How People-Pleasers Can Heal with Somatics

People-pleasing isn’t something you’re born with. It’s a survival strategy…

People-pleasing is exhausting, and its impact on your body is far-reaching. Those of us who are prone to this tendency do so at the expense of our own health and wellbeing. Because we’re constantly turning our attention outward, scanning for what other people need/want, instead of tuning inward and listening to what we need/want, we miss a lot of our own important bodily and emotional cues. Being disconnected from our bodies can lead to unnoticed illnesses, chronic pain, elevated stress hormones, and a whole bunch of other ailments.

People-pleasing isn’t something you’re born with. It’s not your fault that you developed this tendency. It’s a survival strategy built out of years of experience. Fortunately, these patterns can change, no matter what stage of life you’re in.

Before we get into how to change these patterns, it’s worth noting that people-pleasing is so difficult to stop because it is inextricably linked to survival. When we’re little, we’re completely dependent upon our caregivers to keep us alive. If we perceive them to be pulling away from us because of something we did, this actually registers biologically as a threat to our survival. If it happens frequently enough, we learn to adapt our behavior in order to get our needs met because this is how we’re wired.

As an adult, you are able to meet your own needs, so what gives? Why is this still happening? The pattern persists into adulthood because it’s already encoded in your nervous system as being necessary for survival, even though you can take care of yourself now. For this reason, you can’t just logic and reason yourself out of people-pleasing. It’s a whole-body affair.

That’s where somatic work comes in. A somatic practice can heal people-pleasing on at least two different levels: bodily and relationally.

From a body-based standpoint, in a somatic session, we can notice what it feels like internally when you imagine telling someone else what you want, especially something that you’ve been afraid to communicate out of fear of the social repercussions. Likely, imagining this scenario will be physically uncomfortable, and together we’ll sit with that discomfort, following the sensations in your body, letting go of the narrative, and learning how to navigate the uncomfortable feelings.

You’ll learn where these feelings get stored in your body, and you may experience some memories from childhood that are associated with this primal tendency to people-please.

The healing happens when you expand the amount of time that you’re able to sit with these uncomfortable, painful sensations, breathe into them, and accept what happened rather than resisting it, numbing it, or dissociating altogether. Somatic sessions give you the structure to be able to expand your ability to tolerate these sensations.

Once your body registers that the sensations won’t completely derail you in the present moment, you gain a new sense of autonomy and empowerment. I can handle this. Gradually, your nervous system adapts and doesn’t sound the alarm bells every time you feel uncomfortable emotions.

From a relational standpoint, somatic work can heal people pleasing by providing ample opportunities for what are called “corrective” experiences with another human being. I’ll explain with a scenario.

In a somatic session, I’m going to ask you, “What are you feeling in your body?” People-pleasers tend to panic at this question and try to figure out what they think I want to hear. They aren’t able to tune into their bodies because they’re too busy scanning their brains for what they could possibly say to appease me.

Instead of following through on this pattern, if a people-pleaser simply tells me, “I’m not sure,” or “I don’t know,” or even, “I think I’m trying figure out what you want me to say,” we have an opportunity for a corrective experience. Instead of being met with hostility or disappointment or rejection, you will be met with understanding, compassion, and validation. It’s okay that you don’t know!

The relief that clients experience from this letting go of people-pleasing is palpable. Their shoulders relax down away from their ears. They sigh. They can breathe fully again.

With enough of these corrective experiences, your body can truly take in this feeling and then apply it to other social situations outside of the somatic container.

The reason we are able to change our patterns is thanks to a concept called neuroplasticity. Research shows that we can create new neural pathways, no matter what happened to us in the past, and no matter how “set in our ways” we are now. There just has to be the willingness to change, and the container in which to practice, like somatic sessions.

Want to work with me? Here are a few ways I can help you:

1.Join a community breathwork session (virtual): Meets the first Wednesday of every month, 6:00-7:15 pm (US-Eastern Time). More info here.

2. Work with me 1:1 (virtual): This is for you if you’re looking for a more personalized approach to deepen and accelerate your healing process. Fill out my application form to see if we’d be a good fit:

3.NEW - UPDATE: Watch my upcoming video series on how to regulate your nervous system and find strategies that actually work for you that you can start using daily. Upgrade to a paid subscription to access the videos as they come out.