How People-Pleasing Lives in Your Body (And What to Do About It)
A somatic approach to people-pleasing
A somatic approach to people-pleasing starts with something most women haven't been told: people-pleasing is something you are doing in and through your body. For women especially, this pattern lives not just in thoughts or habits, but in the physical shape of how we move through the world.
Ways to think about the body
There are a number of ways to think about the body.
1. As an object. A consequence of merely biological processes. A thing. To be bent and shaped to your will. (Until of course it gets sick or injured or old and you realise you have little control at all).
2. As vessel. As an important but temporary container for your soul/consciousness/brain. A meat taxi to be used but eventually abandoned or transcended.
3. As a vital co-creating aspect of your personality and consciousness. The storehouse of your history, a living biography intricately entangled in shaping your perception of the world and what is possible in your future.
My approach is the third. The bodymind.
The bodymind
Our bodies are shaped by every single one of our experiences, in our own lives, and those of our ancestors.
Our bodies are the sole witnesses to our entire lives. Everything. EVERYTHING that we have ever experienced, has been experienced through our bodies.
And each experience has an impact.
The way I curl my shoulders in, how I tilt my head, the resonance of my voice, the speed of my walk - are all revealing my past to you.
The ways in which I have been harmed, the ways in which I have harmed others, the parts of me that have been shamed, those bathed in love. My suffering. My joy. My freedom. My bondage. My hatred. My love.
When you look at someone’s body, what you are seeing is biography.
You are witnessing how they have learned to cope in this impossibly brutal and beautiful world.
Not good, not bad but rather - shaped.
And in turn - shaping what's possible in their future.
People-pleasing is a coping strategy
People-pleasing, or ‘niceness’, is one of these coping strategies - it is done in and through the body. Niceness is a shaping of the bodymind.
Bring to mind a situation in which you are ‘too nice’.
What do you do in your body when you are people-pleasing, or ‘doing niceness’?
~ Do you shrink?
~ Lean forward?
~ Tilt your head?
~ What does your breath do?
~ Where are your eyes looking?
~ Is there tension/holding in some muscles?
Notice the shaping.
Now do the opposite in your body.
And notice how your experience and perception of the world changes in this moment.
Reflect on how the body had limited what it was possible for you to see, hear, feel, do ~ when you were doing niceness.
The body and her wisdom
History shapes our bodies
This shaping becomes a pattern, a habit. A well-worn groove in our being.
We get stuck in it. Identified with it.
We don’t realise we are doing it, we think it’s just who we are.
So we lose the possibility to do something different.
And history repeats and repeats and repeats.
But if you can do people-pleasing and niceness, you can do something different.
The key is to discover and grow a different way of being - in the body.
This why just reading the books, saying the affirmations, working on communication techniques etc doesn’t work - the body and her wisdom is key.
Want to go deeper?
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