The Childhood Roots of People Pleasing and Nice Guy Syndrome

So if you have people pleasing tendencies in your relationships, if you're the stereotypical nice guy, nice girl in relationships, placating, always doing and afraid to speak up and express yourself, this video will show you exactly why that's happening. I'm going to show you a graphic of how this works in terms of the metaphysics underneath it all. And it will give you a much deeper understanding of why conflict can be a challenge for you and how to step into conflict more and be more honest in your interpersonal relationships. So if you are a recovering nice guy or not a guy, you're generally noticing people pleasing. This can be men, it can be women, anybody in interpersonal relationships, right? If you have this problem of people pleasing, This will be an important video because I'm going to show you. the primary conflict, where it comes from. Now this really comes from childhood for us. And what I'm depicting here are kind of two states of consciousness. This is one frame of mind, mindset or state of consciousness that we find ourselves in. And this is the second state of consciousness that we come into contact with. So think of these as sort of frames of mind or states of consciousness. This first state of consciousness here is when What we want and what the other wants, primary caregiver or our parents, whoever it may be, this is a mindset where wills are joined, okay? So they have shared will. So let's label that one. This mindset here is when wills are shared. And the way I depict that is that this is the mindset But the mind orbits in this clockwise direction. So that indicates here that the... we're in this shared will okay so let's just the mind will be moving around here a lot so i'm just going to so but in this state of consciousness the mind adheres to this rule in order for this state of consciousness to exist which is depicted with the heart in the center what the other wants and what i want are shared so let's just put the mind over here for a second and we're going to depict that that is showing it moving in this direction It's moving in this clockwise direction, okay? So this is an experience where things are typically, and we all need this in childhood, and we get this in childhood, hopefully to a certain degree, and what we want and what the other wants for us is in alignment, shared, okay? And we experience here usually some degree of needs, needs being met, and a sense of connection and love. This is fine, lots of people talk a lot about this, but really the quality of our interpersonal relationships and life in general is all about what happens down here, which is the secondary state of consciousness that we experience in life. And this is when the mind is in shared wills, experiencing that connection, and then it comes down into this mindset here. I'm going to explain that part in the middle in a moment, but now it's moving, you'll notice, in a completely different So this state of consciousness is when the mind is adhering to the rule or the law that wills what you want and what I want, conflict. Now, so far, nothing has gone wrong. We are supposed to experience shared will, what we want, our needs are met by others, et cetera, et cetera. And this is healthy. We need a lot of this in childhood. And also, we are supposed to be able to go down and move into conflicted wills. So this is when what I want is different to what my parents want, or what my parents want is different to what I want. So now, ideally speaking in childhood, we move back and forth very easily. And actually, we do invariably. This is a natural part of development. So we're in conflicted wills, and we move back into shared will. and the trick to this What we want for a healthy development to make our relationships and life easier is to be able to move from shared wills into conflicted wills and back again very naturally and freely. Now what happens after some time in our development? The mind is experiencing both of these states of consciousness. Let's just put that there for a second. What happens is an interpretation. This is an interpretation of relationships in themselves okay so let's label this as in here we have the interpretation okay so this part here is what our understanding of what relationships are and it comes to there are two ways to interpret relationships so this first part here so there's two conflicting parts that's the first and that's the second one interpretation is that if When we step into conflicted will, the love we have is not threatened, okay? So we can still experience this. But this is safe for me to navigate. And when I do, shared will is still something that is accessible. Stepping into conflicted wills does not mean that we are against each other, okay? So that is the first interpretation in here. Alternatively... the mind or the interpretation in here develops that if we go into conflicted will the love between us is threatened okay so this becomes more precarious this threatens this sort of a one or the other type scenario develops right if what we want is different this is true in childhood but it's true in our adult relationships this becomes precarious Now what this leads to, there will still be very often the back and forth happening, right? This is natural. This is happening all the time. When we want the same thing, we want different things. We want the same thing, we want different things. And that's natural. But what happens is after, if the mind starts to take this interpretation as this is how relationships are, when we want different things, love disappears. What will happen is The mind moves into this shared will. Instead of feeling love and connection, what it starts to feel is a great deal of anxiety. I'm going to highlight that because that's really the important part of this video. Anxiety starts to become the experience of love. And again, think of like anxious attachment styles, right? So and what happens down here, if it's if the mind is in the other With conflicted will, what it starts to experience down here, is guilt. And again, I'll highlight that because those two emotions are primarily the problem when this interpretation in here becomes the dominant interpretation. So what happens when we interpret, well, what do relationships mean? If what we want is different, what you want and what I want is not the same, love disappears. When that happens, the mind goes through these two. When it's in In conflicted wills, it's feeling all this guilt. Because me going after what I want or expressing something genuine for myself, well, it means love has been destroyed. And we feel immense amounts of guilt, especially as children, about that. It's our fault. But if we go back into shared wills, well, now this is a precarious state because it's going to involve making sure that we don't go back down here. So this becomes an anxiety-inducing experience for us. When we're in shared wills. So this effectively what happens is we can get stuck in this state of consciousness. Okay. Clinging to love, afraid to be someone that's going to rock the boat too much. Very, very anxious, maybe hypersensitive or hypervigilant to the needs of others around us in order to keep that love. If we are in conflicted wills. We're going to feel an awful lot of guilt and shame because what I want, who I am, means that love gets destroyed. Connection gets taken away. So the ultimate thing you could say, and this goes back to childhood, this is a very, very fundamental thing in life. And this is true in childhood, but it's true in our adult relationships. And it's true for anyone who has people-pleasing tendencies or who is the nice guy, etc., etc. What we have to do, we have to resolve that conflict, right? We have to reinterpret what relationships mean. And we have to step out of this and we have to step into this. We have to start taking this interpretation of relationships, this one here, as, oh, this is how relationships work. When what we want is not the same thing, it doesn't mean that the love between us or the connection between us is threatened in any way. And in my experience, I know this to be a fact. Intimacy, for instance, connection, deep connection in a relationship, it's all about conflict. It's not about the love part. It's not about when things are going well between you and the other person. It's about when we are not aligned, what is that experience like for us? Can we still maintain love, respect for one another and a commitment to one another? When we don't agree on something, when what you want differs from what I want, and that's the whole thing. It makes it a lot easier for us to experience intimacy because intimacy really isn't, you know, I love you. You're amazing. You're this wonderful person. It's great that we want the same things. Intimacy is more about taking a risk and telling and being willing to tell the other person something that you're not sure they're going to want to hear. And feeling safe to do that. Feeling like you can be honest with the other person. Even when at times it's scary to do it. Okay, that's what, that's how real intimacy is formed in relationships. So it's been able to say something that you think the other person might not want to hear. Is it safe to do that? So what happens in childhood is, you know, we, when we're in, the whole problem in our childhood usually is that when we are in conflicted will, we're here. It's not... See, that's a very, very... important thing for us as children to go through and when we are around caregivers who are not patient who are controlling who have no gentleness because it's not the thing of the child should always get what they want okay it's is their patience is their gentleness is their softness is their openness is their honesty that that phase of consciousness when we're learning it in life Life requires caregivers around us who are very, very. soft and gentle around it now not placating the child not always giving the child absolutely acknowledging that sometimes the child will not get what they want and that's perfectly fine and safe but certainly no bullying no coercion no shaming around it and a lot of us got that and really that's what creates this interpretation that leads to the people pleasing and the nice guy Okay, so the inner work here is to change that interpretation. This is where it all hinges. When you take that interpretation of, oh, it's safe for me to step into conflicted wills. Doesn't mean the relationship is gone. Doesn't mean love is gone. In fact, it means love is becoming deeper. What will happen is you will be able to do the superpower that really we're trying to do here, which is to... Fluctuate between states of consciousness very, very easily. One interpretation allows that fluctuation. One interpretation locks you into a particular place, right? So there's less fluid motion. That figure of eight is what we want in our relationships, just like this. So look to that interpreter inside. And it requires getting still and going back into an honesty about, well, how do I really understand relationships in life? That's where you'll find the answers inside yourself and looking at what it is we learned fundamentally about how relationships work in life. If you'd like to know more about this, we're covering this material in the weekly sessions on Tuesdays. The link is below in our self-trust community. So you can check that out below. Also, I'm available for one-to-one work. You can find my information there too. If you can like the video, if you can subscribe to the channel, it's a huge help. It helps me reach more people. And I really hope this is an insightful video. And I hope you like this format with these sort of graphic depictions. I'll leave it there, but I'll see you in the next video. Take care of yourself. Bye-bye.