When survival strategies start running your life
In this issue of my newsletter, I’ll be introducing you to two of your potential Saboteurs: The Pleaser and the Hyper-Rational. We’ll discuss them and then look at how they impact clarity and your productivity, and what you might be able to do to counteract them.
Last week, I introduced you to the main Saboteur, the Judge. We all have it. To review, this saboteur arrives and judges you, others, and circumstances. All of the saboteurs have been with us since childhood, when they were originally developed as survival mechanisms. This doesn’t mean your survival was threatened, though it could have been. It was just a way our brains coped with different events in our lives.
Again, these ideas are adapted from Shirzad Chamine and his book Positive Intelligence.
Let’s get started.
First Up: The Pleaser
The Pleaser is one of my Saboteurs, though on some level we have probably experienced all of them. It’s just that some are usually more active than others. This one is actually developed as an indirect attempt to gain acceptance and affection by helping, pleasing, rescuing, or flattering others. I was third out of four girls in my family. My experience within my family was that I wasn’t especially noticed, liked, or enjoyed, especially by my father…again, my experience. I’m not saying he didn’t enjoy me. I have pictures that show a different story.
The Pleaser has a strong desire to be liked and it’ll attempt to earn that by helping others, trying to please them. It might even rescue someone in pain or someone who is struggling (think codependent, without boundaries). It’ll even use flattering others.
Some of the thoughts the Pleaser may have are that to be a good person, it needs to put others’ needs above its own. It is sometimes bothered if others don’t notice or care about what they’ve done for it and think they’re selfish or ungrateful. Sometimes it thinks it can make anyone like it. Also, it may think that if it doesn’t rescue someone, who is going to? It is deeply concerned that someone may be struggling, especially if it has the capacity to help them.
It believes expressing its needs directly, feels selfish. It’s concerned that if if insists on its own needs, it might drive others away. It can also resent being taken for granted but doesn’t have a known way of expressing it to others.
It can lie to justify its actions by telling itself it’s not doing it for itself. It can believe that it’s helping others selflessly and doesn’t expect anything in return.
The impact on itself and others: when the Pleaser is active, it can jeopardize meeting its own needs. This pertains to all needs whether it’s financial, emotional, or physical. It can lead to burnout with resentment standing in the shadows. It also can lead to others becoming dependent on it, rather than learning to take care of their own needs and emotions. It can in turn, feel manipulated and obligated or guilty.
Next Up: The Hyper-Rational
This saboteur is intense and focuses almost exclusively on the rational processing. This includes relationships. It can be perceived as cold, distant, and intellectually arrogant.
It has an intense and active mind, sometimes coming across as intellectually arrogant or even secretive. It’s pretty private and doesn’t let many people into their deeper feelings. When it does show feelings, it’s mostly through passion for its ideas. It prefers not to get involved in any chaos surrounding it, but will watch it from a distance and analyze it from there. It can lose track of time due to intense concentration and it has a strong inclination towards skepticism and debate.
The thoughts it frequently has are that the rational mind is where it’s at. Feelings are distracting and irrelevant. Others are frequently sloppy and irrational in their thinking. All those needs and intrusions from others are distracting me from my endeavors and therefore I need to block them out. What it values most is understanding, insight and knowledge. Its self-worth is strongly tied to mastering knowledge and competence.
It gets frustrated with the emotionality and what it sees as irrationality of others. It’s anxious about preserving personal time, energy, and resources against intrusions. It often feels different, alone and misunderstood, often skeptical or cynical.
The lies it believes are that the rational mind is the most important thing and it needs to be protected from what it sees as the wasteful intrusion of others and their messy emotions and needs. It prefers to get its work done.
This has a definite impact on itself and others. This frequently shows up by limiting the depth and flexibility of relationships in work and life by analyzing rather than experiencing feelings. By virtue of its nature, it intimidates less analytically minded people.
Clarity Impact:
Here’s the thing: The Pleaser gets so wrapped up in pleasing others, usually to the detriment of itself. When it do this, it can become disconnected to who they truly are. What their values are becomes secondary and they can begin to live out of alignment with their own determined values. For instance, as a pleaser, I used to frequently lose myself in relationships seeking acceptance. When I first began understanding that and also determining what my core values were, I realized I was not able to be truly authentic in my relationships. I also lacked bravery. The type of bravery that takes up space and doesn’t shrink for another.
Without clarity because we’re too busy pleasing, we can jeopardize our own needs. As mentioned above, it can lead to burnout and resentment. Clarity and resentment/burnout cannot successfully live together.
The Hyper-Rational, on the other hand is so busy being intense and rational, it misses the depth that’s possible in relationships. It obscures the clarity that could be present to connect with another, without being arrogant and thinking it’s intellectually superior. Because, whenever we believe that, we’re close to becoming an island, unable to connect with others which is something we are wired for.
This distortion of the Pleaser and the Hyper-Rational actually destroy clarity…which is what we’re after here at Creating Clarity.
Productivity Impact:
I’ll reiterate from last week and in the weeks ahead: our Saboteurs run in the background all day. Think of it like having a hundred tabs open on your computer. They’re always running in the background. Taking up space. They replay conversations, catastrophize outcomes, overthink decisions, and procrastinate. That cognitive load drains your focus. It delays the execution you need to feel and be successful. It fragments your energy. You don’t actually need more discipline. In some respects, you need less internal sabotage.
Beyond the Pesky Saboteurs:
Beyond the Saboteurs is our beautiful Sage brain. Think: clear, calm, decisive. The Sage operates from curiosity instead of fear, a calmness instead of urgency, strategy instead of reaction, compassion instead of shame. It doesn’t deny reality in some sort of “woo-woo” way. It faces it without distortion. It’s a type of mental fitness. And that mental fitness can be trained. That’s the beauty of it.
So what can you do about it? Practice catching yourself and your negative thoughts. There’s more to this idea than can be explained in one newsletter, but here’s a great place to start: When you notice yourself choosing to please versus standing in your own power and beliefs, stop. Just notice it and ask why you think you are choosing to please. It’s a longstanding pattern that has been with you your whole life.
If you notice yourself feeling superior to others, that their feelings are pointless, stop. Consider for a moment how you are impacting that relationship by holding those views. Is it ultimately serving you and/or the relationship? Unfortunately, you do not just stop thinking this way and begin to have deep care and concern for another’s feelings.
This newsletter is really here just to highlight our saboteurs. There’s an entire process Chamine uses to deal with them. They can’t possibly be addressed here in a way that brings honor to his work.
Next week, I’ll introduce you to the Avoider and the Hyper-Vigilant Saboteurs.
Why I’m Here
One of my passions here at Creating Clarity is just that…creating clarity. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, in the midst of some life transition that has you off your game, or struggling in that certain relationship, usually you’re in need of some clarity. It’s why I coach others. We explore those areas that have you ‘off’. It’s not counseling. The goal is to move forward with awareness of your goals (clarity), with a framework to make them happen and a healthy dose of encouragement.
If you’ve frequently thought, “I can’t keep doing this”, or “I won’t be doing this in 2 years or 5 years”, I ask you what needs to happen to affect change that ensures that won’t be the case? You CAN change the trajectory of your life.
Want to learn more? Book a free call with me and see what we can do together. I offer different packages to meet your needs. Want some real foundational help in your life? I have a package for that. Just need a little help with a specific situation? I have you covered. Why wait any longer wondering what your future holds? You can create it now, even if you can’t yet see it.