-Welcome everybody. Doug and Aleya back. And in this session, we are going to talk about people pleasers, empaths, and why being a pleaser is not a good idea. We will also share with some tips on how to stop being a pleaser, especially if you are an empath.
Pleasers in Family Systems
Family systems theory is a way of describing, how families systems work within one generation of families and extending multi-generation back and forward into all other generations. It basically describes how families build roles and rules in order to maintain what you could call group stability.
And it’s a idea that was first really created by Virginia Satir who was a family therapist and psychologist back in the 1960s and 70s. And then the work was carried further by Murray Bowen, who did generational systems theory, and then others like Friedman have developed family systems theory and use it to analyze organizations in organizational development theory. 5 Signs You Are A Damaged Empath and 8 Liberating Ways to Heal
So it’s a very well-known theory in the clinical world and it’s a pretty effective way for describing common situations that we all see in families. Now, the family systems theory describes two kinds of systems.
One is a functional system and one is a dysfunctional system. In the functional system, the family roles can change, the rules can change. People can adapt. They’re not always comfortable with the change or adaptation, but they accept it and they roll with it and they move with it.
It doesn’t mean that families are always happy or content when change occurs, but in a functional family system, change is allowed and people can, can and do grow. And as they grow the system shifts to adapt to their growth and change. Super Empaths-13 Ways to Hone Your Skills
In a dysfunctional family system, the system is locked, like steel rods, locking everybody in to predefined roles with implicit rules of behavior that talk about, that describe what can be talked about, what can not be talked about, what is taboo, what behaviors are acceptable, what behaviors are not acceptable, what roles are acceptable and what roles are not acceptable. Pleasers tend to be from dysfunctional family systems.
And then a dysfunctional family is considered dysfunctional, when people are not allowed to move out of their roles. They cannot take on new roles. And the whole idea is to hold the family in this very stable rock solid place, which turns out to be really unhealthy.
And as a result of that, a series of roles emerge in a dysfunctional family that create a lot of angst, a lot of conflict and a lot of pain. And tonight we’re gonna be talking one of the most common roles that we see, which is the role of the pleaser.
Pleasers Are Often Empathic
And so I’m gonna let Aleya take off with her perspective on all of that. – So the pleaser is usually one person in a group dynamic or a family dynamic. And that one person who is plays the role of a pleaser is often highly empathic.
And so even at the age of two or three or five, you were empathic. You were born with this knowing of other people’s emotions. And that empathic sensitivity set you up for the journey of taking responsibility for everyone’s stuff.The Awakened Empath: 6 Paths to Powerful Enlightenment
Taking responsibility for soothing them, keeping everything peaceful, walking on eggshells, feeling responsible when people are upset and angry. And the challenge of being highly empathic, and then going on to step two, and we become a pleaser unconsciously, we don’t even know it.
Pleasers Tend To Take Responsibility For Everybody’s Feelings
When you are a pleaser, you go on to step two, taking responsibility for everybody’s feelings and their behavior and feeling shamed when they do something that’s embarrassing, feeling like it’s your fault when they are upset, angry, hurt, sad, or not even physically well, like if they could come down with a cold, “Oh, I’m so sorry you have a cold.”
Like you’re taking responsibility for the fact that they got a cold. And when you take responsibility for them, what you’re also doing as a pleaser is you’re disempowering them. You’re essentially saying to them, unconsciously, silently, “I’m more capable of handling your stuff than you are.
Pleasers Disempower Other Family Members Without Knowing
And so now everyone in the family feels actually unconsciously or consciously, depending on the family dynamic or the level of awareness, disempowered. And so then, because they feel disempowered because you’ve just taken responsibility for fixing them and soothing them and helping them with their emotions, they then start to attack you and they might shame you and they might put you down and they are not going to appreciate you and you’re not gonna feel valued and you’re not gonna feel respected because you’re holding this bundle of responsibility that doesn’t even belong to you, you essentially energetically stole. This is when it sucks to be a pleaser.
And so when they attack you and shame you, what they’re trying to do is get that responsibility for their needs back. We all want to be self-confident and self-reliant regardless of the level of consciousness of an individual, because the moment that someone takes responsibility for you, you immediately put yourself into the role of being the victim and then when you’re in the victim, you’ll cycle back and forth between the victim and the victimizer and the victimizer will attack the pleaser, trying to get that responsibility back.
And again, this is happening at an unconscious level. And so when you’re the pleaser and you’re highly empathic, and you’re holding all of these little bundles of responsibility for tending to everybody, and it’s your fault that no one’s happy or fulfilled or healthy, then you start to feel burdened by all of their stuff.
And you’ll start to feel their feelings and maybe even feel and process their physical discomfort, their emotional discomfort. You might even start going into their behaviors. Now you are in the empathic soup of their stuff.
And the last ditch piece that we do as an empath is we try to put our vibrational energetic gifts on another, trying to help them, shift them, heal them, sooth them, but then you don’t have that vibrational fabric for you and not to get too out there in the energy world, but just start pondering and bringing awareness if you are a pleaser and you’re highly empathic, that idea of, “Oh, why is it that my family doesn’t appreciate me and respect me and honor me and they’re not connected to me and they don’t even realize what I’m doing?” Oh, it’s because you took responsibility for them.
And they’re unconsciously upset or consciously upset. And they blame and they shame you. And so you can just start intending to return those responsibilities for their happiness, for their health, for their sense of connection, fulfillment, peace, calm, support, safety, giving that responsibility back to them.
As a pleaser, you have information in your heart, in your energetic being. You can send them that energetic information by just intending it. And then you’re stepping out of the role of taking responsibility for everyone and everything.
And you start realizing, “Oh, it’s not my fault they’re having those feelings. It’s not my fault they’ve created this situation in their life.” Then you go to the next step, which is recognizing that they are having their feelings.
They are having challenging situations in their life as their mechanism to grow and evolve. And then you’re able to hold a really safe space for them to be in their process and shift. So when you’re in that family dynamic, really start holding awareness of what is your role? Are you taking responsibility for things that are not yours? Returning it and holding a safe space for them to have their process.
And then we start bringing in the tools of the validating and the affect labeling, and that takes it to another level. And then the family dynamic starts to shift because it started with you, ’cause as we know, we can only shift ourselves, we cannot shift another, but then you are modeling a very different way of being.
– The difficulty is that as you, stop being a pleaser, because you are probably in a dysfunctional system, there’s gonna be a lot of pushback and resistance. And so the challenge is always, how to be emotionally present, how to give back as Aleya called it, the responsibility chips to the other people, without creating a terrible disruption in the system, because the system does not want to change.
And because it’s dysfunctional, it’s rigid, there’s too much hurt, too much pain, too much shame buried underneath everything. That the fear is that if the system changes, all of that is gonna come to the surface and everybody’s gonna feel this overwhelming annihilating pain, that they just won’t be able to handle.
To Stop Being A Pleaser Takes Courage
And it’s very, very scary. So to stop being a pleaser takes some courage and it may be, this is a kind of a harsh reality and now I’m speaking as a peacemaker. It may be that you have to redefine your relationship with your family, and you can no longer be the pleaser.
And you now need to hold a different stance. Many times, especially when dealing with younger clients in their thirties, who have these kinds of problems. I tell them, “You have to adopt the role of the wise elder.
And that means you have to distance yourself from the family. You can’t fix everything. You can’t even begin to fix everything. But what you can do is hold the place of compassion and emotional safety for everybody to do whatever they’re going to do.
And when you learn how to do that, you hold a safe space for yourself, so that if people accuse you or attack you or nibble at you or insult you or use direct sarcasm at you, you’re impervious to it.
You just don’t care. You’re like a wise elder who’s towering above everybody else, metaphorically speaking – With compassion. – With compassion. And their stuff just doesn’t bother you.
And it may be for your own health and protection that that’s a stance you have to take within the family. Again, this is not easy work, but it is doable. And sometimes it is the only solution that’s available to you.
And for you to do this, you have to obviously develop your own emotional competency. And we’ll give you the links to that at the end. You have to develop your own emotional competency and become emotionally much stronger than everybody else in the family.
To Stop Being A Pleaser, Develop Your Emotional Competence
These are all skills that are teachable and learnable. We’ve taught thousands of people how to do this. The issue is just, is this something that you have decided that you have to do? – And initially it’s harder, because you’re learning a new tool, but it’s a thousand times healthier. Learn About Developing Your Emotional Competence In This Power Course
And in the long run, a thousand times easier than living in the messy dynamics of an unhealthy system. – Yeah, the thing about this, depending on where you are in life, if you’re a young person in a dysfunctional family system where everything’s super rigid, you’re gonna carry that dysfunction into your family, when you find a partner and form a family, this is gender neutral.
So you form a family. You’re gonna bring in all the dysfunction of your family system and you’re probably going to attract a partner who comes from a dysfunctional system as well.
And that together, you’re going to end up recreating and perpetuating the dysfunctional family systems that you both came from. Unless you make a decision to change yourself. If you’re already in relationship and you have your own family, that’s much, much more difficult, especially if you have children.
Now, it really takes you and your partner making a conscious joint decision to say, “We’re not gonna tolerate this anymore. We’re gonna do whatever we have to do to grow and change and learn and master emotional competency. We are not going to be pleasers.
And then we will take on the role of the wise elder and hold a safe emotional place for the family, with our presence. And we will teach our children how to do the same thing.” Or you can see that that’s can be a daunting task, if you have a partner who is locked into the dysfunction and refuses or doesn’t desire to change, because the dysfunction is comfortable.
And because the fear of the shame, the underlying shame and anger and resentment and bitter is a huge incentive not to change. If I don’t change, I don’t have to feel that stuff. – But again if you come back to, you can really only shift yourself.
So if you do have a desire to change, again, it’s going to be easier than what you’re sitting in. Because as you start your journey of awakening and evolving the discomfort, the discordant becomes eventually intolerable.
The Tools You Need Are Simple and Counter-Intuitive
And so there’s a part of you that’s seeking and looking for tools that are healthier and learning these very simple tools. They’re totally counter-intuitive, but they’re really simple.
When you learn these very simple counter-intuitive tools, you start shifting yourself and others around you are gonna start emulating you because you’re holding a more coherent field. So there’s this concept of the Law of Resonance of when you’re exposed to a higher vibration, you naturally move to that higher vibration.
So not being attached and wanting for your parents to change your children to change, your partner to change, just being attached to you, making the shifts inside yourself and cultivating more awareness of what is it that you’re doing and what could you do that’s healthier? And you start moving in that direction.
Small incremental changes. – Small incremental changes. This is not easy work and we’re not gonna sugar coat it and say that, “Oh, this is all yippy skippy yappy if you just-” – It takes a wee bit of courage.
– It a lot of courage. (Aleya laughing) And it takes a lot of patience and a lot of discipline and a lot of perseverance. But we have had many clients and students who’ve made the journey. So we know it’s doable. Start Your Journey Here
And it’s just a question of how badly are you seeking through happiness? And that’s really the issue. And if that’s something that you really, really aspire to then you’re gonna have to work for it, but you can get it.
It’s there for every human being on the planet. – And once you get it, it’s elegant and lovely. Creates this incredible state of inner peace and calm. – That’s right. – And on that, thank you so much for joining us tonight.
I hope that these tools, concepts, have inspired you to look at your systems, your parent systems, family systems, in a slightly different way, and explore the idea of only being responsible for you and modeling a strong coherent field to those that you love in your life, to everyone really, oh.