How to stop saying “yes” when you mean “no”, with Natalie Lue

Who would you choose to be if you weren’t shit scared about what other people might think about you? Writer and speaker Natalie Lue has noticed that people pleasing is often a response to anxiety. In this chat with Fearne, Natalie explains how when you desperately people please, you’re putting your self-esteem on the chopping block. In becoming disassociated from your “no” you become disassociated from your needs, desires, opinions, and limits. Natalie talks through the five ways people pleasing might show up in your life, including ‘efforting’ (e.g. over-achieving at school and work), and ‘saving’ through trying to fix other people’s problems. Plus, a word of warning that pushing past your mental and emotional limits can lead to physical health issues. Natalie’s book, The Joy of Saying No, is out now. If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like: Saying No: More Boundaries, Less People Pleasing https://pod.fo/e/288e7a The Good Girl Rebellion https://pod.fo/e/2dc795 Child on the line is a three-part documentary podcast series celebrating the Volunteer Counsellors of Childline, and the brave children & young people who contact the helpline service. Listen here: https://www.childonthelinepodcast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Natalie Dormer and I'm proud to be an ambassador for Childline. This year, Childline turns 40. To mark it, I've made Child on the Line, a three-part documentary podcast. We hear why children needed a helpline in 1986, how it was built against the odds and the challenges children face today, from abuse and mental health to social media and AI. Search Child on the Line and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:28Fearne Cotton?

  Hello and welcome to Happy Place. I'm Fern Cotton and this is the show that helps you prioritise yourself. Today, I'm chatting to Natalie Lu.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  We have these people pleaser feelings, anxiety, resentment, guilt, irritation, frustration, feeling low, helpless, powerless, overloaded, overwhelmed. Those feelings tell us that we said yes to something that for all intents and purposes is a good thing, but we've done it for the wrong reasons. I always say if you don't say yes authentically, you say it resentfully, fearfully or avoidantly, and that leads to more problems than if you'd just said no in the first place.

• 1:02Fearne Cotton?

  So guys, welcome to my messy world today. I just want to remind you all that we're living through absolute mess always. And even when things look shiny and perfect on Instagram, they're bloody well not. I woke up this morning at half four because my daughter got in the bed with me. She was sucking her thumb really loudly in my ear and I couldn't get back to sleep. At five, I ended up getting out of bed because my brain was just racing and I thought, I can't listen to this bullshit anymore, I'm going to get out. When I say bullshit, I mean the thoughts in my head, not my daughter next to me. I was just like, my head's being mad. Got up, Simon, one of my cats, had puked everywhere. Frank had a mouse, it was alive, running around and he was sort of kicking it.

• 1:43Fearne Cotton?

  So I had to grab a tea towel, grab the mouse, try and put it back out in the garden. I mean, it's absolute chaos. Then my son tells me he's got an exam this morning when he wakes up. He needs a clear pencil case, a protractor, an erasable pen, a pencil rubber and pencil sharpener, all of which apparently he doesn't own. Cut to me texting my neighbours, begging people in the local area for a bloody protractor. Oh my God. Absolutely exhausted, but I know many of you will meet me there in that place of complete burnout from just the small little moments of life that wear us down. But look, we're in this together and we can do this. And today, someone's going to help us. She's called Natalie and she's a brilliant writer, speaker, artist and founder of one

• 2:28Fearne Cotton?

  of the longest running self-help blogs in the world, Baggage Reclaim. And the Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast as well, which is hugely successful. Her most recent book is called The Joy of Saying No. I love that title so much. It's all about reclaiming ourselves from the cycle of people pleasing, and I need that, thank you very much, by discovering the joy that comes from being more of who we really are and listening to ourselves. We talk about how to realise you're saying yes when you actually mean no. We talk about how people pleasing is essentially connected to compliance and obedience, which makes it much more sinister than we might first think.

• 3:09Fearne Cotton?

  Also, we talk about stress and burnout, which is, seems very apt today, and also how people pleasing can be deeply connected to self-loathing. Oh, it's an interesting one. You might find it confronting in the best possible way. Me and producer Anushka definitely did. We took so much from this chat.

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• 5:43Fearne Cotton?

  To Natalie in just a moment, but first a quick reminder that it's only four weeks until the Happy Place Festival comes to Gunnersbury Park. OMG, I can't believe it, so soon. And of course, we'll be in Tatten Park on August 30th and 31st too. Have you got your tickets yet? There is still time. Come and join me and loads of brilliant people like Millie McIntosh, Liz Earl, Davina McCall, Vogue Williams and loads more. You can get your tickets at happyplacefestival.com. All right, here we go. This is the show.

• 6:36Fearne Cotton?

  Natalie, I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. You can drink your tea throughout. We're like very relaxed around here. It's all good.

• 6:45Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, we were just talking off mic because your brilliant book, The Joy of Saying No, was tipped off to me by Susanna Reid, who you're mates with, and who was like, you're gonna love this book. You need to read it. And my god, did I need to read this book, The Joy of Saying No, which looks at people pleasing in such acute detail. And I think brought to the surface many things that I needed to know about myself. First of all, I'm really intrigued slash pleased that the word joy's in there. Because sometimes when we talk about boundaries, it's like, you know, learning the skill of saying no, whatever. But this is the joy. Why the joy of saying no?

• 7:25Speaker 02

  I think it was because I'd always grown up believing that like no was like a dirty word. That's how it's often treated. Like, yes, it's so clean, so wonderful. And no is like this terrible thing. But what I'd seen time and again was how, when you turn around and say no, that actually you can pave the way to so much better things. Because of course, whatever you say no to, you're saying yes to something else. It just might not be clear at that moment. But I also saw just how often I and others had said yes. And it was so very far from being a good thing. We didn't feel good about the yeses we were making. When I looked around my life and how much it had changed over the last couple of decades, I was, I could see the trail of no along the way. And I was like,

• 8:10Speaker 02

  yeah, there's a lot of joy in there.

• 8:11Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, there is a lot of joy in there. But I think so many people, and this is why... This subject is so important. So many people feel like they are still people pleasers or they kind of know they are, but they're not quite sure because, you know, like you're saying morally, it feels really jarring to say no to certain things that you're used to saying yes to constantly. You class yourself as a recovering people pleaser.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:34Fearne Cotton?

  I think I'd say the same, although I'm probably still leaning more towards people pleaser, but I'm very aware of those moments where I feel huge discomfort saying no. It isn't necessarily comfortable ever, would you say? Do you get to a place where it's just like, I don't care about saying no to things?

• 8:53Speaker 02

  I, I, I still find, after all these years, that I will have my moments where I'll say no and it feels like all my insides are clutching together going, what the hell are you doing? I, I think that we are socialised and conditioned into avoiding no. And because we're socialised and conditioned to be really compliant.

• 9:13Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  I always say that we grew up during what I call the age of obedience, where the disciplining, interacting and communicating with children was about making us as excessively compliant as possible, so like really obedient.

• 9:26Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, children will be seen, not heard, that kind of thing, yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I'll give you something to cry about.

• 9:30Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Stop being a crybaby, drama queen, sissy, you know, all of these things. And so we became disassociated from our no and it felt like you always have to do as you're told if you're around somebody who you perceive to have more power over you. And the thing is, is that in becoming disassociated from our no, we became disassociated from our needs, our desires, our expectations, our feelings and opinions. We be, we forgot ourselves in the process. So of course, in the unlearning and starting to get a sense of where we need to say no, we're bound to feel uncomfortable. I always say to people, you know, when you get that awful feeling like, oh my gosh, like what have I done? And you feel really guilty, it's like, that's not because you're doing a terrible thing. It's because it feels so foreign to your body for you to consider yourself,

• 10:15Speaker 02

  for you to actually prioritise yourself and think about your needs, that your body's going, alert, alert, alert, danger, danger, danger.

• 10:23Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. I mean, isn't it weird that we've conflated that? We think that. Not looking at our own needs and desires, or what we know is truly right for us. We've conflated denying ourselves of that with being a good person.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's wild to me. And the thing is, is like, we're so like caught up in chasing this idea of good, even though we actually feel pretty shit.

• 10:49Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  And all the time, that that's wild to me. And what you were saying as well about how you can kind of have that sense that you might be a people pleaser or know that you are. That's exactly why I wanted to write the book, because I found that a lot of people were either like, oh, I'm a people pleaser, as if it's like a really noble thing, like a sign of how virtuous you are. Oh, I'm just like a people pleaser. Oh, I'm forgiving. And then at the other end, there were a lot of people who were like, oh, well, it means you're a doormat. And it's like, no, it's not any of that. I think it's, we needed to take a closer look at what it was really all about, because it's rife in everything. It's like, it's just part of the culture.

• 11:27Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. And do you think certainly for our generations and above, all of this starts in childhood. Like you say, the age of obedience, our parents, our grandparents, certainly, it was authoritarian and, you know, we did as we were told. And there was perhaps a bit of fear there about if we didn't do as we were told. And compliance was seen as the only way, the right thing to do, you know, even if you look at how parenting has changed over the years, you know, perhaps, we're still unpicking a lot of this, obviously. It's not like our generation are nailing it. We've got it all going perfectly, because of course we haven't. We're we're all trying to fumble through the complexities of parenting and working out how to raise kids. And, you know, that could take generations and hundreds of thousands of years.

• 12:10Fearne Cotton?

  But certainly, we can look back and see, you know, I remember being a kid and, you know, if you were making a scene in public or having a tantrum, that was to be halted immediately. Whereas I think there is more knowledge today that actually, it's okay if your kid's kicking off in public. It's okay for them to have big emotions, have big feelings. And we're trying to We're trying to parent that, but also not really allowing ourselves to do that still. You know, we don't allow ourselves to have tantrums or to be angry or to show emotions.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh. I mean, we managed to go through our entire childhoods and I didn't hear about boundaries.

• 12:45Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Needs. I mean, it'd be like, we talk about needs for cop on. It's like, when I was a kid, I barely had shoes. I didn't go to school. So it's like, oh, okay then.

• 12:54Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Talks about your wants. It's like, stop being selfish, you know, stop being spoilt. You know, you talk, it, it, it, things like the values and the boundaries. It's like, what are they? We own your boundaries. And you're so right that, I mean, I remember being a kid and seeing people, like little kids have a tantrum and people would encourage you to slap your kids.

• 13:11Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Uh, it's just wild times. It's so different now. You know, I've got teenage daughters now and it's really been really interesting parenting them. And then seeing my kid self through my eyes as a parent and realising, wow, like, I am way harder on myself than I am on my kids. I don't expect and demand from them in the way that I still do myself. And so parenting my girls really opened my eyes up to that and really allowed me to start being more patient with myself, to be more curious about what was going on with me. Because I was a kid who was like, I had to shut down my feelings as survival.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  I had to be always smart and wise and sensible and mature because anything else was like, no, you're letting us down.

• 14:00Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a lot for all of us to unpick when we look back at childhood. And I'm sure most people listening to this will have dabbled with that to an extent and had to think about, why am I like this? Why, if, you know, if, if people pleasing resonates, why am I a people pleaser? Would you say that one thread from childhood is most commonly seen with people that people please? Or are there other factors that, that create the tendency to people please?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  So I, I feel like actually to some degree, we're all taught these people pleasing messages growing up. Because it's like, oh, this is the way to survive.

• 14:38Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  This is how to be happy and successful. And when you think about what's Schools like.

• 14:41Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  And then if you throw in that maybe you go to church, you could see how a lot of people could wind up that way. But I do think as well that if you grow up really in spaces and around people who intentionally or not, you're really discouraged from doing anything that differs from the status quo. You learn to be a people pleaser. If it becomes clear, oh, feelings aren't really the thing here. Nobody talks about anything. Nobody expresses any feelings. You're gonna be a people pleaser. If you're, if you're encouraged and praised all the time for how much effort you make and it's, it's the message becomes clear. Even if they're well intended, that, oh, if you do well, if you get the A.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  You know, we're gonna be really proud of you. We're gonna be perform, do well, do your best. That can teach you to associate, you know, your worthiness, who you are, your identity with, oh, performance.

• 15:38Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  And, and if there's, if you even, again, and I keep saying, it's not necessarily intentional, although of course sometimes it is.

• 15:45Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  But we can grow up and might be around people. It's like, this is what a good something is, you know. This is what it means to be a good Christian, or a good girl, or a good boy, or a good person who comes from this place. This is what it means to be a good citizen, for instance. You know, something I talk about in the book is about how as part of, of being, for instance, an immigrant. In immigrant cultures, you know, where you've moved from one place to another. That actually teaches people pleasing because there is this real pressure, this need to assimilate. And so you're taught about, listen, you know, I was always told you don't leave the house without creaming yourself. Your hair has gotta be like perfectly in place. I was told you're a black girl. You are gonna have to like work a hundred times harder than your non-black peers.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Don't have anybody coming around here talking about you because you know they're gonna get the wrong impression of us. There was so much emphasis on various different things and that varies by culture, but it's all about this is how you be a good immigrant. How you be a good citizen in wherever you are. And it's like, this is how you fit in. Do well, perform. Don't be like those others. Whatever the negative idea is, again, all the ways in which we're taught, do as you're told, comply, go along with things, you'll be all right. And of course, we grow up and we discover that's not really the case.

• 17:04Fearne Cotton?

  No, because life doesn't work like that.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Not at all.

• 17:06Fearne Cotton?

  You could be the best person ticking all the good boxes and shit's still gonna go down. Life's still gonna, life, you know, that's still gonna happen. For you personally, I mean, that is complicated when you're getting that sort of messaging growing up. How have you personally unpicked everything that you got told growing up?

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Well, I think for me, a big turning point for me was, you know, I had this illness in my twenties called sarcoidosis, this immune system disease, and it it really badly affected me. But I was kind of oblivious to that in a way. I just kind of did whatever I was told by doctors and then discovered, oh, I'd done all the things. And still, it was getting worse. And what that woke me up to is, hold on a second, you really need to start taking care of yourself, not in a surface way. You really need to figure out how to get well from this thing. And at the same time, I thought, well, hold on a second, how are you going to focus on your health and, you know, doing all of these things to to improve it if you're not going to sort out all these dodgy guys that you keep going out with?

• 18:06Speaker 02

  And you're not going to basically figure out how to, you know, manage your relationships with your family. And so through that sort of, you know, approaching my health that way, I suddenly thought, oh, I can actually speak up for myself. And gradually, my relationships with family, I was actually pretty good with friendships, but family, romantic relationships shifted dramatically. And then I was in remission, you know, from this illness. And I realized, you know, I wanted to stay well. And I knew that there had definitely been this this influence of my really dramatically changing how I treated and regarded myself. Because I'll be honest with you, I used to hate myself.

• 18:46Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  And it was so normalized to feel that way. And then when you actually start paying attention to all this crap that's running through your head all day long, and you start to notice all the ways in which you dismiss yourself, you erode yourself, the way you're dishonest about who you are. I was like, my life is short.

• 19:05Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  I I've got to change here. And, you know, I'd met my now husband, I'd I'd had my girls. And I I knew that aside from them, I I wanted to be more for myself. What's interesting is we often think when we do, you know, a little bit of, as we call it, self-work, that, you know, it's, oh, I've done and dusted, it's all sorts of.

• 19:24Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, yeah, Tick, I've done, I've done self-work.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's not it. It's like, life keeps coming.

• 19:29Fearne Cotton?

  Bad news, it's every day forever.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Totally. And so what I found it was just coming and coming. Family dramas, all sorts of stuff. And I had to keep showing up. And I'll be honest with you, you know, when you was talking about like, sometimes, you know, we actually need to have a bit of a tantrum ourselves.

• 19:43Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Honestly, I've had that feeling because sometimes I was like, you gotta be flipping kidding me. Like, how is this coming?

• 19:50Fearne Cotton?

  How much more?

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, how much more? Why have I gotta do all this stuff? But after a while, it was like, Natalie, this is in service of your wellbeing. It's in service of your emotional, mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing. It's in service of you living a really good life. You, you face up to this stuff, it gets on your flipping nerves, but you lived it up to.

• 20:09Fearne Cotton?

  You gotta face it. I mean, it's so interesting because, you know, I, I've certainly had big periods of my life where I've really not had any self-worth and I've really not liked myself at all. And I don't know if I can look back and see one moment where I've decided to not think like that or to certainly sift through those thoughts and question them. I think incrementally, maybe with a bit of therapy and I love having these sorts of conversations and I'm lucky I get to do it in my working life a lot. I do feel able to challenge them, not all of the time, if I'm honest, but most of the time. And I'm certainly not in a big chunk of self-loathing like I have been through previously.

• 20:48Fearne Cotton?

  For you, can you see, obviously, you know, you had this wake-up call and you were 28 when this health issue happened. That is always going to be a bit of a wake-up call when you've got a health issue going on, you, you're forced to look at life differently. But what enabled you to stop that, that negative voice or to at least challenge it? Because I think so many people struggle with this. And that's where the people pleasing is stemming from. They don't like themselves. So they allow other people to treat them badly or they think they have to say yes to everything because they're undeserving of their own autonomy, their own path in life. And they just feel like, this is just how life is. I get treated like shit by everyone. But deep down, is that self-loathing? How do we start to challenge that?

• 21:34Speaker 02

  So it, it goes back to that thing of like, It's ongoing.

• 21:39Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Like, in an ideal world, we do this work and it's like, yeah, I love myself. Grant, off we go.

• 21:45Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  And what I realized is that I was in this constant dialogue with myself. Now, I had the benefit of, you know, I was writing about my experiences, sharing those. I was having conversations with people around the world who were grappling with these feelings. And so I was probably in a somewhat more self-reflective place as a result of exploring these things. I was paying attention to all these patterns that I kept seeing in people, but I was particularly paying attention to what keeps coming up for me time and time again. And it was like, oh, my God, what does this problem want? What does the same scenario that I was so sure I'd already passed that level before? Why is that coming back around?

• 22:31Speaker 02

  And I guess it was coming from this place of before I used to ignore stuff. I used to be really judgmental of myself. It was like, I always came last, whereas now alongside all the living, I was starting to pay attention to this thing keeps coming back. What does it want from me? Sometimes I found myself sitting alongside it going, okay, you're back. What do you want from me? What are you trying to tell me here? It's like starting to have these conversations with these issues that kept showing up, but also these recurrent feelings like, why do I feel like an outsider? Even though it's like, actually, maybe the situation isn't that at all.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Like, why do these feelings of not being good enough, of being quote unquote worthless and good for nothing, keep coming back around? And I realized that they're the patterns, the ways I've learned to feel. And so I think that when we actually start noticing those recurrent themes, those things that we keep returning to, that we say over and over again about ourselves, it's like, hold on a second. Let me get curious about this, actually, because we often get so used to saying this stuff.

• 23:37Fearne Cotton?

  We don't even know it's there.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  We don't even know it's there and we don't even interrogate, is this actually how I feel about myself right now?

• 23:46Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  And often it's old feelings, an old pattern playing out again and again. And what I found was that anytime I was in a situation that brought up, you know, there's that vulnerability, that fear of rejection, that fear of abandonment, it's like an old backing track would suddenly pipe up. And I'd be like, yeah, Natalie, you're no good, you're unlovable, you're not worthy, and all this stuff. And it's like, oh.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's like it's recorded in us. And when, it's like, when you start to realise that, you can actually start to step back from it and go, hold on a second. This is old stuff, not actually, and it doesn't have to be how I feel about myself now.

• 24:26Fearne Cotton?

  Do you think you have to understand the root of it? Is that important?

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Not always, you know, I didn't have the easiest of childhoods. And, you know, over the last couple of years, I found out things that I was like, oh, that kind of changes my entire understanding of certain things about my childhood. But the thing is, if you're waiting around for the answers to everything, whether that's somebody's told you that or you go on this massive excavation, it's like you're putting off an opportunity to be present to yourself now. And to make a very intentional, conscious choice about how you want to treat and regard yourself. I think we find it very easy to be caring and compassionate and empathetic to others. But I always say that, you know, compassion, empathy, they're full circle gigs.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  But how are you able to give out this stuff to everyone else, but you're not giving it to yourself? You're leaving yourself out of that. And if you're doing that, that's not really empathy and it's not really compassion.

• 25:22Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, why, why are we like that? I find myself doing that all the time, you know, someone could tell me the thing they deem the worst thing about themselves and I would have zero judgment. You know, it's like a great friend of mine, I would give them a big hug and say, oh my God, you know, you mustn't worry about this or whatever. With my own things, I, I'm nowhere close to having that level of compassion with myself. And I know it, but I still feel like I'm unable to exercise it. How do we start tapping into that self compassion? Because I do think I can see with my own people pleasing tendencies or times when I've said yes, I mean no. It's all rooted in this, in believing that I'm a bad person or, you know, all these other hangups that I have about myself or things in the past that I just cannot find

• 26:05Fearne Cotton?

  that compassion to apply to that situation. How are we cultivating that?

• 26:10Speaker 02

  So something that really helps in my understanding of people pleasing is recognizing that people pleasing is a response to anxiety.

• 26:20Fearne Cotton?

  Right.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  So we're anxious about something. It's often out of our awareness, but when we reflect back, we go, oh, my gosh, I was anxious that I was going to be judged. I was anxious that I wasn't going to get the thing I was looking for out of this. I was anxious, you know, that there's going to be conflict or criticism or something. So it's a response to anxiety. And then so what we try to do is soothe the anxiety with the people pleasing. And of course, just more anxiety comes back.

• 26:48Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  So it's like a response to anxiety and an anxiety management tool that then creates even more anxiety. So in recognizing this, I was like, oh, a bit of a light bulb went off because now when I notice where the people pleasing was shown up, I was able to go, oh, I'm anxious about something. And that started to halt me in my tracks around certain things I was doing. The other thing then that I've also found really helps is that people pleasing is like creating a debt and expecting other people to pay it off. And when people realize this, they go, oh, oh, because it's like, we don't realize that we have a hidden agenda of people pleasing. We don't like to think of ourselves that way, but it's like we're

• 27:31Speaker 02

  trying to get or avoid something with the people pleasing and it creates debts between us and the people around us. And if what we really want is, you know, that love, that intimacy and all those things, why are we trying to villainize people all the time by acting as if, oh, my God, if I turn around and say, no, the most terrible things are going to happen. So these things started to make me go, okay, I can pause for a moment, check in. What am I doing here? Why am I doing this? And each time I was noticing, oh, oh, this anxiety driving this, I've got a bit of a dodgy intention here.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  That allowed that bit of compassion to start coming through. It felt like, oh, I'm getting into a more truthful relationship with myself. And you know, I say, we have these people pleaser feelings. Anxiety, resentment, guilt, irritation, frustration, feeling low, helpless, powerless, overloaded, overwhelmed. Those feelings tell us that we said yes to something that for all intents and purposes is a good thing. But we've done it for the wrong reasons. Yeah. So find the why, because this is where you can really have a gateway into that compassion and empathy. But sometimes, actually, we're perfectly fine doing the thing. It's not even a dodgy thing, it's just the approach. Yes. Like me, I go and do something, I have the best of intentions, I'm excited about it.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Put my people pleasing, perfectionist myths all over that thing and I take the fun. Yeah. Out of it. I have to notice where I'm pushing and striving. And so if we can be compassionately curious about how our people pleasing shows up for us and notice, oh, like for me, it's that pushing, striving energy. And sometimes, yeah, it's that resentment because I am pissed off after I realize, oh, I forced myself to go and do this thing and I'm not even getting what I want out of this thing. And it's like, whoa. Resentment's in the room. Hold up, Natalie. Go check yourself. And this has forced me into a more compassionate place because you know what? I don't go around judging people for when they figure out that they've done something for the wrong reasons. I don't judge people when they, when they make mistakes.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  I don't judge people for having various different reasons for why they're afraid of saying no. Because the only reason we don't say no is because of emotional baggage. Yes. So once we understand this, it's like, oh, okay, well, something about my past inhibits me from doing that. But now that I know that's there, what might present day me want? What does future me even want out of this?

• 30:00Speaker 03

  This is Nick and Jack from the best one yet, and we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business.

• 30:05Speaker 04

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• 30:13Speaker 03

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• 30:21Speaker 04

  Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need.

• 30:28Speaker 03

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• 30:36Speaker 05

  Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notification screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of 10, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by QUO, spelled Q-U-O. The business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place, so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, "Wait, who talked to this customer last?" And if you're worried about after-hours leads slipping through, QUO's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline.

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• 32:08Fearne Cotton?

  Hello, this is Susie Ruffel.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  And Maisie Adam.

• 32:12Fearne Cotton?

  And together we host Big Kick Energy. Hey Mais, what is it?

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Only the best podcast ever.

• 32:17Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  A comedy entertainment podcast with a focus on all things women's football, all things hilarious, all things friendship. It's a laugh is what it is, Ruffel.

• 32:27Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, and a fair bit of gossiping, too.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Oh, and a lovely bit of gossip. Chow down on the gossip.

• 32:32Fearne Cotton?

  You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, you just need to search Big Kick Energy.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Grab a knife and fork and tuck in, baby.

• 32:43Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, that curiosity seems absolutely key. The why behind it seems absolutely imperative to talk about. Because I think sometimes when we talk about people pleasing, like you said earlier on, it's in these really opposing extremes. And then some people will go, well, of course you've got to, you know, help other people and please other people. Yeah, of course you can, but that's when it's coming from a place where you really genuinely want to do it. And of course, we all want to be, you know, loving to the people that we adore around us, or do, you know, we get a dopamine hit from doing something nice. It's not like we're going to just say no to everything from now on.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 33:19Fearne Cotton?

  Maybe we know the yeses a bit better because we understand where we want to say no.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Exactly. Because the thing is, is that I always say, if you don't say yes authentically, you say it resentfully, fearfully, or avoidantly.

• 33:30Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  And that leads to more problems than if you just said no in the first place. At the end of the day, of course, we love the people around us and we want to take care of them when we do things. Maybe we stay behind at work, or we do that favour, or whatever it is. There are people who do that and they know exactly why they're doing it. And they feel good about doing it. And if they realise they don't, they pay attention to that and they make adoptions. For the rest of us who are still in that people pleasing, we do it not because we actually want to, but because we're afraid of what will happen if we don't. Or we do it because we have associated our worthiness with always saying yes. So each thing that we're saying yes to, it's like we're putting our self-worth, our self-esteem on the chopping block.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  That's not a healthy reason to do stuff.

• 34:17Fearne Cotton?

  No, it's not. What I found utterly fascinating, and I hadn't heard of these terms before, and I think this is really helpful. I mean, just go and buy the book because you need to properly read it. But I found the five different types of people pleasers or people pleasing so interesting because not only could I recognise myself in actually three of them. And I can see the one that I'm predominantly leaning towards, but I can also recognise it in other people.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:43Fearne Cotton?

  Which is making me a lot less judgmental about those people too. Would you mind us running through these? Because I think they're really, really helpful terms to look at, to break them down. So first of all, the first type of people pleasing is gooding.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:56Fearne Cotton?

  Tell us what that means.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  So this is where we go about our pleasing by always trying to look good to others. We're always trying to be a good something. Even if we're not necessarily always doing those things, we find it really important to manage our reputation, to always be seen, to be doing the right thing, and we really, really want to be liked.

• 35:19Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  And that is the thing, I think, that a lot of people associate with people pleasing, that fear of not being liked and wanting to be the good person who's doing the good thing. And when that's your big driver, and then when things don't go your way, you're like, but I had good intentions. I was a good something. You know that gooding is your style.

• 35:39Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I'm really fascinated with this one because that fear of not being liked, I think, is so debilitating for so many of us in a plethora of ways that impact us really negatively. What's the root of that fear? Why are we so shit scared of not being liked by people?

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Well, it can come from a number of places, but we'll have had potentially something that's happened much earlier in life, where it felt like we didn't do the pleasing thing.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  And we were rejected.

• 36:10Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Disappointed or even abandoned for that. But it can also come from that sort of basic teaching. And I think this is particularly aimed at girls and then women where it's be meek, be mild, be sweet, be kind. Always help out, be a good girl. If you do all of that, you know, you you always, you know, please the teacher, please your parents, please your friends. Then you will finish school and then maybe you'll go and get like a job or you go to university. And then from there, you're going to get the relationship and then you're going to get this and you're going to get that. As long as you're good all the time. So anywhere where there's that really heavy emphasis. We're going to get good, good, good. We have to be good all the time. When you ask people, what does that even mean? A lot of the time, we don't even know.

• 36:55Fearne Cotton?

  We don't know. It's almost like a weird superstition. I've had moments of that where I think, well, I must do the good thing because otherwise something terrible is going to happen. Like it's a weird superstition. It's abstract. It's like, what does that even mean? And like, we all understand to a degree that, you know, if we put good energy out there or, I don't know. This is so complicated because I might be then reinstating what you've just said. But I think we all understand that sort of karmic balance of like putting good energy out there. And things going our way or having a positive mental attitude about things and seeing the results. But it's not this kind of situation where it's like you just do this and everything works out forever. It doesn't work like that.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  And that's how a lot of people pleasers are thinking because it's almost like you're trying to Jedi mind trick people with your goodness.

• 37:38Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  And then it's like, but why don't you see that I'm being this good something? And it's like, ah, you're performing at your idea of whatever the good something is. But you're actually leaving yourself off the table.

• 37:51Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, totally, totally. And then you end up feeling like shit. So even if good stuff is happening, you're not enjoying it in the first place.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, because the real you is not showing up.

• 37:58Fearne Cotton?

  No, the real you is not showing up. Yes, that is also something I'm deeply fascinated about in my forties is who the hell am I?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm seven, almost eight years into my forties and why it has been.

• 38:14Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, you're like, who am I? Because you know, you've done decades of people pleasing. You've been conditioned in family life or school or just on a societal level. And I think it is that cliche thing. If you get into your forties and you go. What do I, what do I like? What do I, what do I want? What do I wanna do? How do I wanna act? And I think especially when you then throw, not exclusively, but when you throw like motherhood into the equation, or other roles like that where you're caring for people. Obviously, your needs are knocked down slightly on the priority list and you do start to just go, I genuinely don't know who I am and what I wanna do anymore.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:48Fearne Cotton?

  Got no idea. How do we, I mean, I've gone off on a tangent because we've got four more to look at, but I can't, there's too many exciting things to talk about. How do we get in touch with our authentic self? Like who, who is, who's inside of us? How do we find if we wanna say yes or no? What's the easiest way to do that?

• 39:05Speaker 02

  You know, I always say, make it a desire or say no. And so what I mean by this is think about what you feel is expected of you, what you feel obliged to do. Oh, I have to do this. It's important for me to be or do that. And then what do you want to do? And if there's quite a gap between those two things, that's not only where the resentment lies, but you start to get some clues about how you can move towards being a more honest version of yourself. It's like, people say, what does it mean to be the real you? And it's like with all the things you'd be and do and have, if you weren't so shit scared of what people would turn around and say about you.

• 39:47Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  And a lot of us know what the answers.

• 39:51Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  To that is.

• 39:53Fearne Cotton?

  We've got to get quiet and work it out. Also, you say in the book, when you're saying yes or no, see where that lands in your body. Like, how does that feel when you're saying yes? How's that feel when you're saying no? And I think we've all become so good at just disassociating from our bodies. We're not feeling where these emotional moments are happening, or like the painful stuff's happening, or the good stuff's happening. We're just so cerebral and it's just, I've said yes to something, I've said no, and then, oh, I'm mentally annoyed about this, or I'm mentally whatever. But actually, if we tune into our bodies, we can feel if there's tension or if we're feeling good about something, saying yes.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  It like, our body is actually there to tell us the truth about what's really going on in our lives. It's just that sometimes we are going at such a pace and we are doing our And this to try to shut that information down that we're not accessing that. And that's when you start to get the burner and the breakdown and the lashing up because your our bodies have to go to greater and greater lengths to get our attention. I mean, I feel that like that's what happened to me with the sarcoidosis all those years ago. So I was just browning around, getting into shitty relationships with emotionally unavailable men, always trying to go around doing the so-called good thing. And that illness stopped me in my tracks. It forced me to confront myself in a way that honestly, we ideally shouldn't have to wait

• 41:12Speaker 02

  for those things to happen, but that's how it had to play out for me.

• 41:15Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, exactly. But you know, I guess you do have that opportunity to look at whether it is a health ailment or circumstantially something's going down, that it is always, there's always opportunity in it to go, oh, right, why might this be happening? Why might my patterns of behaviour have contributed to where I've ended up? And we don't often do that. Sometimes we're just like, this was unfair, this was a shit moment. I really hate that it happened. I wish it hadn't happened. And then you just carry on. But actually, it's an opportunity for us to, you know, I can think of loads of moments where I haven't done that, where I've gone, well, this is a big mess and, and this isn't fair. And then I just plow on. But actually, it's an opportunity for us.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, you know, I hear from a lot of people who will be like, they'll be navigating all sorts of stuff in their week, family, work, friendships, and they are just going, going, going all the time. And they probably feel like they're treading water and they have no clue how they're truly feeling from day to day. And then they get, for instance, to the weekend and they are ratty, they're snapping, they're exhausted, all of this stuff. And then they keep going, going, going. Because maybe they've tried to catch up on their sleep or whatever at the weekend and the whole cycle starts all over again. And it's only when, I say to them, why don't you ask yourself, start the day by asking, how am I doing today?

• 42:37Speaker 02

  And people say they are shocked that actually they very rarely ask themselves how they're doing. And sometimes they're really surprised by what they hear because it's like, actually, I'm really pissed off.

• 42:48Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  I'm exhausted. I feel like something's wrong with me. I need to stay home. But unless they'd asked. They'd have no clue and they just keep going and going and going. And then after a while, it all kind of becomes this gloopy soup of yet we know something's off. We know we're pissed off about something. We just actually just don't really know what. And then maybe the next thing that comes along that annoys us is like, ah, yeah, it's this.

• 43:10Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  And we have this really sort of outsized response to it. And it's like, yeah, okay, that thing annoyed us. And also.

• 43:18Fearne Cotton?

  What else? All the other shit.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:20Fearne Cotton?

  Let's move on to number two, which is avoiding. That is a type of people pleasing. Talk, talk to us about that.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  So with avoiding, it is really where we will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid discomforting others as a way of pleasing. So it's like going along to get along. I like what you like. Really avoiding being or doing anything that is going to invite criticism or conflict. And you learn to be an avoider. And this was probably the style that shocked people the most. Because you, you tend to have grown up in an environment where it was not the done thing to address stuff. You know, to express feelings, to talk about stuff. But also maybe on the flip side, you might have seen so much stuff and there'd be so much drama that it's like, when I grow up, I'm just gonna like, keep it sweet. You know, play quiet in a corner and just hope everything kind of goes away.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  And of course, we go around avoiding, avoiding expressing our needs, desires, expectations, feelings and opinions, avoiding dealing with stuff. Then of course, life does what life does. And then the person who has that avoiding style is pissed off. Because it's like, hold on a second, after all the lengths I went to, to avoid doing anything to displease you, avoid causing you any discomfort. You're still criticizing me.

• 44:37Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Or we're still having this conflict. Or you still don't want to be in a relationship with me. I'm not getting what I want out of this. And so this avoiding, it turns out, is really this avoidance of ourselves.

• 44:49Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  But it's avoidance as well of having a more truthful relationship with the people around us, all for the sake of being pleasing.

• 44:56Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, because so often we do need to have a difficult chat with someone or tell someone, I don't like what you're doing. Or it's so interesting because I think certainly in my job, this one really resonates with me quite a lot. I don't know if it's my predominant one. I keep changing my mind now. But this one really resonates because I think in my job. People so often will walk away and go, oh, yeah, I just worked with Fern Cotton and she's so lovely. Oh, she was a right bitch. And you get sort of labelled something quite quickly, I think, because you're in the public eye, there's an assumption about who you are. So I think I went through years of avoiding saying anything at work that would rock the boat in any way. Because I just wanted people to walk away and go, oh, my God, she was a delight to work with.

• 45:39Fearne Cotton?

  Even if I hated every second of that job, even if I did things in photo shoots I didn't want to do, or said things on camera that I didn't agree with, I would do anything to not let people walk away and have any bad thoughts about me. And I can see now that that is not appropriate. And I care a lot less about it. And I want to honour the work I'm doing in the way that I believe is going to bring out the best in what I'm doing, but also has the best results so that everybody gets something from it, rather than just what's going to make everybody feel happy the whole time. And I think that feels like a real sinister people pleasing, that one, the avoiding one.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  It's sneaky one. It's survival.

• 46:20Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Like, you know, I have an element of that avoiding because I grew up in this chaotic environment where it felt like things were very volatile. And it's like, oh, the safe thing is don't deal with stuff. And, you know, I've spoken to so many people, particularly women, who are like, I almost blend into my relationships because I don't want to give them enough of an opinion that they could change their mind about me. So they've just become whoever their partner wants them to be, or who they imagine their partner wants. And then, of course, when things don't work out, and they skip off down the road to somebody else, they're like, what the hell?

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Even the version of me that was, this fake me that was designed to please you is being rejected. And then they convince themselves, well, if I'm going to get rejected for this fake version, what's the point in being myself? So it becomes really quite sinister, as you say.

• 47:17Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, it is. It's a really sneaky one. That's why I liked reading about that one.

• 47:24Speaker 03

  This is Nick and Jack from the best one yet. And we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart Business helps you simplify operations so you can focus on building the next big thing.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  Find exactly what your organisation needs with their ever-expanding business assortment and everyday low prices.

• 47:42Speaker 04

  Keep your momentum going fast with reliable shipping and fulfillment. Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need. It's Walmart built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart Business Account today at business.walmart.com.

• 48:00Speaker 05

  Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notification screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of 10, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by QUO, spelled Q-U-O. The business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place, so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, "Wait, who talked to this customer last?" And if you're worried about after-hours leads slipping through, QUO's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline.

• 48:44Speaker 05

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• 49:04Speaker 06

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• 49:37Fearne Cotton?

  Next up, we're going to talk about saving. Tell us about saving.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  So this is the one I think that a lot of people are familiar with. It's the fixing, healing, helping, rescuing. It's needing to be needed. Like, that's the way that you go about pleasing, but it's also what drives you. The sense of, oh, I'm driven by these good intentions, but actually, it also becomes problematic. I would say it's kind of a mixture of gooding, that I mentioned earlier, and efforting, which we haven't got to yet. But it's the driver is needing to be needed. And the thing about that is that for that people pleaser, whose identity is very tied up in being in service, you know, sacrificing themselves, it can feel like everything that they're doing is really noble. And then they can run into problems in

• 50:23Speaker 02

  their relationships, where actually, not everybody wants to be rescued. People don't want to be pitied. And something I always point out is that when something is so much a part of your identity, you're going to design your life around it. Now, if you need to be fixing, helping, healing, rescuing, then you have to keep aligning yourself with people who present problems.

• 50:44Fearne Cotton?

  And do you think that one is also about not looking at saving yourself?

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Exactly. Using these relationships, these endeavors, like, oh, I'll be, I'll be needed by these people, and somehow I'll get the backflow to me, and eventually I'll be healed by that. And often, people who have that saving style as sort of their dominant style, they were old before their time as kids, where maybe they had care and responsibilities, or they just had to be more grown up than the grownups around them. Or they observed, you know, things going on, you know, with their parents or other loved ones, and there was this sense of, oh, my gosh, I couldn't save them. No matter what I did as a kid, no matter how good I was, you know, the grades, what I did at home, you know, helping out, it didn't stop them, for instance, from being an alcoholic, or having drug issues, or, you know, disappearing on me. And so they

• 51:32Speaker 02

  channel that energy into their adult relationships and endeavors, and make it their personality, when in actual fact, yeah, of course, there are their good qualities mixed up in that, but actually, it's a misappropriation.

• 51:45Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. Yeah, the saving one, I, you know, definitely, again, that was a big thing for me, probably throughout my twenties and thirties. It was like, it was so tied up in my identity. And how I move through the world. And it's only, I guess, again, in my forties that you can stop and check that behaviour and like, oh god, I was really trying to save that person there. And I don't know if my intentions were even good. It's just like a habitual thing where I believe that's what I should be doing. There's like an element of martyrdom to it and and yeah, like you say, this sense of I'm being a noble person. And actually, that's much more attached to ego than than anything else. It's this is all fascinating stuff. Let's talk about efforting then, because you mentioned efforting.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  So that's my dominant style of people pleasing. This is where really the way you go about pleasing is through effort. It wouldn't be enough, for instance, for you to be like, you know, doing the gooding because you want the receipts. So you're always trying to be the best, doing the best. You're the one who's most likely to engage in a perfectionism. And you're also the one who's most likely to burn out. Your identity is very intertwined with what you do with performing. And there is this sense of effort controls outcomes. So the more effort you make, the more likely it is that you're going to get what you want. Of course, when you don't get what you want, it's like, oh, I didn't make enough efforts.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  So let me throw some more effort at it. That's what people who have that style, if something goes wrong in my life, okay, what can I do? What can I throw at this thing? With the efforting style, that has come from picking up messages, you know, earlier on in life, that your value really lies in in what you produce.

• 53:27Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  So being productive, you know, making sure that you perform, always being seen to be giving the most amount of effort. So you're always afraid that you've not given a hundred percent. And and you'll find, you know, and this could of course happen with the other stars, whatever you are either praised for or where you haven't got that validation, is going to often be the thing that drives you the most. And so I was, you know, always praised for performing, but also for getting into trouble if I was seen to have not met, you know, to have not met expectations. And so of course, it's like, there's that hunger, prove, prove, prove yourself. And it's like, it doesn't matter how you feel, you're doing this. It doesn't matter that you're exhausted, don't care about your limits. That's what the forties has been about for me.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  It's like, part of understanding who I am was realising, Natalie, you went through an entire childhood, never discovering what your limits are. You just threw effort at stuff, you demanded it of yourself, and you just kept going until your body went, okay, fine.

• 54:25Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm, I love this one because so often, especially on Instagram, and maybe it's coming from a more male place out in the sort of metasphere. We see this messaging like, move out of your comfort zone, push yourself more, try, I love the eye roll. Try harder, keep going, push faster, stronger, better. And, you know, maybe some people out there do need motivating or feel like they need someone to help give them energy to do the thing they wanna do. But I think most of us feel fucking exhausted.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:58Fearne Cotton?

  And actually are going, I think my limits were like back there about a mile. But people keep telling me I need to keep pushing harder. And so not only are we dealing with our own personal habits and cycles and this, you know, reward system that we've learned in childhood, we're also, the messaging is everywhere. And we're, and we're sort of so confused with, am I meant to be in my comfort zone, out of my comfort zone? It's so confusing. How have you personally learned, if that's your one, to take your foot off the brake and go, do you know what? It's all right that I don't achieve anything today. Cause this one resonates with me again. I don't know which one my dominant one is, Natalie. I'm massively, I feel like it's saving, but now I think efforting also is like a strong one for me. Cause I have that same thing of never stop, never sit down.

• 55:43Fearne Cotton?

  And then I felt so burnt out the weekend. I actually had a whole afternoon in bed watching TV and I've not let myself do that in years, like so long, I've just not allowed myself like, nope. You could be reading a book, you could be learning about something. My insecurity is always, I didn't go to uni, I'm not educated. So I'm like, you need to be learning more, what are you gonna learn? Don't sit down, don't watch shit TV. And it is that efforting cycle we get in. How have you let yourself off the hook?

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Well, it's a work in progress, but the forties, I would say, has been the undoing of my efforting ways because I was perimenopausal. I worked out from around age thirty eight. Right. And between being perimenopausal and then just that that natural shift in your body and also just I was all the things I was doing in life, you know, parenting, work, life, all those things were catching up. And I was like, I can't keep up with myself. It was starting to annoy me that all the things I used to be able to do, I just did not seem to have the same stamina. I particularly noticed after, so my dad died, it was twenty seventeen.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  I took some time out. I feel like it was about six weeks or so. And then, you know, you start hearing that noise of, well, you've got to get back to things now. And I went back to things, you know, and I did not fit back into my old life. I've never been able to go back to the level that I was at prior to his death. In fact, I wonder how an earth. Yeah, how you did it. I did all of that. And what's been interesting for me is bumping up against my issue with limits and and how I've demanded a lot of myself. Case in point, uh, the winter after dad died, so it was twenty eighteen, I was offered a place in the the London Marathon. The most I've ever run was, I think it was like a mile.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  And they offered me a place because of the work I've been doing. And I was like, well, you know, I'm taking this time out. Because at this point, I was like, taking time out again, because it's like grieving, it's like, what's going on with my life? I've turned forty, what's happening to me? Existential crisis. I was like, you know what? This could be a fun little project. And I decide to train for a marathon in the space of four months. Shit. And it's it's what I discovered is I can demand a lot of myself. If I've decided that I am doing something, I'm going to drag that out of myself. The three weeks before the marathon, I couldn't even run because I had an injury. Because of course I had gone from zero to this sort of intense training.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  But I did actually manage to complete the marathon. I perhaps dragged myself the last five miles. Anyway, a few weeks after the marathon, it's like a crash and burn.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  I was burnt out and I felt depressed. And I remember going to see this guy, like it was like, it's like for acupressure and something else. And he was like, you have a low battery, you have the equivalent of a low battery. And he said, you have a very strong mind. It's nothing to do with capabilities, what you're going through in life. He says, you demand too much of yourself. And because you have a strong mind and you will force yourself to, for instance, train for and run twenty six point two miles, your body has gone, okay, fine, she won't listen. And it was such an eye opener for me because I actually, I felt this grief for myself.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  And what this episode of Modern Family one day where the, the girl who's super bright and. Yeah, the daughter. Yeah. Yeah. And she, she's basically struggling with her exams, you know, it's her birthday, she's freaking out because she's, you know, pushes herself really hard. And, you know, Claire, the mom, comes to pick her up one day after her therapy session and she goes, oh my gosh, I finally realised how much work you're having to do for, for these exams. Fine, I'm not even kidding you. Next thing, I found myself sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. And I was like, what the hell just happened here? And I realised that I had managed to go through my entire childhood.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  And nobody had ever expressed an understanding that I have limits. Yeah. And so it didn't matter if I was tired, it was always like more could be done. And I had then transferred that attitude towards myself. I mean, imagine going through your entire, and nobody said, hey, that's your limit. So I just had this idea, it didn't matter. It's like, no, you're just being lazy, you keep going. And I broke down and I was like, oh my God, I need to give myself limits. And so my big thing, I noticed where the pushing striving energy shows up. Yeah. That's my dead giveaway. I'll be perfectly happy doing something and then something just get a little bit carried away. And I'm pushing, striving, and I'm like.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Stop what's going on here. And that means that I have to recheck in with my why. I have to notice where I'm overdoing things, where I'm trying to be perfect, where there's anxiety about something. But that's my big signal because I push and I strive because it's my default setting.

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, my God.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  And that's how you like, I always say you can always figure out what your dominant style is by asking yourself. What's the first thing I think about when something pisses me off, when life lets me down, you know, when I feel like I didn't get things despite all the things I did. And if it's like, I was so good, you know, had good intentions, gooding. If it's like, but I made so much effort, I tried my best, efforting. If you talk about whatever you avoided, it's avoiding. If it's like, but you know, after everything I did for them, it's the saving. And then, of course, we've got the last one, suffering. Yeah, let's talk about this guy.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  So, you know, suffering is the sense of the more you suffer, the better that makes you as a person. So it's like, I bleed for you. Now, often we might have cycled our way through some of the other styles and then kind of fallen on our sword with suffering. It's like we're trying to call attention to a need by putting ourselves in dire straits. When you have the suffering style and you've actually had it, you know, maybe all your life, it's because you were maybe the scapegoat, the black sheep. You know, and you're trying to catch the attention of someone. So like, for instance, you'll be, for instance, in a romantic relationship and the person is tr- you know, trudging all over your boundaries and carrying on. But because you're trying to prove, you know, I'm the right one for you, I love you so much, you keep doing it.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  And it's like, can't you see I'm suffering here? Can't you see I'm bleeding out? And then the person keeps going and it's like, oh, well, I've clearly not suffered enough. Okay, let me keep going. And the thing is, like what I was saying earlier on with that identity thing. If you believe that you have to suffer in order to prove that you are good or to call attention to a need, you're not going to allow yourself to be in a situation or do things that completely contradict that.

• 1:02:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  So you will gravitate to people who allow you to please them. By suffering at their hands.

• 1:02:52Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, you use the term suffering Olympics, which I liked in the book.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:02:56Fearne Cotton?

  I wrote that down. I was like, I like that. Suffering Olympics. I know those people. Without judgment, obviously, because I know my own patterns. But we can see, I think that's why it's so handy to have this index of terms and the understanding, because we can get to know ourselves better and in turn in our relationships, which is of course a key, a cornerstone to our wellbeing, is having dynamics that work in our life and relationships. They don't have to be perfect or like jolly all the time, but they're relationships that we know work. That is so important. And I think all of this, hell, it's the underbelly of all of it. We can see how other people are working. We can see why we're reacting in certain ways. We have more compassion for ourselves, more compassion for other people.

• 1:03:39Fearne Cotton?

  These terms for me just broke everything down so brilliantly. If people are listening to this today, they might have identified with one of these terms that we've used. The cogs might be whirring like, oh, God, yeah, I definitely do that. Or I definitely know that I'm saying yes a hell of a lot when I want to say no. If they wanted to try saying no this week, for the first, it might be for the first time ever, but certainly there might be one dynamic in their life where they know they always say yes. How might you approach saying no for the first time, feeling shit scared, feeling petrified that everyone's going to hate you?

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  I always say, don't go for the big guns first unless it's unavoidable and the situation absolutely calls for it. Because the reality is, somebody listens to this, I'm not expecting to roll out of bed tomorrow and be like, fuck your lord, I am healed, I'm no longer a people pleaser. Because the reality is, this is stuff that we have been carrying for a long time. So I always say, first of all, pay attention, just observe with as little judgment as possible, how you spend your yes, no, and maybe each week. Notice who or what, you know, brings up those sort of anxious feelings, who you dread seeing their name pop up in the email or on the phone or whatever, you know, who's bringing out those people pleaser feelings in you.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  Observe that. I always say, try it for a week. But some people, even in just like a couple of days are like, oh, my gosh, I have so much intel on where I need to say no. And then I say, If you imagine cutting the amount of yes in half, pick something that's at the the the lower end of what feels scary. Because the reality is, is that if you go for something big first, and as I said, unless it absolutely warrants it, you're probably gonna get pretty triggered by that. And then you're gonna be like, oh my god, oh my god, what have I done?

• 1:05:21Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, backtrack.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  Whereas try something a bit smaller. And then I want you to go outside or just like look out your window, open your front door. And you notice that the world is still turning. The Armageddon is not happening outside. And this is a really good reality check because inside you're like,

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  you know, life is exploding, terrible things are happening. But actually, if you take in your surroundings, look at, it's like, oh, I'm I'm still okay. So pick something small, like an example, I hear from a lot of people, their people pleasing even extends to not returning things to like wherever, you know, they've done the online shopping or whatever. And it's like, there's a simple no. Return the item.

• 1:06:02Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Like, don't make it complicated.

• 1:06:04Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Another way is like a simple way is if you're very reflexive in saying yes, make an agreement with yourself. You know what? When people ask me to do stuff next time, I'm gonna say, let me come back to you. That way then you have a chance to check in. What am I being asked? How does that feel? Do I have the bandwidth for this? So like, what's my schedule like? You know, what else have I have I got going on? All the rest, check in with that. And what a lot of people discover is, you know, sometimes they're absolutely perfectly fine about saying yeah. But actually, when they give themselves time to think about it, they go, oh, hold on a flip in a second. I don't even wanna do this thing.

• 1:06:42Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  And it's an easy way in.

• 1:06:44Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, you've got to give yourself that time.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Fearne Cotton?

  Saying that for my own benefit.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I always say, if you turn around to somebody and you're like, um, can I come back to you? And they turn around and say no, then I say then your answer is no.

• 1:06:55Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  If they can't give you time.

• 1:06:56Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, too right.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Whether you can do it then.

• 1:06:59Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  The answer's no.

• 1:07:01Fearne Cotton?

  I love that. I love that. That's that I'm gonna practice that one this week, I think, giving myself like pressing pause rather than just going, yeah, yeah, of course, fine. You know, like, you know.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:09Fearne Cotton?

  This very reflexive, as you said. Say yes, because I just want everyone to be happy, just going, let me think about it. Give myself that time, press the pause button, you know, the world's still turning, as you say.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you're worthy of consideration, like, check your schedule, check your existing commitments. Because we're constantly over scheduled and we don't leave ourselves by any margin.

• 1:07:28Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, none, zero, it's wild. This is fascinating, I urge people to buy the book because we've really dived into it. But I think there's so much more for people to discover about themselves if they really get into your own storytelling. But also the details of how it impacts our lives, because it's, you know, it's everything we've talked about and more. So I think go buy the book if you've loved this chat. I would love to know, Natalie, where is your happy place?

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, I was thinking about this and until recently, you know, I've been officially in medical menopause now. So I'm like, I'm all about the heat.

• 1:08:06Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Well, happy places normally, let's, wherever it's hot, you know, I'm getting to be out in the sunshine. Well, I'm bursting into flames recently, so that's been interesting about whether that is still my. But yeah, I feel it's like summer's almost here, heat's here, I'm like, oh, that's like, I feel like I kind of come into my own. I'm a, I'm a right in the middle of summer baby. So I feel like that's my happy place where I kind of come into my own. Failing that because I'm never very good with favourites, home is Ireland. And so I always think it's like Dublin is my happy place as well.

• 1:08:37Fearne Cotton?

  I love Ireland.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  It's, it's fantastic, it's so beautiful there.

• 1:08:39Fearne Cotton?

  It's so gorgeous. Well, I'm so grateful for your time today, I love reading this book, I needed to read this book. And it's been fascinating talking to you, so thank you so much, Natalie.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you, Fan.

• 1:08:52Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, bloody hell, I love that. Do you know what I loved? The five different types of people pleasing, that one just sort of still continues to blow my mind. Because they're so niche and so nuanced, but so accurate. And I know that every one of you listening will have nodded along to one of them. Or at the very least, recognised someone else in your life who has those attributes. It's so fascinating. God, Natalie, thank you so much. Her book's called The Joy of Saying No, and I urge you to get it. By the way, there's also a Happy Place episode called Saying No: More Boundaries, Less People Pleasing, and one called The Good Girl Rebellion. Both of those are collections of loads of different Happy Place guests and their words of wisdom on all the stuff we've been talking about today.

• 1:09:37Fearne Cotton?

  I reckon you're going to like those ones if you enjoyed the chat today with Natalie. There'll be links to the episodes in our show notes if you fancy it. And I want to say a big thank you to all of you for listening. I'm back here next week. Huge thank you again to the brilliant Natalie, to the producer Anushka Tate at Happy Place Studios, and to you, go and say a big old joyful no this week.

• 1:10:25Speaker 03

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• 1:11:34Speaker 07

  And you guys know we don't do Halloween by halves. Full costume, full prosthetics, full commitment. I'm a rat. And I'm the chef. It's our Ratatouille special. Then we're grabbing our broomsticks for the witches.

• 1:11:47Speaker 07

  We've got a spooky hotline caller. An update from our woman who was in love with the ghost of Prince Albert. And your tarot card dilemmas. Listen to our Halloween specials, search for The Girl's Bathroom.