Grief plays a big part in the journey to stopping people pleasing and perfectionating. It's the death or the changing of a former life- a former way of seeing the world, a former way that we used to relate to each other in relationships, a former way that we used to be rewarded and recognized. It comes up a lot in my group coaching program, Stop People Pleasing, and in my work with individual clients. As we change for the better, we lose parts of our past, sometimes including relationships. We create new boundaries and ways to function which don't always align with the dynamics in our life. We should never have to hide or pretend to stay in relationships. If you’re experiencing some grief during this process, I hope this episode is helpful for you.
Grief plays a big part in the journey to stopping people pleasing and perfectionating. It's the death or the changing of a former life- a former way of seeing the world, a former way that we used to relate to each other in relationships, a former way that we used to be rewarded and recognized. It comes up a lot in my group coaching program, Stop People Pleasing, and in my work with individual clients. As we change for the better, we lose parts of our past, sometimes including relationships. We create new boundaries and ways to function which don't always align with the dynamics in our life. We should never have to hide or pretend to stay in relationships. If you’re experiencing some grief during this process, I hope this episode is helpful for you.
You are listening to the Ex Good Girl podcast episode 54. I wanna talk about grief and the part that it plays in the journey to stop people pleasing and perfectionating. It's it can be sneaky. It can be overt. It shows up in a lot of different ways. But grief is the the recognition of loss and the the anguish, the sadness, the confusion, sometimes the disorientation that happens around things changing. It's, you know, it it's not just when someone dies, and I that is probably obvious, but it's also the death or the changing of a former life, a former way of seeing the world, a former way that we used to relate to each other in relationships, a former way that we used to be really rewarded and recognized. And all of that is such a big part of the the journey to stop people pleasing that I wanted to speak to it directly. It comes up a lot in my group coaching program, Stop People Pleasing, and in the work that I do with individual clients when they're working on their own people pleasing. And I have a list of ways that it shows up. It is, you know, by no stretch of the imagination, the definitive list. Um, but I wanted to share it with you. It's something I've been mulling over for a while, asking people about finding, you know, kind of some of the sneaky ways that it shows up. Because when we normalize something by naming it and we say, you know what? This is part of the process. What we can actually do is we can understand that that grief actually means progress. That grief actually means that you are moving in a direction that is ultimately going to serve you in a way that will make your life better, more expansive, more satisfying. And that's not how we tend to react to our negative emotions, especially, you know, grief and sadness. Biologically we're programmed that negative emotions means that something has gone wrong or something, um, is is bad. And you can see how that would help us in terms of evolution. But I think the purpose of the grief and my my hope in recording this podcast episode is that you will, number 1, recognize grief as a normal part of this journey and not an indication that you've done something wrong. Number 2, that you will have some skills to sit with it and learn from it. And number 3, that you will understand that it's actually progress. It actually moves it actually means that you are moving forward down a different path, developing new skills, new capacities, and that when grief shows up, it's a confirmation of that and not a confirmation that something has gone wrong. 1 of the places where we feel a lot of grief is in relationships that don't change with us as we move into less people pleasing. There are relationships where our growth is not celebrated, that, um, in fact, maybe the opposite happens where we are questioned, our experiences minimized where there is, you know, guilt tripping or even invalidation. You know, people say things like, you know, but I I thought you cared about me. I thought I was important to you. Can't you just keep doing this thing for me? We get called overly sensitive sometimes by people who are invalidating our experience. You know? This you're just really overreacting. You're being so dramatic with all these boundaries. You're being unreasonable. Why can't we just do it the way it was before? And so there are going to be relationships that do not survive the boundaries and the skills that you set and maintain around your time and energy. And that that's true. That's just true. 1 of the conversations I had with someone I was in a class with yesterday when we were talking about the potential conversation that she wanted to have with this friend about some boundaries that she wanted to set. She is used to doing a lot for this friend, showing up and meeting a lot of this friend's needs, and she doesn't wanna do that anymore. And her question was, you know, what if this person chooses to end our relationship? That'll be sad, I told her. That will be sad. And the question that I would encourage you to ask to really get clear on the grief and the sadness is, who do I have to be to stay in this relationship? What parts of myself. Do I have to hide? How do I have to pretend? What parts of me have to be smaller? What parts of me are not welcome or can't show up for me to stay in this relationship. Because that is the reality of those the relationships with those people who don't want you to change. You can keep those relationships. I think it's important to name who you have to be to be able to stay in that relationship. And then just ask yourself, am I okay with being that person? In some cases, you might very well be totally fine with that. There is 0 judgment from me nor should there be from anyone else because whenever we're making a decision, the most important thing to uncover is, what are my reasons, and do I like those reasons? And so for those relationships that don't have the capacity and the elasticity from other people to grow and change with you, you might be comfortable being smaller, showing up less, speaking less, and doing some pretending to stay in that relationship. Totally fine. Just do it consciously. There will be other relationships where you are not willing to hide, pretend, accommodate, continue to pretzel and chameleon yourself in the same ways. And so that's where the grief will be, that there is a loss. And even if later, you can see that relationship differently as maybe, you know, not good for you or or not supportive, fine. But now there is there is some grief. Right? There's grief when we experience the deaths the displeasure of other people. Oftentimes people who love you. This was a big part of my leaving my religious congregation and and, like, cultural heritage, the Mormon church. I experienced over and over and over again, the displeasure, the disappointment, the sadness of other people. And while I could completely understand logically that they thought I was making a terrible, terrible decision, every time I saw either the look on their face or I experienced the sentences they would say to me, like, I think you're making a terrible mistake. I think you're choosing the wrong thing. I think you're being deceived and heading down a path that you are gonna regret. You used to be so, um, you used to be such an example to me. I can't believe that you have, you know, made this terrible decision, there was grief there. There was grief because the connection that we had shared in this faith community didn't survive me leaving. And so now I was faced with their displeasure and disappointing them. And some people will actually make comments like, I liked you better when someone in my family said to me, I think you've taken this not people pleasing thing too far. Like, I I I think you should go back to the way we were doing it before. So those kinds of invalidating, dismissal, even manipulative sentences, there's grief there. We were hoping for something, and we did not receive that. Francis Weller talks about grief as being what we expected and did not receive. And so in our relationships, that is going to show up a lot. Sometimes people withdraw from us, and that feels so sad. Other times, they're outright manipulative or resistant, and they say things like you were more fun when we used to do this. You were easier to work with when you were more accommodating. I liked you better when you were always available and willing to help. Sometimes they will say the word that no woman wants to hear, which is, this seems really selfish. Right? Like, I I don't remember you being this selfish before. Um, and so when we are faced with the displeasure and the disappointment of other people, there can be a lot of grief. There's personal sadness, and then there's a sadness that comes about when other people don't like our changes. Another category of grief that is related is you are undoing your identity. Right? If you were someone who really was rewarded and recognized for the ways that you showed up for other people, that you always came through, that you were always the 1 that could be counted on, the loss of that identity can be really disorienting and full of grief. Oftentimes, we used people pleasing as a way to gain connection, to gain belonging and friendship and love and community and a sense of having a place in the world. Oftentimes, entire communities run on the people pleasing tendencies of women in particular. But when we decide for reasons that we like that we don't want to give so much of our time, energy, and effort to those systems, it can often mean a personal loss of identity. Who am I if I am not the person who's showing up for other people? What if I loved that? I I'm actually getting a little emotional right now, and that kinda lets you know how tender this is for me. I was so rewarded for being so helpful, so service oriented. Sarah Fisk loves everyone, serves everyone. She will give up her time, her energy, her resources to go out and serve in the world. And not only did I love the way that felt, but I loved that that was what I was known for. It felt like I had achieved, especially in a religious sense, like being like Jesus. And that was really important to me, being like Jesus in in some important ways. And then in the wider world. You know, the world loves a serviceable a service oriented woman because that is someone who can be counted on to contribute and not expect anything in return. So there were religious my in my religious community, the loss of that identity was something that I really had to grapple with, especially because it was intergenerationally ingrained ingrained to serve, to love, to give, to show up, to be the 1 who does the jobs that nobody else wants to do, to be the 1 who shows up in really big important ways to love and serve other people. And that's a lot to untangle. Because for me personally, I still want to be someone who loves and serves other people, and yet the dark side of that service was constant exhaustion. Not being able to give a lot of my primary relationships with my husband and my children. The attention that I wanted to give them because I was busy doing it for other people out in the world because I wanted not only to do it, but I loved the reward and recognition of it. So as we unravel that, and I am not done. As we unravel, like, what do I value and who do I want to be, and what is the dark side of that? What is the unintended burden or consequence sometimes that emptiness, the the loss of identity, the loss of the rewards, the loss of the the recognition is real. And sometimes, in some cases, especially in work settings or other relationships, there's actual punishment. Right? When you are not the person at work anymore who shows up on all the committees, who volunteers for all the extra free mentoring hours, who shows up endlessly to be an important part of the service team, there's punishment. Maybe promotions aren't coming like, they otherwise would have. Maybe you are now on the outside of the group of people who has the information, the in group, the the the the people who have used that service to get things like belonging in terms of being the people in the know about what's going on in your workspace or company. There's grief there. There's turmoil that comes up when you used to be in and now you're out. That was a big thing in some friend groups that I was a part of where because I chose to leave my church and do the thing that I thought was best for me, I was no longer worthy to be a friend. There was something potentially wrong with me because I might be deceived and taking, you know, the the the wrong path, um, because I was misled or led astray. And so to see the shift in the way I was treated, punishment, it was really hard. And I know that some of you are experiencing that as well. Another place where grief really shows up is in having to let people let me back up for a second. So people pleasers are master pretenders. And so it's often in our relationships that we are not very well known. We're not able to be vulnerable and open because the reason that our relationships are healthy and happy, and I'm doing that in air quotes, healthy and happy, is because we are so giving, is because we are so accommodating. This happens a lot in romantic relationships. A people pleaser will be in a romantic relationship. And what they don't understand is that their partner is not in a relationship with all of them. Their partner is in a relationship with the curated parts that the people pleaser allows to be seen. And most of the time, if you are a woman who has been socialized in our western way of thinking, that is to be very nice, to not be disruptive with your opinions, to not be needy, to accommodate, to be pleasant, to be happy, to not rock the boat. And so as you leave people pleasing and perfectionism behind, you open yourself up to new authenticity, to realness, and that can be tricky to navigate. You start showing more of yourself, who first yourself, and then to a partner, to other friends. And it requires a level of vulnerability that people pleasers are not usually accustomed to because people pleasing is all about doing what everybody else wants. It's not about doing what I want. And so There is the there is the grief of really, it's it's twofold. It's as I open myself up to other people as I show them who I really am, as I either experience their discouragement or their disappointment in me. That is part of it. But then the second part of it is that I also see how much of myself I had to trade for belonging and safety. So all of that is wrapped in so much grief. There's not only a feeling of like, oh my gosh. How do I navigate this whole vulnerability and, like, letting people see the real me, asking for help, expressing my opinion, saying no to things I really don't wanna be doing, saying yes to the things I really do wanna be doing. There's that. Then there's navigating other people's responses to that that are not always supportive and loving. And then there's me seeing how much of myself I have edited, hidden, pretended away so that I could belong, and there's real grief there. Francis Weller talks about the gates of grief. I already mentioned 1, what we expected and did not receive. Another of the gates of grief is the places that have not known love, and that's what I'm talking about here. The parts of us that we don't know that have not been loved by ourselves first and the parts that we have hidden away from other people that have not been loved. And so as we expose those through vulnerability and realness and rawness, there is grief to feel. So whenever I feel grief. Here's what I do. Grief comes in waves, and I feel almost like you know how you're standing in the ocean, and if you stand in deep enough, like waist deep or so, you cannot stand, um, still while a wave just washes over you. Your whole body kind of moves with the wave. That's how grief feels to me in my body. And whenever I feel a wave of this grief, I put my hands on my chest and I say with as much gentleness as I can. Oh, honey. Yeah. This grief is part of it. Sweet, sweet, sweet girl. Yes. This is part of it. This is part of it. This is part of it. It belongs. I let myself cry if I need to. I let myself rock back and forth and comfort the grieving part of me that wants to be recognized. It doesn't wanna be fixed, doesn't wanna be talked out of it, doesn't want the the thing to be silver lined. I mean, I spent a lot of time doing that. Don't don't get me wrong. But what grief wants is witnessing. Witnessing and feeling. So my hands go to my chest or my neck or my cheeks or my my belly, my sternum area, an eyewitness. Yes. This is grief. This is grief. This is grief. This is grief. I confirm that it's part of the process. This belongs. This is part of it. This is normal. This is such an important thing that we're feeling right now. And then if I feel like the grief has something to say to me, I let it speak. I ask the grief. What do you want me to know today? And sometimes the grief will just say, this is really hard. This is really sad. I didn't know it would be this hard. And I say, yes. That makes sense. Sometimes the grief will say, I'm really upset about this particular thing that happened or this particular relationship dynamic that doesn't seem to be going this way that we want it to. And I will say, yes. You're right. That makes sense. So stopping, letting the wave be there, witnessing hands on my body in a way that promotes that connection, agreeing with it. Yes. This makes sense. Asking it what message it has for me, letting it be there. That's the way that I'm dealing with the grief that is still a part of this journey for me. Less and less, I will say, it comes up less and less, more today than anything. For me, it comes up around just seeing how small I made myself, seeing the hypervigilance that I lived with, turned on high all the time, that I still live with in some ways, seeing the anxiety that that I was just my constant companion, there's grief and sadness for that that life that that I didn't get to live because I was so busy being hyper vigilant and anxious. Yes. It makes sense. It makes sense, and it's part of it. I remind myself that the grief belongs to not to go away, not to make it go away, but to acknowledge that it actually means that I'm growing. If you are experiencing some grief in this process. I hope this is helpful for you. Send me a DM about where you're feeling grief. If I haven't named it, I would love to to hear about it from you and have the conversation in an ongoing community way between us that is supportive and helpful because those conversations with people who coached and sustained and validated me were so important. So let me know how this shows up for you because, again, it belongs. And our goal is not to make it go away, but to witness it and to be with it and then to let it mean that we are headed in the right direction. Have a beautiful week. Talk to you next time.