Recovering people pleaser: a story about how a salad proved I'm healing

[Intro] Hello and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm your host, Corinne Powell. I'm an intuitive guide, and I absolutely love helping people to heal from within so that they can create a life that they love, a life that they enjoy. 

We weren't meant to just tolerate and get through life. We were meant to thrive and enjoy the life we're living. Of course, we will have seasons and moments that are difficult and challenging, and the beauty of it is that we can be supported in those moments. 

I am here to be an aid and a guide to support you, and I hope that you will enjoy not only today's episode, but some of the past episodes if you haven't heard them yet. On this podcast, I talk about all things inner wellness. We also sprinkle in some spirituality and parenting, because as a mom to three kids, parenting is a big part of my life. 

I hope that you enjoy the episode and that there's at least one thing you'll pull from it and start to implement into your own life. If you want to follow me in other ways, you can find me on Instagram @corinne_changeradically, or on Facebook, Change Radically. 

Would you do me a favor and share this podcast with your friends if you hear an episode that resonates with you? And would you also go ahead and give me a rating and review my podcast? It would mean so much to me, and I would appreciate it. I hope that you enjoy the episode and that we connect. 

All right, so we're continuing the conversation about ways you can know that you are healing, you are changing, you are coming out of codependency and people-pleasing. I'm going to relay a story to you that happened at Panera Bread a few weeks ago. 

I went cause I wanted to get some work done, so I brought my laptop with me. I ordered a salad, and I don't remember if it was a sandwich or soup. And when I got my order, I saw some of the lettuce leaves, and they looked like they just weren't fresh. And in the past, I would have thought to myself or said, “I can deal with this. It's okay. I don't want to make a fuss. I don't want to be an inconvenience. I'll just eat it, or I'll pick them all out and not have the whole salad”. Instead, I went back up to the counter and I asked them to remake my salad. And I didn't explain away why. I might have said something about the lettuce didn't look fresh to me, but that would have been the extent of what I said. And could you remake my salad? 

And if you've come out of codependency and people-pleasing, you, completely understand what I mean about that idea of not wanting to be the inconvenience, thinking, oh, “I just make this work. But then the whole time you're eating your salad, you're either thinking, this is ridiculous, I just paid money for this and now I'm not even able to eat the whole thing”, or, “I'm not comfortable eating this”, and you're regretting your decision to not go back and ask, but you're also not going back and asking. 

I think one of the most incredible things is in the past, if it was my friend whose salad was not the way she wanted, I would have had no issue going up to the counter and saying, “Hey, can you remake this?” For someone else, but for myself, I wouldn't have done it. 

It's a beautiful thing when we start treating ourselves with love and respect and I treat myself as well as I would the next person. That's an indicator. You're growing in self love, in self care, in a good way, and to be able to use your voice and advocate for yourself, to not need to explain, “oh, I'm sorry”, I don't know a big explanation as to, could you just change the salad for me? I understand if you can't. Just using all these words to basically say, “Hey, I'm not happy with this, and I'd like it to be remade”. 

And I even had to be aware of the intrusive thoughts that wanted to come afterwards. Like, maybe they thought you were too much. Like, come on, you could have eaten the salad like that. What was it going to do? It wasn't going to harm you. And I just let those thoughts be like, “No, it's fine that I asked. I paid for this, and now I'm happy with what I got and I enjoyed my salad”. And this is one way you can know “I am healing, I am changing”. 

This is a story about a salad. But this applies to so many areas of our life. Whether it's something we order that isn't to our liking or wasn't made the way it was described, or a service that we received that wasn't the way it should have been, or the way a person is treating us or interacting with us that we're not comfortable with. It's all these ways we have an opportunity to speak up, to use our voice, to advocate for ourselves and stand up for ourselves. In another word, you could say to protect yourself, but I say that in the way of advocating, and these are all good things for any of us coming out of codependency and people pleasing because we learn to put ourselves on the back burner. 

We learn to grin and bear it, to stuff it. Or we got so in other people's heads that we decided, you know what? Since I don't want to be misunderstood, I don't want to be criticized or judged. I don't want to be looked at as this certain person or this in this sort of way. I'm not going to say this or I'm not going to do this. And when we disempower those stories and we stop projecting onto everyone else based off of maybe some of the past experiences we had, you legitimately may have been told you were too much or that, “Hey, you should just grin and bear it or just stuff your feelings and your thoughts”. “This isn't an appropriate time to share your opinion”. 

You well might have heard or experienced these things. The point isn't that we now live our life based off of what our parental figures or somebody else in our life said to us or about us or about life. It's time you reevaluate and you get to decide for yourself what feels best for me, what is aligned with the direction I'm going now?  What is actually true to my authentic self? 

Because you can know with certainty if you're sitting at a table, let's go back to the salad situation and you're eating that salad or looking at that salad and thinking, “I really wish I had gone up and gotten another one. I'm really disappointed. I spent money on this. I'm really unhappy with this”. If you have any of those thoughts, you can know I need to do something about this. 

That is your indicator. Go. Go back and stand up for yourself. And then watch out for the inner critic in the inner dialogue that may want to say otherwise, that may want to say, “you shouldn't have done that. They're going to think you've got the complicated order or they're going to think you're so picky”. No, you don't have to empower those thoughts. Those thoughts can show up, can run through your head and can leave. 

And so what if they think I'm picky? So what if they think she could have just dealt with this? They're allowed to think that and I'm allowed to ask for what I think is best for me. And hey, I mean, we're paying for something and we're supposed to get something in return for it as well. But like I said, this goes for relationships. This goes for standing up and using our voice. You can know that if you're standing up and using your voice that you're creating some riffs. You're feeling the tension in the room because you're actually speaking out something that's oppositional, that you're probably doing what you need to do if you've always stifled your voice, if you shut your voice down.

Yeah, it might be messy, you might feel like my emotions got really big. Like, I felt dysregulated as I spoke up. That's okay. You have to start somewhere. If you've been used to shutting your voice down, you might feel dysregulated when you start using it. That's a part of the process. Over time, we get more comfortable with a new practice. When we're initially doing it, it's uncomfortable. It's unknown. 

We may not know how to navigate it, but it's okay to learn as you go. It's okay for it to be messy. It's okay even to go back later and apologize. Not for everything you said, but you could say, hey, I realized that when that came out, that was a lot. But I'm trying to learn to use my voice. I'm trying to speak up for myself. I'm trying to share my own thoughts and opinions. And because I haven't done that for a while, it's really uncomfortable, and it's hard for me, so sometimes it's going to sound messy. It's going to be, yeah, I don't know how else to put it. It's going to be messy. And I need grace in that. I'm going to need to be able to continue to do that until I work this out in me. 

And, hey, the other person, they don't have to give you grace. They don't have to be okay with. It doesn't mean you don't need to stop speaking up. It doesn't mean that you need to shut your voice down again. So I hope this has been helpful. And if you're like, “Oh, my goodness, she gets me. She understands how I think and the struggles I have”. Even if you're not at that place where you're starting to speak up for yourself and you're advocating for yourself and you're asking for the things you want, even if you're not there yet, I'm ready to help you get there. 

And yes, if you think, “wow, she understands how I think”. It's because this is what I've come out of. I get it. I understand what it is to shut yourself down. I understand what it is to be the person who doesn't want to be looked at as a problem child. So then you put on this Persona and you shut yourself down at your own expense. We're missing out, and so is everyone else because they don't get to experience us for who we authentically are. And I believe who you authentically are is worth getting to know. 

So please reach out to me. I'd love to set up a session with you or have you join one of the group sessions that I run biweekly. And let's do this. Let's help you together, me and you, we link arms. We help you get where you want to go, because you should get to stand up for yourself. You should get to advocate for yourself. You should be able to use your voice and share freely your opinion and not have the repercussion later on of the intrusive thoughts that spiral you downward and the inner critic who wants to say, “oh, my gosh, why did you say that? Why did you act that way?” 

No, that voice should not get to be the one that is empowered in our heads. And there's a lot we can do about it. And there's even things I share on past episodes about our thoughts and what we can do with them and other ways that we heal ourselves. Because it's definitely not all cognitive, for sure. There's the somatic, the body piece. There's healing the inner child. There's all these components to healing. But I'm all about it, and I'm ready to stand with you and support you. So here's to people pleasing less and living more interdependent and less codependent. I'm rooting for you, and I'm right on that journey with you. 

[Ending] We've come to the end. What did you think about what you heard? I hope that there's something you pull from today's episode and start implementing it into your life. Create the change that you want to see, the change that you hear about. You have the opportunity to transform your life, and I'm ready to link arms with you and to help and guide you to the life that you want to live. 

If you resonated with what you heard today and it touched you, would you share it with your friends? Would you also go ahead and rate my podcast and write a written review? It would mean so much to me. I hope that we'll connect, whether it's for a session or just to connect because I enjoy meeting new people. 

You can find me on Instagram, @corinne_changeradically, or on Facebook Change Radically. You can also always email me at corinne@changeradically.com if you have thoughts, questions, or anything that you just want to talk about, send me an email. I hope that you have a wonderful week. 

But no matter what your week is like, in the moments that are quiet, maybe it's when you pillow your head at night, or when you're driving in the car or taking a walk. Or maybe it's going to be in the midst of the chaos with your children or the craziness of work. I hope that you'll remember how significant you are, that there is meaning and value to your life, and that I for one am so glad that you're alive. Catch you again next week.