[00:00:00] Hey high performers, welcome back to the podcast. Today we're talking about people pleasing. Are you people pleaser? Welcome to the club So I want you to talk about people pleasing because this is something that comes up a lot for nurses Right, and this is something that I have dealt with slash struggled with slash beat myself up with for my whole life and I've recently learned that people pleasing is a learned behavior and it's something that I did, a past version of me did, in order to get other people's validation and to show them that I was worthy and to avoid conflict and highlights my lack of ability to have boundaries and assertiveness.

Isn't it fun doing professional development and personal development? Let's talk about it. So, I went to the Google's slash ChatGPT and I asked ChatGPT, or my AI friend, What, uh, for a definition of people pleasing. And so people pleasing is a behavioral pattern where an individual strives to make others happy and to gain their approval or avoid [00:01:00] conflict at the expense of their own needs, desires, or feelings.

Hello nurses, that's us. This pattern is characterized by several key traits prioritizing other people's needs. Fear of rejection, avoiding conflict, seeking validation, lacking assertiveness, guilt, and difficulty making decisions. People with disabilities often have good intentions. Yes, we do. And we may genuinely care about others wellbeing, but their behaviours can lead to negative consequences for themselves, including stress, resentment, and burnout.

Who's with me? The drive to people pleased can stem from various psychological and social factors including upbringing, cultural expectations, and personal insecurities. Who feels seen? I feel seen right now. So let's dive into it. I've got some notes here. I'm gonna pull them out. Let's dive into it and let's explore what People pleasing means for us as nurses, and maybe just some things to think about.

You know with these episodes I really want to make sure that you leave this episode feeling maybe a little curious, a little bit more exploratory [00:02:00] about your world and people pleasing in your life and your career. Now, whilst I've just given a pretty negative lens of perspective of people pleasing, I do think that people pleasing is a safety mechanism for many of us.

And for me, for many years, people pleasing was an, uh, um, and adaption. It was a strategy that I implemented because I needed to feel safe and people pleasing is one way in which I try to create that safety for myself with of course some negative consequences. So let's talk about it from the perspective of nursing and being a nurse in the nurse in healthcare service.

People pleasing is like innately part of our job. People pleasing is, like, almost should be in the job description, right? If you think about it, what do we want to offer our patients and their families? It's the best possible hospital experience. That's what the hospitals harp on about, even though they do, they're completely different.

thing, but we're not going to talk about that, but [00:03:00] we as nurses, our role ultimately is to make sure that people are pleased, like make sure that their needs are met, and that we avoid conflict at all costs, and that we really help them through the healthcare journey. So we develop people pleasing very early.

As a clinical skill or a tool because we're here in that moment to meet their needs and to, people please, to provide patient centered care. And when we think about it through that lens, I think that it's not such a bad thing. It's something that really helps our day move more smoothly. Nine times out of ten.

And I think when we think about values, uh, value based healthcare, and we think about organizations and their values and like kindness, respect, compassion, whatever the values might be where you work, those values also often drive people pleasing behavior, right? To be respectful, it's about meeting people's needs, or to be compassionate, it's the same thing.

So, I think that from a service nursing perspective, it makes [00:04:00] complete sense that we hear a lot of nurses saying, oh, I'm a people pleaser. That's who I am, as if that is actually who they are and who they embody. But it's often not factually true. It's just kind of what we've learned as a tool, as a strategy to be able to move forward.

And I know that will help some of you me just saying that because some of us look at people pleasing through a really negative lens. Like it's a horrible, terrible thing about ourselves. If you're anything like me, I was very critical of my people pleasing. And now I can see it through this kind of like 50 50 lens.

It's 50 percent great, it helps me heaps, but it's 50 percent not so great, and I'm trying to raise my awareness of that side of things. Now, when we think about it from a safety perspective, when we think about how does people please and keep me safe as a human and a nurse? Well, it's, people pleasing is a strategy that we use to de escalate situations, right?

It helps us turn that really pissed off patient and relative into a relative and a patient that is like, bringing you a bottle of wine at the end of your shift, [00:05:00] like, they're like, thank you so much! I've had that happen so many times. I have to say that people pleasing, as a strategy, in some way, shape or form, has probably saved my ass so many times when it comes to Dealing with patients and relatives and their families, because as a manager, people pleasing is a strategy that you need to consistently employ, because your job is ultimately to please the people.

You are a people pleaser. That is your job. You've got to please your staff, you've got to please the MDT, you've got to please the doctor, you've got to please the patients and their relatives, the kitchen staff, the admin staff, the families, the higher execs, you've got to please everybody. And so it's very common for us to be stuck in this cycle of people pleasing.

This is where it becomes a little challenging, is that when we take that people pleasing, we take it to our personal lives. And then we do the same thing there, which is natural, right? Because we've imprinted this behavior upon our psyche. It's kind of almost [00:06:00] becomes part of our identity. So that's why I wanted to talk about it today.

So I've used it in situations where I had a relative come into my ward once and had to wait at the door for about 20 minutes because everybody was busy on the floor and no one Answer the call bell to let them in and it was a locked unit and they were a processing system. champion in a previous life.

There was somebody that helped organizations improve their processes and systems. Now, I didn't have the time to sit there and listen to a process and system chat for two hours. But this person needed me to people please them. Needed me to co regulate them so that they could get it off their chest how angry they were 20 minutes.

I'm laughing about it now. Stand at the door for 20 minutes, waiting to get in. I get it, like, they're seeing their family and they're stressed, they're worried, they want to see them, and they've only got a finite amount of time, and they're working, and they couldn't get in. [00:07:00] So, as a manager, I met with them, they were really angry, straight off the bat with me, like, screaming, shouting, pointing at me.

unacceptable but we'll talk about that another day and I needed to use my people pleasing skills and abilities to be able to de escalate the situation so that we could co regulate her nervous system and get her to a place where we could have an adult conversation. As nurses, this is a super skill when we use it correctly, okay, and here's the funny thing.

I sat there, listened, genuinely listened to this conversation for two hours. I could not get her out of my office. I didn't try because I just knew. I just knew that she was not going to leave and wanted to get it all off of her chest. So I sat there, listened intently, I managed my own nervous system, I was infuriated, infuriated because I had so much to do, but I just needed to commit to people pleasing to this individual at that point in time.

And as a result, I got some great feedback about my award. I implemented some changes. My team, you know, when they [00:08:00] could answer the call bell, we worked out a plan and a strategy and an escalation plan for that. And, um, the relative got the care, the relative got the people pleasing that they needed, the validation, and the, they got to see their family member.

And she came back to me a day later and she said, you know, I gave you such a hard time yesterday and you were so calm, collected. I wasn't. Internally, I was like, oh my god. Get out of my office now. But in the moment, I wanted to Just give her what she needed and co regulate and that's a superpower as nurses.

We're co regulators to the max. Um, and we do that. A mechanism is one way that we do that is through people pleasing. So she gave me a bottle of wine. I know we're not supposed to accept gifts, but I did. And I took that wine. You better think believe I took that frigging wine and I took it home and I drank it.

So that's an example of people pleasing to deescalate situations. People pleasing can help us build trust. With our patients, right? There's a reason why when you go to a restaurant, and you get in there and you sit [00:09:00] down, and like, their service is super quick, and they bring you some water, and they give you a menu, and you know, they come back and check in with you very quickly, it's because they're trying to please you!

They are, it's how you sell anything to anyone. You've got to please them straight off the ban because left to our own devices we will find to the fault immediately. So it's a really great strategy for us in building trust with patients and their care delivery. That's why when we have a new patient come into our ward we want to like go up and introduce ourselves as soon as we possibly can.

We don't want to wait for 50 minutes before you say hi to them. We want to be able to have the first interaction. Maybe it's a people pleasing interaction, but it builds a foundation for their whole experience. We cannot underestimate that, that experience, that exchange that we have with them. It builds trust in the service and makes them feel safe.

It co regulates their nervous system because they've just moved for the 14th time from another ward to our ward and now you're the 24th nurse that they've met. And the last nurse didn't do their [00:10:00] dressing very well, and they've been in pain for three days. So see how people pleasing can become a strategy that we can leverage.

That's really awesome in our nursing career. Like, how tedious. All people please every time. If It's going to make sure that my patient gets what they need. And we're going to talk about when it's not so good. So don't think that I'm all one sided, okay? And people pleasing is a risk management strategy.

So we kind of talked about that. But it is a strategy that you can employ that will reduce risks within your patient care and delivery. Um, we, we had, we had a patient that Relative came in, and I actually was off shift this day. I chose good days off, obviously, I was a nurse manager. And there was a relative that came in that threatened to, um, Do something naughty with a knife, uh, in the ward.

And my, my, my assistant director, my A don and Don at the time, they had to deal with the situation because I was on the day off, and of course, you, you better believe that I heard about it. Ha ha ha. And I had [00:11:00] to people please them. Um, but that was the situation where really it came down to like, okay, we've got to validate this person's experience.

We've got to people please quote unquote. We've got to give them what they need. Like, we've got to help them navigate this because there's a critical issue right here, right now. And so many people are at risk and we need to de escalate this right, right now. So this is where, if you're a new nurse in particular, or you're a nurse that just comes across a lot of conflict and you don't know how to manage it, people pleasing is a great kind of first step.

And I use that as like a loose term, but really acknowledging and validating and, and confirming somebody's experience can really automatically de escalate them. because they feel seen and heard. And most people just want to be seen and heard. Most patients sit in a room for 23 hours out of the day and have an interaction probably for about a total max of an hour across their day, across the whole team, their patient, their relatives, and the nursing staff.

So it makes sense. People are left to their own devices, just sitting there waiting [00:12:00] for us to come and care for them. Um, and just to people pleasing to deliver for them. So we've got to make sure that when we need to tap into people pleasing, we can as a risk management strategy. Now, when we think about it from a job perspective, if we think about people pleasing as a strategy, And like it helps us stay safe in our job.

It helps maintain our income. It keeps us in job security, right? And it also helps us balance our team dynamics. We all know those people on our teams that are like, you know, you say the wrong thing to them and they fly off the handle. Or maybe they don't deal with stress as well. So sometimes we do need to employ people pleasing to help our colleagues, to co regulate our colleagues nervous systems, to help them navigate.

gate, the complexity of nursing, and to help them build up their resilience as well. So people pleasing is effective for that. And of course, people pleasing in professional development, I mean, some people are like professional people pleasers. They are, you know, brown nosers [00:13:00] and will, you know, kiss ass to get wherever they want to be and what they need from people.

And I'm not going to call that out as a bad strategy. Some people that works for, for me, that's not a thing that I like to do. I like to be in the middle where I can people please on demand and I can also acknowledge a boundary and I can say, hold on a second, this is not sitting right with me. I need to learn more about this.

Let's discuss. So it can be used to progress your clinical career. So there's lots of great things there, right? Now, when we think about. our nervous system as nurses and we think about being kind of chronically stressed as a population of humans. It's really, really interesting because we are so good at meeting everybody else's needs, but we're not so good at meeting our own.

And I say that as a global we, um, but that was my lived experience, and I know it's many of yours too. We go to work, we give all of our people pleasing to the world, to the people, and then we are [00:14:00] left with, like, nothing left to give back to us. And I do really believe in this phenomenon that I've kind of just coined, like, giving debt.

If you really think about it, it's kind of just like spending money. Every day we go to work, we give, we give, we give. If you saw every interaction, every little people pleasing moment as giving, imagine we're giving away energy, you're giving away a dollar every single time, and you start your day with X amount of dollars in your giving bank, then by the end of the day, You're probably in either a negative or like a super negative balance if we have not gave back to ourselves, if we do not engage in giving back to ourselves.

And this is where our nervous system is important because when we are giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, and we're people pleasing, people pleasing, people pleasing, we end up in that state of hyper arousal where we're always seeing everybody else's issues and challenges as hyper acute. And they need to be done now.

How many of you try and do 24 [00:15:00] hours of work in 8? It's a sign that your nervous system is a little triggered and that you're in a hyperactive state of arousal, where you believe that you've got to do the impossible. I've got to please the next shift and my 60 to 50 patients for however many patients you've got and the MDT and all of the other people.

And this over time is not sustainable because our nervous system gets to a point where we've been in chronic stress for a prolonged period of time. We can't do it anymore. Your body will shut you down. Chronic stress leads to burnout. And so many of us are in this kind of upward spiral of we're giving, giving, giving, and every day we just keep giving more and we keep giving more and we keep giving more and we take that extra shift.

But our debt, like our giving debt is in the negative. If you think of it like a fluid balance chart, like we are, you know, Giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. So we're like plus in the giving side and then in the giving back to ourselves, we're like super, super negative. And we [00:16:00] all know that that's not sustainable.

That doesn't create homeostasis for our patients, doesn't create homeostasis for us. And without us, like there's no self care, there's no healthcare without self care, self care, right? So we've got to make sure that we are really paying attention to our nervous system and our patterns of people pleasing and being able to tap into it and tap out of it as and when required.

Because when we are in stress and when we're at work and we're triggered and something happens and our nervous system is activated, we're going to default into people pleasing mode because that's what we've learned as a learned behavior. So it becomes about getting ourselves back to homeostasis and to safety where people pleasing is an option.

It's not just a default strategy. Okay, it's not just a default strategy that we go to that we think, Oh, well, I better just do this now. Or it's 3. 23 and the next shift comes on at 3. 30 and I'm going to do this dressing that I know [00:17:00] is going to take me 40 minutes, but I'm going to try and get it done and I'm going to try and people please, because I want to validate and I want validation and I want all of the work to be done.

So then, you know, people aren't pissed with me. That is not serving you. And so many of us do it. And we need to strengthen our boundaries around people pleasing when it comes to our nervous system and our chronic stress. Because if we're going to build a sustainable nursing career, we've got to master being able to go to a hyper acute state in our nervous system and experience stress and then come back to safety.

Because right now what many of us are doing is that we're in stress, and then we add more stress, and then we add more stress, and we add more stress, and we never come back down to safety. We just keep adding it. And the only time we come back down to safety is when we burn out and we actually go to hypo, hypoarousal, where we are then in the state of like, oh, what do I bother?

Dark night of the What am I [00:18:00] doing with my life? Questioning absolutely everything. So, we will naturally vary through these spectrums, right, of the hyperarousal, hyperarousal safety states, homeostasis, and that's a healthy nervous system. Have a look around at work, see all the people that you think are people pleasers, everybody's a people pleaser, but just in your brain be like, oh, who really, you know, who's really a great person?

People pleaser. And then think about it through that lens of, Oh, the nervous system is responding. Do they stay in people pleasing mode for a long time and then crash and burn? And they have a couple of days off. Managers pay particular attention to this, or are they people pleasing? Then they come back to safety and that you hear them have a boundary and they say, no, we got to celebrate the heck out of that.

That is healthy nervous system regulation. And there's lots of talk online about. Do we need to be, we need to be, um, leaning into self care more and I've really struggled with self care. As a people pleaser, as [00:19:00] somebody that loves doing for others more than I love doing for myself, self care is like so unsafe for me.

Self care is like, what, I've got to spend time with me? I've got to spend time with my brain? I'm going to look after this, I've got to look after all the other people. That is a traumatic deep imprint. That is being put into my brain and for me, my mum had a cardiac, but she had a cardiac event. She had an MI when I was like eight.

She had two MIs and from that age on I remember, I remember my dad saying to me, hey Liam, you're like, you know, my dad walked away from home. So he said to me, you know, not knowing what he was saying, but he said to me, Liam, you're, you're the man of the house. Like you're here, you gotta look after your mum.

And from that day, I've been hyper vigilant, hyper independent, even to this day, I'm so protective of my mum, so, so protective of my mum. And I think about her health all the time, and I'm always giving her a hard time as a nurse. But that behaviour [00:20:00] came from that traumatic imprint. There's always a root cause, there's always a reason why some of us are more prone to people pleasing than others.

But we are conditioned as nurses to people please, but some of us have got more conditioning that we need to. So, raise out awareness of it, allow it and accept it, and then play with that and decide how do we want to show up in each moment of the day. So People pleasing is a coping mechanism in nursing and it's something that when we're in that stress fight or flight state that we go to because it's tried and tested and we know that if we can just deescalate the situation right now, we can people please them, then we can regulate their nervous system.

We can move on and get on with them. Okay. And that's effective for a period of time, but it really raises the question about, do we have strong boundaries? Are we starting to create safety for ourselves where we can. Go back to that homeostasis zone and we can realise I've spent a couple of days in high stress.

[00:21:00] Now I need to take the time to be back doing the things that I love, to reconnect with myself because I need to give back. I'm in debt, I need to give back to me. Okay, so I wanted to list out the pros of people pleasing and the cons. So the pros we've talked about. Improved patient team relationships. It makes your job easier at times.

Conflict avoidance in a harmonious work environment. Positive feedback leading to job satisfaction. Like sometimes when you people please, it pays dividends and you get a little badge or whatever you get, whatever the hospital throws at us. But sometimes that happens and that's great. The cons of people pleasing is that it has this negative, or potential neglect, or negative association with our own personal needs and boundaries.

It almost reminds us that when we people please, we don't matter. Like, that just feels icky to me. Like, we don't matter. When we indulge in people pleasing all the time as a strategy, and we kind of never bring ourselves out of that state, we increase our risk of burnout and stress. Because [00:22:00] we're going into giving debt.

You cannot live there. As nurses, we cannot live there. It also... Opens us up to the possibility of manipulation by others, because you know what people are like, people will see that you are a yes person, and then we'll dive into it. And what we need is a balance of yes and no. You've all heard this before, I'm not a yes person.

Okay, that's a great thing, people often say that like, I'm not a yes person, in like a, it's an empowering way, but it's also like a negative way. As if to say, oh I'm a problem. But that's how we all should be. That's self regulation. That's how humans are supposed to evolve. We're not supposed to just be dummies that sit there and say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

I'll do it. So I want you to think about that. Are you always saying yes? Where can you start introducing no? How can you make it safe for yourself to say no? in any way, shape, or form in your personal and professional life. The other con is that you lose your authenticity of who you [00:23:00] uniquely are. You just become that yes person, right?

You become the yes person. And you might also lose respect from your peers, okay? Like maybe they're standing up for an issue or a fight or a challenge on the unit, and they need collective group You know, cohesion and people aren't coming to the table because they just, people pleasing is easier. It happens all the time.

I remember I used to sit in meetings and I'd ask my team, and I'd try my hardest to create safety and psychological safety in the workplace, but people would come to these meetings and I'd be like, okay, this is a safe space, it's an open space, we are here to talk, we are here to work out these issues and these challenges, I'm so excited to celebrate these achievements, and it would be crickets.

No one would talk. And I can now see it's because people People didn't associate being open and vulnerable and authentic with safety. Because we all know that in the system, speaking your mind is not safe. And we, if you're listening to this podcast, [00:24:00] our job, tasking you with some homework, our job is to make it safe for people to speak their truth.

Safe to bring these issues to light, so that we actually have a nursing workforce in the future that looks after us, that meets our needs, that people pleases for us, but also holds a boundary. And shows us exactly what it's supposed to look like. They self regulate, they co regulate us. It also can have impediments to your personal and professional growth.

So everything that's a positive, of course, could be framed as a negative. But it could potentially stop you from moving forward. So many of you come to me and say, My manager said I'm not ready yet for a promotion. My manager said I'm not ready to move into education. I haven't done enough yet. I need more experience.

And... You, you guys just say yeah, yeah, and you just like kind of agree with them and like appease their, their belief about you. And then I say to you, but do you believe that to be true? Do you believe that you are not ready yet? Why, why do you even have that desire [00:25:00] if you're not ready? I'm a firm believer that there's data in the desire.

So are you going to take their word for it? Are you going to self regulate and we're going to bring ourselves from hyper or even hypo arousal state? Because you might be thinking, oh well I've put all this work in she still doesn't think or he still doesn't think that I'm ready. And we're going to come back to homeostasis and we're going to decide.

I am ready. I'm not gonna take this as a no. I'm gonna go all in. I'm gonna figure this out. I'm gonna make this happen, and I'm gonna push the boundaries, and I'm not gonna people please here, and just do what they want me to do on their terms. Because listen, they could be leaving next week. They could be leaving in six months.

They could be retiring in a day. They're not gonna be there. Who cares? Like, it doesn't matter. Or maybe they are there, but maybe you proved them wrong. Do not just take people's word for granted. Do not believe what other people believe about you without running it through your own filter first, okay? Now what we want to really think about is how can we find balance.

[00:26:00] That 50 50 idea of like, yeah, 50 percent people pleasing is great. 50% Not people pleasing, um, and being aware of people pleasing and drawing some boundaries is also great. But we can't do any of this unless we create safety for ourselves. And safety, I'm going to be talking about a little bit more, but safety is basically looking at how can I create safety within me?

In my mind, my body, my spirit, my energy. What are the things that make me feel safe? For me, it's playing music. It's singing, it's being out in nature, it's being near water. You can't do all of these things when you're on the ward, right, but you can integrate them into your life. For me, safety is getting good sleep, it's taking my vitamins, is um, or vitamins, oh my god, did I just turn American?

Vitamins, vitamins, taking my vitamins, um, vitamins. It's drinking a lot of water, it's limiting my coffee to two a day. It's spending time with the people that I love that co regulate my nervous system and reminds me why I'm doing all of this work. It's [00:27:00] connecting with people online. That's safety for me.

It's coaching. It's doing this podcast. It's listening and reading books. How can you create more safety? in your life, in your personal and professional life, so that you can go in and then start uncovering and exploring these learned behaviors that maybe you want to keep some of them, but maybe you want to let go some of them as you move and build your career, or at least you consciously decide when you use them.

Okay. And I really want to leave you with this thought. Maybe it's not just about self care, but it's about self regulation and safety. There's a lot of S's in there, but I truly am learning and believing the more that I learn about nervous system and trauma. and nursing, and our mental and emotional health, the more I'm seeing that self care is like this glorified marketing strategy, words that people throw out there, and Elena Mallory, the happy nurse, says this all the time, you know, self care is not just [00:28:00] bubble baths, but that could be safety for you.

Some people it is, um, bubble baths and doing all the nice things, but other people are going to need to dive into that a little deeper, especially if we've got some traumatic experiences that we've, we've gone through throughout our nursing career. So I want you to think about that for you. What. is more important for you right now.

Is it self care or is it self regulation? Is it bringing our nervous system down from that hyper state of arousal where we're people pleasing into homeostasis and then from there making decisions about where to next within our nursing careers. Remember you are awesome and that just because we have experienced traumas in the past and imprints.

You are whole, you are worthy, you are complete. The more we raise our awareness to these things, the more we better understand ourselves, the more opportunities we have to grow and evolve, and to become the version of us that we are here to [00:29:00] be. So I'm so excited to be part of that journey with you, and self regulation I think is the new self care, and I can't wait to share more of that with you on the podcast.

I would love to hear if this episode has helped you reframe people pleasing in your mind. I'd love to know what nugget of wisdom you've taken from this episode and I'd love to hear about how you are integrating this knowledge from this episode into your nursing practice. You can find me at highperformancenursing on the instagrams and I'm all over the place and I will see you next week.

Stay safe. Stay forever curious.