Ep. 218 How "People-Pleasing" Fuels Midlife Anxiety, Stress, and Anger—And Silences What You Really Want

Do you ever wonder why you say yes when you want to say no—only to feel anxious, resentful, or even angry afterward?

You’re not alone—people-pleasing is one of the most common hidden drivers of midlife anxiety and stress.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

1.     What people-pleasing (or fawning) really is, and why it’s more than just “being nice.”

2.     Why it silently fuels midlife anxiety, stress, and anger—damaging both your self-respect and your relationships.

3.     The hidden causes of people-pleasing, from social conditioning and family systems to trauma and sensitivity.

🎧 Take 13 minutes to understand the roots of people-pleasing, and begin reclaiming your truth—you’re worth it.

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover why people pleasing silently fuels your midlife anxiety, stress, and even anger.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:07

Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, the podcast where you and I tackle stress and anxiety in midlife so you can stop feeling like crap, feel more present at home, and thrive at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over 50,000 hours of therapy sessions and 32 years of teaching practical science-backed mental wellness.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:32

Welcome to the podcast. Today I celebrate my 200th episode, and I am so glad you're here. We're diving into one of the most important patterns you can grow out of in midlife people pleasing, or what psychologists and neuroscientists call fawning. Sit back because there is a lot packed into this one episode. In this episode, you are going to discover what fawning really is and why it's more than just being nice, why it increases your anxiety and stress. And damages your relationship with yourself. How it can pull you into some really unhealthy relationships with others. And I'm also going to help you learn to spot the signs when you're fawning. And what's happening inside your body when you do. And lastly, the hidden causes of fawning that once you know them, they'll serve as a motivator for you to do an update in midlife let's begin with what is fawning. Fawning is more than being polite or kind. It's borrowed from animal behavior where submissive animal shows exaggerated affection to avoid threat. You know that puppy that flips on its back the minute you walk in his house? In people, it's the same dynamic appeasing. Pleasing smoothing over conflict just to feel safe. It often looks like kindness on the outside, but inside it's survival. It's when you silence your own needs, your own perspective, your own opinion, and over please others to avoid conflict gain approval. Feel safe. Unlike genuine kindness, fawning comes at a cost you abandon you. There isn't a day in my office, I don't see this, a woman whose husband wants her to lose weight, so she starts on Ozempic even though she hates the side effects. An employee whose boss expects late night emails, a parent who says yes when everything inside is screaming, no fawning always cost you. It costs you your truth. It might be surprising or perhaps comforting for you to know that most of my clients need encouragement, even to notice their people pleasing tendencies. For many, it feels normal, even good. You might think I was just born nice. Somebody has to accommodate, or I can't put my needs on the table, I'll lose my job or set off an explosive spouse or child. It can feel like it's just not worth it. But do you know what fawning is really doing to your body, to your relationships? When you fawn, your nervous system never rests. You're constantly scanning for what others want, reshaping yourself to fit it. This increases your anxiety because you are living out of alignment with your truth. Fawning creates stress because suppressing your needs is exhausting, and over time it damages your relationship with yourself. One client of mine was a super volunteer. Because she was so talented, she was asked to lead every fundraiser, every committee. One day she walked into my office in tears. She looked at me and said, I feel used. I gently replied, yeah, you are being used. It must really hurt. Her response shocked me. I am not hurt. I am pissed. I don't even like these people anymore. How do I always get myself over committed and underpaid? My answer fawning. She set out to be helpful, but without the power of no. She ended up being used and resentful. Here she was in my office beginning to understand this dynamic within herself. It's not pretty, it's not easy, but in midlife, if you want more energy and to be happy and calm, working on your tendencies to Fawn or people please is an absolute why, because fawning actually hurts your relationships. It's actually paradoxical, fawning looks like it protects relationships, but it actually harms them. When you over accommodate resentment builds you. And guess what? You may and probably will attract people who take advantage and miss out on true relationships based on honesty, mutuality, and equality. Years ago, I worked with a male colleague who had just survived a heart attack in his thirties. He wasn't ready to return to work, but you know, he needed money and insurance. Our project together was deadline driven and he never met his tasks. I made up excuses in my head. He's too overwhelmed with his health issues, so I covered for him. When it came time to present, he did most of the talking and took the credit. I was furious, but I never said a word. Instead, I wasted energy avoiding him on future projects. Finally, my supervisor sat me down and said, you have to collaborate with him again. I explained to her my frustration and she looked at me and said, MJ, you're telling the wrong person. That moment hit me because I didn't know how to be direct. I avoided. Instead, an avoidance is just another version of fawning. So how do you spot fawning in yourself? The first sign saying yes when you want to say no. And sometimes, as you know, that Yes, comes out so quickly that you didn't even think about what you were gonna say because remember, your body feels threatened often that yes is proceeded by a wave of overwhelm. Your heart races, your mind is a little foggy. Your breath shortens your muscles brace. That's your nervous system saying keep the peace, stay safe. Fawning is physiological. The second sign is maybe you are constantly apologizing even when you've done nothing wrong. This is especially true for highly sensitive people, always scanning and smoothing to avoid overwhelm. If you want to hear more about HSPs, make sure you listen to episodes 173 and 174 it will be so helpful. Because fawning is a real common dynamic for people who are highly sensitive. The third sign of fawning is measuring your worth by how others respond instead of trusting how you feel about yourself. In fact, if you are a lifelong people pleaser, you might be at a place in your life where you're not really clear what you think, what you feel, and what your values are. Let me assure you, that is a perfect place to begin the process of understanding and working through fawning. But first you do have to be able to recognize it. One of my clients told me she apologized to a cashier because her credit card didn't swipe. That same day she agreed to host a family dinner when she was exhausted. That night, she lay awake, worrying if her boss thought she was good enough. Three signs of fawning packed into a single day. It's exhausting. So how did you get here? Trust me, you did not get here on your own. None of us did. In our culture, there's a really strong social and gender conditioning to be nice. Think about it. Were you taught to prioritize harmony? Maybe you were praised for good girl or good boy behavior, apologizing. Smoothing conflict, being rewarded with approval. One of my clients grew up with an alcoholic father. At age 10, she'd console her mother, then patch things up between her parents. The next day she really wanted to be out riding bikes with her friends, but instead she was the family therapist. Another woman in her fifties constantly picked up the slack at work. Her bosses praised her reliability, but inside she was exhausted. She learned as a child that her role was to keep everyone calm, to be on top of everything. And decades later, she was still carrying that script. Boy am I glad she found her way to my office. Sometimes fawning is a trauma response. Wanna hear a staggering statistic? 70% of Americans have experienced trauma that is overwhelming. Trauma. Overwhelms coping systems. Leaving the body on high alert, fawning can become survival. I had another client who grew up in a home of unpredictable yelling. She learned to placate quickly. Decades later, she still said yes to every request at work, terrified of criticism. We talk a lot about trauma in our culture today, and in many ways this is incredible growth. But one of the consequences of trauma is fawning and people pleasing, which can lead you to feeling out of sync with yourself, exhausted. And never feeling safe enough to meet your wants and needs. In some families that are rooted in faith, there can be no room for doubt. Children learn to obey instead of question. As an adult, you may struggle to explore your own feelings without guilt. As I said before, another cause of learning to people please or fawn are people who are highly sensitive for HSPs conflict feels overwhelming. Fawning is less about trauma and more about avoiding overstimulation. One of my 45-year-old clients could remember the agony of sleepovers. As a child, she pretended to be fine, but inside she was overwhelmed. When 80% of the people aren't highly sensitive, you can feel forced to go along just to belong. As you can see, fawning can be caused by cultural, social. Religious or temperament driven Trauma may intensify it, but conditioning alone can create it. Midlife is often when fawning hits hardest. You're juggling kids who need you, aging, parents who depend on you and work where you fear being overlooked. The pressure to please everyone's spikes, leaving you exhausted, resentful. Anxious and if you're a person who has high standards, put midlife and fawning on top of it. Whoa. It is almost too much. That's why midlife is the perfect time. To look at this dynamic within you, you are not broken. You've just been overtrained and you're not quite sure how to connect with yourself in a healthy way. But trust me, this can be learned. Fawning is not a flaw. It's a skill you once use to survive, connect, or belong. At some point it served you, but in midlife, it no longer serves your peace, your health, or your relationships. Are you recognizing yourself? Here, take a breath. This is not your fault, it's just a pattern you learned, and patterns can be unlearned. So let's start with this week's Inner Challenge. All I want you to do is notice the moments when you silence your truth, write it down, or just make a note in your mind. Oops, I did it again. No judgment. Just notice awareness is the first step to reclaiming yourself. In today's episode, we discovered what fawning really is and how it adds fuel to your midlife anxiety and stress. Not to mention it harms your relationship with self and others. We talked about the top three signs of fawning, what happens in your body as well as the root causes that set you on the path to this pattern and why midlife is the perfect time to unlearn this pattern, which is exactly what we're gonna talk about on Thursday, you'll learn a practical way to SAP people pleasing and start living authentically. No one is more amazed than me that I am over the 200th episode mark here at Creating Midlife Calm. As a thank you, I am offering a free workshop called The Good Life Versus The Abundant Life. We all know the pull of the good life checking boxes, proving yourself, achieving, but midlife stirs up a different longing, what I call the abundant life. It's about living from your worth, slowing down and letting challenges deep. You rather than harden you. In this workshop, I'll share five simple anchors to help you move from proving to becoming more fully yourself. If you'll want to go deeper into moving from the good life to the abundant life, please join me on Monday evening, October 13th from seven to 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. If interested, send me an email at MJ. MJ Murray von.com. I'll include information in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Thursday with more creating midlife calm.