Episode 25 - Advice From A People Pleasing Coach

Tune in to this week's show, where we chat with Lesa Blackham – a multi-faceted coach and support system for those looking to recover from people pleasing. With her extensive background as an educator, life coach, NLP practitioner and more combined together into one unique package - you don't want miss out on this enlightening conversation!

You can find Lesa at www.lesablackham.com.au

Audio Transcript

Becca 

Welcome to the do divorce right podcast. I'm your host, Becca Maxwell. And I'm here to help you transition through your divorce with ease and integrity, to not only survive the challenges of your divorce, but to thrive as you come out the other side of it with a much better life than you ever hoped possible. On this show, we talk about many different aspects of divorce, interview women who have their own incredible divorce stories, or those who can offer some great advice as you go through yours. The focus here is to help you find the strength and support to help you feel lighter, happier, more positive, and then a better frame of mind to face the inevitable challenges of your current journey.

Becca 

This week, I'm delighted to be talking to Lesa Blackham. Lesa is an educator, a life coach and NLP practitioner, yoga instructor, mindfulness meditation teacher, a speaker, a presenter, a writer, but more than all of that wrapped up together, she's a coach in helping people recover from people pleasing. Lisa, would that be the right way to wrap up your experience and what you do now?

Lesa 

Absolutely. And going when you say it all like that, it sounds quite airy. So yeah, very impressive. Yes, yes, I am definitely now a coach for people pleasers. That's my new hat that I wear it in present day.

Becca 

That's really, really good to know, I think there's a lot of nuggets here. And you're going to be able to share. Because a lot of the women that I work with really struggle to know, what's the difference between, you know, people pleasing, or standing up for themselves. You know, where's that boundary? So why don't we delve straight in I'm going to ask you some some questions about that. How do people identify if they are people pleasing? What does that look like?

Lesa 

Yeah, that's a really good question. And you know, there's kind of a fine line between being a people pleaser, and just being a genuinely kind and generous person. And I think where we err on the side of it, as you're a people pleaser, or you have a head, I like to say it's a habit of people pleasing, or a behavior of people pleasing, as opposed to an identity where you are a people pleaser. So if you're have got the habits and behaviors of people pleasing, you're more likely going to be sabotaging your own health and well being for the sake of others. So you tending to put yourself put other people first, before yourself, it's almost as if you have this belief that your needs are not as worthy as someone else's. And so that's where the people pleaser comes into it, you kind of go out of your way, to make sure that everybody else is comfortable, that you're keeping the peace, that you're not rocking the boat, that whatever they need, they get their needs met first, and yours come second, or last or not even at all. So it's this forsaking your own. Your own needs really not not not even necessarily your wants, but your actual needs, things that you need for survival, you forsake those, for the sake of others. And I think that's probably a big umbrella. But a really good starting point, because there are lots of, you know, lots of different little indicators of when you might be pleasing. But I think the biggest one is that your belief is that everyone's needs are greater than your own, and therefore, you must serve them first. Do you find

Becca 

Do you find that there's an expectation as certainly as we become mothers that will obviously we need to put at small humans needs before our own? Do you think some of those habits that are unhealthy begin at that stage or is it much earlier than that? Typically,

Lesa 

oh, I think it's way, way earlier than that. I think this is in our DNA, to be honest. And it's a generational generational trait that's passed on, through from mother to Mother, mother to daughter, mother to daughter sort of thing because we've grown as women of today have grown up in a society that is still very patriarchal and almost colonial in that the masculine is the most recognized trait to have. And then if you're on the feminine side of things, then you follow what the man does, or you follow what the masculine paradigm of living is, and therefore, we've been conditioned over millennia, to be the caregiver to Be the nurturer to sacrifice to self sacrifice, and always sort of waiting in the background to be called upon to whatever your whatever that whoever is the head of the family, so to speak, whatever their needs, were, we need to sort of hop into it. So I think it's I believe it's generational, intergenerational and been passed on for, for many, many, many, many years.

Becca 

I've been reading quite a bit lately about intergenerational trauma, and how that has led to some really fascinating conversations with my mother, who's of a very different generation and talking about Australia Day specifically. But Columbus Day, well, wow. Oh, yes, it is fascinating how trauma and habits and behaviors do get passed through generations. And you mentioned about the masculine and feminine. Is it fair to say that the people pleasing habit and behaviors are more common in women than in men?

Lesa 

I'm not sure to be honest, I haven't really dove into that as a research and experiment. I believe, if we even take it through that through the lens of trauma, I feel like there is probably 5050 Like, feels it feels like from a woman's perspective that there are a lot of women people pleasers and I most certainly work with a lot of women, that's my my core client base are women, so only not from that perspective. But if we look at it from the lens of the other trauma response, people pleasing is actually one of the four Did you know, there are four trauma responses, we've got fight and flight which are very, very common, and freeze, but people pleasing is actually considered the foreign response. And so given that you could be, you know, the trauma that you experience as a child could be a form of the form response, form response, gosh, I'm getting my words or tangled up on formless bonds, so that what that would mean you could be male or female, it wouldn't matter, you would still be us, you know, we would be trying to keep the peace and make friends with the perpetrator of you know, that whatever situation you're in, where you're being traumatized, and it might not even necessarily be, you know, a big T trauma, or it could just be tension that makes your concentration, bullying, you know, being picked on just little, little, little T I like to we would kind of terminals little T or developmental so when you're young, just a little situations where you felt scared or line or threatened in some way, shape or form. Forming could show up in that respect, so that you try to make friends with whoever it is so that they stop being mean to you, or they start picking up to stop bullying you. So yes, it look, I don't think it's either or I think it's a real a response that is non discriminated of male or female.

Becca 

I'd like to unpick a little bit about personality types. Where does it get to an unhealthy habit and behavior of people pleasing? And where is it still quite okay to be somebody who brings help and, you know, sacrificing with a little less, if you like, to the people around them in order to, you know, have a happy, healthy, peaceful home. I'm thinking specifically, you know, profiling, Enneagram profiling, there's, you know, the eights might be much more direct and more comfortable with confrontation and more decisive and, and a number two, for example, is a helper just drawn to wanting to help people. And you know, there can be a lot of healthiness and allowing that to play out. But where does that then become unhealthy? You mentioned about not getting your needs met, but that can be such a intangible, so maybe

Lesa 

give us Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think you're probably right there. And so in terms of some personality types or traits that might show up, that might sort of lead you towards more, becoming a people pleaser, or having more of a higher tendency to people, please. And I certainly feel in the work that I've done with the ladies that I've helped and the research that I've done, people pleasing traits tend to show up more if you are more of a like an introvert type of person. You're quieter, you're shy, more shy. You find it difficult to, you know, step out of your comfort zone and, you know, stretch those boundaries, perhaps you're feeling a little bit more? I guess not, not so extra not so out there and vivacious and big personalities probably quieter, quieter sort of types of people would attending to be more more on the people pleaser side they're not so.

Becca 

Okay, that's, that feels, it feels true, right? It just feels intuitively that that would likely be the case. And I don't want to get too broad here because I feel like it could get pretty inappropriate pretty quickly, which we're not going to do. And but do you have any observations about cultural expectations of women being people pleasers or the more feminine being people pleasers, or the more introverted is there? Are you seeing in your work? Let's not be too general, or specific if there's cultural expectations?

Lesa 

Yeah. Look, I think in a broad sense, cultural expectations across the board, I don't have any specific research or background on different types of cultures and how more prevalent people pleasing is. I feel like it's more of a, like a general, this patriarchal sort of culture that we live in the paradigm that we live in where the masculine is the dominant sex for one of a better word than necessarily cultural differences. In that respect, I feel like there's more more generalized in terms of the patriarchy, as opposed to different types of culture. And and I don't know, I don't know for sure, but I mean, when you look around, and you see different people, and you see them in environments, it certainly feels like there are some women who are more disadvantaged in their environments that they're in, but look for the beat anywhere. It could be anyway, you know, I guess

Becca 

the reason I was asking that I'm certainly not trying to put anybody on the spot. But I am, I've been talking to a couple of clients recently who have had to go, they've had to fight against the expectations of the family around them in order to ask for what they want. And that has been to separate from their husband, you know, they're in a relationship that no longer serves them. They're utterly devastated that it hasn't worked out. And yet, on top of that, they are they have this pressure in the cultures that they come from, whether that's, you know, highly religious culture, or European cultures that just don't agree with divorce. So I just wondered if there was another layer in there, I could help talk to my clients about

Lesa 

I think, I'd love I'd love that product to be that lineated. And you know, that there was a specific year, while if you're in this culture, this is going to happen, but I don't think so I really think it is, across all cultures, that there are some families that have very strong expectations of the role that each member plays, and therefore make it very difficult for someone to have their own opinions and to have their own desires and their own needs, that need to be met in form in order for them to thrive. I think that is that comes to a family culture, and could be in any anywhere really,

Becca 

and different personality types in that as well. I'm sure that my daughter, no matter what culture she'd been brought up in, she'd be no people pleaser. Does Fine. Let's talk about boundaries. This is something I talk about with clients quite a lot, especially because if they've already made the decision, you know, the separation has happened. But they get triggered so easily. From not always the ex husband, it can be family members, it can be somebody saying to you did you try hard enough to work it out? And if you're someone with the habit of people pleasing, then the guilt spiral that comes with that kind of comment, which is just so unhelpful. So do you ever talk to your clients about boundaries and setting healthy boundaries?

Lesa 

Yes, yes, definitely. That is kind of one of the bigger topics that we do cover is setting healthy boundaries. And well, it's big, where do we begin? I think the most important part when having healthy boundaries is tapping into your value system. You know, what is most important to you? Because what what tends to happen is if a boundary has been crossed or being pushed to the enth degree, it's typically something that's important to you. And if I think in the beginning, when, I mean, we've never really been taught how to set boundaries, let's be honest, like, it's not something, particularly if we've grown up in families where there are no boundaries and, or, you know, the family dynamics that you're in, there's, there's a lack of kind of emotional maturity for one of a better word, they were only learning now how to manage our emotions in healthy ways. And so our parents haven't really been able to model that kind of healthy boundary setting to us. And so we've never really been taught how to set boundaries. But I feel like, once you start to realize that something is not working, or that you're really uncomfortable with the behaviors around you, or the expectations, that is, that is an opportunity to sort of tap into well, what is important to me, what do I need here? And what or what am I not getting sort of thing. And so when you start to get super clear on what is really important to you, then you can start setting boundaries, because, you know, you know, then what, what you need to have protected, you know, boundaries are really about protecting you as the individual, like, if I'm setting the boundary, the boundary is for me, it's to protect my energy, it's to protect my emotional well being, and it's to protect, you know, the time maybe that I have available, so it's for me, the boundary is for me, so what's important to me is to be able to, for example, have some space to be able to do some of the things that like me out that make me feel good that fill my cup up. And if that's not happening, then what is happening instead, and that's where I need to set the boundary. And, you know, set some time aside or tell other people you know, these this time is my time, and I will catch up with you at a different time, whatever it might be.

Becca 

Yeah, yeah, finding a way to, to put that in place that might not feel selfish can be can be challenging. But once you've got that technique, isn't it wonderful?

Lesa 

Absolutely. And you talked about guilt, and then just selfishness, like those are two big red flags. I think when we start to set boundaries, we do feel guilty, we've never done it before, or we've not been very good at it and boundaries have been loose. And of course, we're going to feel guilty because coming back to that people pleaser, who wants desperately for the approval of whoever it is that they are people pleasing with. They want that approval. And so they tend to sort of feel guilty that we might be upsetting that person, or we might be putting them out or we might be disappointing them. And of course, of course we're going to feel guilty and then feel selfish for wanting that time for ourselves or for asking for whatever it is that we need. That comes up. Yeah.

Becca 

Do you coach your clients then on the kind of communication that they can use the different phrases and words in order to create some distance?

Lesa 

Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, for sure. My favorite is is the power of the pause. I love the pause. To begin with, you know, if you feel like, you know, a boundary has been crossed, or you'd have a need or something that you wish to communicate, pause first, because that gives you time to collect your thoughts. And to come from a place of calm, instead of reacting. One of the one of the practices that I've studied and learned is mindfulness. And quite often, the opposite of mindfulness is autopilot. So reacting in an instant. So if we practice the pause, it gives us that opportunity to be mindful, first of all about how we want to respond. Because genuinely, we want to respond from a place of kindness and compassion. But often what happens is our trigger has been pushed or our buttons have been pushed and the incident is to react. And so when we react, we often don't respond in a way with kindness and compassion. So I think the power of pause is certainly something that can be well practice and then having like an armory and armory of ways to say no or ways to express your boundaries and express your needs, so you know, coming up with a few little one liners or rules sponsors, because when we have to think of it on the spur of the moment, it can be really tricky because, you know, we're in reaction mode. So when we pause, we've got our little armoury of phrases or responses that we can use, then we, we can practice them. And, look, you need to practice them just coming up with your own. I mean, you just have to go do a Google search, essentially, ways to say no, or ways to express my needs, and you'll come up with plenty, but find the ones that work for you. And make a little cheat sheet like these are the things that I can say, if this happens, because I'm sure

Becca 

I'm saying them. Yeah, yeah,

Lesa 

get real, practice it in the mirror, practicing in the mirror. And I think to the other part of expressing your needs, and the communication is this feeling of confidence, having, having the confidence to ask for what you want, and quite often, our people pleasing when we're in people pleasing mode, it with, with already feeling doubtful about our needs, we're already feeling like, we're not worthy. And we're not, we're not enough to ask for what we want. So having a little practice that gets you you know, once you've paused, once you've got your few little phrases that are going to work for you is almost stepping into a version of yourself that is confident, and then having the courage to just go, oh, well, I'm just going to ask what's the worst that can happen here? Yeah. And yeah, I don't know. How does that sound? Is that sort of feel like a neat little package?

Becca 

I kept thinking of, yeah, exactly how I apply some of those too. So just thinking of boundaries and the power of the pores. Specifically, when there's a high conflict challenge going on with my clients and I talk them through, it's okay to ask to shelve this conversation for another day, or I'm not feeling very productive right now. I'm not feeling very receptive to what you've got to say. And I want to respect this conversation. Can we follow up tomorrow, please? Yes, I need some space to think about what you're saying. The power of the pause is so important. So so important. Yeah. Yeah, and exactly what you're saying about we don't want to be reactive, I do a quite a lot of work in triggering, right? How do you calm the triggering response so that you can respond? Not react? Yeah, as you were talking through it absolutely. is a nice little parcel and like, yes, yes. And yes. And,

Lesa 

yeah. And it's really that, if we, if we marry it back to, you know, this trauma response form being a trauma response, you, you want to have this sense of safety, for yourself, really, and I mean, I'm sure there are some situations with some of your clients where they don't feel safe. But if they're in a situation where you know, the partner is not like a physical threat, feeling, tapping into that sense of safety within even if it's just imagining a time or a place where they can take their brain to their mind to that is a safe place for them, that helps their body to calm down and to come back from you know, this fight flight situation, or the phone where I need to fix this, I've got to, you know, I've got to make you feel better. That way they can, if you're feeling safe within your own container of your own self, then there's a better chance that you'll be able to communicate more effectively, and, and more courageously and even confidently, yeah, that's

Becca 

beautiful. I really think that's gorgeous, tapping into that safe place. I was thinking not of physical violence or verbal violence. The one of the areas that I see this play out is a lot of women no longer recognize the person standing in front of them. Why is he so awful to me? Or why? Why is he acting in this way? I don't recognize I don't understand this person. You know, what are his motives? Let's let's not try and unpick any of that. Let's try and work on you and what you can do in order to? Yeah, I haven't thought of that phrase. But in order to create that safe space in yourself, because that person is now an alien to you. You don't need to understand them. It's going to be a waste of everybody's energy. Because you're never really going to understand what's going on. Hindsight might help you years from now, but right now is not the time to try and figure out this alien in front of you.

Lesa 

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that takes us back to something that I use with my clients all the time is this circle of control, like your circle of control So it's brilliant. It's brilliant. It's what I teach you with my teenage girls that I mentor as well, you know, their circle of control, what do you have control over? So basic step back into your own circle, and, you know, you have 100%, control over your thoughts, your feelings, your actions that let the rest go. Because you can't wait, you can't possibly know what the motives are, what they're what they're even thinking why, I mean, for all we know, they could be in their own stress response and survival mode and just simply reacting to whatever is going on without any thought. And my other favorite thing is, it's not because of you, like whatever someone else is doing their behavior. However, they are acting, whatever they're saying, it's not because of you. It's because of them and what's going on in their mind and all their beliefs and all of their expectations of what their world should look like. Yeah, yeah, I think to do with you, it's not personal feels personal. I know. Not so not that's a that's a big thing for people to get their heads around. Is this whole? It's not not personal? Because it does. I know it does. I know it feels personal, but

Becca 

absolutely does, yeah. In this situation, you know, whatever it is ending. I just thinking back to what you're saying about values. And also as that conversation was just playing out, you mentioned, or maybe I'm paraphrasing, empathy, right, we don't want to get into the other person's head, we don't, we don't need to waste our energy on creating the empathy for the other person, while we ourselves are going through whatever we're going through, we need that safe space for ourselves. So thinking of empathy, and then also thinking of other values, which I find really critical for people to revisit multiple times throughout your life. But if there's an evolution in a marriage breakdown creates an evolution, it's time to revisit your own values and your strengths. What are you fabulous at? But on the values piece? How would we differentiate if if one of my values is caring, or loving, or being helpful? Now, can I live with my values and avoid the unhealthy behaviors of people pleasing?

Lesa 

Yes, that's, that's beautiful. That's a really good question. And we talked, we touched on this at the really the beginning when we when we talked about people pleasing versus kindness and genuine kindness. So those values of caring and kindness are not necessarily part of being a people pleaser. You can still be kind, and caring and set boundaries to protect your time and energy. It is not unkind of you to do that. It is not selfish, for you to have boundaries and to have expectations around how people will treat you. We get kind of hung up in that, you know, if you're people pleasing, then if you're not people in the must be unkind, well, no, you can still be kind and set boundaries and having helped.

Becca 

I feel that people need to hear that I really do. But it's quite okay to be a loving, kind, caring person who has strong boundaries, and it's not people pleasing. Not the healthy version of people pleasing behaviors, putting yourself behind everybody else's needs when it's unhelpful. Yeah. There's a word that comes up quite a lot in divorce circles, and the industry and it's one that I think is thrown around too easily. I'm not a fan. When, you know, people are not experienced in diagnosing it, and they throw it out. So my question is, what's a good balance between putting yourself first and creating healthy boundaries? And versus the personality disorder where people have an unreasonable expectation of their own worth, and are considered narcissists?

Lesa 

I think you're right in that whole the whole terminology and coming to the you know, what is a narcissist? I think there are narcissistic behaviors for sure. But diagnosing them that's not our job. That's not and does

Becca 

it it's too simple,

Lesa 

too simple. But I think when we come when we come right back to it, if we were looking at that selfishness, I mean, what is the purpose what is the purpose of the boundary? You're setting. And we're looking back at what our values are, again, we're still check tracking back, you know, what's important to you? And are those boundaries being crossed, and then maybe it's a case of how we express what our needs are, it comes back down to that communication, you know, we can still communicate what our needs are in a kind of respectful way. Yeah. Without being, you know, selfish. And for one, you know, for the term narcissistic, we are, we are kids. And, and I want to say we're entitled to it, everybody is entitled to be treated in a fair and equitable way. And if you feel like you're not being treated in a fair and equitable way that's in alignment with your values, then you have every right to express your needs. But there's also a way of expressing your needs, so that they feel, you know, we don't have to be Can I swear on this Can I don't have to be ourselves and bankers about how we express our needs, we can still ask for what we want in in a respectful way. Again, it comes back to that circle of control, you're in control of how you express what you need. And it's up to you, it's up to you to express it, but what you're not in control of is how the other person receives it. And you can still be, yeah, you could still be the kindest, most generous, thoughtful person and express your needs in the most genuine and authentic way, and someone that's out of your control, becomes back to your values, it comes back to who you are as a person. Did I do that in the most respectful way? Let me just check. Yes, I think so. If I didn't, okay, how could I do it better next time? The writing process? Yeah.

Becca 

And it's quite okay to be misunderstood occasionally. And it's quite okay to learn from that and try not next time.

Lesa 

Absolutely. And also, something that I've learned recently is that it's okay to disappoint people to goes along the same lines, like because we can't control how someone is going to receive the information that we share. It's okay for them to be disappointed. We can't control their feelings we can't manage. That's not our job to manage how someone feels that's their responsibility. And they're adults. They're adults. So you know, sort of

Becca 

adults behaving badly out there. We can hold them to account we can hold them, expect them to behave well. Yes. And they might surprise us at night. Lisa, thanks so much for this. I think this has been super, super useful. I really enjoyed chatting with you. How can people find you? And to work with you or to learn about what you do?

Lesa 

Yeah, it has been I've really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me on your show. I'm always excited to be here. So I'm available or via you can find me via Facebook and Instagram through my tag which can handle whatever that word is. I'm still new to this at Lisa black and coaching. And Lisa is spelled a little bit differently. It's Lisa with an E. But I'm sure we'll put some little tags in the show notes. So lesablackhamcoaching on Instagram and on Facebook. And my website is just lisablackham.com.au. And they're the three main places where you can find me

Becca 

and you do a combination of things, don't you? It's not just one on one coaching for someone who's feeling particularly challenged. You've also got some online courses.

Lesa 

Yeah, yeah. A variety of different ways that people can work with me just because we're all at different places in our journeys. So yes, I have, you know, premium one on one, a four month coaching package down to just a one month, one on one coaching package, or some online courses that are also really helpful.

Becca 

So yeah, that's incredible. Lesa, thank you. So good to chat with you.

Lesa 

Thank you.

Becca 

Thanks for listening. I hope you took something of value out of this episode. I'm your host, Becca Maxwell. And you can find me on the web at dodivorceright.com or on Instagram at dodivorceright. I look forward to connecting with you there.