The Hidden Cost of Being Liked - 62

Most of us were taught that being liked is a good thing. We learned to be agreeable, helpful, accommodating, and easy to get along with. But what happens when the desire to be liked becomes the driving force behind our decisions? 

In this episode of The Approval Detox, we're exploring the hidden costs of people-pleasing and approval-seeking. You'll learn how the pursuit of external validation can disconnect you from your own needs, create resentment, weaken boundaries, and keep you stuck in roles and relationships you've already outgrown. 

We'll discuss why so many high-achieving women equate approval with safety, how self-abandonment develops over time, and what it looks like to begin choosing self-loyalty over people-pleasing. 

This episode also includes a reflective journaling exercise and a simple weekly challenge designed to help you recognize where you may be sacrificing yourself to maintain the approval of others. 

Because being liked isn't the same thing as being loved—and it's certainly not the same thing as being yourself. 

Transcript

Autumn (00:00)

Welcome back to the podcast, my friends. As we start into the month of July, we're going to be rolling out an approval detox. We're going to be covering the hidden cost of being liked. when being the good girl stops working for us and the difference between being liked and being known.

Over these next couple episodes, we're going to be talking about why we as humans are always seeking approval from other people, which is part biology, part conditioning, but we're going to unpack all of that. And then I'm going to leave you with some tools this month that can help you identify and dismantle some of your own people-pleasing and approval-seeking tendencies. Today we're kicking off this month with a great topic:

The hidden cost of being liked.

This is something that most of us have truly been taught since childhood. And I think any of you that are parents listening to this, you can relate to this notion that we want our kids to be liked. We want our kids to have friends. As children, there was certainly a hope for all of us that we would be liked by our peers when we started school.

Over time, this idea of trying to make friends and trying to be liked can bleed over into being the easy one or being agreeable, being pleasant all of the time, being low maintenance, or being the person that just everybody enjoys having around. At first glance, this seems relatively harmless and even desirable. It's very appealing to a lot of us, which is why I think many of us live our lives seeking that approval.

But what if constantly trying to be liked is quietly costing you not only your authenticity, but your boundaries and your energies and ultimately your true life? Today we're gonna be exploring the hidden cost of being liked and making other people's approval your emotional currency.

To start off, I think we have to unpack why we learn to chase approval. Many high-achieving women learned early on that approval equals safety. And biologically speaking, we are a community-oriented species,

Meaning, if we were not liked by the group, that could very well risk our survival. So biologically, there is a need within us, a need to survive, that is rooted in being accepted and liked by others around us.

When I think back to myself as a little girl and I I kind of ask myself, what did it feel like to be liked? And what did that look like?

For me, and I think a lot of us, that looked like receiving praise for being responsible, being helpful, helpful to the teacher. I have a lot of memories of trying to be the teacher's sidekick, literally the teacher's pet, and trying to help any way that I could. Being successful, being quiet, being easy to manage.

Additionally, for a lot of women, if you grew up in a family where potentially you were the only woman, there is likely a lot of cultural expectations about how you are to help everybody around you and be as helpful as possible and be responsible for your siblings.

Over time, all of that creates an association in our brains that if people approve me, then I will be safe.

The problem with this is that initially this is kind of a survival strategy, culturally, socially, biologically as well. But over time, that strategy morphs into an identity where it becomes a really critical and crucial part of ourselves to be liked, to be helpful, to be responsible, and to make everybody else around us happy. And that's when it starts to become a problem.

Because in that space, once that kind of transformation happens, we stop asking what do I actually and truly want? And our brain instead focuses on what will make everybody around me happiest.

So instead of making decisions based upon what aligns with us and what we actually want, we start making decisions from approval. And that is where self-abandonment first begins.

In thinking about this work for myself, I have so many examples that kind of stand out in my life. But a couple that came to mind most recently in working through this was

Years ago around the holidays, my family all lives in different states or several hours away. So getting together for the holiday is a real lift for all of us. And I think in that particular time, I was really struggling with a lot personally and professionally. And I think I'd had some

frustrating exchanges with members of my family. And anyway, the holiday is leading up to it. And and I'm just feeling this tremendous amount of stress and pressure around the holiday. And deep down I know I don't want to go home for I think it was Thanksgiving. I don't want to go home for Thanksgiving. I want to sit this one out. I want to take some time and care for myself. I don't want to show up and be frustrated with anybody or even frustrated that I'm there. And I just don't want to do it. But there was a really big part of me that

felt like I should and felt like I needed to be there. I need to be there to help mom. I need to help mom with the food and the cleanup and all of the grandkids. And if I'm not there, who's gonna help her? And all of those kind of thoughts. And the more I kind of thought about myself showing up and going there because I felt like I should, the more angry and frustrated that I got. And so I actually had a meeting with my own coach and we kind of talked it through. And what ultimately we decided was that I was going to listen to what I actually wanted.

And that was to take a beat, care for myself, and sit this one out, which is something that just happens, I think, as an adult. it can be sometimes really hard to realize that we can't always make it to everything and that's okay. But we have to first and foremost focus on our own needs. And for me, that felt like a really big deviation from that part of me and that person that just wanted to keep everybody happy and wanted to be the helper.

around the holidays for everybody, even though that was in complete contradiction to what I actually needed and where I was in my life. And yes, it was really hard, but I think back to that weekend and I think I spent it alone. And it was tremendously restorative, but also really empowering to recognize okay, I feel that pull to be the helper, to worry about what everyone's gonna say about me sitting out and showing up for myself. And in the end, I showed up for myself. It didn't feel great at the time in that initial conversation.

conversation, but it was well worth it. And very quickly I felt very happy with myself and really pleased that I decided to follow through.

Another thing I think that comes up for me a lot is we live in a really great city with a really great airport. And so a lot of my family members that are flying anywhere or going to see kids in college visits, they come through our city. And I get a lot of requests: can we stay with you? Do you have room? Can we stay at the house even if you're not there? And it it seems like somebody's always kind of coming through or staying, even when we're not here. And over the last few years, there have been times when people are asking, can we stay at your house?

Yes, we know you're gonna be out of town, or we're only coming through for a night. And sometimes those requests would fall at the back end of a vacation or a tremendously stressful week, or a week where we were really, really busy and just kind of shifts passing in the night all week long, and we were looking forward to maybe a weekend just us. And I started to feel again that pull, that desire to please everybody, to be the helper and let people just constantly stay at our house as they come through. And

The tension between that and wanting my space and wanting to kind of protect my own sanctuary that I have here in my house and risk frustrating these people that I truly do love. And that tension became very real. But eventually I started saying no more often when it felt right, so that when I do say yes, I can actually be excited about it instead of living and kind of resentful for saying yes, even though I mean no. And and you'll see as I kind of unpack.

some of the results of that self-abandonment. And one of those is is tremendous amounts of resentment.

So let's start by unpacking some of those hidden costs of being liked.

I started with the resentment one because for me, that is the one that I relate to the most. So we're just gonna jump into that one to get started. People pleasers often appear very generous to everybody around them. They're always giving, they're always saying yes, they're always showing up for the holidays and helping everybody, they're always letting people crash at their house. To everybody around them, they seem tremendously giving. But underneath it is really where the truth is. There's exhaustion.

Or a quiet resentment. And that is because a lot of those yeses that were given to avoid disappointing other people really become a silent no to yourself and a no to what you actually want and actually need and what you actually wanted to say. And that feels terrible. So not only are you setting yourself up to do something you don't really want to do, but you're sort of selling yourself short at the same time, which also doesn't feel good.

And that manifests as resentment, which is really, in my opinion, just accumulated self-betrayal. We do it so often and we're always frustrated with ourselves for it. And it just boils below the surface all these instances of us abandoning what we actually want and saying yes when we mean no. We never feel good about it. It always feels terrible in the moment and makes us resent those people and resent those types of asks in the future.

The second cost of trying to be liked by everybody is that you ultimately lose connection with yourself. When you're constantly monitoring other people's reactions, we stop listening with our own inner voice because we have a pattern of telling that inner voice that you're not important. What is important is how these people are receiving me. And do they look upset and do they look frustrated or do they look happy? Are they thinking I'm a really generous and grateful person, even though I'm really boiling below the surface?

That is what our brain focuses on, other people's reactions, other people's feelings. And it kind of brushes over what is actually happening in our own heads and hearts because it's not important. And we have a pattern of disregarding that voice. And it just becomes more of an ingrained pattern the more that we do this. We start becoming so highly attuned to everyone else's needs while becoming more and more and more disconnected from your own.

eventually we get to a point where we don't even know what we want anymore.

I know that sounds like a really small and kind of silly thing, but I have had hundreds of coaching calls with really impressive professionals. Some of them are lawyers and they have these long-standing careers, but they realize that they became lawyers, not because they really wanted to, but because they were trying to please the people around them. And so as we start unpacking this and I say to them, what do you actually like doing? Or what do you think you would enjoy? And they always say, I don't know.

And that's because they've spent so much time paying attention to the wants and needs and feelings of everybody around them that they don't even know what their own voice sounds like internally when it's telling them, I like this or I want that or that would actually light me up. And so we have to start rebuilding that skill of paying attention to that inner voice again before we can even figure out which direction we want to move forward. It happens all of the time.

And it always comes back to this constant approval seeking.

Cost number three of always being liked is that we end up attracting relationships that benefit from lack of boundaries. This could be a personal relationship or a professional relationship. Regardless, you are going to draw in people that love the version of you that never says no. I see this a lot in professional work environments. And they're attracted to you.

Not because they love you or they think that they're the you're the best and maybe you are the best and maybe you are fantastic, but that's probably not all that's driving them to you. It's because they benefit from unlimited access to you and knowing that you're never going to say no. I always say to people in coaching, you're like their easy button. Of course they're gonna keep coming to you, of course they're gonna keep dumping everything on you, of course they're gonna bulldoze every boundary.

You have been their easy button for years. It makes their life really simple and streamlined. Why would they stop coming to you and trying to push on those boundaries? Historically, it served them really well and they want that to continue. So when you start implementing boundaries, they're not gonna like it because it's gonna make their life a little bit harder. But I think that's really telling because it really shines a light on the reason they liked us so much is because we just made their life really easy. Not necessarily because

We were their favorite or they think that we're super great. It's just that they knew they could bulldoze us and they could get something good from us and from that unlimited access that we were giving them. The moment that you establish a boundary, that is when it will be very clear who was attached to you and who was attached to your compliance. They are not the same thing.

Cost number four, you delay your own growth.

one is really common in professionals who are considering leaving their career or changing their careers. Many of us stay stuck in careers or relationships or identities that we have outgrown.

Many of those women stay not because they don't know what they want to do, but they stay because there's a tremendous amount of fear of what people will think about them if they leave.

In their world, the pain of disappointing people or having people talk about them leaving is so much more significant than any fear of changing jobs and trying something new that they stay because they don't want to encounter that fear. It's a lot easier to stay in a job that doesn't make you happy than it is to risk suddenly not being liked by everybody because that's a real challenge to this identity that they have built. And their nervous system doesn't really know what to do with that.

You know, it takes a lot of coaching and a lot of thought work to learn how to get comfortable with potentially disappointing people.

Ultimately, what this shows us is that our desire to be liked has simply become stronger than our desire to become who we're meant to be. And I think that is a very sad place to be. But when we really unpack it, that is where a lot of us are. When we start worrying about what other people are gonna think, it's really us just weighing. Is it more important that I keep these people happy?

than it is for me to pursue what actually feels true and aligned for myself.

Cost number five, you become exhausted. Managing perceptions is exhausting. Watching everybody around you engaging how how happy they are with you or unhappy with you and trying to manage that is also exhausting because you're constantly wondering, did I upset them? Do they still like me? Do they still want to work with me? Was I too much? Was I not enough? This creates a mental load.

That most of us don't even realize that we're carrying.

Approval seeking is emotional labor. There is no other way to slice it. We've got all this energy going out, monitoring, wondering and worrying, and it's tremendously draining.

For many women, I think as we get older, we start to move into this phase of just caring a lot less what people think about us. And it's a pretty beautiful thing to experience. And I think a lot of us look back and say, Gosh, I wish I could have been more like this in my twenties and my thirties. But but really what they're speaking to is this. It's that decision to let go of all those cares and concerns about whether people like us, what they're thinking about us. And the decision to not care about that anymore.

is such a mental relief almost instantaneously because we don't realize how much energy we're wasting and carrying thinking about this all of the time. And I think as we get older, a lot of us finally let that go and we immediately feel the relief.

If all of this is the drawback of trying to be liked, what is the path forward? Hear me when I say the goal is not becoming disliked. The goal is becoming free. And when I say that, I mean a freedom that is allowing people to misunderstand you. It allows people to disagree with you or have opinions about you or be disappointed in you.

It's freedom to let all of those things be without making their reactions mean that something is wrong with you. It's ultimately a decision that your worth is not going to be determined by consensus. Your life and what you do with your life, it's not a public voting system. You don't need unanimous approval in order to feel good about yourself and to move forward.

I kind of liken this to my clients that I work with that are running businesses. And I often say to them, what is the rate of dissatisfied customer that you would be comfortable with? And immediately they all say zero. But they know after we have a laugh about it, they know that's not realistic. They know there's going to be a percentage of clients or or customers that aren't happy with them. And I think helping them.

get clear on what that percentage is like can help them move through those criticisms and and embrace this idea that you maybe we're not for everybody and that's okay. And I think we as humans can embrace a little bit of that as well. I'm not for everyone. Not everyone's gonna get me and that is okay. There are plenty of coaches out there and God speed. I hope you find the one for you. But it goes for us as humans as well. And letting it be okay that you know what sometimes

My best friend, my family, my boss, my coworkers, my spouse, sometimes they're not gonna get me. Sometimes they're gonna be disappointed in how I show up and they're gonna disagree with the actions that I take. That's okay. And maybe I'm I can wrap my head around this idea that okay, maybe 20, 30% of the time, people aren't gonna get me. Maybe they will be frustrated with me. Maybe I can learn to be okay with that. Similarly, I work with a lot of attorneys and business owners, and I say,

Part of the cost of our work and being a professional is knowing that somebody is probably gonna sue you. And the first time my clients get that lawsuit or a threat of a lawsuit, I always say, Welcome to it. Now you know you're playing big enough that enough people are seeing you that you're gonna get that one or two that takes issue with you. And that's all it is. It doesn't mean you're wrong, it doesn't mean you've necessarily messed anything up, but it is a reality.

Of getting big enough and running your business in a way that feels aligned. People are gonna take issue with it, you're probably gonna get sued. If we can start looking at our personal and professional relationships that way from a cost-benefit analysis of like sometimes people are gonna be frustrated with me, sometimes people are gonna wanna sue me or write me off or just be frustrated with me for a day, and letting that be okay and letting that be a threshold that we can be comfortable with, it can be tremendously freeing.

And that's what we're shooting for.

As we kick off July in this approval detox, I want to leave you with some reflection exercises so that you can assess whether and to what extent some of this approval seeking is taking place in your life. Furthermore, this week I want to leave you with a weekly challenge that you can do for the next seven days to just start flexing some of those self-trust muscles. So let's start with the reflection exercise. Grab a journal.

And I'm gonna give you a few questions to just reflect upon.

If a journal's not your thing, that's perfectly fine. Just sit silently and think on these questions. You might even pause the podcast and give yourself some space to really work through them. Number one, where am I making decisions primarily to avoid disappointing someone else?

Number two, what am I tolerating because I want to be like?

three, what truth am I afraid to speak?

four, what would I do differently if approval wasn't required?

Five, where have I been abandoning myself to keep the peace? So pause after each question and just allow yourself some time to answer it honestly, not judge what comes up, but just practice that awareness because that awareness is where we can start fixing it and recovering some of that self-trust.

Here's your weekly challenge to take with you to further explore this work. For the next seven days, I want you to practice one small act of self loyalty every day. Some examples of that may include saying no, period, and no overexplaining. Just letting no be a complete sentence and not feeling the need to justify or overexplain. State a preference clearly when someone says,

What do you want to watch tonight? I want to watch this movie. What do you want to have for dinner tonight? This is what I want to have. Where do you want to go for lunch? Stating your preference outright instead of the default that most of us say, Well, I don't know, what do you think? But instead, reaching for your own decision and offering it up right out of the gate.

Ask for what you need. This could be from someone in your professional life or someone in your personal life. But just identify a space where you're not getting what you want and state it clearly.

For instance, if it's a personal relationship, you could say, I need you to ask me how my day was and actually seem interested. If it's a professional relationship, it could be I need you to give me some constructive feedback as well as some positive feedback at the same time. I can't do one or the other. Can you please give me more of the latter?

Decline something that drains you, whether it's coffee with a friend or dinner or even a work meeting that you just don't have the juice for and you know deep down that pit in your stomach that you don't want to go, decline it without explanation, just because that's what's right for you.

Last, maybe you allow someone else to manage their disappointment. So many of us that are driven by approval, when we feel like we've disappointed someone, we will go out of our way to try and make it right, try and soot them, try and make them feel better. Instead of doing that, I challenge you to just let someone be disappointed. And you could simply say, I'm really sorry that you're disappointed, but this is a decision that I feel strongly about. And that is the end of the discussion and the conversation.

And let them figure out how they want to handle their emotions that they're responsible for, and you will deal with yours. Those are just some examples of things that you can do this week, but I really encourage you to find your own ways to explore more self-loyalty every day during the course of this week. As you do that, notice what emotions come up, what discomforts, what judgmental thoughts come up when you're not comforting someone, when you're declining a meeting, or when you say no.

Without any explanation, what comes up for you? And pay attention to how often that approval seeking is in there somewhere. This is not about perfection whatsoever. This exercise is just to help you begin developing awareness around places in our lives that we outsource our worth, we outsource our own needs and opinions.

If you are engaging in this challenge for the week and you want to share, please send me an email to autumn at the uncomfortable dream.com. I will be sharing those on social media. So please let me know if it's okay to use your first name, no last names, obviously. But if you're participating and you had a win or some discomfort that you want to share with me, email me. I would love to hear from you.

The reason we are doing this for the month of July is because I really am feeling very strongly pulled to this idea that being liked is not the same as being loved. And it's definitely not the same thing as being yourself. And as I I've gotten older, I'm finding more and more areas of my life where I care a lot about keeping people happy and making sure they like me and they're not bad mouthing me.

And it's just fascinating to identify these areas of my life. And I've been thinking about it more and more. And I think a lot of us do this a lot. And so I'm hopeful that this July approval detox will resonate with a lot of you. Because ultimately, recovery from that approval seeking begins when we stop asking ourselves how do I get everyone to approve of me? And instead, we focus only on how do I stop abandoning.

Myself, my own wants and my own needs.

When we do that, the world really opens up and our energy dramatically changes. And what we want that maybe we haven't been paying attention to can suddenly become clear. And that's a beautiful thing because that's where I get so excited is helping people not only figure out what that thing is, but now that I'm clear on it and I want to show up and be faithful to myself and live authentically, how do I get it?

And that's the work that I truly love and find so transformative for my clients.

Thank you so much for joining me on this first episode of our July Approval Detox. As you go about your week this week, just keep in mind that you don't need permission from anybody to show up the way that you want to in the way that you were meant to. Keep that in mind this week as you move forward. Inside Becoming Her, my premium space this month, we're exploring the self-abandonment recovery project.

It's a deeper journey into understanding how approval seeking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and self-abandonment really keeps us disconnected from ourselves and how to begin coming home to who we really are. If you're interested, the link is in the show notes, and I hope that you'll join me there.

Otherwise, I will see you next week where I'll be rolling out a new moon guided meditation

As well as a full episode on what to do when being the good girl stops working.

I will see you there.