26. Why Boundaries Make People Pleasers Feel Guilty

New behaviors feel awkward and you may feel guilty, anxious, or fearful ... but could it be vulnerable instead?  Just because our honest choices conjure up uncomfortable feelings, doesn't mean we have made a wrong choice.

Learning to sit with uncomfortable feelings is the new skill we are learning and practicing so we can become the women God has created us to be instead of people pleasers.

https://www.rhondamorales.com

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:03

You're listening to Forget People Pleasing, the show for women who want to understand how people pleasing can keep you from being who God created you to be, and what to do about it. I'm your host, Rhonda Morales, and today we're talking about what do you do with the uncomfortable feelings that show up when you finally start making healthier choices. This is an area that doesn't get enough attention because when you begin changing your people-pleasing behaviors and start making choices that are truthful, emotionally healthy, and aligned with God, some people may decide they don't particularly like the new version of you. You've probably heard the phrase: the only people who get upset when you set boundaries are the ones who benefited from you not having any. If you have spent years accommodating everyone else's wants, keeping the peace, saying yes when you wanted to say no, overlooking behavior that hurt you, or making yourself responsible for everybody else's feelings, and then you stop. There may be some disruption in your relationships. And quite frankly, that disruption may be exactly what kept you from changing into healthier, more aligned, truthful behaviors in the first place. You were, of course, fearful. Fearful that you would disappoint someone or that they would be angry with you, or maybe they thought of you as selfish, or afraid that you wouldn't be invited next time, afraid that they wouldn't like you anymore, maybe even afraid that they would leave. But here's the update: you've grown emotionally and spiritually. You've begun realizing that it is better to please God and live honestly as the woman he created you to be, rather than to continue being fake or allowing fear to make your decisions for you. And that brings us then to today's topic: learning to sit with uncomfortable feelings because anxiety, guilt, fear are uncomfortable. But their presence does not automatically mean you have made an unhealthy choice. I want you to hear that. Their presence, the uncomfortable feelings, doesn't mean automatically that you have made an unhealthy choice. We can name our feeling of guilt, but really it's more accurately and likely called vulnerability because we did something different, not wrong. We changed the pattern of pleasing, which equals acceptance or proval, to honesty equals unknown response, which makes us feel vulnerable and fearful. When we don't manipulate the outcome, yes, I said that, and I'm gonna say it again. When we don't manipulate the outcome, and in parentheses, by people pleasing, then we sit in unknown waters. Same goes for anxiety, which is caused because you interrupted your old pattern. And practicing something new tends to feel awkward, doesn't it? I'm thinking about the stretches that I learned to do for my hips. When I first started doing them, they felt awkward and difficult. My body wasn't accustomed to moving that way. But after practicing them over and over, I can now ease into those stretches. What once felt awkward now feels rather natural. It actually feels like a bit of a relief. And emotional growth works much the same way. The first time you say, No, I'm not available, you may feel terrible. The first time you don't explain yourself for 10 minutes after saying no, you might want to grab your phone and send another text just to make sure that they understood and maybe to alleviate your fears that they aren't mad, or maybe to just make sure, are we okay? People pleasers are really good at trying to make discomfort disappear. So we overexplain, we apologize when we haven't done anything wrong, we soften the boundary until it really isn't even a boundary anymore. We rush back in and rescue someone from the consequences of their own choices. Why? Why do we do this? Because their discomfort creates discomfort in us. We must know that their discomfort creates discomfort in us, and we haven't learned how to sit with it yet. But emotional maturity says, I can tolerate someone being disappointed with me, I can tolerate someone misunderstanding me. I can tolerate someone not agreeing with my decision, and I can tolerate the knot in my stomach without immediately changing my boundary. This is a skill, and skills get stronger with practice. Sometimes we mistakenly believe that peace means everybody around us is happy with us, but that isn't really peace. Sometimes that's what we call appeasement. There's a difference, isn't there? Galatians 1:10 asks, Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or of God? That verse challenges us because sometimes obeying God, honoring our values, and taking responsibility for our own lives will indeed disappoint another person. Jesus disappointed people, and he certainly wasn't controlled by whether approved of him. So when you begin living differently, I want you to pay attention to what happens inside of you. You so you set the boundary, then anxiety arrives, or fear, or guilt, and instead of immediately assuming I made the wrong decision, try saying, This feels uncomfortable because it's new. That's really important. It's changing our story about what uncomfortable means. Because people pleasers often confuse the feeling of guilt with the fact of guilt. Ask yourself, was I dishonest? Was I rude? Or did I simply disappoint someone? Those are very different things. You are allowed to disappoint people because sometimes the only way to avoid disappointing another person is to disappoint yourself over and over again. And that is chronic self-abandonment that may be unaligned and dishonest to who God created you to be. And eventually that creates resentment. We talked about resentment in our last episode, and resentment often becomes the warning light on the dashboard telling us something needs attention. If you want to learn more about resentment, then listen to episodes 2, 19, andor 25. So back to the topic of today. And in summary, changing your people-pleasing pattern may feel uncomfortable before it feels peaceful. So don't run from the discomfort too quickly. Give your nervous system time to learn that somebody being unhappy with you is not an emergency. Give yourself time to learn that you don't have to fix every uncomfortable emotion, and give other people the dignity of managing their own feelings. Their disappointment, their opinion, and their reaction belongs to them. Your responsibility is to examine your heart, make your decision with wisdom, kindness, honesty, and prayer, and then allow other adults to decide what they're going to do with it. Free to be authentically you offers you peace. You are a better manager of your time, your energy, and other resources. You can set a boundary and still be a loving Christian woman. You can be kind without abandoning yourself. And you can love people without constantly accommodating them. So this week, when that uncomfortable feeling shows up after you make a healthier decision, don't immediately rush to make it disappear. Notice it, name it, pray about it, and remind yourself uncomfortable does not mean unhealthy. Sometimes uncomfortable simply means I'm learning a new way to live. And eventually, just like those hip stretches I was telling you about, what once felt awkward may become a whole lot easier. So until next time, friends, keep choosing truth over approval and become more of the woman God created you to be.