Episode 121 - Part 2: Are People Pleasers Liars? (And Why That's Not The Real Problem)
Last week, I shared an interactive episode about people-pleasing and lying—today, we’re continuing the conversation. In this episode, I offer an approach that is based not on the morality of telling the truth, but on your values and human need for safety. We’ll take a deeper look at why we lie, the hidden costs it can have in our relationships, and how you can be more truthful in safe, selective places to foster connection to yourself and others. Here’s what I cover:
How good-girl programming wires us to lie in order to please and avoid conflict
The huge role that the nervous system plays in why we lie
When lying can still be a necessary and useful tool
How we separate children from the truth of their bodies and punish them for honesty
Why protecting yourself is not the same as deceiving someone else
How to build more honesty in your life one relationship at a time
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Transcript
00:59
Oh, man, the more time I spend with this topic, the more I learn, and I'm just fascinated by it. Last week, we did our first interactive podcast episode where I asked you to send me your experiences with lying.
01:16
And I'm so grateful I got some great ones, funny ones, sad ones, everything in between. And it's just I'm really fascinated with this topic. And I feel like I've got some great information to add to this discussion because I know so many women who on top of beating themselves up for being people pleasers, they beat themselves up because they lie as well.
01:42
I did for a long time, I have a long and storied past with not being able to tell the truth because I didn't feel safe to do so. And now after sitting with this topic for the last seriously 18 months, maybe almost two years now.
02:00
I have a much better understanding of why that is. I want to spell it out here for you today so that a couple things. Number one, what I hope you take away from this episode is the reality of why we lie and why it was always gonna happen and why I still sometimes thinks it's necessary and a useful tool.
02:20
Number two, an awareness of what lying is causing in your relationships. And number three, an opportunity to explore how you might be more truthful in safe, selective places so that you can be more seen.
02:39
The joy of being a human, part of the joy, a lot of the joy of being human is knowing who we are. Like being deeply connected to myself is a joy. It's just unlike anything that I've ever known. I had built an entire life around showing up for other people, being the giver, being the doer, being the one who would overwork, overgive, stay later, push harder.
03:11
And so much of my value came from that. Maybe this is familiar to you too, right? People relied on me. I made myself indispensable in a lot of my relationships. And that felt really good until I realized I didn't know me.
03:28
And the joy of being connected to myself is such a huge part of the peace and the joy of being a human. So I want that for you. And number two, another big part of the joy of being human is having relationships where you can be seen and heard fully, where every part of you is accepted and loved and treated with respect and honor, because that's what you deserve.
03:59
And so often, the way we have been taught to interact with the truth gets in the way of that. So those are my goals for this episode. And I'd love to hear what you think. So send me a DM after you listen to this.
04:14
Just to be clear, what we are talking about here is what I call like survival strategy lies, right? It's when you say you're fine, but you're really not fine. It's when you say, I have other plans when you just need space.
04:30
Or when you say, no, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. I don't mind. I don't mind when you do mind, when you don't feel like you can tell the truth. And so you make up an excuse. I am not talking about lies that are manipulative, where you're trying to rob or cheat someone, or where you are trying to hurt other people.
04:51
That is a separate category. So these type of survival lies, they happen across our relationships at work, with our friends, with our family, and there's actually a really, really good reason behind it too that I want you to consider.
05:10
Number one, good girls are conditioned to believe that we are supposed to be kind of this open resource, this open book, right? That we don't really fully belong to ourselves. We are taught that we exist as a resource for other people instead of as our own autonomous person with our own needs, boundaries, and entitlement to having needs and boundaries.
05:40
We are taught to see ourselves as valuable when we give, when we serve, when we are a resource for others to use. And I lived that, right? My value came so much from what I did for other people. And this idea that a good woman, a good wife, a good mom, a good sister, was just always being accessible, agreeable, and accommodating.
06:09
So think about when your value is really plugged in to that, and you want to take any time for yourself or you're going to disappoint someone or let someone down. If your value is tied to that, of course, you're going to lie because you want to keep whatever you can of someone else's confidence, someone else's good opinion, right?
06:33
It's making me think of the times when I lied about not being able to show up for someone else. I wanted them to still think well of me while I also wasn't able to show up for whatever reason. And so I would lie to preserve whatever value I could get out of that situation.
06:51
So that's the first thing I want you to think about. And ask yourself this question. How much of your value is tied up in being accessible, agreeable, and accommodating for other people? And how do you respond when those things are threatened?
07:09
And when your value is threatened? We lie, we don't tell the whole truth because we want to just keep whatever value we can. Second of all, children in general are not taught that they are allowed to have boundaries, that they are allowed to have preferences.
07:29
Think about the rock and the hard place that children live in when it comes to the truth. We often love how honest little kids are. And we don't always realize how we punish them for telling the truth.
07:45
As children, we actually learn that us telling the truth could threaten our connection with our caregivers. That it could get us punished, that it could result in lack of connection. We tell children, tell the truth, but then when they do, they're punished.
08:05
We tell children, you know, tell me what you think, but then when they do, they get in trouble. Children are separated from the truth of their body, the feelings that are in their body over and over and over again and forced to perform for adults.
08:22
I think a lot about interactions that I have watched where children were told to do something against the truth in their body and they were punished for not wanting to do it and rewarded for doing it.
08:36
Classic example, I was always told to finish all the food on my plate as a child, even after my stomach was full. I would get in trouble if I didn't. So if I hold the truth, mom or dad, my stomach is full.
08:50
I don't want any more. I would get in trouble for that truth and how often we do that to kids. We teach them, don't trust the truth in your body. You have to conform to the truth that I am giving you that I want you to live.
09:08
And just how fucked up that makes the truth for children because they know we don't really want the actual truth as adults. We want conformity. We want obedience. And so between those two layers of programming, the good girl programming that we don't really belong to ourselves, that we're supposed to be accessible, accommodating, and always available to others, plus the way that we separate children from the truth of their bodies and punish them for telling the truth.
09:38
I mean, no fucking wonder that this becomes a chronic disconnection from our own truth. That we learn that the truth is actually dangerous to our survival. And that's the feeling that we carry in our brains and in our bodies.
09:56
It's all of those conflicting messages. Always tell the truth and yet being followed by being punished for being honest. I taught kindergarten for a lot of years and I'm telling you it was some of the funnest years of my life because those kids would say things.
10:14
I remember one morning Paul came in, dropped his bag, sat down for circle time and he said, my mom would not stop farting in the car. Okay, that's the truth, right? What would Paul's mom have done if she were there?
10:28
She would have punished him, right? Another student, Clarissa, talking about all the different men coming in and out of their home as her mom was dating and having different relationships. What would her mom have done if she had been there when Clarissa shared that with the whole class?
10:42
It's such an interesting frame of reference that we give children and it just makes so much sense to me that when that is our relationship with the truth, we grow up with this constant anxiety about the truth because we know it's not safe.
11:05
It creates a fear of what other people will think of us or how they will react to the truth and it put your hands on your chest and just think about the answer to this question. Is it safe for me to tell the truth and just go through some of the different relationships in your own life?
11:38
Is it safe to tell the truth there? Is it safe to tell the truth there? Sometimes the answer will be no and what I want you to understand is that while that feeling is real, it's an old feeling, it's a feeling that's connected to these conflicting messages that you received when you were a child.
12:01
And so while it might be what you are actually feeling, what I want to explore a little bit later in the episode is that it might actually be safe now as an adult and your body just doesn't know it yet.
12:14
And so there is an opportunity to be more authentic and more honest that we're missing because our bodies are still running on this old programming, on this old idea that the truth isn't safe. And that we are responsible for other people's emotions and comfort and so we can't be honest.
12:38
So before we get into that, I do want to say a little bit about safety. Emotional safety is a real need. Some people do not deserve or cannot handle the truth. And I want you to just think, who are some of those people?
12:58
And I want you to trust yourself. I want you to trust that your body has good information that might need to be updated or that you might need to actually stick to and you're going to know the difference.
13:14
You're going to experiment with the difference because again, what we want is some places where we can increase our safety and be more truthful and we want to be able to not feel guilty when our emotional, our physical, our economic safety or our social safety is at stake in ways that we are not ready to handle yet because that is actually true.
13:40
Sometimes the truth isn't safe. It can threaten us economically. I'm thinking back to a workshop I did a couple of weeks ago, where a woman was in attendance. I'll call her Barbara. She worked with a manager who a couple times a week would ask her to stay after her shift to do extra work.
13:59
Barbara didn't want to, but she did not feel like she could tell the truth, right? She felt like there was a threat to her economic safety. And so Barbara came up with the lie that her son had soccer practice, so that that would get her out of having to stay later.
14:14
I am not passing any judgment on Barbara's decision. What I want to do is take you through a couple of questions and a couple of reframes, because while Barbara's manager might not be a safe person to open up to and to be more truthful with, my goal is that you have one place, even if it's just with yourself, where you are able to be more truthful.
14:42
At the same time, having a very healthy respect for the safety that we all need as humans. So, some people can't handle the truth and don't deserve it. You are not required to tell the truth to anyone, unless I guess you're hands on a Bible and you're in a court of law, right?
15:05
Then you should probably tell the truth. But you're not required by some moral law of the universe to sacrifice your safety for other people. Not everyone deserves or is entitled to your truth. And protecting yourself is not the same as deceiving someone else, right?
15:26
We have so much moral language around this idea of the truth. And I want to just set it all aside and look at the core need that we have as humans for safety and make some decisions about how we can increase that safety.
15:45
So, I really want to offer an approach to this that is based not on the morality of telling the truth or not, but on your values and on our need for safety.
16:57
So I want you to just think of an area or a relationship or a particular situation where you are not telling the truth. And I want you to ask a couple questions. Number one, does this lie serve me?
17:17
What's my initial response to that? And remember, your programming or your body's response is connected to your childhood experiences. And so just keep in mind that the answer right off the bat might be no.
17:34
But then I want you to just sit with it for a minute. I want you to remind your body, you know what, we're an adult now. We have resources, we have skills, we have tools, we have opportunities. I can take care of us better.
17:52
We're not a child anymore. So in that frame of reference, does this lie serve me? I'm thinking about a lie that I told. This was maybe two years ago, I had started reading spicy books. And I was embarrassed about how much I enjoyed them.
18:16
And one time my husband found one of the books and he said, Oh, it's this I was like, Oh, it's just a book. And I didn't elaborate at all. And okay, so was that true? Was it a book? Yes. Did that lie serve me?
18:30
It didn't. Because in that moment, I could have shown him a little bit more of me and been accepted or gotten some feedback from him. And I chose not to. Now the little me, that old programming that tells me it's not safe, she would have definitely said, it's not safe.
18:53
You can't show him this. But when I sat with that, and I let the older me join the conversation as well. And I said, you know what? It's true, he might have some judgment about that. He might have some thoughts about this type of reading material.
19:10
But if that's true, I can handle it. I can take care of us. Because the second question I want you to answer is what effect is lying having on this relationship? Notice I'm saying this relationship, I want you to think relationship by relationship.
19:31
We are not going to blanketly be honest with everybody all the time about everything. That's not what we're talking about. So using my example specific to my relationship with my husband, and not telling him the truth about the spicy books I was reading, what effect was not telling the truth having there?
19:49
It was keeping me hiding. It was keeping me having to like monitor, you know, what he was seeing. It was creating a lot more work and it was creating a part of me that I could not let him see or that I did not think he would accept or want to see.
20:09
Question number three, what was the lie doing to me or how was the lying affecting me? It was making me feel smaller. It was making me feel embarrassed. It was kind of feeding this idea that there was something shameful about what I was doing and it didn't feel good.
20:31
And then the last question I want you to ask yourself is, am I satisfied with having to lie in this situation? Another way to ask that question is, is this what I want to keep doing? And for me, in that situation with the book.
20:47
The answer was no. I wanted to show him what I was interested in. I wanted to show him what I was curious about. I wanted to show him the parts of me that I was wanting to explore. And so asking and answering those questions for myself helped me make the decision to be truthful with him about what the book was about and why I was interested in it.
21:11
So those questions, again, number one, does this serve me? Does this lie serve me in this situation? Number two, what effect does lying have on this relationship? Number three, how is lying in this relationship affecting me?
21:27
And number four, is this how I want to keep doing it? Am I satisfied with having to lie to get what I want here? Always remembering that your body has some of that old programming that the lies is the only way to be safe and that as an adult, you actually have more resources and more ability to take care of yourself if you tell the truth and someone doesn't receive it well.
21:55
So I want to add a couple of other things. Getting clear on your values is going to be really important. What do you value when it comes to relationships? Kindness, honesty, safety, growth, opportunity for vulnerability.
22:13
Those are my values. And so when I decided to read a passage of the book to my husband and let him in on what I was reading and what I was curious about, it was from those values. He laughed. He was like, OK, so that's what we're doing now.
22:29
And I was like, yep, that's what we're doing. And it felt like such a relief and such an opportunity to let him not only see a part of me, but be curious about it with me, give me some feedback and to not have to hide that part of me from him.
22:47
So getting clear on your values is really important. Another thing that's important is just always assessing the situation. Is this person or is this situation safe for the truth? I'm thinking about a story that I got from a woman named Jen.
23:05
Every time she goes to the doctor, it's near a coffee and bookshop that she just loves. And so she always tells her husband that the appointment takes longer than it really takes. So she has time to get some coffee and to enjoy a book because she doesn't feel like she's able to get that any other way.
23:24
I don't know if Jen's husband is a safe place for that truth right now, but Jen will know, right? Assessing the situation or seeing how might I be a little more honest here. And then just making a conscious choice.
23:41
That's the last thing I want you to give yourself permission to do. If I am going to deflect, I am going to do it because of a really good reason, right? It's something that I'm still figuring out how to do.
23:53
It's something that I am learning how to have the capacity for with myself, and I'm not going to make myself feel guilty when I don't have the capacity and when I choose to deflect. You're always gonna start with safe people and low-risk situations first.
24:12
That's what I teach across the board, no matter what is happening. And then when you choose to deflect, just release the guilt. Here's some things I want you to remember as we end here. People pleasers don't lie because they're bad people.
24:30
We lie because we learned it wasn't safe to tell the truth, and our lies make perfect sense given our history, given the context of the Good Girl programming, given the context of how we as children are taught to disbelieve the truth in our bodies.
24:49
And we are not living in that context anymore in certain relationships. Some of us might be living in some of those contexts as adults, and I want to honor that, and I want to tell you, in those situations, you protect yourself.
25:04
But the work isn't to stop lying. The work is to build safety, to develop nervous system regulation skills, and to make conscious choices that are aligned with our values, and to find one place where we can start to be a little more truthful, even if it's just with ourselves.
25:27
So I want you to start noticing when you are lying or deflecting, and just ask yourself, what would I need to tell the truth here? What effect is this having? How can I honor both my need to tell the truth and my need for safety?
25:42
Because you deserve to be known. You deserve to be loved. You deserve to be seen for who you really are. And the ironic thing is that telling the truth leads to more relationships like that. If any of this episode has brought up some questions for you, I would love to hear what those are.
26:04
I would love to hear what kind of reactions you have, what it brings up for you. I'm really grateful to be able to explore this topic with you. Thanks again for listening. See you next week.
