Inner Work With MaryAnn Walker: Stop People Pleasing and Start Honoring You!

183: 10 Common Struggles Highly Sensitive People and People Pleasers Face (And How Coaching Can Help)

• MaryAnn Walker • Episode 183

Share episode

Send us a text

Are you always showing up for everyone else — yet feeling unseen, unfulfilled, or disconnected from yourself?

In this episode, life coach MaryAnn Walker shares the top 10 struggles she sees most often in highly sensitive people and recovering people pleasers — and how to start reclaiming your joy, balance, and authenticity.

As you listen, take a gentle self-inventory. If even one of these resonates, you deserve support. But if four or more hit home, consider it a loving nudge that it’s time to invest in you — because you deserve a life that feels peaceful, balanced, and full of joy.

10 most common struggles: 

  1. You’re checking all the boxes but still not feeling happy.
    Life looks good on paper, but joy still feels just out of reach.
  2. You’ve lost yourself in caring for everyone else.
    You’re so tuned in to others’ needs that you can’t even identify your own anymore.
  3. You’re doing the lion’s share of emotional labor in your relationships.
    You’re the one who comforts, initiates repairs, and carries the weight of everyone’s feelings.
  4. You feel personally responsible for others’ emotions.
    You can’t rest until everyone around you is okay — even if it drains you.
  5. You feel like you’re walking on eggshells.
    You’re constantly scanning for danger or disapproval, trying to keep everyone happy and avoid conflict.
  6. You feel insecure and wonder if you’re too much or too little.
    You replay conversations and second-guess yourself long after interactions have ended.
  7. You love serving others, but something feels missing.
    Giving brings you joy — and yet you feel a quiet ache that there should be more for you, too.
  8. You crave deeper, more balanced relationships.
    You’re longing for mutual care, emotional depth, and connection where you can be fully yourself.
  9. You’re tired of living on autopilot.
    You want more than productivity — you want passion, creativity, and joy.
  10. You’re ready to reconnect with you.
    You’ve spent years living by others’ expectations, and now you’re ready to rediscover who you are and what lights you up.

How many are you experiencing? 

Work With Me

If you recognized yourself in several of these struggles, know that you’re not alone — and you don’t have to figure it out by yourself. Coaching can help you reconnect with who you are, set healthy boundaries, and create a life that feels balanced and joyful.

✨ Book your free clarity call today to see if coaching is a good fit for you: https://calendly.com/maryannwalkerlife/freeconsult

Or email me directly at maryann@maryannwalker.life

Don’t Forget to Subscribe

If you’re new here, welcome! Be sure to follow the podcast so you don’t miss future episodes on emotional healing, boundaries, and reclaiming your joy as a sensitive soul.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

well, hello and welcome back. My name is MaryAnn Walker and I help recovering people pleasers and highly sensitive people learn how to experience true joy. They do so much further people, and I help them to find joy for themselves. You may notice I'm a little bit congested. Today. I am on the tail end of COVID I love that I work from home, so I'm still able to do things and not get other people sick as I'm feeling able. I'm on the mend all as well, but just letting you know, that's why I sound a little bit congested. It's because I am. So, I was talking with a friend and listener earlier this week and she said, Hey, what episode, if you had to pick one episode for me to refer a friend to, to see if this was the podcast for them, which episode would you have me refer to them to? And I thought, you know what? That's a great question. So I thought for today, I would share the top 10 struggles that I see most often in my community. And so many of these struggles are things that I've addressed here on the podcast, but I really wanted to put as many of them into one episode to really help you to see if this is the place for you. Okay, so as I list these off, I invite you to do a little bit of a self inventory. I want you to count how many of these feel familiar to you, how many describe what it is that you are currently carrying right now. And of course, if just one of these things resonates, then that's enough to reach out for support. You do not have to wait until everything feels overwhelming in order to start your personal healing. And also, if four or more of these really hit close to home, I want you to take that as a loving nudge, as an invitation to get support because you do deserve to have a life that feels peaceful, balanced, and full of joy. So let's dive in. Okay. Remember, you're gonna count these out. So number one, you are checking all the boxes, but you're still not feeling happy. You've done all the things, you did everything that you were supposed to do, and more than likely, from the outside looking in, people may even think or comment that, wow, your life just looks picture perfect. It looks like you have it all together. But at the same time, you aren't experiencing the joy that you thought would come after you checked all of those boxes. There was this silent expectation for you that happiness would magically arrive if and when you finally did all of the right things. And while you aren't miserable right now, you also aren't as happy and fulfilled as you thought you would be. Maybe even your day-to-day life. It looks like box checking. You wake up, you work out, you get the kids ready, you cook, you clean, you show up for your friends, family, coworkers, go to bed, rinse, and repeat. It's a routine, yes, but you find that you're still chasing a feeling of not just contentment but joy, and it feels like joy is just constantly, barely out of reach for you. All right? Number two, you've lost yourself in caring for everybody else. Maybe it's a parent or a spouse, a child or a friend, but your mind is constantly filled with wondering how it is that you could best meet the needs of others. And yeah, there is joy in serving other people. And also part of you is waiting for permission to give voice to what it is that you want. You may even feel guilty for wanting something for you, and honestly, you don't need a lot. Maybe it's just going out to eat where you would like to go, or having a conversation where somebody thinks to ask about how your trip went or how things are going for you. Because your needs are small. You feel torn between dismissing them completely'cause they're not that big of a deal, right? And you feel torn between that and resenting other people for not fulfilling for you what should be a super easy request to fulfill. You notice that while you're highly aware of other people's needs, it's really hard for you to talk about your own needs. In fact, maybe even as you're listening right now, you aren't even able to identify what it is that you need. You just know that you need something different, but you're not quite sure what it is. Or maybe even fear, giving voice to your needs. You know what they are, but you fear giving voice to them. You're not quite sure if it's selfish or not to actually have needs. You are scared that if I give voice to them, will they actually be met? So maybe it's just better to shove them down. You do find joy in your level of loving and serving others. For you, loving is a gift. It's easy for you and also in your mind, asking others to show up for you. It's the hardest thing ever. As part of this over responsibility for others, boundaries are really hard for you. As hard as it is for you to make a request to get your needs met, it is even harder to say no, to state a boundary, to let them know, I'm sorry, I don't have the time for that right now. You have this belief that if there is any possible way that you could do something for someone else, then you should do that something for someone else. And again, you believe there is joy to be found in serving others, and there is. And also right now you're noticing that you're maybe feeling taken for granted or taken advantage of, and that leaves you feeling out of balance and resentful. All right. Number three, you are doing the lion's share of the emotional labor in your relationships. This might look like feeling responsible to fix it when somebody's having a hard time. Maybe you're the one that everybody comes to when they want to feel better, and honestly, you love that part about yourself. It feels so good to be able to help other people, and also when you're feeling good and strong and capable, this part is really easy for you because it just feels so good to do that for other people. But sometimes it just feels like a lot. And sometimes you want somebody that you can turn to, somebody that can hold space for you in the way that you hold space for other people. Sometimes you feel like an emotional dumping ground where people come and they just leave all of their stuff and then they walk away feeling great. But now you are feeling the weight of their experience. Now, if this is you, I want you to check out my episode on Welcome mat versus Doormat energy. I will link that in the shuttles, but if this resonates with you, I highly encourage you to go and check out that episode about how you can shift that energy. Okay? Maybe you're starting to notice some resentment and exhaustion that is showing up in your relationships where you're experiencing maybe this one-sided care, where you're showing up really well for them, but they either don't know how, or they're unable to, or they just aren't showing up for you. Another sneaky way that this shows up is by always being the one to initiate a repair. You're always the one to check in first, to apologize, to initiate the uncomfortable conversations. It's all on your shoulders, and that's a really heavyweight to bear. I was recently listening to the book, sister Wife by Christine Woolley. So yes, she's one of the wives from the TV show. Sister Wives, I'm a huge fan. I find it highly entertaining. Um, but at one point in the book then she shared that her husband at the time, Kody had told her that, Hey, everything is good on my end, and if it's not for you, it's your job to bring it to me. And she really sat and reflected on that for a while. And on the surface it made sense. I mean, of course he couldn't fix what he didn't know and also. She was feeling like it left the full weight and responsibility of identifying what was and wasn't working in relationship... it was 100% on her shoulders. And that made her feel more distant in her relationship, and it also made her feel like she was always the problem because she was always the one to initiate those hard conversations. She felt like she was the only one trying to make things better. It is a unique kind of weight to always be the one to notice, to always be the one to speak up, to always be the one to create change, and ideally that emotional labor, it's shared in relationship. All right. Number four, you feel personally responsible for other people's emotions. Now, whether you're an empath or a highly sensitive person, it's often easy to confuse empathy with personal responsibility because you can see that somebody is upset. You feel like it is your personal responsibility to fix it. In fact, if you do nothing, you feel so guilty about it. It's almost like you're the lifeguard and you're watching somebody approach the deep end where you know they can't reach and you experience so much anxiety about it. You jump in and you go to rescue them. And yes, part of you knows that they'll never learn how to swim if they aren't given the chance, but the level of guilt and discomfort that you experience while watching them struggle, it's too much for you to bear. You don't like feeling that way, and so you feeling uncomfortable compels you to jump in the water with them even if they're pulling you down. Now some sneaky ways that this shows up is through people pleasing, which we talk about a lot here on the podcast, placating other people. And also it can show up as toxic positivity. So this might sound like, oh, look on the bright side! You have so much to be grateful for, well at least it's not worse. It kind of reminds me of a Brene Brown clip that's very popular on YouTube. Go check it out. I'll maybe link that in the show notes as well. But she kind of talks about empathy versus sympathy and what that can look like. And as she talks about empathy, she talks about it as actually sitting with someone in their experience. It's being okay with their emotional experience and acknowledging that, yeah, I can understand how hard that must be for you. It's actually sitting with them. Whereas sympathy is essentially trying to talk them out of their emotional experience. So some examples that she gave was somebody saying, I had a miscarriage, and then the response is, at least you know you can get pregnant. My marriage is falling apart. At least you have a marriage. John's getting kicked out of school. At least Sarah is an A student... and because we are so uncomfortable with the other person's discomfort, then we try to do whatever it is we can to get them out of it. Or at the very least, convince ourselves that somehow we've made it better. So maybe we're trying to help them feel better by, here, have a snack. We're throwing food at it, right? Let's get outta the house. Go take a nap. Hey, you should call so-and-so. They're having a hard time, right? We might even be delegating it out to other people because it makes us feel so uncomfortable for somebody else to have a negative emotion. And maybe there is a time and a place for those that kind of an approach of, you know, helping people to make sure that they're resting, make sure that they're eating. And also, I want you to start to recognize when it's coming from a place of love and when it's coming from an attempt to avoid having your own negative emotion. All right. Number five. You constantly feel like you're walking on eggshells, and this might be all the time, or it might be in certain settings or with certain people, but this is what it feels like when hypervigilance starts to take a toll on your nervous system. And it comes in the belief that, well, if I can just do everything right, whatever that means, then nobody will get upset. Then I can finally rest, then I can finally be happy. But this is kind of an extension of the box checking that we talked about earlier, and it's mostly when you're trying to check off someone else's list of shoulds, right? That, oh, well, I'm telling you that you should be more patient. You should be more forgiving. You should be more attentive. You should be more accommodating of me. You should be less needy, because that's inconvenient for me, right? So it's kind of acknowledging that, okay, I have this list of shoulds. They may or may not be coming from you. They might be coming from somebody else. But notice that. Now some ways that this manifests is maybe somebody walks into the room. And you're worried that they're going to judge you for sitting on the couch, so you immediately jump up and start tidying so that you can look more productive. It might look like talking a lot. You're thinking, I'm just gonna say so many words, and maybe some of them will be able to fix it. So I'm just gonna keep saying all the words and see if something lands, or it might look like not talking at all because you're so afraid that you might say the wrong thing. It might look like feeling insecure and uncertain about what it is that you're supposed to do. You're trying to figure out, well, I don't know what I'm supposed to do in this relationship. I don't know how I'm supposed to maintain relationship. I don't know what I'm supposed to do to keep myself safe and to not rock the boat in this relationship. Now, often this shows up because at some point in life, possibly in childhood or maybe in a friendship or a romantic relationship, but somebody has made you feel like your personal safety would be at risk if you didn't show up exactly as you were supposed to. And maybe they handed you a list and said, these are the exact things I need you to do. Or maybe they wanted you to intuit their list and you would only know if you got it wrong, when you got it wrong, right? Because they're gonna really get after you if you're not doing the right thing. But for whatever reason, you learned over time that if you didn't check all of the boxes, something bad would happen. So you walk on eggshells hoping that if I can just do whatever it is that they want me to do, then I'll be safe. Then I'll experience connection. And yet it always feels like that safety and connection is just out of reach. So notice when your body tightens up around somebody else's discomfort. That is your cue to just breathe and ground and come back into yourself. All right. Number six. You often feel like you're too much or not enough. Now, have you ever gone to a party and then after the party you're thinking in your head, you're just really in your head about it? You're like, oh, no, I probably talked too much. They probably think I'm arrogant now. Or maybe you're thinking, oh no, I didn't talk hardly at all. They probably think I'm so. Boring. You're questioning if you are too much or too little all the time, or maybe you kind of play out this internal too much or too little in your mind. You're wondering about if I'm too much or too little as a parent or in my friendships or in my romantic relationships. But being just right in relationship, it can feel like you're trying to walk on a super skinny balance beam. And honestly, you keep falling off. And you're so afraid you're gonna fall off, right? So that kind of leads to these feelings of insecurity and self-doubt, and often that keeps you stuck in fear because when you have the fear of being too much or too little, it often creates inaction because it's better to do nothing at all than to fall off of the balance beam and get hurt. All right. Number seven. You love serving others, but it also feels like something's missing. You are amazing. Just so you know, you're incredible. Like you are so amazing that you probably actually have multiple people that have told you, oh my gosh, you are so amazing. You are my best friend. You know exactly what it is that people need, and it brings you so much joy to love and to serve others. So maybe you hear things like, oh my gosh, how did you know exactly what would help my mastitis? You are a godsend. Or maybe, ugh. You always remember that I struggle around the anniversary of my mom's passing. Thank you so much for thinking of me. Or, wow, Hey, how did you know I really needed a friend and a phone call right now? Thank you so much for checking in. You do so much for other people and for you, honestly, it doesn't feel hard. In fact, you actually do know that this is your superpower. You are so good at it, you're amazing You just think about what it is that might be helpful in the moment, and then you offer it, so you're absolutely incredible when it comes to showing up for other people. And also sometimes you feel like a little something is missing. You maybe feel a little bit guilty thinking that, okay, well service should be its own reward, but something's missing, so what's wrong with me? You just can't quite put your finger on it. And when you start to feel a little bit down or a little bit tired or a little bit hungry, or just a little bit off, then you start to wonder who is it that I could even turn to? Where do I go when I have a need? You love showing up for other people and you feel so fulfilled by it, and also there's something missing. All right, number eight, you crave deeper, more meaningful and more balanced connections. There is a time and a place for superficial conversations. They can feel very safe at times, and also you are craving more depth. You're craving more connection. You're craving more balance and fulfillment in relationships. When you ask somebody how they're doing, you want the real answer, and you also want to feel safe enough to give your real answer too. You are longing for real human connection to see and be seen, to hear, and to be heard, to love and to be loved. You want it so badly that you can taste it. But you aren't quite sure how to get it. Maybe the relationships that you do have, they feel really out of balance. For example, when you do have an intimate conversation, it's always about the other person and you're more than happy to listen and reflect back to them. And also sometimes you would like for the conversation to be about you. Maybe your friend group has remained the same for years, which is an amazing thing, by the way. And also you're starting to wonder if you are outgrowing certain relationships. And this wanting more from your relationships. It's impacting your current relationships because you're not quite sure how to create more supportive change in your current relationships. You aren't quite sure. Okay. Well, I kind of need easy relationships to evolve, but I don't know if they're going to want to change. So then what do I do? Because I can no longer stay in this place. I have this deep desire to, to make things a bit more deeper, to more fulfilling, more intimate. And if they aren't willing to go there with me, then what do I do? And you aren't quite sure where to begin when it comes to finding new and more aligned relationships. All right, number nine, you're just ready to stop living on an autopilot. Every single day it's the same routine, and since you know what it is that you're supposed to do, then you go through the motions. But life is starting to feel more like it's about productivity than joy. But how are you supposed to create joy if you're supposed to get your checklist done? It can feel almost irresponsible, right? So life is starting to feel more blah. There's no real highs. There's no real lows, but you also really just don't wanna live like this anymore. You're ready to increase your baseline and find more joy and fulfillment in life. Maybe you daydream about different things that you want to do. You want to learn that instrument, you wanna take that trip, you wanna make that memory. But all that seems so frivolous and so what's the point? I need to be adult about this, right? And so your ho-hum life continues. And life is just feeling so predictable and it's not bringing you joy. And number 10, you're ready to connect with you. You're starting to realize that you have been living life according to other people's expectations of you, other people's shoulds, and you're ready to discover who it is that you really are. You want to know what it is that lights you up. You want to know what it is that energizes you, and you desperately want to see who you are outside of your roles. You already know how it is that you show up as a partner, as a friend, as a parent, as a caregiver, but you're ready to learn who you are outside of what it is that you do for other people. One way that this shows up, there's one gal that I coached for a while who she just was even wanting to know how is it that I want to dress? I've been dressing according to what the magazines have told me, or what my coworkers have told me is the way that I should dress, but I don't even know what I like. And I've only given myself permission to buy things that are on sale. I want to be able to dress in a way that makes me feel good. And we kind of just explored that about, okay, yeah. What does make you feel good? She'd never really given herself the time in this space to discover that about herself. Another example that I love, and I know I've shared it here on the podcast before, but it's just such a great visual, but I love the scene from Runway Bride where she's actually sitting down to see how she likes her eggs throughout all of her relationships. Whenever they went out to breakfast, then she would just order whatever they were having. So she honestly didn't know if she preferred her eggs. Poached, boiled, fried. She had no idea. But to sit down and actually try them and go, huh, do I like scrambled eggs? Or do I prefer my eggs with a Holland Day sauce? Right? She had no idea how it was that she liked her eggs, but to actually dedicate time and space to yourself to discover who am I? What do I like? I know what everybody else likes, but who am I and what is it that I like? Can be such valuable information. Okay, so add them up. How many of these resonated with you? If you recognize yourself in any of these, then coaching might be your next step towards having a more balanced and fulfilling life. And again, if you would like help working on one of these things, wonderful. You don't need to wait until life is unbearable to get help and support. And if four or more of these really resonated with you, then I highly encourage you to invest in yourself and reach out to see if coaching might be a good fit for you. You can book a free clarity call with me by clicking on the link in the show notes, or you can email me at maryann@maryannwalker.life. Reach out and let's see if coaching might be a good fit for you. Also, I wanted to let you know about a cool new feature for audio listeners. And of course if you're on YouTube you can just comment on the video. But there is a new feature on my audio platform that's pretty cool. There is a text me hyperlink in the show notes where you can simply click on it, drop me a note, and so these notes will go directly to my podcast. I haven't figured out yet if I can reply to them there, but I do know I can reply here on the podcast. And so if you want to just shoot me a number and tell me how many of these resonated, or tell me which one of these most resonated, or if there's something you'd like me to talk about more here on the podcast, shoot me a text. I would love to hear from you. You, my friend, deserve to take up space. You deserve to feel fulfilled. You deserve to feel heard and seen and understood, and you deserve to really feel comfortable in your own skin. Thank you so much for being here. I look forward to working with you and let's talk soon. Bye now.