Episode 163 - The Hidden People Pleasing of High Achievers
There is a version of people-pleasing that hides behind competence, ambition, professionalism, and being the person everyone can count on. In this episode, I’m unpacking the patterns that show up in high achievers and what happens when competence becomes part of your identity. If the traits that brought you success are slowly starting to feel exhausting, it doesn’t mean you need to stop striving completely. It means there is a different way to experience achievement, one where you can be highly capable while also being supported, loved, helped, and truly known in reciprocal relationships. Here’s what I cover:
Why people pleasing in high achievers is often brushed off as “just being professional”
The childhood experiences that teach women that being useful is what makes them lovable
How competence can become a cage that leaves high-achieving women feeling lonely and resentful
The invisible contract women believe in when they keep overfunctioning and overdelivering
The sneaky ways people pleasing shows up through perfectionism and emotional responsibility
How to start supporting the younger part of you that learned that needing things was unsafe
Find Sara here:
pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations
youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333
Transcript
00:59
Last Saturday, I spent the morning with a group of doctors and medical professionals are among my very most favorite people. Not only because I have received some amazing attention and care and my life has been saved, the life of Rachel, my firstborn was saved because nurses were paying attention.
01:20
And so I jump at the chance to spend time with medical professionals because they are caring a lot, right? They are caring a lot. And there's something I think we can learn from them because we're also carrying a lot in the various jobs where we are showing up and trying to give value and earn money and support our families.
01:42
And so what I want to do with you today is kind of look at that time that I spent with them because I think it has some really profound lessons for others of us who are not necessarily doctors, but who are living in some of the same dynamics and traps.
02:02
And these people are, you know, not struggling to be competent. They know how to perform under pressure. They are people who walk into rooms every single day and do everything from make life or death decisions for other human beings to just how do we take care of the fact that you are sick or not feeling well, or how do we get to the bottom of a health problem that you are having?
02:24
And so they are really competent. They're highly educated. They have so much to offer us. And yet, when I asked them, what is the biggest problem you face? Like, why did you come on a Saturday to give me two hours of your time?
02:43
What are you hoping to get? They all talked about why they can't speak up for themselves and the dynamics that they are in because they were never taught how to speak up. One of them, I'll call her Lori, she has been practicing medicine for over two decades and she came into her career as a very natural, clear, straight communicator, very direct, confident.
03:12
And in medicine, she knew exactly what she thought and she said it. And then she was told, too much. You are too much. You are too blunt. You are too direct. You are offending people. And so she softened herself.
03:28
And over the years, in ways that were gradual and maybe some she didn't notice and others she did, but she turned herself down and she became a version of herself that the system could tolerate. And then, you know, over two decades later, she's sitting with me on a Saturday morning telling me that she doesn't want to work in medicine anymore and she felt like a quitter for finally deciding to leave.
03:55
But she wasn't quitting. She was rescuing herself from a situation that had required her for two decades to be someone that she was never supposed to be. And I just kept thinking, this is not just a doctor problem.
04:09
This is a high achiever problem. And so if you are listening to this right now and you are someone who is good at things, who people count on, who figures it out, who makes it look easy, this is for you.
04:22
And I want you to stay with me through this episode because I want to describe a problem that's going to be very familiar to you and also where we start to unravel that. And let me start by naming something that I don't think is very obvious.
04:38
This is people pleasing. So there is a version of people pleasing that looks very competent, very strong, highly capable, driven. This is not a woman who can't say no to something. This is not someone who is even like a pushover or meek, right?
05:00
This type of people pleasing is ambitious. It looks like people who can just get something done, women who can just get things done, oftentimes with less resources and in less time than everyone else.
05:14
And it looks a lot like you, right? I've met and talked with so many of you who match this description. You are kind and nice and respectful, and sometimes you are direct and blunt, but what you have in common is this.
05:30
At some point, and for most of you, this was early on, there was some kind of childhood or adolescent thing that you noticed where you're like, wow, when I achieve, that gets me something. Maybe it was overt, a parent telling you, this is what is expected of you.
05:51
This is very common in immigrant households where parents sacrifice a lot to be here, to give their children new opportunities. And so the expectations are very explicit. Maybe it was less explicit. It's a teacher who you noticed paid more attention the higher grades you got.
06:09
Maybe it was a grade or a moment that you proved to yourself or to someone else that you were really smart. It was the feedback you got from peers about your intelligence or your capability. And that equated to belonging, belonging in an educational system, belonging in a system where people are measured against each other, where grades are given, and you were good at it.
06:37
So you went after it. And when things got hard, when there were problems maybe that you'd never seen before or moments where it might have been completely reasonable to ask for help, you just figured it out on your own.
06:53
Sometimes that's because the adults were not paying attention and they didn't know that you needed help and you didn't know how to ask. Sometimes it's because the adults were absent and you just knew you were on your own.
07:04
And sometimes it was because you got punished for asking for the help. Doesn't matter. You figured out how to answer a lot of your own questions, how to get the thing done that got you the belonging you were looking for.
07:21
And I know this feeling, that glow, that feeling of like, I handled it. I totally did it. And maybe you do too. The look on someone's face when they're so happy with you, so proud of you, so pleased with you.
07:37
And you got rewarded for that. Not just the result, but also for the independence, for needing less, for doing more with fewer resources, less support, less handholding than anyone else around you. And for some of us, this goes all the way back to childhood where we were literally praised for not needing.
08:01
You're so easy. You're such an easy child. And so that grows up to look like high achieving, where you learn to carry a lot and make it look good, make it look light. And that is not just ambition. That is not just drive.
08:20
That is not just wanting to be intelligent. That was actually how you learned to stay safe, how you learned to belong, how you learned to earn the thing that we all need, which is love and approval and connection and care.
08:37
Being useful created belonging. Being the one who figured it out, who didn't make things harder, who held it together, that got you something far more than just a grade or a promotion. Those things were fantastic.
08:52
But competence wasn't just a strategy to be successful. It was an attachment strategy. So I remember early being a student and being teased in my sixth grade class by two boys, Shane Farrell and Chris Brow.
09:11
Still remember their names. If you're out there, hello. And they called me the walking dictionary. And I remember being so embarrassed by their teasing. And my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Mario Guerrero, the best of the best, put his arm around me one time after noticing that that was happening to me.
09:30
And he said, you know what? You are smart. You are clever. You are impressive. You always do such great work. And that really matters. That is going to matter way more than what these two boys are saying in sixth grade.
09:45
You don't know this, but you're going to grow up and you're going to have this whole life and you're going to be so happy that you have put time into learning words. It is going to serve you so well.
09:58
And that special attention from him, I still remember it. I'm still getting a little teary as Mr. Guerrero rescued this, you know, awkward sixth grade version of Sara who needed to belong. And I ate it up and it became my superpower, getting things done, shining, delivering.
10:21
And I'm sure it's yours too. And I don't think we should pretend that it isn't valuable, that it isn't something highly, highly sought after, because it is. What we just didn't know is that there was something else also beginning to happen at the same time.
10:37
And it is this. We built our reputations around that. Job after job, role after role, class after class, relationship after relationship. We became the people who came through, who didn't drop the ball, who actually filled in the gaps of systems that had holes in them, who learned how to absorb the extra and show up when other people didn't.
11:06
And it felt genuinely good. There's a real satisfaction in being the one that people can count on and in proving that again and again and again. And what we don't notice is that it becomes the expectation.
11:22
What we don't notice is that the more we achieve and the more we give and the more we produce and perform, people stop asking if we need help because we had always assured them, oh, no, no, no, I got it.
11:35
I can do it. And so slowly we start to do more and receive less. We don't even notice it in the beginning. But at some point, there is a little voice that pops up in the back of our head, or maybe it's, it might even be subconscious for a while.
11:52
But we just start to wonder, huh, when is it going to be my turn? When is someone going to show up for me the way I've showed up for everyone else? And here's what happens. It doesn't because we are so highly competent and we have said, no, no, no, I've got it.
12:13
I'm fine. I can do this for so long that we become trapped by that competence. The resentment starts to build. It's quiet at first and then not so quiet. And because you don't have the words or you don't know what's happening, the resentment doesn't go anywhere.
12:33
It just builds and builds and starts leaking out sideways. You start snapping. You start shutting down or withdrawing. You start going cold in the middle of conversations that you used to be warm in, where you realize that things are being expected of you.
12:51
And then this is one of the things that we talked about on Saturday, you actually become the thing that you are afraid of becoming because you don't want to be mean. You don't want to be rude. You want to be nice and kind.
13:04
But when all that resentment just builds and builds and is not addressed, it starts coming out. And you become more difficult, possibly angrier. And that's what happens when we don't know what's happening to us and we aren't given skills to talk about it along the way.
13:25
You were never given that alternative. The only two options that good girl programming teaches us are these. You stay silent and you're good and you're nice and you keep the peace and you keep performing, or you speak up and become the bitch.
13:41
And no one ever said, you know what? There's a third option where you learn the skill to find the words and the inner sturdiness to say them in that moment. And that's how you take care of the resentment.
13:55
Here's the part that makes this cycle so hard to break. Subconsciously or otherwise, we begin to believe if I ask for what I really need, it's going to undermine the very thing that I have been the most celebrated for.
14:13
And I want you to really think about that for just a second. If you need help, then maybe you can't handle it after all, right? If you have limits, then maybe this image of capability and dependability, the one who figures it out, somehow either isn't who you are anymore or maybe never was.
14:37
And so instead of asking, we do all kinds of other things. We hint or we wait for someone else to notice or we do even more. We double down even harder to prove that it's not a lie and that we don't need the support, that this really is who we are and we can just double down and keep going.
14:59
And that's when our competence becomes the cage. And other people are looking in at us and sometimes they're admiring and they're saying, wow, Sara can really get it all done and she's amazing. And I'm lonely inside that cage.
15:17
I'm resentful and I'm stuck. One other thing makes this hard to reckon with. For a long time, for probably a lot of your career or wherever you've been doing a lot of work, that strategy actually pays off.
15:35
It doesn't just work. It pays off. There's promotions and titles and a reputation and more pay. There's more opportunity. And there's a sense that you were building toward something, that the output, the effort, and all of the competence was an investment in some future state.
15:58
And here's kind of how it sounds, even if it wasn't visible to you or wasn't spelled out. There's this invisible contract that says, if I keep performing at this level, eventually I'm going to arrive somewhere, somewhere easier, somewhere where I am respected enough that I don't have to keep proving it again and again and again.
16:21
Somewhere where people take care of me the way I take care of them. And somewhere that I belong so permanently that I can finally stop trying to prove it every single day. And I can just kind of exhale and enjoy everything I've worked for and built.
16:42
That was the deal. And you held up your end. You kept delivering. You kept being the one people counted on. And what I think a lot of us have found and what these doctors have certainly found, what so many women find themselves in, the position they find themselves in in their, you know, late 30s or early 40s, is that that contract was never real.
17:07
Because here's what actually happened. Every time you came through, the bar moved. What used to be impressive just became expected. What used to earn you goodwill now is just the minimum. And you weren't building toward a place of ease and belonging.
17:26
You were building a reputation that now requires that you maintain it relentlessly, constantly, day after day. Because excellence recalibrates expectations upward every single time. The system doesn't reward sustained excellence with rest.
17:52
And that system, to be clear, is capitalism and the Western way of doing things. It doesn't reward excellence with getting to take a break. It rewards sustained excellence with more expectations. And then this is the part I think is actually genuinely cruel.
18:13
The better you got, the more invisible the effort became. You made it look easy. And when something looks easy, people stop thinking about what it costs you, which means that it's possible that right now in your life, there are probably people who depend on you enormously, who could not function the way they function without you, who have absolutely little to no idea what it takes for you to keep showing up the way that you do.
18:44
Mothers feel this a lot, but that's different because these are children, right, that we're talking about. And sometimes we feel it even later into adulthood. But children and working with children, taking care of children who are dependent, who cannot take care of themselves, is kind of the template for what we expect of women everywhere, right?
19:04
And so even if you're at work, you are working with people who feel like they can depend on you, not because they're bad, but because you are so good at hiding the effort that it costs and you just keep doing it.
19:21
And here's what happens when you get good at performing and hiding the cost of it to you. You get crossed off the list of people who need to be taken care of. The more capable you become, the less people check on you, the more others lean on you emotionally, the more you become, you actually become part of the infrastructure, not a person, but the infrastructure that just the system needs to run on,
19:55
that nobody really thinks about until it stops working. There was a doctor in the room last Saturday, I'll call her Sam, who had recently gone to her hospital administrator and said, listen, we are drowning.
20:07
We need more physicians. The gaps in care are real and people are waiting a long time to be seen. And the administrator looked at her and said, actually, I think we're doing pretty great. And he then quoted back to Sam all the ways in which he had seen her filling in the gaps so completely and so consistently and so invisibly, staying late, taking on extra patients, answering messages after hours,
20:36
that that gap to him didn't exist or didn't exist to the same degree. The system had no problem because Sam was filling in the gap. And so what I said to her was, so just notice the more you bend and fill in those gaps, the system doesn't say thank you.
20:58
The system says, Sam stayed late. That means we don't need anybody else. If we can count on Sam to do this, we can continue to save money. And as much as I want to go off on a capitalism rant here, we're going to stay here.
21:11
That's another podcast for another day. And Sam nodded like she had known it and she had felt it, but putting it into words, putting that invisible contract into words and seeing how it was failing her in real time was really important.
21:33
Your suffering becomes invisible because you appear so functional. And that's why this feels stuck, because of course, none of us want to appear less functional, less capable. But we also don't want to continue to suffer for another decade or two in a job or in a position or in a relationship where our capability is just being taken advantage of.
22:02
The support never comes because we have made ourselves look like someone who doesn't need it. And you just keep going. So I want to go back to something because I think it matters. And when I say that that invisible contract was invisible, I don't mean that it doesn't exist or that you were naive for believing it.
22:25
Most of us who run this pattern learned it very early and we learned it for a reason. Somewhere along the way, often before we had words for it, we figured out, I want to say this again, that being extraordinarily capable created safety, that being useful created belonging, that being the one who didn't make things harder, who held it together, who came through, that got you something far more than just the good grade or the gold star.
22:56
It got you connection, which also means that rest, need, asking for help, depending on someone, these things don't just feel uncomfortable or hard to ask for, they feel dangerous. They feel suspect because somewhere in your nervous system, they got coded as a threat to the belonging.
23:24
This is not a character flaw. This is actually a very intelligent adaptation that you made a long time ago under real circumstances, and it worked. The problem is those adaptations don't update on their own and you're still doing it long past the point where it works for you.
23:44
And now it's actually costing you. Underneath the resentment, underneath the burnout, underneath the exhaustion, there is grief. Because at some point, women who run this pattern arrive at a realization, no one is coming to take care of me the way I take care of everyone else.
24:03
And that surpasses, that's beyond frustrating. That is a loss. That is grieving a relationship and a reward and a payoff and a place of safety that we really believed in. We are grieving the version of the future where all that effort finally paid off with belonging that couldn't be threatened by anything.
24:26
And relationships that saw us and valued us for how much work we put in to our jobs and showing up for other people. And we have to grieve the relationships that could have been more mutual if we had known what was happening.
24:42
Underneath that grief, there is often this question. If I stop functioning at this level, if I stop being this person, who am I? The competence isn't just the strategy. It's an identity. It's that cage.
25:00
And it's not just the demanding job or the people who take you for granted or the systems that keep extracting from you. All those are real. The cage is that you cannot stop because now your sense of self is around not needing to and being able to just show up and keep getting it done.
25:20
The doctors in that room last Saturday are well into, and some of them are even past, the first five, maybe 10 years of their practice. And they're looking at maybe 20 more years. And they're doing the math and they know with perfect clarity that the way they have been operating is insustainable.
25:40
But then they also still felt stuck, not because they didn't see the problem. These women are brilliant. They totally saw it. But the stuckness happens because the solution requires them to do something that they have spent their entire careers learning not to do, which is ask for what they need and to stay in the conversation long enough to find out if they can have it.
26:08
So now I want to walk you through something because when a lot of people hear people pleasing, they immediately think that is not me. I'm not the pushover. I have opinions. I can say what I mean. I don't do things just to make people like me.
26:23
And you're right. That's not what this is. This is sneakier than that. This is the version that hides inside behavior that looks from the outside like it's totally reasonable and is actually professional.
26:37
But I want to describe some of the things to you that I have heard from clients, that I heard from these doctors and that I've heard from talking to you, because we need to understand that this is also contributing to this problem we're talking about.
26:52
It is overachieving, not just because you love the work, but because staying valuable feels safer if you are an achiever. If you keep performing, nobody looks too closely at what is underneath because that feels vulnerable.
27:10
So that overachieving to gain belonging. And it looks like difficulty delegating because somebody else, if they're going to do it wrong, you're going to get blamed. So it's easier to just do it yourself.
27:24
It looks like downplaying what you've accomplished or what you've done. Somebody congratulates you and you deflect and you try to be humble, not necessarily because you are humble, but because claiming it feels dangerous.
27:39
Owning it has the possibility of inviting people to look at you a little more closely, and you don't want to do that. It looks like always waiting for the right time or the right words. The right time never comes and there's always a reason to wait.
27:56
There is internal bargaining, you know, the relationship's okay right now. They're stressed. You'll bring it up later. Things never calm down. And so you're just constantly in this state of waiting for the right time to bring up some of the things that are bothering you.
28:13
It also looks a lot like smiling or laughing to cover up discomfort. Somebody says something that lands wrong and instead of naming it, you smile, you laugh, you move the conversation along. And then later, you wonder why you didn't say anything.
28:31
This happens all the time in professional settings and other settings where we work and where we volunteer. And what it does is it contributes another layer of performing easygoingness. This acting easygoing to where you deflect or smile and you don't address comfort, it adds another layer because it becomes also part of your personality.
28:54
Easygoing, easy to get along with, not someone who's going to bring up hard things and rock the boat. It looks like feeling responsible for other people's emotions. And that's beyond just being aware of them.
29:09
It's taking on responsibility for them. So instead of being honest, you manage, you calibrate based on what you think they can handle and you protect them from your experience of needing, your experience of being exhausted and wanting additional support.
29:30
It also looks like the person who always puts in the effort, who initiate, who remembers, who follows up, who shows up. And again, that quiet wondering in the back of your head, if I stop doing all of this, would anyone else reach out to me?
29:45
Here's maybe the sneakiest one of all. When someone asks you about a decision you've made, it feels like a challenge, like an attack. Sometimes it is, and I'm going to totally own that. But other times, it feels like they're questioning your competence, that thing that keeps you safe.
30:04
So you over-explain, you over-justify, possibly get a little defensive, because somewhere underneath, that competence feels like it's on shaky ground. And some of us are worried that we're going to be quote unquote found out, that that competence, our belief is that competence really isn't as high as it should be or needs to be to be bulletproof.
30:32
So one of the doctors in that room, a woman who had been practicing family medicine for over a decade, described how every time a patient asked her to address just one more thing before the appointment ended, she said yes, every single time.
30:46
Because saying no would have felt like she hadn't done everything she could have. It threatened her identity as a competent caring professional. And so she said, yes. And then she ran behind for the rest of the day, day after day after day of running behind and having to walk into every single room after that, already apologizing.
31:09
And then she gets home late and she's apologizing for being late getting home. And then she feels terrible the whole time. None of this feels like people pleasing from the inside. And it often doesn't even look like it from the outside.
31:24
It just feels like being professional, like being strategic, like being the bigger person. Maybe like someone who doesn't have time for the drama. I'm just here to work and work competently and not need anything from anyone else.
31:39
And competence has to be the thing that we sit with and question. There is something else that I asked the women in that workshop to think about, and I'm going to ask you to think about it now. When you picture a woman who says exactly what she wants to say, who speaks up, who is clear and direct, what kind of image comes to mind?
32:04
Right? Some of them had some great words like brave, she's queen, she's confident. But there were also some words like she's bitchy, she's brazen, she's too much. And I want you to just notice that because that list and that automatic gut level association between a woman who speaks clearly and a woman who is dangerous, that is the programming.
32:29
That is why your nervous system is scared. And as long as your brain believes that there are only those two options, right? Either stay silent and be nice or become the bitch, chances are you'll stay silent every single time while that resentment and that loneliness leaks out.
32:48
Here is what I want you to know. This is not a character flaw. This is not who you are. You are not uniquely difficult. Nothing has gone wrong. You are running a very logical program based on very, very real experiences that taught you some very understandable things about what keeps you safe, what keeps you valued, and what keeps you loved.
33:15
And it can be rewritten. I want to give you one way to start rewriting this, because here's the thing. So many of the doctors in that room described like this internal fight they were having with themselves.
33:30
And they said it the way I've heard hundreds of women say it over the time I've been working. I am a 42-year-old woman. Why can't I just speak up? I am a 38-year-old, whatever. I am a 54-year-old woman, professional, doctor, lawyer, mother, volunteer.
33:49
I'm intelligent. Why can't I just say it? The logic of it feels so obvious. The reason you cannot logic your way into speaking up is not because you lack information. You have the information, right?
34:07
So many of you have read all the books and listened to the podcast and been to therapy. You know intellectually what you should do. The reason that the logic doesn't work is that the part of you that freezes in those moments, the part that goes silent when you need her the most, the part that pretends, that part is not an adult.
34:30
Remember when you learned this? You were young. That part is young. That part is the kid who learned that speaking up gets you in trouble, that needing things makes you a burden, and that the way to stay safe and loved and connected was to be so capable, so useful, and so easy that no one would ever leave you.
34:53
They would never have a reason to because you were amazing. And when you are in a hard moment, when someone questions your judgment or your decisions or takes more than they're entitled to or treats you in a way that is genuinely not okay, it is that kid who is jumping into the driver's seat of your experience.
35:12
And she panics because this is the thing that could have gotten her into trouble, needing, wanting, having something to say and wanting to say it. And so when you yell at yourself, I'm a grown fucking woman.
35:27
Why can't I just say this thing? I want you to know and I want you to picture that you're actually yelling at a child, a younger version of you. And children, what happens when they're yelled at? They don't respond to that.
35:42
They go smaller. And what they need and what you need is to come down to that child's level and say, I see you. And I know you're scared. And I know that this has felt dangerous before. And I want you to know that I'm here, that you don't have to figure this out alone.
36:01
I have skills now that you didn't have then. And I'm going to take care of you. And I'm not going anywhere. I watched this happen in real time last Saturday. This is one of the most effective ways to bridge the gap between the logic of, I should speak up, but I'm scared to.
36:23
There was a doctor named Josie, and she and I were practicing something that she had never been able to say to the nurses in her practice who had been undermining her medical decisions. And she said it out loud in her full, honest, unfiltered version.
36:37
And I watched her nervous system flood. Her hands went up around her face. Her voice changed. And I asked her, okay, so there's that, there's that young part of you. What does that young part of you need to hear right now?
36:52
And she said, no one's going to hurt you. Your life is not in danger. This might suck, but you're going to be okay. It is safe to use your voice. And then I added one more sentence and I said, try this.
37:07
I'm going to be here with you the whole time. And she took a big deep breath and she said, there's less tension in my chest. That's amazing. Just hearing herself say it. This is what I want to leave you with.
37:24
Yes, learning the skill and learning the inner sturdiness, that matters. But you can always take care of the part of you that is scared instead of criticizing her for being scared. Because once she feels safe, once she knows that you are not going to abandon her in the middle of that conversation, that she won't be on her own, she will begin to let you feel more comfortable to say the thing.
37:53
This has worked for me. This has worked for so many of the clients that I work with. And as I worked on this specific skill, taking care of that little part with the doctors in the room, there was visible relaxation.
38:06
There were tears because this is one thing we can do to move the needle. And I want to offer it to you because even if right now you can just bring to mind a younger version of you that made the connection between being capable and belonging, being smart and being safe, and notice what she is worried about.
38:29
That's where you start. To just notice her, to talk to her in ways that feel good. That's a really meaningful thing that you can do for yourself in addition to learning the skill of how to find the right words and then how to continue to support that part.
38:47
That's the inner sturdiness that I'm talking about. If any part of what I said today felt familiar, if you are like, yep, that is me, I think that that is something worth looking at. Again, I will say it, this is not who you are.
39:02
You make complete sense. Giving everything that you've learned and been rewarded for. Yes, of course you're here. And of course this is hard. And it can change. Thank you for listening. Here is what I know.
39:16
The things that made you the most valuable, that brought so much joy and the glow and the recognition, you don't have to stop doing those things. But there is a way to have a better experience doing them.
39:30
And that is what I want for you, because the people pleasing that is in kind of woven through our experience as high achievers, it doesn't have to be that way. And we can be supported, we can be loved, we can be known, we can be helped, and we can have relationships that are reciprocal.
39:49
It is possible. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week.
