here?
• 37:11
  Ludovica: You know, so if you want to see if people pleasing is one of the patterns that you have.
• 37:16
  Ludovica: Some people know, right?
• 37:17
  Ludovica: But some people don't know the full extent of where that behavior takes them or the impact that it has even in the workplace, you know.
• 37:26
  Ludovica: I am struggling to get a promotion.
• 37:28
  Ludovica: I've been two years in line for this promotion, they keep delaying it to me.
• 37:31
  Ludovica: Okay, so how do you show up?
• 37:33
  Ludovica: I work.
• 37:33
  Ludovica: Well, I work 24-7, but okay, so where are the boundaries here?
• 37:39
  Ludovica: You know, I don't have any because I want to get promoted, but is that working?
• 37:43
  Ludovica: So there is a moment in which self-sacrifice, which sometimes is at the core of these behaviors, it's actually hurting everyone because people cannot see your value because you're basically self-sacrificing for them and they you're not you're not letting them know how you want to be treated, but also you're not valuing yourself and they see that.
• 38:03
  Ludovica: That's why they don't like you.
• 38:04
  Ludovica: That's the reality that people see when you are disconnected from yourself and they feel something is off.
• 38:12
  Ludovica: I think that's the biggest thing away for people who are listening.
• 38:16
  Ludovica: Be connected to you, to your needs, to your feelings, to your wants, to your goals, to your preferences.
• 38:24
  Ludovica: Because when you aren't and you are uh you tend to de-center yourself in favor of the other person, the other person feels it.
• 38:31
  Ludovica: Yes, and you're more vulnerable in that moment to be used, let's say, or be taken advantage of because they know you're not connected with your own inner wisdom really.
• 38:45
  Mary: Right.
• 38:46
  Ludovica: So yeah.
• 38:47
  Mary: Well, and it's interesting because we're trying to be a value, and by always being what somebody else we think they want, we devalue ourselves.
• 38:56
  Mary: It's that irony and just a little sort of we don't need to go into systems, but when you start to change, there will be people that don't like it, that will want you to stay like that.
• 39:06
  Mary: That also means you're doing something right.
• 39:08
  Mary: So there's one more thing I want to touch on before we end.
• 39:12
  Mary: And I'm guessing there are people listening that are thinking, well, I didn't have a traumatic childhood.
• 39:16
  Mary: I had a quote, normal childhood, but yet I'm still a people pleaser.
• 39:20
  Mary: What is that about?
• 39:21
  Mary: What would you say to that?
• 39:23
  Ludovica: Well, the experiences that can lead to someone's developing people pleasing behaviors are many.
• 39:29
  Ludovica: It doesn't have to be a traumatic childhood, it doesn't have to be a difficult family, but sometimes it's just a parent who is a people pleaser, and we observe and we absorb uh their behavior because we're like, okay, my mom worries so much about what other people think.
• 39:45
  Ludovica: So that must be something I probably should also worry about.
• 39:49
  Ludovica: That's also true for general anxiety.
• 39:51
  Ludovica: When we see a parent who worries a lot about something, we think that must be right because they are doing it, right?
• 39:57
  Ludovica: So it can be just as that subtle, it doesn't have to be a huge traumatic experience.
• 40:04
  Ludovica: It can be even being praised for uh being the generous one or the kind one.
• 40:10
  Ludovica: It can be that you are the oldest of, I don't know, three siblings, and therefore you take care of them and you learn to sacrifice yourself for them.
• 40:18
  Ludovica: So that can be a number of experiences that you have can have in life that actually teach you um to put other people first.
• 40:26
  Ludovica: Uh even bullying can be an experience where people learn to be pleasing because that's a way to defend themselves, right?
• 40:34
  Ludovica: To make other people happy, to make sure that they don't experience that perceived threat or that you know that they are not uh in a dangerous situation.
• 40:43
  Ludovica: So it doesn't have to be big trauma.
• 40:46
  Ludovica: Uh it can be long-term relationship, raised relational difficulties, it can be just uh a random situation that you find yourself in life that teaches you self-sacrifice and self-abandonment.
• 41:00
  Ludovica: And from that onwards, you just repeat the pattern long enough to the point that it becomes you.
• 41:05
  Mary: Yeah.
• 41:06
  Mary: So I think if it feels off, if it feels that there's something that's happening that makes you feel, I mean, you alerted to this, we can get to the point we're physically ill from abdicating so much.
• 41:18
  Mary: And it could even just be that, you know, your mother was afraid what would happen to you if you stepped out and took up your space, because it's scary.
• 41:27
  Mary: So she may have even inadvertently given messages like stay small, you're safer that way.
• 41:32
  Mary: So you're right, it's so complex.
• 41:34
  Mary: But I think the key is if you feel that you're identifying with someone what we're talking about, and you're saying, Well, I didn't have any big trauma.
• 41:42
  Mary: I'm, you know, I had a normal childhood.
• 41:44
  Mary: Okay, well, that doesn't invalidate what's happening.
• 41:48
  Mary: It's still the same path, mostly, to sort of getting to that realization and stepping into taking up your space more.
• 41:57
  Mary: So what a great conversation.
• 42:00
  Mary: I love talking to you today.
• 42:02
  Mary: So can you review for us what you offer for people and where they can find you?
• 42:07
  Mary: I will link it all in the show notes.
• 42:09
  Ludovica: So you can find me on my website, uh luchkoolco-le.com and on Instagram um under ludivika.colela.
• 42:21
  Ludovica: Um, I offer therapy and confidence coaching to women who want to stop self-abandoning and have more uh deep and satisfying relationships with others.
• 42:33
  Ludovica: Um I offer a number of solutions for people depending on what they um how they prefer, if they want a more therapeutic approach where we analyze their past and the family history, or they want a more coaching-based approach when they want advice on how to deal with some of their current situations.
• 42:52
  Ludovica: Uh, so that really very much depends on I take it case case by case and I see what people need in that moment.
• 42:58
  Ludovica: Um, and yeah, you can find me online and you can find me on.
• 43:01
  Ludovica: I also have a blog where I talk about people placing.
• 43:04
  Ludovica: That's all my website.
• 43:05
  Ludovica: So it's all out there.
• 43:06
  Mary: Okay, I will link your website.
• 43:08
  Mary: And I think this was so valuable.
• 43:10
  Mary: And I would encourage people, if they feel stuck, get someone to help you.
• 43:15
  Mary: I mean, having someone to walk with you along the way, it's really hard to confront your own stuff.
• 43:22
  Mary: And when you have an expert who can look at it, you know, through a behavioral lens and through irrational beliefs and, you know, just changing some of that thinking, it's really, first of all, it's a faster track.
• 43:35
  Mary: And I think it can just give that safety net.
• 43:38
  Mary: So thank you for talking to me today.
• 43:40
  Mary: I think it's a really valuable topic.
• 43:42
  Ludovica: Thank you so much, Maddie.
• 43:44
  Ludovica: I really enjoy this conversation.
• 43:45
  Mary: And I want to thank everyone for listening.
• 43:47
  Mary: Please forward this episode to another woman who could find value in our discussion.
• 43:52
  Mary: And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.