From People Pleasing to Emotional Maturity - How to Get Your Needs Met in 6 Simple Steps
One of the biggest challenges for people pleasers can be overcoming the fear of directly asking for what you need... ‘What if it makes them upset’? ‘What if they say no’? ‘What if they reject, ridicule, dislike me’? ‘I don’t want to burden anybody’.
Sound familiar?
Even thinking about it can make a nervous system calibrated to ‘fawn’ break a sweat or worse – drop into full flight mode or total shutdown.
Interestingly on the other hand, it’s also often these same people who are incredibly talented at assessing other people’s feelings, needs and moods and going over and above without even being asked to anticipate, accommodate or meet them.
If you can relate to this, I have some possibly uncomfortable news for you – this ISN’T normal, or even kind. It’s a self-protection and survival strategy that you like likely learned or turned to get your needs met when the people around you weren’t willing or capable of meeting them (remember those words as we’ll return to them later!).
Understanding the Fawn survival response
Humans are creative and adaptive creatures. Fundamentally we’re also biologically hard wired for CONNECTION.
You’ve probably heard about research that shows babies whose physical needs of food and shelter are met but who aren’t held, soothed and nurtured still fail to thrive.
That’s because our nervous systems are designed to feel safest, especially early in life in what’s called CO REGULATION. It’s a synching with another person’s nervous system - when you’re young, usually your primary caregiver - that helps you find ease, peace and safety as your connect with them.
Sounds warm, fuzzy and lovely in theory, but the fact is that for lots of different reasons our early caregivers might not have had a calm, well-resourced nervous system for us to connect to.
What this can do at an early stage of development is set in place a sort of hyper vigilance – of always being ‘on’ because there’s no reliable place to turn to for safety, support or soothing.
And as you grow, if your immediate environment continues to an be unreliable source of safety, often you learn to adapt your behaviour so that YOU become the lead co-regulator. You learn ways to please, appease, distract or disappear your own needs so that you can try to find tiny islands of safety from the more volatile or unpredictable person in the dynamic and in doing so you get your own needs of safety, attention or connection met temporarily.
What this dynamic can set up is a pattern of intermittent reinforcement where sporadic rewards trigger an internal happy hormonal spike or ‘hit’, even though they only happen some of the time. This sets up a foundation of persistent and addictive behaviour, so even though you’re now an adult, it can still feel out of your control when you’re overtaken by the urge to do someone else’s emotional work in the hopes you’ll be rewarded with their gratitude, affection, or attention.
The burden of managing other people’s emotions
When you operate in the world by attempting to manage your own emotions and behaviour to try and create comfort, ease or avoid conflict, or monitor others non-verbal body language for the subtle signals that indicate the relationship is emotionally safe, you are not only using a lot of your own energy on scanning and interpreting the external environment, you’re also doing a great deal of internal adaptation to ensure you are doing the things you think are the ‘right’ thing to get the outcome you hope for. Over time this becomes EXHAUSTING.
And sadly, as these attempts at people pleasing might keep you ‘safe’ sometimes, often when they’re not successful they can turn into disappointment and even resentment.
So what’s a people pleaser to do?
Changing people pleasing from the inside out
The biggest mistake I see people who are sensitive to the feelings of others make, is assuming that others will know, care about, or understand what you need them to do when you tell them how you feel.
News flash. They won’t. And truth bomb – it’s not actually their job to. It’s yours. Oof.
This is one of the first and most important realisations to make. Emotional maturity starts with being able to notice, label and make meaning out of what your own feelings are trying to tell you.
Feelings are like flags. They indicate when a need, belief, or value of yours has been met or unmet.
Being able to identify and accurately label your feelings is the first step.
One thing connecting language to emotions does is connect the non-verbal structures of the brain which govern feeling with those that look after language, logic, reason, and discernment. Often, just by bringing words to our feelings we can reduce their intensity.
Specificity matters. The more ‘granular’ you can get with your emotional vocabulary, the more range you have in your ability to connect with feelings at different levels.
The best example of this I have is that the word ‘anxiety’ is often misattributed to an experience of multiple physical sensations and emotions happening at once. It’s a compound emotion. However, it’s come to be commonly used to describe a wide range of emotional states and it’s not always accurate or helpful.
I liken using the word anxiety to an avalanche, as that’s often how it feels when it’s taking over - powerful and unstoppable.
But if you can imagine that an avalanche is just a whole lot of smaller snowballs gathered together and moving at once, and each snowball is made up of smaller particles again – tiny, unique snowflakes, with specific patterns - you might able be able to see how learning to recognise and label emotions at the level of the snowball and the snowflake might give you much more ability to intercept your feelings at a place where they are manageable and not yet overwhelming.
Why specificity matters
The more specific you can be with identifying your feelings, the more specific you can be with figuring out what they are trying to tell you.
This is the next step, what are you feelings telling you about your needs, beliefs or values in this moment?
This still, is emotional investigatory work that belongs to YOU as an adult. As a child, it was the job of the adults around you to help you with figuring out what your feelings mean, but if you didn’t have that supported or well modelled, it’s perfectly NORMAL that you don’t know how to do it yet. If you have kids, helping them translate their feelings is work that belongs to you.
You can absolutely do this for and with your friends, partners, or family members. This kind of support makes up a significant percentage of my job as a therapist too!
This step is not about venting. It’s about clarity. What you discover here provides the raw materials for the next step – clearly identifying the solution!
What helps/fixes/meets your need?
Know what your need is? Great! That means you are also the in-house EXPERT on what is actually going to help!
Once you’ve identified your need, getting EXPLICIT with the exact steps required to meet that need is vital.
And once again, this is all self-reflection. You’re not telling someone else how you feel, what your needs are OR what fixes them yet!
That’s the next step!
The invitation – nervous system centred communication
Let’s use our imagination again… you want to have a dinner party, what information do you need to share to invite someone to join you? How would you ask them?
Would you say ‘Hey, I feel like having a dinner party!’? Maybe! But that’s not specific enough for someone to understand or interpret that you want them to be at the dinner party, or when it is, or why you’re having it, or if you want them to bring the wine.
This is what it’s like when you tell someone how you’re feeling – they don’t have enough information to know what actions you want them to take to help you with what you’re feeling (remember, not everyone spends all their time thinking about other people, even if you do!).
Would you say… ‘Hey, I need you to come to my birthday party, it’s really important to me that you’re there’? Again, maybe! But can you also see what’s missing? The deets. When we tell someone what our needs are we are giving context without instruction. When we do this, it rarely translates into them realising that there are SPECIFIC actions that you’d like them to, at specific times or in specific ways to help your stated need be met.
In addition, the nervous system response in some people reacts to a needs-based request as a DEMAND. This sends their nervous system into their own defensive state meaning you could have an adverse response - someone that argues (fight), avoids or pulls away (flight), shuts down (freeze), or fawns and says yes even though they don’t authentically want to - leading to two people now pretending to be ok, when deep down inside you are both NOT OK!
So what’s the alternative? It’s using the clearly articulated actions you worked out in step three and framing them to the other person as an INVITATION.
And just like a dinner party invite needs to have all the important info like date, time, location, occasion, dress code, the more information you give someone about what’s required to meet your needs the better informed they are to decide whether they’re - remember these words from earlier… WILLING AND/OR CAPABLE of meeting them.
Why ‘The Invitation’ works
A nervous system that’s grounded in safety has more access to WISDOM. Wisdom can be thought of as the ability to discern and employ the ideal balance of emotion and logic specific to the circumstances. The goldilocks point.
When you do your own emotional detective work, you step into a new level of emotional maturity. One that is well resourced from both the feelings centres of your brain, AND the rational thinking, language driven communication parts.
When you approach someone from this state, you’re also inviting them to meet you where you’re at – to coregulate with you at this level.
You’ve also taken responsibility for your own needs and take all the guess work off the other person’s emotional plate making it as easy as possible for them to make a well-informed decision.
Here’s where things get tricky! Willingness and capability…
Just because you’ve done all of this wonderful work getting to the heart of your needs, what meets them and inviting the other person to participate in meeting your needs… it doesn’t oblige them to.
So just like when wedding invites go out, they come with an RSVP – the other person now has to assess your invitation against their own needs and provide you with an answer.
There are three possible answers: All yes, all no, or somewhere in-between which means the conversation then becomes a negotiation.
That means you must know what you’re willing to accept if the other person cannot or will not meet 100% of your needs or cannot meet them perfectly immediately.
Willingness is a signal of CONSENT. When someone says yes, they’re telling you that they are willing to try what you’ve asked of them. Someone that is BOTH willing and capable will be most likely to successfully meet your needs.
What yes may NOT be is a signal of capability. Meaning that even if someone says yes, you might have to be patient while they learn to meet your needs. Or, if after some time has passed with no change, or repeated trying and failing to meet your needs, you may have to accept that they are in fact not capable of meeting your needs, even though they want/ed to.
Capability is a signal of SKILL. If someone can do the thing you’re asking for they are capable. This does not mean that they will. Even if someone is capable, they must consent and demonstrate willingness to participate in doing the skill.
Green indicates WILLINGNESS:
Willing AND Capable
Willing NOT Capable
(requires time)
Red indicates NOT WILLING:
Capable NOT Willing
(no consent)
NOT Willing NOT Capable
(no consent)
Self-Care, Boundaries and Solutions
It sucks when it’s a no. It also sucks when it’s a yes, but through lack of capability, it really turns out to be a no.
That’s why the final step is initially about self-care, and then about actions that align with the needs you identified.
Learning to tolerate receiving a ‘no’ is the highest form of emotional maturity.
It’s also important to consider context and manage the meaning you make from things. Just like someone RSVPing no to your dinner party or wedding doesn’t mean they hate you, it might just mean they’re unavailable, you have to be mindful your own emotional responses and stay curious about the other person’s. Just because it’s a no right now, it may not be a no forever - you have to avoid catastrophising but check and accept the facts before deciding your next move.
Being able to recover from rejection and redirect with a boundary or solution when appropriate trains your emotional agility.
When you’re feeling hurt, I recommend using my Acknowledge, Validate, Reassure steps (AVR) as a helpful first stop for staying with yourself. Obviously having connection with other people who love, support and can reassure you is deeply healing too.
Two of the most important steps that come after AVR are Boundaries and Solutions.
If we rush to these before we do AVR, we risk having to come back to do the compassionate connection again later.
Internal boundaries means being able to turn your mind intentionally towards a specific focus – ideally something other than the thoughts, feelings or events that are troubling you.
It’s not necessarily easy! But this skill is at the heart of mindfulness practice, so it might be no surprise that meditative activities that force or train you to focus your attention are incredibly beneficial.
Internal boundaries form the foundation of a robust sense of self-trust. So as you grow this muscle, you start to develop more confidence in being able to set external boundaries too.
Occasionally, there might be times when you might need to walk away from a relationship or job that isn’t willing or capable of meeting your needs.
Solutions are actions you can take to change something either inside or outside of you. You have the most power to change things within your control, so if someone else isn’t willing or capable of meeting your needs - who can take responsibility for them?! That’s right, you! And since you did all the detailed investigating above, you already know exactly what to do!
What next?
If you’re excited by this approach to emotionally mature communication, try the worksheet below to get started! It’s a simple yet structured way to help you make sense of your inner world before inviting someone else into it with clarity.
New skills are best learned experientially by giving them a try in a safe relational container where there’s no risk of getting it wrong.
If you’d like some practice working through The Invitation steps before you try them out with someone you love, I’d be delighted to support you!
You can book a 90-minute discovery session with me online. Ongoing packages to work with me to resolve past trauma, unwire old behaviour patterns, support the development of your insight, communication skills and personal empowerment are available.
I’d love to hear how The Invitation works for you!
The Invitation Worksheet - 6 effective steps for getting your needs met
Step 1: Figure out your feelings
I suggest using Brené Brown’s ‘Shitty First Draft’ approach:
1) Vent on paper - get all your feelings out - DO NOT ACT/SEND. Step away for 24 hours.
2) Review - re-read your shitty first draft and clarify the main points – DO NOT ACT/SEND. Step away again.
3) Refine – distil your second draft to the essence - the most succinct and specific way to say the important feelings/themes.
Step 2: Identify your needs
What are your feelings trying to tell you about what’s important to you?
This might also tell you something about your values, beliefs or goals.
Step 3: Figure out WHAT is required to meet your needs and HOW this can be done.
Now you know what your needs are, what exactly is required to meet them?
How could you or another person take specific actions that will result in your needs being satisfied?
Step 4: Frame what you’ve identified in Step 3 as an INVITATION
Use what you’ve identified in step 3 as the foundation for the invitation.
The information in steps 1 & 2 can be provided for context if necessary (this is your WHY).
Once you’ve invited the other person to meet your needs, wait for a response.
Step 5: Assess for Willingness and Capability
Assess if they are willing and capable of meeting your needs as invited or if there’s negotiation possible/required.
Step 6: Self-Care, Boundaries, Solutions
Know what you’re willing to accept if 100% isn’t on offer.
If you don’t get a 100% yes, look after yourself first.
Try acknowledging and validating your feelings and reassuring yourself.
Consider if boundaries or solutions are needed to move forward authentically.
Make sure to do what you can from Step 3 to meet the needs you identified!
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