I love you and, no.

breaking promises when we change our mind + are we people pleasing more than we think?

why does substack offer this image for search term “people pleaser”?

We’ve got self-abandonment issues, folks. According to a poll of 1,000 participants, 50% are people pleasers. I’m one of them. I often agree to do things I don’t want to do, especially for those I love, and abandon myself in the process. I’ve put a magnifying glass on myself lately and, through careful observation, I tend to ditch myself in obvious ways AND in the minutiae of my everyday life.

I have a lot of work to do. How about you?

I recently quit my podcast. From day one, my gut told me no but I said yes. I shoved the instinct to the side because I couldn’t say no to my friend when she asked me to co-host.

It was a valuable lesson. I’m done with that behavior, I thought.

But like a wise lady often asks me (a.k.a. my oldest sister), “Where else is this showing up in your life?”

I can’t help it, I love to stay on theme.¹

I recently completed yoga teacher training knowing I did not want to teach. Mid-way through training, my friend and classmate

Heather Casper

² managed a new series of donation-based yoga classes. While the two of us shared a keto-friendly peanut butter cookie, she asked me to teach one of these classes. You already know what I said.

My yes to her was a no to myself.

And that’s the way the cookie crumbles. (Sorry for the cheesy idiom!)

In a less obvious example, during yoga training graduation, one of my classmates made a triple layer (or was it quadruple?!) german chocolate cake. It was the bomb dot com. After a few bites, I looked down at my slice, thinking, this is way too much for me to eat right now. But a voice in my head said, keep eating it, Steph. Your amazing classmate spent time making this cake, you owe it to her. Sugar crashed, I felt sick that night and the next morning.

These are just two instances in a span of weeks.

the delish cake for awesome yoga nature bitches

What in the lifetime of people pleasing have I been doing?!

In a Washington Post article: “People-pleasing is when we suppress and repress our own needs, desires, expectations, feelings and opinions to put others ahead of ourselves […] we do it to avoid conflict, criticism, additional stress, disappointments, loss, rejection and … abandonment.”

Where does this stem from? I come from a generation in which you hugged your strange uncle from the Philippines you barely know because you don’t want to hurt his feelings or disappoint your parents. I finished my plate even when I was full because I didn’t want to offend my grandma, who labored over my food… sound familiar?

It also stems from good ol’ fashioned societal norms. I’m a woman untangling my worth to being liked. Are you like me, still in the camp of undoing the act of saying sorry when, in fact, you are not sorry? (I take it back, not sorry about earlier idiom!)

We take these tendencies with us to our friendships, families, workplaces. In my PR days, a former boss told me when I didn’t tweet her agency’s news from my personal Twitter handle that my actions were hurting our “family” — a manipulative way to make me feel bad and responsible for my coworkers’ feelings. I believed it, and proceeded to work for her for another 8 years. Longest sugar crash of my life.

I expect you all to pat me on the back because, just this week, when my brother-in-law asked me to teach yoga for one of his queer wellness retreats in LA, I immediately said no. I cringed and felt relief at the same time. He awkwardly laughed, probably because he’s not used to hearing me say the 2-letter word.

It’s hard to say no, especially to those we love.

For recovering people pleasers, expect one step forward, two steps back.

Here’s a likely scenario. Let’s say you say yes when you really mean no. Guess what?! We are allowed to change our minds. I give you full permission to take-backsies.

Just because we said we’d stick with whatever conditions we agreed to then, it may not be right for us as we change and grow older and wiser — or when your sister points out your twisted view of obligations.

The power and strength to say no after we’ve said yes is a very scary thing, especially when a core value is sticking to your word.

We place high value on our promises and commitments, for obvious reasons. Of course we want to be trusted and taken seriously. But we need to give ourselves wiggle room to fuck up. As we gain our own sense of power back and relearn how to trust in ourselves, we need to be confident with saying no after we’ve said yes and didn’t mean it.

It’s a simple explanation. You are retraining yourself to give space for the things you truly want in your life — for you, and not for anyone else. With forging a new path, in the future, you will have the gumption to know when you really mean yes and no.

Then we can go back to our pinky promises.

backing out likely hurts you more than the person you’re saying no to

1. Thank you to my friend Lola L’Amour who helped me figure out my recent people pleasing BS.

2. I recommend subscribing to Heather’s newsletter, Wild Blooms. Her latest post is an invitation to rethink and examine and question our current systems. Also read this one on grief, on the complexity of addiction and sobriety, and trauma — and the sunshine between the cracks or, like Heather writes, “the beauty amid the shrapnel.”