No more people-pleasing

March 13, 2025 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Now what?

When we begin the work of letting go of people-pleasing, it can feel like everything is shifting.

For so long, acceptance and connection may have looked like being agreeable, accommodating, pleasant, helpful, easy to get along with. We may have shaped ourselves around what others needed or expected. We became the supportive friend, the reliable colleague, the one who didn’t rock the boat.

And underneath all of that was the quiet hope: If I can be who they want me to be, then I’ll be accepted. Then I’ll belong. Then I’ll be loved.

But people-pleasing is not the same as genuine acceptance or connection. It’s performance masquerading as intimacy. It’s self-abandonment in the name of belonging. And at some point, we realize that the cost is too high.

We realize that we’ve been offering curated versions of ourselves in exchange for “acceptance” or “connection.” But “acceptance” by others of curated versions of ourselves – is that really the acceptance or true connection we want?

So what do acceptance and connection look like now, in this next phase, post-people-pleasing?

It looks like showing up as your full self, not just the “palatable” parts.
It looks like being honest about your needs, your limits, your preferences.
It looks like saying “no” without over-explaining or justifying.
It looks like letting go of the idea that you have to manage other people’s emotions in order to feel safe in relationship.

And yes—this might feel strange and uncomfortable at first. We might worry that we’re being selfish, or “too much,” or not “nice enough.” That’s normal. We’re unlearning patterns that were reinforced for a long time.

But as we keep choosing honesty over false harmony, self-respect over self-sacrifice, we’ll notice something: our relationships begin to shift. Some will fall away. Some will deepen. And new ones will emerge—ones rooted in mutual authenticity, not some performance.

True connection doesn’t require us to stay small. It invites us to expand. It welcomes all of who we are.

Your turn:

In what ways have you curated yourself to maintain acceptance or connection?
What does authentic acceptance and connection feel like to you now?
What are you willing to let go of in order to experience more aligned relationships?

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What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Choose discomfort?

February 27, 2025 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Your new currency.

Why is it so hard to make changes in our lives, even when we know they will benefit us?

Because change requires discomfort—and our brains are wired to avoid it.

We make changes because we recognize that our current habits, routines, or mindsets aren’t fully aligned with who we want to become. It’s not that who we are right now is “wrong” or “not good enough.” It’s simply that we know we’re capable of more. We know we can grow.

Making changes is an act of self-care. We choose to eat healthier, deepen relationships, find more fulfilling work, or be more present in our lives—not because we’re trying to “fix” ourselves, but because we care about the person we are becoming.

At first, change feels exciting. We’re motivated, thinking, I can do this. This feels good.

But then … it gets hard.

The discomfort sets in. We feel resistance. Our brain urges us to return to what’s easy, comfortable, and familiar—even if that old comfort is exactly why we wanted to change in the first place.

We think:
🔹 I don’t feel like it today.
🔹 I’ll just scroll for a few more minutes.

🔹 It won’t make a difference anyway.
🔹 I miss him so much—maybe I’ll just text him.

These urges pull us back to comfort. But if we keep answering them, we’ll never pass through the hard part.

So let it be hard—and keep going anyway.

Discomfort is the price we pay for growth. The more we allow it, the closer we get to real transformation. When we stick to the plan, sit with the discomfort, and honor our commitment to ourselves, something shifts.

What once felt impossible becomes second nature. The habit becomes part of who we are. The future version of you is waiting. Are you willing to pay the price of some discomfort in the short term to get there?

Your Turn:

Are you ready to stop flaking on yourself?
What would happen if you let it be hard or uncomfortable—and kept going anyway?
How would your life be different if the thing you’re struggling with now simply became part of who you are?

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Ready to set boundaries?

October 17, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Feel the discomfort.

I haven’t talked about boundaries in a while and my next podcast episode that’s out today is about boundaries, so I’m revisiting them here too!

Sometimes people mix up setting boundaries with trying to control others. We do not create boundaries for other people. We create boundaries to take care of and protect ourselves.

Boundaries are not:

Ways to control or manipulate other people
Things you think other people should be doing (e.g. “I want my partner to clean the bathroom,” “I want my friend to call me back when I call her,” “I want my kid to clean her room.”)

We can learn to recognize when to use and talk about boundaries. This means having a clear sense of what and where our boundaries are. When we don’t have clear boundaries, people don’t know if they’re violating them or not.

When there is a clear boundary violation, such as someone speaking to us in a demeaning way or someone doing something in our home that’s not allowed, then we have the boundary conversation.

The conversation includes making a clear request along with stating a clear consequence. The consequence is something that WE will do, an action or behavior that WE will take.

Here’s an example of a clear boundary: “If you smoke a cigarette in my house, I am going to ask you to leave my house. We don’t allow smoking here. This is what I will do if you smoke.”

It’s important to remember that the person we’re making the request of can continue to do whatever they would like to do. Human beings can smoke cigarettes if they want. It’s not a boundary violation until they come into our home or our car or our space and try to smoke cigarettes there.

Notice that when we make the request, “If you continue to do that, then I will…” the consequence is the behavior that WE will take. It’s not, “You need to stop smoking or else.” We’re making the request and then explaining what WE will do as the consequence of not following that request.

So why don’t we set boundaries when we know we want to? Because usually it’s difficult and uncomfortable to make these requests and establish consequences with the people in our lives.

Sometimes it’s so uncomfortable for us that we avoid making the requests. Or if we do make the requests, we don’t actually follow through on the consequences. Because that’s uncomfortable too – doing what we say we’ll do when someone violates a boundary means potentially risking our relationship with that person or facing their disapproval.

But then what happens when we don’t make these requests or when we don’t follow through on the consequences? People continue to violate our boundaries.

And we get upset and build up resentments. Usually we’re the only ones feeling this way, because the people who continue to violate our boundaries either don’t know they’re doing so or don’t think there are any consequences for doing so.

There’s a lot more to say about boundaries – more next week!

Your turn: Are you recognizing why you might not be setting boundaries that would benefit your life? What would you have to believe in order to make the requests and follow through on the consequences? How can you practice saying what you want to say instead of avoiding setting boundaries with people?

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Satisfied or Afraid?

August 22, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

May you discern accurately.

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts the other day and the episode (an older one from 2023) featured Michelle Obama talking about her book The Light We Carry.

The hosts and Michelle were talking about her parents and how they were content and deeply satisfied people. However, the potential downside of being deeply satisfied with life sometimes is stuckness or rigidness – a fear of being more and doing more, outside our comfort zone.

I interpreted this as meaning that we need to be able to discern between being content and satisfied with our lives versus being afraid to do new things, or to have or be more than we already are.

This felt powerful and revealing to me because I’ve recently been considering certain things in my life. Travel, for instance. I traveled a lot when I was in my mid-20’s and 30’s, and now I recognize that I have less of a desire to travel.

Part of this is because I enjoy being HOME now and reveling in the home space I’ve created for myself. Another part of me knows that it takes a lot of energy and planning to travel too, which, when I think about it, already feels exhausting (!). And another part of me feels resistant to the discomfort of being away from home, in new places, without the familiarity of the things I’m usually surrounded by.

Of course, there’s also excitement and adventure in being around new places, people, and things. I’ll be on the east coast for two weeks soon, and I’m feeling the anticipation of that – having a change of scenery and exploring new places, doing things outside of my routine.

I’ll be traveling internationally later this year too, to places that I haven’t been before. Yes, it does take energy and planning. Yes, it may be tiring and uncomfortable. But it will also be fun and exciting to explore, eat, and experience new things.

Because, could I be satisfied if I never got to travel anywhere again and just got to be HOME, like I enjoy? Maybe. But what would I be missing? Would I be missing out on growth opportunities? Experiencing things I wouldn’t otherwise get to experience? Yes. All because of a little fear of being uncomfortable.

And it had me questioning, WHERE ELSE in my life am I doing this? Where else in my life do I think I might be “satisfied” with how things are, but in reality, I’m actually just resistant to feeling some discomfort or feeling afraid to expand?

My life coach says, “Discomfort is the currency of growth.” And isn’t that TRUE? There is no growth without discomfort.

Ultimately, we get to decide if we’re satisfied or afraid. May we discern accurately.

Your turn: Where in your life might you think you’re “satisfied” but in actuality, you might be afraid to stretch yourself to be more, do more, or have more?

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Overeating, overdrinking, over-anything?

July 27, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Stop buffering.

This week we’re talking about buffering. What is buffering?

We buffer to avoid feeling emotional pain or uncomfortable emotions.

When we buffer, we use external things to change how we feel internally. This means engaging in an action to put a buffer between us and a feeling we don’t want to feel.

The action could be something like overeating, overdrinking, overspending, over-Instagraming, over-Netflixing, overworking, over-cleaning, or over-exercising. It could be anything, if we’re using that thing/action to prevent ourselves from feeling an emotion.

These things become false pleasures that have a net-negative outcome: When we overeat, we gain weight. When we overdrink, we end up with hangovers and half of the next day is ruined. When we overspend, we go into debt or don’t meet our savings goals.

If buffering is what we do to avoid pain/discomfort, it makes sense that when we stop buffering, we’ll feel pain/discomfort. But most of us don’t understand this, which makes it almost impossible to stop buffering.

We have to be willing to feel uncomfortable in order to move past our buffers.

An analogy for this is like stepping into a house and turning on the lights and the house is a mess. The obvious and easiest answer is to turn the lights back off (to buffer) so the mess will “go away.” But the mess doesn’t go away–you just can’t see it now because the lights are off.

It’s similar with emotions. Avoiding an emotion doesn’t make the emotion go away—it just helps us not to see or feel it. We pretend it isn’t there, but it is there, and it’s there for a reason.

When we stop buffering, we’ll likely experience temporary pain. And the pain isn’t caused by the lack of buffering. What we need to do is stop buffering ourselves long enough to find the cause of the pain.

When we give up our buffers, we’ll still get upset, but we’ll deal with it differently. We won’t head for the ice cream, which will just make us feel sick or regretful. We’ll deal with it by becoming aware and examining why we’re upset. Soon, we won’t even want ice cream or chips because the (false) pleasure we get from food—or whatever buffering actions we’re doing—actually diminishes, and the pleasure we get from taking care of ourselves and fueling ourselves increases.

Instead of using external things to change how we feel, we can use our minds to change how we feel. Or we can even choose to feel and process the emotion in the moment.

Your turn: What feelings have you been avoiding? What are the false pleasures you’ve been engaging in? In what way would your life be better if you didn’t have these false pleasures? Are you ready to stop buffering and willing to feel some discomfort instead, to move towards real well-being?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help create a more meaningful life in which you start committing to yourself and show up the way you want? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

Ready to stop procrastinating?

December 15, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Feel the feelings.

Some of us thrive on procrastination, saying that it’s the only way we get stuff done—the incentive of a deadline and having no time left to do anything else but the thing we could’ve done two weeks ago. The adrenaline, the motivation. Procrastination has become a habit for those of us.

And that’s great for those who like the adrenaline and the deadlines and the rush of it all.

For those of us who wish we could stop procrastinating so we didn’t need to crash into deadlines, or feel the thing looming over us the whole time, or experience the stress of adrenaline, there’s another way.

It may not be easy, but it’s simple.

Why do we procrastinate? We can probably come up with a bunch of reasons, but the main reason is we associate some level of pain, fear, or discomfort with the activity we’re procrastinating about. That’s it.

To overcome procrastination, we need to understand that all of that pain, fear, and discomfort is mostly imagined—coming from our thoughts in our heads.

Thinking about doing it can seem scary. So the more we think about it, the more we procrastinate. But actually doing it? Doing the thing we’ve been thinking about, the thing we know we need to do, can be liberating.

We stop expending energy on thinking about NOT doing it and why we HAVEN’T done it yet and we just expend energy on DOING IT.

The feelings of fear and discomfort may be there for us, they may be real. But allowing it to be scary and uncomfortable and DOING IT ANYWAY shows ourselves that we can feel our feelings AND do hard things.

Most of the time, our perceptions become irrelevant while we’re doing the thing we THINK is painful, scary, or uncomfortable. Actually doing the thing frees us from our fear—it’s almost never as “bad” as we told ourselves it would be.

There’s an added benefit as well: soon what we imagined would be uncomfortable settles gently inside our comfort zone. Just from doing it and realizing that it wasn’t “so bad” after all.

We start to build trust with ourselves, knowing that we’ll do the thing when we say we’ll do it. And get it done. Without having it loom over us or stay on our to-do list for days, even weeks.

So in order for us to find the motivation we need to do the things we habitually procrastinate on, we must:

Remember that our thoughts about the thing are what makes it uncomfortable (scary, painful, uncertain, etc.)—not actually the thing itself or doing the thing
Allow ourselves to feel the feelings of discomfort and DO IT ANYWAY—because we know we’re going to have to do it at some point, why have it looming over us the whole time and spend mental energy on it that way?

When we start doing the things we used to procrastinate on, we’ll start to feel proud of ourselves. We’ll realize that the choice to procrastinate is exactly that, a choice—one that we no longer have to settle for now that we’re clear about what was causing it.

Your turn: What parts of this resonate with you? If procrastination is just a choice and not an “identity” (e.g. “I’m a person who procrastinates” vs. “I have chosen to procrastinate in the past”) how would your life be different? What are some things you can start practicing with—doing them when you say you’ll do them instead of putting them off like you used to?

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Ready to set boundaries?

November 10, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Feel uncomfortable.

We’ll be talking about boundaries for the next couple weeks, so we can get ready for the upcoming holidays with family members!

Sometimes people mix up setting boundaries with trying to control others. We do not create boundaries for other people. We create boundaries to take care of and protect ourselves.

Boundaries are not:

Ways to control or manipulate other people
Things you think other people should be doing (e.g. “I want my partner to clean the bathroom,” “I want my friend to call me back when I call her,” “I want my kid to clean her room.”)

We need to recognize when to use and talk about boundaries. This means having a clear sense of what and where our boundaries are. When we don’t have clear boundaries, people don’t know if they’re violating them or not.

When there is a clear boundary violation, such as someone speaking to us in a demeaning way or someone doing something in our home that’s not allowed, we have the boundary conversation.

The conversation includes making a clear request along with stating a clear consequence. The consequence is something that WE will do, an action or behavior that WE will take.

Here’s an example of a clear boundary: “If you smoke a cigarette in my house, I am going to ask you to leave my house. We don’t allow smoking here. This is what I will do if you smoke.”

Notice that when we make the request, “If you continue to do that, then I will…” the consequence is the behavior that WE will take. It’s not, “You need to stop smoking or else.” We’re making the request and then explaining what we will do as the consequence of not following that request.

OK, so why don’t we set boundaries? Because sometimes it’s difficult and uncomfortable to make these requests and establish consequences with the people in our lives.

Sometimes it’s so uncomfortable for us that we avoid making the requests. Or if we do make the requests, we don’t actually follow through on the consequences. Because that’s uncomfortable too–doing what we say we’ll do when someone violates a boundary means potentially risking our relationship with that person or facing their disapproval.

But then what happens when we don’t make these requests or when we don’t follow through on the consequences? People continue to violate our boundaries.

And we get upset and build up resentments. Usually we’re the only ones feeling this way, because the people who continue to violate our boundaries don’t think there are any consequences for doing so.

There’s a lot more to say about boundaries–more next week!

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