Ep #54: Main Character Energy > People Pleasing with Margaret Mason Tate

Welcome to Parenthood Prep, the only show that helps sleep-deprived parents and overwhelmed parents-to-be successfully navigate those all-important early years with their baby, toddler, and child. If you are ready to provide the best care for your newborn, manage those toddler tantrums, and grow with your child, you’re in the right place. Now here’s your host, baby and parenting expert, Devon Clement. 

Hi everybody. My name is Margaret, and I am thrilled to be doing a wee bit of a podcast takeover while Devon is traveling. I have guested on this podcast several times, but I’ve never done a full takeover. So you, my dear listener, and I will be going on this experience together for the first time.

We are going to be discussing, because I am a coach and creative consultant here in Atlanta, and frankly, I help people get their shit together emotionally and creatively. So, what we’re going to be discussing today is people pleasing, more specifically, people pleasing as it relates to pregnancy, the birth experience, and the postpartum period or the fourth trimester, etc.

So, without further ado, let’s get into it. What even is people pleasing? I know you’ve heard the term. I know you’ve seen think pieces about it. I know you’ve seen it bandied about in comment sections online. The best way for you to understand people pleasing is really just the set of behaviors of someone who prioritizes the needs and desires of other people over their own, often sacrificing what they want or need for keeping the peace or maintaining relationships with other people.

This starts early, and I think if you are a people pleaser, you know because you’re probably nodding along right now. You can probably think of several examples, maybe in the last week or maybe over your lifetime, where you have put yourself fully in the back seat and allowed the whims, the desires, the needs, the everything of other people to come always before you.

And it becomes a habit. It’s a behavioral habit that tends to put us in situations that end up kind of sucking. And I’d really love to give you some insight about that behavior, but moreover, some ways that you can combat that behavior, not only so that you can have like a much better experience during your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, but really, because I want to help you teach your child how to not engage in that behavior. And it starts with you.

So, I think that a lot of the time, people pleasing leads to not even knowing what you like or don’t like or need or value or expect from anything, but specifically your like pregnancy, you know, your birth, your postpartum experience. You might not even know what it is that you are sacrificing in order to prioritize other people. And that is not uncommon, but it’s also super fixable. And I’m going to give you some steps toward the end of our time together so that you can rewrite, literally, how this is going to go for you.

I think also a big pain point of people pleasing is just not believing that you are the main character. You are the main character in this. And it’s a huge deal to not only to accept that, but to really step into it and embody it. A lot of the time we have come from this like not wanting to be a bridezilla, for example. You get married, you have a wedding, and you’re doing everything you possibly can to not be deemed a bridezilla. 

Somebody wants to wear neon heels, you’re like, “Oh God, not my favorite,” but I’m just going to go along to get along. Listen, go along to get along is the mantra of the people pleaser, and I want you to get it right out of your head because that does not serve anybody. Go along to get along leads to built up resentment that will sublimate in some way, even if you really try hard to get a handle on it, it’s impossible.

Also, a lot of people have problems with people pleasing, like specifically remedying people pleasing because they don’t know how to handle situations in real time. They don’t have language or scripts for these kind of interactions, and so they just default.

Gonna be real. If you are a people pleaser, one of your parents is a people pleaser. If you’re nodding your head, you know what I’m talking about. A lot of the time we see it with our moms, but we really, really do see a lot of this with passive dads. Especially, you know, if you’re my age, I’m about to turn 39. Our dads were arguably pretty passive, especially when it comes to that insidious phrase, go along to get along, right?

But I want to give you carte blanche to say and do whatever is going to serve you to protect the peace that you deserve during this time. Again, like back to the Bridezilla thing, you don’t want to be too much and too demanding and too specific, too needy. But here’s the thing. Birth and pregnancy and postpartum, they’re kind of a shit show sometimes. And if you don’t get clear on how you want it to go and how you don’t want it to go, other people are going to drive that car.

So, what can you do in order to help yourself help other people around you to do what it is that you want and need? Circling back to not knowing even what you like, what you dislike, what you expect, what you value, I want to invite you to take the time to do a little bit of journaling or voice noting, verbal processing with your bestie. However you can organize these thoughts best, I want to invite you to do that.

What is it that you want out of this time? Do you want a lot of privacy? That’s okay. Do you want people over all the time? That’s also okay. But figuring out what it is that you want and not what the experts you really like are saying, not what your mother-in-law or your parents or your sister who has six kids. None of their experiences are the main one right now. You are the main character. And again, you have permission, you have carte blanche to do whatever it takes to make sure that you center yourself in that.

One of the things that I really love to do is like waving a magic wand over the experience and saying like, well, if in a vacuum, you know, without any consideration to anybody or anything else, what would this look like for me? When you do that, you can kind of start to see what falls away. Maybe a baby shower is not a big deal to you, but a stock-the-freezer event really, really sounds like something that you would feel nourished, nurtured, and seen.

It’s kind of specific to the person. So there’s like myriad examples of what this could look like for you. You know, I only experienced birth and postpartum once. So it’s kind of hard to only speak from my perspective, but luckily I was a doula for many years and experienced that with a lot of other families. So I saw the gamut, and it was colorful. Let me tell you.

With regard to not believing that you’re the main character, my biggest recommendation for that is something called EFT, the Emotional Freedom Technique. A lot of people call it tapping. It is quite literally taking your fingers and tapping on specific points of your face, clavicle, and wrist while out loud repeating certain types of phrases. 

And the way that you set up the phrases are, even though blank, I love and accept myself. So an example might be, even though I don’t know what I want, I love and accept myself. Even though I’m a people pleaser, I love and accept myself. Even though I cried when my mother-in-law told me that breastfeeding was stupid, I love and accept myself.

These things can help you reprogram and rewire your brain, like quite literally the actual structure of your brain. Because let me tell you, your pregnant brain, while you may feel like you have lost many IQ points because it’s very difficult to remember things and all of that, it is so, so neuroplastic right now, which means that it’s malleable, shapeable, and programmable. And we love that for us, yeah? It also means that, you know, your baby’s hearing all of these things and feeling the same kind of nervous system shifts that happen when you accompany these behaviors. It’s really, really cool.

Obviously, I believe that stepping into that main character energy is served by coaching. I do that with my clients. I know that Devon has coaches. Devon and I have coached each other. We really value what coaching can do, but that’s certainly not the only thing that you can do to help yourself. So, I mean, I’m hesitant to even mention it. But I am a coach. I have a coach. I love coaching, and I think that it really helps specifically in this circumstance.

You can also, my favorite, favorite, favorite thing that I do all the time and have for years is have a dry erase marker on your mirror and write affirmations or write words that are your mantra words, anything that’s going to help you. It comes right off. It’s super easy. And most importantly, other people, if they use your bathroom, a lot of the time they will take the marker and write something for you. And I love that. That’s a fun one.

With regard to not having scripts or models for the face-to-face interactions that occur when you don’t know what else to do and you just go, “Okay.” You really want a test that is usually reserved for a higher risk pregnancy than yours, whatever, something like that. And, you know, they want to refuse it. It’s in our nature to just go, “Okay,” and to let that go.

This is the time for you to be that main character and to say, “Hey, my intuition and desire for this test are data points that I would like considered in the holistic view of my pregnancy experience. Can we please talk more about this?”

It’s not rude. It’s not selfish. It’s not demanding. And frankly, even if it was any or all of those things, you are the main character. You won’t be forever, and nobody’s saying that you should, you know, focus entirely on yourself for the rest of your life without regard to anybody else. But right now, now is the time to set the baseline for sticking up for yourself, allowing other people in your circle to stick up for you too, and being able to really show up. It matters. It makes such a difference. And your baby, they’re just little sponges. I mean, it’s impossible to truly impress upon you how much they learn without you actively teaching them.

So, with that said, I want to say this, which I was talking to Devon and this came out and I wrote it down and I loved it. People pleasing means when people are talking crazy at you, saying, “You have to read this book,” or, “You have to do this parenting style,” or, “You have to do this feeding style,” or, “You have to whatever.” And people will do that. It happens all the time. We see it all the time. People will do that. People pleasing is saying okay and then doing what they want while lip service, which I’m here to advocate for in these instances, is saying okay and then doing what you want.

You can say that you’re going to read a book and then not read the book. And it’s fine. It really is fine. You can say, “Oh, thanks. That’s given me a lot to think about.” And then, honey, you could never think about that class or modality or bottle or whatever they’re talking about. You can never think about it again. “Oh, thanks for telling me.” Okay. And continue on doing what you want because frankly, really and truly, when it comes down to it, it’s just you, the baby, and oftentimes whoever you had the baby with. It’s just you guys. So whenever everybody else falls away, and they will, you’ve got to do what makes sense for you, your baby, and your partner.

And we really like to do anything that we can to avoid conflict because we are really not very adept at repairing conflict. But I want you to know that people are not going to stay, they’re very reluctant to get mad at pregnant folks, but they’re almost, it’s almost impossible to stay mad at pregnant folks. You know why? Because they’ve got the baby in there. And that’s ultimately what everybody is, you know, wanting the best for is the baby. They also want to see the baby.

Laud that over people. It’s fine. And that’s maybe an exaggeration, but also, is it? Listen, you’re the boss. Like you are the main character in this, every day, in every way. And believing that doesn’t mean that you believe that, you know, you are asking for like servitude. It really just means that what you say goes, what you say does not get questioned, and what you want is not overridden by what other people want. It really doesn’t mean that you bend on things that are best for your baby, and you know that for their health. For example, you know, people pleasing can be hazardous to your baby’s health.

If you know that people should be washing their hands, getting certain vaccinations, not kissing the baby before they hold the baby, and you know that there are proven outcomes that are going to protect your baby from things that can really do damage. People pleasing can look like you bending on those rules, taking some pretty big risks just because you’re unable to say, “Absolutely not. I understand that, you know, you’ve smoked for 35 years. I completely understand. If you’re unable or unwilling to change your shirt though before you hold the baby, we can’t do that.”

I mean, it’s just that simple. It’s like a math equation. And if you think about it like a math equation, it’s a lot easier to see that you’re right and they’re wrong. I mean, it just is. I think that often times opposites attract, and we find that people pleasing folk pair up with either romantically or like in the best friendverse, they pair up with people who are a lot more bold and a little bit more bombastic. So if that’s you and you are in an opposites attract couple, let your partner take the reins and take the lead on, you know, making sure that people are doing what you want, need, value, and expect.

If you have a best friend who is your opposite, I tend to be the token extrovert and loud person of my people pleasing friends, Devon obviously excluded. Yeah, find your best friend and say like, “Listen, I need you to be the heavy. And I need you to make it like manageable for me after all of this is over.” You know what I mean? Don’t burn any bridges. I just need you to take the heat, be the heavy, and make sure that this stuff gets done, gets abided by, etc.

So, people pleasing is really, really prominent. Honestly, in like when you see like parenting media, I made a little list. I love television. It’s like one of my favorite art forms. I think it’s fantastic, and I think that when we see ourselves in characters, we can really see, okay, well, like I don’t want to extrapolate the damage that people pleasing has done to my psyche, to my life path, etc. But I can look at the other person and say like, “Oh, wow. Okay. I really see it playing out in this storyline.” So I wanted to like give you some examples that I think you might know from shows that you probably love. Okay.

So, This Is Us. Everybody loved This Is Us. In the first season, it was like toward the very end. It was like episode 18 of season one, I think. Rebecca is preparing for this musical tour, but Jack is like super resistant, and she goes along to get along. She acts like it’s not as big of an aspiration for her to do this tour. And she even like considers abandoning the whole thing. And that shows her inclination to sacrifice her personal goals to please her partner or to maintain that relationship.

I think in Workin’ Moms, if you didn’t watch Workin’ Moms, fantastic. Body, absolutely audacious. Really, really loved it. Great writing on that sitcom. So first season, Kate goes back to work like super shortly after giving birth. And not only does she go back super fast because she wants to be seen as like really, really competent and, you know, boss babe can handle it all. She also, she goes back super early, and then she takes on these other projects, like additional work because she’s trying to prove herself that she can handle motherhood and her career. 

And she is like super hesitant to express any of these struggles to anybody that she’s working with, to anybody in her family, because she wants everybody in her orbit to believe that she can do it all. And she wants to meet everybody’s expectations and not disappoint anybody, go above and beyond, do it better than anybody else has ever done it. And, you know, no spoilers. We don’t do spoilers here. Yeah, we do, but. No spoilers, but that blows up in her face. It is not a good situation.

I also just wanted to say this is such an old movie, but if you’re older like me, haha, you’re going to remember Knocked Up. Remember Knocked Up with Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl? I think it’s Katherine Heigl. Oh boy. If it’s not, comment on the episode and let me know if I’m wrong. Please, please.

So, if you remember, like she is trying everything that she possibly can to overlook the difference in their lifestyles, the difference in their readiness. She’s like accommodating all of his weird behaviors that she is not into. She’s making all these compromises because she wants to try to create this traditional family structure that she believes she needs to live up to. And the whole thing conflicts with what she wants, what she knows is right, and what she believes that she really needs. And it does not serve her. There’s a happy ending at the end of the film, but like, God, at what cost?

And, you know, we don’t want that for you. We don’t want God at what cost at the end of your pregnancy or, you know, coming wrapping up your maternity leave, etc. So, if you can see any of yourself in those characters, you’re going to see what that leads to. So I really, really hope that you’ll take some of the suggestions that I’ve made, the, you know, journaling or gabbing with a bestie or doing a voice note to determine like, what is it that you want and value and need and just expect? I mean, what are you expecting? Verbalize that.

Also, you know, doing the EFT/tapping. I like to call it tapping. Doing the tapping, engaging in some coaching, writing in the dry erase marker. I love all of those things, and they work. Like I’m telling you these things because I personally do literally all three of those things. Remembering that go along to get along is insidious and it’ll wreck your shit. That is not good advice almost all of the time, but especially, especially, especially when you are wanting and needing to show up as the main character of this event. You know what I mean? The next, if you’re pregnant right now, the next yearish really needs to be on lock for you.

People pleasing really can trick you into thinking that you don’t have a good lock on seeking out experts or, you know, listening to your gut and stuff like that. But I want you to know that you’re totally capable of aligning yourself with people you trust and believe, of making decisions, of listening to your gut and to your intuition because those are data points. 

Those really are data points. Just because you can’t put them in a spreadsheet or map them with like an EKG or something like that does not mean that they are not legitimate data points. And I would love for everybody to start believing and really, really trusting. Just because you can’t necessarily explain it doesn’t mean that it’s not a data point. 

So if you suspect that you need something or want something or that something would be best for you, you’re probably right. And you can trust that you have surrounded yourself with people who are able and willing to step in if there’s something that is seriously a blind spot. You can trust that that’s going to be brought to your attention. But otherwise, you’re the expert here. You’re the main character. I know I’ve said that a bajillion times. I don’t care. As it turns out, that’s what we like to call neurolinguistic programming, and it was intentional the whole time.

Okay. Listen, it has been so wonderful talking to you today. I could do it all the time. I totally get why Devon loves doing this with you so much. We would love it if you would subscribe and rate and review. And again, if you have any specific questions or would like to, you know, have a personalized script for something that you know is going to come up, please DM me on Instagram @MargaretMasonTate. You can also find me on Threads, which is where I really shine as a writer. Or you can go to margaretmasontate.com and I would love to hear from you. Thanks so much and we will talk to you next time.

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Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Parenthood Prep. If you want to learn more about the services Devon offers, as well as access her free monthly newborn care webinars, head on over to www.HappyFamilyAfter.com.