As “recovering people pleaser” Natalie Lue opens her book, The Joy of Saying No, “Suppressing and repressing my needs, desires, expectations, feelings, and opinions to try to influence and control other people’s feelings and behavior was as natural to me as breathing. I thought it was normal to tell people what they want to hear (read: lie) to make them feel better. I believed I was ticking the boxes of being a Good Person by being kind, generous, hardworking, conscientious, loving, eager to help, attractive, and intelligent, and doing what others needed and wanted.”

If you, too, are ticking “Good Person” boxes while making yourself miserable, this episode is for you. Natalie and I discuss the five types of people pleasers, what we continue to struggle with today despite decades of awareness-building, and how to build the skill of saying no.

This crossover episode originally aired on the Pivot podcast on July 2, 2023.

More About Natalie: Natalie Lue used to have very low self-esteem, a litany of problems including bad boundaries, toxic relationships with emotionally unavailable and shady folk, and a crippling immune system disease, but this all changed in the summer of 2005. Now, she is a recovering people pleaser. She’s the author of The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People Pleasing, Reclaim Boundaries, and Say Yes to the Life You Want and for 8 years hosted The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast. Natalie helps people learn how to reclaim themselves from their emotional baggage and increase emotional availability through self-care, making a profound difference in their lives via her substack On Knowing Yourself.

✅ Try This Next: Check in with yourself when you feel pressure to be or do something in a certain way—is this a preference or is this programming?

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