Why People Pleasing is Hurting You | Salma Hindy | TEDxUofT

I want you all to picture your average Joe but for the sake of feminism her name is Joanne she's sitting at her couch on a weekday night and she gets a text from her co-worker hey Joanne do you mind covering my shift this Saturday night at the same time her neighbor knocks at her door hey Joanne I'm gonna be going on vacation next week do you mind watching my dog and then her roommate walks in and is like Joanne can I just grab your charger sure Joanne says as she looks down at her phone that's only ten percent thanks Joanne we can always count on you Joanne is a typical example of a people pleaser a people pleaser is one of the nicest most helpful people you know they have a hard time saying no and you can always count on them for favors in fact they spend the majority of their time doing things for other people so far this sounds like a good thing but unfortunately this can lead to a pattern of unhealthy behaviors at one point in time each of us has been a Joanne each of us has agreed to do something that we weren't thrilled or ready to do and yet we still said yes why is that well many people use people-pleasing in the same way others use drugs alcohol food shopping as a way to avoid the disapproval or the discomfort of the disapproval of others but oftentimes when we talk about people pleasing we refer to it in a very shallow superficial context like I did with Joanne's story rarely do we ever stop to think that people pleasing can happen at a much deeper level and can actually play out in problematic ways in our lives that were not even aware of take my life for example I grew up in a strict household and I grew up I mean I still live there because I'm single I'm 27 and single which to my mother means that I'm old enough to be a mother of three but I'm too young to be allowed to stay out past 10 p.m. so I'm an engineer but I'm still trying to do their math growing up in a very strict Muslim family in community we grew up on this notion that our lives are on old and will only begin when we get married or when you're of no longer any interest to your parents but until then they pretty much make all the decisions for you and and we have no problem with that most of us have no problem going along with our parents decisions for us however this is where codependency is born codependency is defined as excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a loved one it is unconscious so you don't even realize it's happening where you're developing this emotional crutch on a loved one and the problem with codependency is that it often gives myself and a lot of us the excuse not to live or to live life in a more passive state and to not take responsibility for our decisions because we don't trust ourselves and this can lead to more problematic things in the future and we are conditioned into this behavior from a very young age so growing up I went to an Islamic school and they had limited resources you couldn't really do much was segregated especially if you were a girl because the guys would just like take over the gym every day during lunch so in an attempt to entertain each other and not die of boredom my girlfriends and I started to put on comedy sketches and storytelling and so since then I would say comedy became an integral part of my personality and then later when I went to university and I started to do one of the most brutal programs engineering humor became yes we got some engineers humor became honestly a survival mechanism it was something that I could use to create allies easily and then power through some of the most difficult years of our lives I still remember how intense our semesters used to be we would pull we've spent hours pull all-nighters in labs pouring our blood sweat and tears into our work preparing studying for our exams and I remember the day after when we would get our exams back and we would feel so relieved and it was so fulfilling knowing that you put in all that work and that you knew you were proud of yourself you knew that you deserved each and every single mark of the 54 percent you got back that was as a marginalized woman I could use comedy to build trust kind of like what I'm doing right now because oftentimes when people see me they have their guard up and they're like does she even English but then when I when I crack a joke they're like okay she's not too bad and it helps lighten the mood in an otherwise tense environment so to a lot of people it wasn't a surprise when two years ago during my masters in engineering I decided to do stand-up comedy yep and this was also my parents reaction but when I first started stand-up I decided to keep it hidden from my family because I myself didn't know what it was and I wanted to give myself the space to be able to explore this aspect of my creative identity without having to worry about the worry of others true story when I first heard stand-up I took a class at second city Toronto and we were going around the table and everyone had to introduce themselves and say why they were taking the course so the guy next to me goes my mom actually bought me this course for Christmas otherwise I wouldn't be here and then the girl next to him goes oh my god that's crazy and then everyone looks at me and I was like well my mom definitely didn't buy me this course for Christmas in fact she has absolutely no idea where I am I told her and my dad that I was taking a night class but I didn't say I which school the first time my family found out that I was doing stand-up was when I posted it on social media I yes probably not the smartest thing to do in hindsight I recorded a podcast with two friends and they had seen my first-ever performance and in that podcast I was discussing comedy and my future plans the thumbnail of the podcast was me and the two hosts my father who is a strict conservative Imam and who also happens to be my facebook friend so I at the same time as everyone else I remember the next day I was in the kitchen and I heard him upstairs he was like son oh man I think this is it and he's like storming down the stairs and he's like son and I'm like okay you know what like you've been preparing for this for the past two months it's finally about to happen he's like send me how could you and I'm like I'm ready he's like how could you take a picture with two boys I was like you but also what do you think engineering was like I was the only girl after that yeah it was definitely a surprise but he it hadn't hit him then and when it really hit him later he was devastated and what ensued was a series of non-stop arguments debates and endless people-pleasing I attempted over and over and over again to convince him and my mom and other community members I couldn't deal with the anxiety that those I loved most were unhappy with what I was doing I'm not saying everyone should rebel against their parents but I am but the problem with codependency is that if you don't break free of it it never really goes away it just transfers on to someone else like your partner your child your friends and it continues to propagate in problematic ways in your future when I stopped receiving emotional and spiritual validation from my parents I started to desperately seek it out in others like I wasn't getting it from my parents and it's not like I could get it from God it's not like I could have a conversation with him where he was like sanma you're on the right path don't worry and also your sweater isn't lost your sister just stole it like I didn't have that opportunity so instead I went out and I saw my friends community members siblings potential partners anyone that I could get my hand on really I saw out if validation from them but more than that I saw out an evasion for the responsibility of my decision until one day my friend asked me straight up the most simple question would you feel better if you quit I was like girl what but then I was like hmm would I would I feel better if I quit the answer was no no I wouldn't feel I know because I knew that this was something that I wanted to do if I quit I would feel relieved but I wouldn't feel better I would feel like I lost I would feel like I gave up and I was living in the shadow of others and not really being true to myself so if I didn't want to quit then why was I so upset because you people please my friend said people please me no that's not true I hardly do any favours ask my mom the dishwasher hasn't been touched in weeks I have no problem saying no but then I thought about it more and I faced I started to face my anxiety and my parents anxiety and I realized that all of it centered around this concept of what are people gonna think of me what's my reputation and because my parents would always tell me don't do it you're gonna ruin your reputation you're never gonna get married because you're ruining your reputation and then I thought about I was like okay if my parents biggest dream for me is marriage it's true you can ask my sister afterwards and and apparently me making this decision will prevent me from achieving that then is there truth to this people-pleasing logic and I thought about it and I after some observation I realized that according to this logic the same thing that can ruin someone's reputation the second they get married becomes magically like the superpower that got them married so for example in my community if you are a single girl and you like to play sports and you're into fitness people will be like oh what is this this is not feminine no one will want to marry her and then when she gets married they're like well yeah she took care of herself and she was doing what she loved if a girl is doing her PhD they're like Nana Nana no you're overqualified you're intimidating you're narrowing your pool of options you need to stop and when she gets married they're like well of course she was educated she's from a respectful family she got someone educated cuz she's educated and then if a girl is doing stand-up comedy they're like oh what is this standing onstage entertaining people this is not dignified and when she gets married they're like well of course she was charming she was witty she put herself out there who wouldn't want to be with her I still I I'm like waiting to hear that last line you guys I just I tell it to myself every night I sex it to myself from an unknown number but that's what made me realize that this people-pleasing logic is hypocritical it is inconsistent these same people will turn against you and support someone else for making the exact same decision if they succeed when other people start living without fear then they become the hero chances are each and every single one of us people please and on a deep level to here's how you know if you take others into account when making big life decisions or if you use your personal relationships as road blocks as excuses to stop you from pursuing your dreams then you are a people pleaser I started to do this exercise with myself and it helps me really sift through whether I'm making a decision for myself or for others what I do is I imagine myself twenty to thirty years in the future sitting with my daughters and they're discussing something on the news in this case a comedian and I interrupt them and I'm like you know I could have been a comedian and they're like okay mom so then why didn't you and I stop to think about every single possible answer I can give them in that scenario like my mom didn't let me or I was too scared my community wasn't ready for it it was too hard and none of those excuses are strong enough to withstand the time leading up to that conversation and honestly I do this because I get so consumed in the moment by my loved ones that I don't know what's real I don't know what I want from my urge to people please but I've been so fortunate to learn in comedy that in order to become a successful people pleaser ie a comedian I had to learn to stop pleasing people and I really recommend that you try this yourself the next time you're faced with a decision for example a really close friend of mine she finished undergrad here we went to the same university and she went to live in the Middle East with her parents and then when they she told them mom dad I'm thinking of going back to Canada to do my Master's and they're like no Canada that's so far stay here what are you gonna do live alone no what will people say and then two years later they're like why don't you ever do your masters you could have been done by now with a job lined up instead of sitting here doing nothing do you see people pleasing doesn't even achieve what you think it does it doesn't make either party eternally happy because neither of them are making a decision from genuine conviction and I urge everyone here to take back the autonomy of your decision-making otherwise you will end up resenting the very same people that you sought out to please and each and every single one of us has an example like this I want you right now right now think back to a time where you want it to make a decision for your own self like I don't know anything like switching programs in university moving out of your house leaving the job you're not passionate about going abroad for a bit to study or to work somewhere marrying someone your parents don't approve of or leaving the long term relationship you're not happy and but you didn't do it because you thought it better not to for the sake of the greater good that was you people-pleasing I can't lie though people pleasing or breaking free of people-pleasing is not free liberation is not free it comes at a cost shortly after I had just started stand-up I remember I had a show where over 20 of my friends came out and I had a bad set it wasn't awful but it wasn't great and I just remember feeling so low after that show I felt so lost because the validation that I'd been receiving from audiences and friends up until that point had stopped and I needed it more than because I wasn't getting it from my own parents and that was the first and only time where I almost walked away from comedy because when the audience doesn't laugh and I don't have my parents approval is it worth it when you when you disappoint those you love you are constantly faced with a lot of doubt when I started comedy I went through a whirlwind of internal battles and I still go through them sometime but people-pleasing is not noble we are not heroes we are not martyrs we are these are the lies that we tell ourselves every night to deal with the decisions that we didn't make we are afraid we are codependent and we owe it to ourselves to stop because we are meant for more but it goes deeper than that I realized that I had reached a point where every single decision that was made in my life was by other people comedy was the first thing that was mine it was the first time I was face to face with a decision of this magnitude the outcome of which I would have to bear on my shoulders alone and that was scary we are terrified of our failures but we are even more terrified of our success so is there hope yes there is but it'll take time and patience to break free of that codependency and you'll never do it fully you will always fluctuate in and out of people pleasing I still do to this day like thinking about how this video is gonna go up online and my mom's gonna see it but what keeps me grounded is knowing that people pleasing comes from an underlying emotion of fear which is weak because why I live life out of fear when you can live it out of intent when I finally stopped chasing people's approval I became a better truer artist a more representative version of myself I was able to bring a more nuanced voice to life on stage and was able to give people a genuine complexity to relate to the complexity of my identity that I am a Muslim woman that I am educated that I am extroverted that I am a first generation Canadian that I am killing it in not one but two male-dominated fields so in the future when I'm sitting with my daughters and they ask me why didn't you go after your dreams mom I can say I did and you can too thank you so much everyone [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 169,174

Rating: 4.9308372 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Humanities, Health, Humor, Individualism, Psychology, Relationships

Id: 55HERZnmHT8

Length: 17min 35sec (1055 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2019