184: Understanding Anger & People Pleasers (Part 1)

Why many people pleasers struggle with anger (and how to start feeling it safely)

For many people pleasers, anger feels unsafe, unpredictable, or even shameful. But here’s the truth—anger itself isn’t the problem. It’s actually a signal, like a check engine light, telling us something is out of alignment.

This is part one of a two-part series on anger. In today’s episode, we’ll explore why people pleasers struggle with anger and the many ways it can show up. Next week, we’ll dive into what anger is here to teach us and how it can actually help us live more authentic and aligned lives.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why anger feels so unsafe for people pleasers.
• How suppressing emotions leads to shame, resentment, and burnout.
• The “rule of thirds” of life and why resisting emotions only compounds suffering.
• Sneaky ways anger shows up: passive aggression, sarcasm, silent treatment, martyrdom, over-accommodating, and more.
• Why anger is best understood as a check engine light, inviting curiosity rather than panic.

Challenge for the Week:
Notice how anger shows up for you. Do you turn it inward? Suppress it? Explode? Withdraw? Instead of judging yourself, simply observe your patterns. Awareness is the first step to creating change.

Work With Me:
If you’re ready to better understand your emotions and break free from the cycle of people-pleasing, I’d love to support you. Visit www.maryannwalker.life
to apply for coaching, or email me at maryann@maryannwalker.life
.

Don’t Forget to Subscribe:
This is part one of a two-part series on anger. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode, where we’ll uncover what anger is here to teach you.

✨ I'm currently offering 6 and 12 week 1:1 coaching packages where we’ll dive deep into the limiting beliefs shaping your life and create space for growth, clarity, and connection.

🎯 Ready to reserve your 6 or 12 week package? email me at maryann@maryannwalker.life to get started and inquire about availability.


Let’s Stay Connected:
📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maryannwalker.life/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maryannwalker.life
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maryannwalker.life

Related Episodes: 

168: Am I The Jerk Now? How to Set Boundaries Without Becoming The Villain https://www.buzzsprout.com/2028767/episodes/17472392

162: How to Stop Fixing, Controlling, and Over-Accomodating Everyonehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/2028767/episodes/17147279

127: When Someone Makes You Upset: How to Control Your Feelings https://www.buzzsprout.com/2028767/episodes/15548383

Transcript

0:17

Well, hello and welcome back. My name is MaryAnn Walker and I'm the life coach who helps recovering people pleasers and highly sensitive people better understand what it is that their emotions are there to teach them. So many of my clients resist feeling negative emotions, specifically because they don't wanna feel bad. It makes sense, right? But here's the thing is I don't actually believe the emotions are positive or negative. I think all emotions are neutral and they're to teach us something, even the scary ones. And for recovering people, pleasers especially anger is one of the more resisted emotions. So in this two part series, yes, this is gonna be two parts. So make sure subscribe. So you can hear next week's as well. But we're going to be exploring today. Why it feels so unsafe for people pleasers to experience anger and how it shows up for them. And then in part two, that's gonna be dropping next week, we're gonna talk about, okay, what can we actually learn from anger? So for today, why do people pleasers struggle so much with the emotion of anger? The truth is that many people pleasers, they became people pleasers because they never actually learned how to sit with negative emotions. Instead, they invested all of their energy into keeping everybody else happy in order to basically avoid conflict or avoid experiencing rejection. But here's the problem, is when we're investing all of our time and energy into making sure everybody else feels okay, so that we can feel okay when we're making our feeling okay, conditional upon external factors, we make it a lot less likely that we're gonna be feeling okay. Instead we're going to be experiencing is a feeling of walking on eggshells. Where now I must tiptoe around everybody else and make sure everybody else is okay so that I can feel okay. The truth is we can't control other people's emotions. And because we're human, we cannot avoid having negative emotions ourselves. And in fact, the more we push them away, the more we're actually compounding these negative emotions because we're judging that we're experiencing those negative emotions. So then we're adding shame and blame on top of an already negative emotion. So it's just making it worse. Okay. So I really kind of like to think of life as the rule of thirds. So it's one third positive, it's one third negative, and then there's this other third that's just completely neutral. It's not positive or negative, it just is. And the thing is that what we resist persists. So when we're resisting those negative emotions, we're actually making ourselves feel more miserable and more out of control. And that's because we're now adding on a second layer of suffering by judging ourselves, by telling ourselves that we shouldn't feel this way. And this is where anger gets really tricky. Now, I want you to just pause for a minute and think about a time when you felt angry. Okay? And I don't usually do this. But I'm just gonna give you a few ideas of things that might make you feel a little bit angry so that you can kind of remember, oh yeah, that does kind of upset me, because sometimes recovering people pleasers, we're so far removed from our anger that we don't know it until it's in the moment. Okay, so if you're having a hard time thinking of a thing to be angry about, I want you to think about these things. Sitting in a traffic jam, arguing about politics. Maybe your partner forgot your birthday or an anniversary. maybe you're the only one that picks up the slack in relationship. This might be at work, at home, in relationships, in your friendships. Maybe you're the only one that picks up the slack. Maybe you're the only one that signed up on that signup sheet. So now you're feeling this responsibility to do more than you actually signed up for to pick up the slack there. Maybe it's narcissistic behavior that really sets you off a lack of empathy or compassion. Maybe it's gun rights, immigration. These are some hot button issues that may create some feelings of anger in you. Now, I want you to just kind of think about that anger for a minute, and first really think about how does it feel on my body? If you've been resisting anger, it can be extremely uncomfortable to just sit with the emotion. So I'm gonna ask you right now, when you're just listening to a podcast, you're completely safe. No one is out to get you. But I want you to just sit in your body and notice how anger feels in your body. Where does it sit for you? For me, anger is kind of in my chest or in my upper stomach area. Kind of depends on what I'm angry about. For some people, it shows up in their head. Their head gets really hot. For me, anger feels a little chaotic. It feels, it does feel hot to me and it feels chaotic where it's just kind of bouncing around, but it's kind of trying to push me forward. It's trying to say something isn't right. It's that righteous indignation, right? That, look, I know that I'm right and everybody else should get on board with what it is that I'm saying because they're obviously wrong. It's creating that forward momentum because that anger is there to show you that, ugh, something isn't in alignment. Something is off right now. In fact, I want you to really think about anger as your check engine light on your car. Now, when your check engine light turns on, you don't wanna freak out, but you do want to intentionally take your car in and see, okay, what's coming up? Get really curious about, is this going to be a little fix or a big fix? What is actually coming up here? Think about your anger in the same way. You don't need to freak out, but use it as an opportunity to get curious about, hmm, something must be out of alignment. I wonder what it might be. Start that inquiry, and this is where coaching can be extremely helpful, is you can actually invite in a coach, a third party observer to come and help you to dissect that. Sometimes when we're too close to a situation, it makes it really hard for us to see this situation clearly. In fact, that's why I still get coaching. Yes, I am a coach. And I also get coaching at least weekly because it helps me to see things a bit more clearly. Sometimes we just need a little bit of outside perspective to help us to even recognize that, Ooh, yep. That doesn't sound quite right. Right. It's like taking your car into the mechanic so you can totally take the time to journal on it yourself. And also, it's okay to seek help when you need it. So notice what's happening inside of you. Notice if you find yourself resisting anywhere in your body, it might be like a physical resistance that, Hmm, I just don't wanna feel this. Or maybe it's a block in your head where now you find yourself replaying a conversation that you had recently. Just kind of notice what is it that my mind and my body wants to do? Because what anger does is it's demanding our attention. It's often showing up because we haven't given enough attention to the problem. We haven't actually acknowledged that this is a problem for us. We've been trying to suppress it and pretend it doesn't matter, and now our check engine light is on, and so our anger is saying, no, this is demanding your attention right now. This is extremely important. So again, don't panic when you see it, but get curious about why it's there. So now let's talk a little bit about the roots of anger resistance for people pleasers specifically, why do people pleasers struggle so much with anger? There are several reasons we're gonna talk about just a few of them, but often this goes back to our childhood conditioning. Maybe you were taught that anger was bad. That, no, you're supposed to be a peacemaker. Peacemakers aren't angry. Anger isn't peaceful, so no, that's bad. It's unsafe to feel anger. It's unpredictable. Maybe your parent or caregiver, they were not safe because they didn't know how to manage their anger, so you just decided to shut it down completely and never experience anger. Never allow yourself to even acknowledge that you're angry. Maybe you're being told that you're being selfish by throwing a tantrum."How dare you? You should be thinking of other people." There's a lot of things that may have happened in your childhood that have conditioned this response to having a resistance for anger. You essentially learned it was safer to only express positive emotions, so this is often where the nice guy or the good girl identities show up is that that is how we've learned how to navigate life so that we can experience more peace is tiptoeing around others, making it all nice, smoothing things over that. That's what keeps us safe. Another reason that people pleasers may resist anger is a fear of rejection. Many people pleasers fear that if they actually reveal their anger, people will leave. But then that forces them to not be their true and authentic self. And in fact, even when they think,"no, this is who I am as. Somebody that suppresses anger. This is me being authentic is me. Being a peacekeeper," you're not actually being authentic. You're not being your authentic self when you're pretending that everything is okay, when it isn't, and you're not actually your authentic self when you're then exploding because things are no longer tolerable for you. The true authentic you is the one that is at peace and mindful within themselves and can recognize the whole picture. That, oh, I'm starting to notice that I'm angry. It's catching those warning signs earlier, noticing that check engine light earlier so that you can actually tend to the problem before it becomes a huge, expensive fix. Okay, and in this case we're talking about, expensive relationally that, oh, is this worth the cost of my relationship? It's learning how to navigate it and keep it manageable for you. All right. Another reason why people pleasers suppress anger is because they have a peacekeeper identity. Sometimes we over identify with being the calm one or the fixer, the one that smooth things over, the one that just makes all of the problems go away. But then when you find yourself feeling tired. Feeling hungry. You've been putting off your own wants and needs for so long in an effort to keep the peace, then often that's when you're going to be experiencing more anger and resentment. And when you are overgiving in relationship, when you are being the one who's fixing everything and smoothing everything over, then oftentimes then that creates the very imbalance that was triggering our anger in the first place. So now instead of experiencing less anger, we're actually experiencing more anger, and we're experiencing resentment now because we have this subconscious belief that, but I've been so good, and so now I'm entitled to this. Now I'm entitled to you showing up for me. But we might not have actually been making the changes in order to get our needs met. So the end result is usually the same, is that we experience that pent up resentment and oftentimes, and that's turned inward. So yes, we are upset with others and also often people pleasers turn that anger in towards themselves. We set the bar so high for how people are supposed to show up. We really hold ourselves through a high standard. So you might actually be turning that anger inward, thinking, well, I shouldn't be feeling this way, or you might be experiencing external outbursts, where now the pressure has built so much and we just lose it, and now we're taking it out on those that are close to us. Now anger can show up a bit more subtly for people pleasers. Yes, sometimes it is that very external outburst that does happen. And also I wanna share with you some of the warning signs that you may wanna start noticing a bit earlier before it hits that stage because it is a sneaky one. Okay, so sometimes anger shows up as passive aggression. Maybe you're saying, no, I'm fine when you're not fine. Maybe you're saying, no, I've got it. When really you want some help, it's showing up as that passive aggression thinking. Well, they'll just see that I need help, and then they should just step in and help me. I don't have to say anything. I'll just make all these passive aggressive comments until they start to show up for me. Then they'll know. Okay, but clear is kind, unclear is unkind, and when you are being passive aggressive, instead of just saying what it is that you need, then you're being very unclear, which is unkind to the relationship because they might not be as sensitive as you. Yeah, maybe you're pretty intuitive and you know what it is that other people need, but they might need it explicitly stated before they're able to step up and into that. So notice if you're experiencing that passive aggression, that's one of the early warning signs that anger is coming into your life. Okay? Another way it can show up is through the silent treatment. This is kind of going back to childhood of thinking. Well, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. And so instead you might be pulling back, almost ghosting the relationship. It's just that silent treatment where it can feel very powerful in the moment. It can feel very empowering, but it doesn't actually solve the problem. You're not actually addressing the problem. You're just basically like if your car's making a funny noise, yeah, I'm gonna keep using this car analogy. You're just turning up the radio and pretending like it's not there. Just, yeah. Eventually it will go away, but then the problem may actually be getting bigger due to that lack of attention. It might also show up as we've talked a bit about as that self-directed anger blaming yourself, Ugh, I should have spoken up sooner. I should have stated that boundary sooner. I shouldn't have allowed them to pass my boundary like they just did. I can't believe that I did this. It's all my fault. We're over owning the situation and that creates that self-directed anger. It's almost easier to be angry with ourselves sometimes than it is to be angry with others because if we're angry with ourselves, we can't leave ourselves. Right. Even though. Truly, we're self abandoning at that moment. So we can actually abandon ourselves, but we like to think, oh, well, if I just make it about me, I can't self abandon. I'm still here. For me, it's gonna be okay. But then also then you are abandoning yourself in the relationship and we're thinking, well, I can't bring it up with them, because then they might reject me, then they might leave me, then they might abandon me. So instead, we're self abandoning and that's not going to help the problem. It might also look like over accommodating other people. This is saying yes when you want to say no, and you're doing this in an attempt to avoid conflict, but when you keep over accommodating other people. Yeah. And we do it thinking, well, if I just keep showing up for them, then they'll show up for me. But more than likely, if you're not expressing your needs, then that anger is going to bleed into other parts of their life. So you might be saying yes when you wanna say no in an attempt to avoid conflict, but eventually you're gonna burn out. And when you do burnout, it makes it a lot more likely that that anger, we're gonna lose control of the anger and we're gonna have that resentment. It's going to magnify a lot of those emotions. People pleasers do a pretty good job showing up and over accommodating other people when they're feeling good, but when they start to get burned out, tired, hungry, any of that, when they start to not feel well physically, which is another sign of that anger, then that's when it is that they're going to be having those problems in relationship. It's a lot harder to navigate life when it's gotten to that point, so be very mindful of that. It may also show up as sarcasm, or maybe you're making jokes about how it is that you're feeling, thinking that they should pick up on it. But again, that's kind of like the passive aggression, right? It's not actually going to help things. It's not actually shedding light on the problem. Instead, it's creating that porcupine energy where we think that, oh, if I can just make a joke about it, it'll be fine. But people can feel the energy when you're being sarcastic, when you're being passive aggressive, and it can actually really magnify things as well. It might also look like emotional withdrawal. This one is, the one that is most common is the people pleasers, they tend to just shut down completely. It's, well, I guess that you can't fulfill my needs anymore. It's easier to just quit. It's easier to just give up on relationship. I'm too burned out. I can't address it. I don't wanna speak up. I'm too tired at this point. And when you are having that emotional withdrawal, it is because you've allowed the burnout to go on for too long. And it's kinder for the relationship to let them know ahead of time. Again, it's that check engine light. We don't want to let the whole vehicle burnout, in this case, us, right? We don't want to burn ourselves out at the cost of the relationship. So noticing these signs earlier on, noticing, Ooh, I'm starting to feel a desire to emotionally withdraw. What can I do about that so that I don't sacrifice the whole relationship? Because if you don't fix it in this relationship, it's going to show up in your next relationship so you're not actually avoiding the confrontation. You're going to be forced to confront it eventually. You can either choose to do it now in your current relationship or choose to do it in your next relationship, but you are eventually going to have to face the music here. It can also really show up through martyrdom energy. This is that victim mindset. And this ties in with so many of the things we've just talked about, the over accommodation, all of these different things where it's not No, no, I can just do it myself. It's creates that hyper independence and that hyper independence is a trauma response. It's when we have learned through countless experiences that it's not safe. To ask for help. It's safer to just do it ourselves. We're the only one that we can depend on. Everybody else has abandoned us or has changed their mind, or wasn't able to show up for us in the way that we needed, and so just notice that martyrdom energy, that oftentimes that's what's underneath this anger is just feeling that hyper independence, that I must do it myself because I can't count on them to do it for me, or I can't count on them to do it with me. And also just as we already talked about, it can also lead to those big explosions where there's yelling, there's name calling, there's lashing out. This is when everything has boiled over. So it's essentially like holding a beach ball under the water. I know I've used this analogy so many times on here, but here it is again. I have a ton of new listeners, so here it is. But essentially when we're trying to suppress emotions, it's like holding a beach ball under the water and that is sustainable for a little while. But eventually that beach ball is going to explode out of the water, and when it does, so it might smack us in the face. It might blow out of the water and knock somebody else off of their feet... at that point we have a hundred percent lost control, so we think that we have things under control holding that beach ball under the water, but it's not sustainable to do that. And so taking the time to really let it come up gradually, really look at it. Observe it, rather than just suppressing it and holding it under the water and pretending like it's not there, but to really be mindful about, okay, I'm going to allow this to come up so I can be a mindful observer of it, so that you can actually create that change. So here's the good news is anger is not the enemy. In fact, anger is full of so much wisdom. It has so much to teach us. And in part two of the series that we'll be dropping next week, we're gonna be talking about what anger is there to teach us. And usually, here's your little teaser for this, is it's gonna teach you one of three things. It's gonna either teach you about your boundaries, your values, or your unmet needs. And so next week I'll give you a few specific examples about how your anger can actually guide you towards healthier and more authentic living. But in the meantime, I simply want you to just notice how is it that anger is showing up for you? When you experience anger, do you suppress it? Do you turn it inward on yourself? Do you just let yourself explode? And I don't want you to judge it. I just want you to become aware of it. Because when we're aware of how it's currently showing up for us, that's when we can actually be really self-aware about, okay, is that actually working for me? Is that how I want it to show up for me? Okay. We have to know where we're at in order to come up with a plan moving forward. So. If where you're at currently is, yeah, I recognize I really do suppress a lot of my anger. I recognize I'm being really passive aggressive in my relationship. I'm not asking for what it is that I need. I really want you to, number one, come and work with me. Number two, make sure that you tune in next week. Make sure you subscribe so that you can learn more about what it is that anger is there to teach you. Now, if you would like some help and support navigating this in your own life, you can come and work with me. Simply go to my website, www.maryannwalker.life, where you can apply to work with me, or you can email me at maryann@maryannwalker.life. You can find all of my contact information in the show notes. So come and check and see what my. Current availability is at whatever time you're listening to this episode, I would love to be your life coach. And also, before you go, I just want to give you such a big thank you. This last week I received an uptick in apple reviews and it made such a significant difference in how many downloads.. You guys, I nearly doubled in downloads and I am just so humbled by that and so grateful for that. It was honestly just a handful of reviews and it made a significant difference in what it was that my podcasting platforms chose to push out to other people. So if you have a moment, and if this has meant something to you, if you appreciate what it is that you've been learning here, I would deeply appreciate a review. And so yeah, you can go ahead and just click on the Apple Podcasts or comment below, but let me know that you enjoy what's here and let's really grow this community. Right now, the world more than ever, it needs more help and support when it comes to deepening our levels of emotional awareness, emotional processing, and emotional maturity. So every share and every review really helps me to reach more people and help the world to just have a little bit more when it comes to emotional intelligence. Alright, well thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you next week as we talk more about anger. See you then.