How to Stop People-Pleasing (with Jennifer Schwytzer)

[Dana] (00:04)
Welcome to Phoenix in Flame. I’m Dana, and this is my podcast on pushing through and transforming even when you feel like a pile of ash. Today, we have a very inspiring guest with us. Our guest’s name is Jennifer Schwytzer, and her last name is a little bit difficult to spell, and we’ll go over that here in just a minute so we can make sure that you get connected with Jennifer. Now, Jennifer is a certified life coach and launched Kindfulness Coaching to help professional women ditch chronic stress, overwhelm, and burnout, to restore calm, productive order to their life. She has 17 years of experience as a licensed master social worker. She has also been featured on several podcasts, including Rochester Business Connections and Getting Real with Bossy. Jen has won the award for excellence in outstanding social work from University of Rochester Medical Center, and continues to provide mental health education through partnerships with American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Cornell University. Jen, welcome to Phoenix in Flame!

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (01:23)
Thank you so much, Dana. I’m excited to be here.

[Dana] (01:26)
You know, when I was reading the information about you, I have to be perfectly honest, although all the stuff that I just read is very impressive, what really drew me to you was this information where you said, if somebody looked up the definition of a people pleaser, they would have found the picture of you, and that you went through this process of getting to know who you are and what is important to you, and it allowed you to recognize that if you’re not first, you’re last.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (01:46)
Yes.

[Dana] (01:57)
And it goes on to say that today you have boundaries that don’t get pushed aside, and you say no like it’s your job, and surround yourself with only positive people who add value to your life, and you support women who are stressed and overwhelmed to tackle their life and their to-do list, to live a happy, simpler life. You are exactly the kind of guest that I love to have on Phoenix in Flame.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (02:06)
Thank you. Yay!

[Dana] (02:27)
So tell me how that process went for you, from being the poster child for people-pleasing to being able to have a really healthy set of boundaries, because that’s a journey.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (02:42)
It really is, and it probably took me my whole 17 years of experience in the social work field to get there, because it’s not something that happens overnight. And I think for me it was a culmination of a lot of things that got me to where I am today, and mainly that was a lot of personal development and really digging into who I am, what I want to exemplify, and what I have to offer. I think that, you know, when we’re sometimes in this nine-to-five job where we report into an office, we don’t always put our best self forward, or we don’t always hand out everything that we have to give, and you feel a little held back. And I think for me I felt very held back in the social work community.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (03:39)
A lot of the personal development for me was about, let me figure out who I am and what I have to offer, because I think I have more to offer. And it was a huge wake-up call for me, and it really helped me to kind of get to where I am today, and just really improve my confidence to set those boundaries and put myself first.

[Dana] (04:05)
Mm-hmm, I love everything you’re saying, and I’m kind of wondering, you said that you felt held back, and I think that is one of the key issues, especially for women, and because I am a psychotherapist as well and I’m known as the queen of boundaries, so we are speaking the same language. And so I am really curious what your take is on why we as females have trouble speaking, taking our space, standing in our space. It seems like males in general, obviously I’m stereotyping here, but it seems males in general don’t struggle with that as much as females, where females do feel that sensation of being held back. And the question becomes, how much of it is we are being held back, and how much of it is we are holding ourselves back? Those are two different things, both valid. What are your thoughts on that particular topic?

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (05:04)
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point, and I do think that there is a combination of both. I know for me, I had a lot of male superiors, the leadership was males, and I think that us as females, we can sometimes feel a little intimidated, we might not feel as confident in addressing some of those stereotypes. And I think another part of it is empathy. I am somebody that, and I’m sure a lot of women in the helping profession can relate, when you are giving and giving and giving, sometimes you have nothing left for you. And so to stand up for yourself, or to speak about what you need, or to even admit that you’re being held back, I didn’t have the energy to do that. I was so giving and giving and giving that I didn’t even recognize in the moment that I was being held back, or that I could do something about it.

[Dana] (06:10)
Wow, you bring up excellent points. So as I’m listening to you talk about that, I’m thinking that there’s only one person on the planet that has been designated, that has been given the responsibility of keeping us together, just one, and that would be us. And so if we’re not doing it, then our wheels will fall off. And you said, you know, you felt like you got to the point where you were giving so much to those around you that you had nothing left to give. And you have to have energy to fight, you have to have energy to care, let’s all be honest about that, because as empathetic women and caring women, we’re in roles as wives, as daughters, as mothers, as sisters, as friends. And if we are caring, loving, empathetic people, all of that takes energy. And so then if we happen to be in a position where we are either being held back or we are holding ourselves back, it does take energy to even give a crap, to be honest, because we’re so tired.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (07:23)
Exactly. Yep. And there were times when I felt like, you know what, I could probably fight for this, but I don’t have it in me to be able to do that right now. And I think that was something that, when I reflect back, I’m like, wow, I had a lot of opportunities to do more, or maybe speak up for myself, but I didn’t have it in me at that moment. And I don’t think anything would have been drastically different, but I put that on myself. I can see now, it’s no one else’s fault, like you said, it’s one person that has the power to keep us together, and I wasn’t that person that I needed to be in those moments.

[Dana] (08:11)
And I think for us to give that space for ourselves, and give that understanding and not judge ourselves, and also extend that to other females out there that are struggling, that we think, well, they should have, could have, would have, but we don’t know their story, we don’t know what’s on their plate, we don’t know what they’re going through, and so extending that acceptance to the other women out there that are walking their paths.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (08:38)
Yup. Yeah, absolutely, yep, yep. And I think that’s a really good point, like people can judge you for not being able to make a change, but no one has any idea what you’re going through behind the scenes, or how you’re feeling internally, and the thoughts that are racing through your head, no one else knows that except for you. And it’s our job to kind of work through that, so that we can advocate for ourselves.

[Dana] (09:09)
Absolutely, 100 percent. And if you’re thinking about advocating for ourselves, once we get to the point, and we’ll wrap back around here in a minute and talk more about self-care, because that’s huge, and I know you’ve got some information on here on your bio for self-care, and that’s a really big deal, that’s how we get to the place where we have the energy to care about these things. But advocating for ourselves once we get to that place, and moving from a people-pleaser, like you say that you were, I love the way you put that, you would have been the poster child, people-pleaser, to move from that to advocating for yourself. So talk about that a little bit, talk about that journey, your journey, and your thoughts on that transformation.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (09:42)
Yeah, and I think a lot of it was really working on my own confidence, I think that was really lacking. I wasn’t confident in some of my abilities. And when I worked on confidence, and just a little bit more understanding of what was important to me, what my priorities were, I could really come from a space where I could recognize what I needed for me to function like a healthy human being. And so I think that once I figured that out, once I figured out, okay, this is what’s important to me, this is how I need to get there, I felt more confident in saying that out loud and making sure that I was getting what I needed to be the person that I wanted to be.

[Dana] (10:48)
I like that. So my next question to you is, when you’re on that journey and you start figuring out the answers to these questions, you know who you are, what you want out of life, you know all these things that only you can answer in an attempt to increase your confidence, inevitably there’s going to be pushback. You are going to step into your space and try to own what you need for you, and there’s going to be a person, or persons, plural, that don’t like that, that don’t agree with you, that do not understand why you’re making the choices that you’re making and don’t appreciate it, quite frankly, and want to kind of push at you with criticism and judgment and calling of names and all this kind of thing in your journey, which I’m sure you had to face, because you cannot go from being a people-pleaser to standing in your space with healthy boundaries without running into the pushback, that’s part of it. So for you, what was that like? Describe for us what that was like for you, and how that felt to you, and then how you managed to deal with that. Because there are listeners right now that are trying to step into their own, and they’re kind of wading in, and they’re getting that pushback, and they don’t know what to do about it, it’s kind of freaking them out.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (11:49)
Absolutely, yup. Yeah, yeah, and it’s scary, I mean, I 100 percent agree. I lost friends because of that, because I was starting to set more boundaries, and I wasn’t just saying yes and I’ll do this and I’ll do that. I lost friends, and those people are no longer part of my life, and that was really hard. I felt like I’m doing this to better myself and better my relationships, and I have people that are not supportive of that. And so, some people, the more I modeled some of this, they got used to it and they kind of jumped on board and they didn’t understand it, and I knew who I could talk to about it. I think there’s this, the article about the five people you have in your life, and you have your cheerleader and you have your mentor, and I knew who I could talk to about this journey, and who was just gonna kind of be on the sideline watching it happen. So I kind of identified those people from the get-go: who can I talk to about this, who’s gonna support me, and for those people that aren’t, is there gonna be room in my life for them along this journey? And I think it sounds selfish, but you really have to think about, how is this person serving me right now? And that was a very difficult question for me. And at the beginning I thought that it was really selfish, but I think now I can reflect back and say, I only have the people that are 100 percent committed to our relationship, and me as a person and them as a person. And I think that that’s brought healthier relationships into my life.

[Dana] (14:03)
Wow, that is absolutely on point. It’s sort of like when you’re in a situation and you go through something very stressful with someone, you start to kind of figure out who the real friends are, because sometimes I think we have people in our life that are under the guise of friends, and they might think they’re friends and we might think they’re friends, but once we start setting boundaries, like you said, then you had to kind of define, what role were they playing, how were they serving you, what were they doing in your life, it really kind of causes all that to bubble to the surface.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (14:42)
It does. And I won’t say that that’s an easy process, because you’re already going through this big transformation, and then to have people pull away that you thought were your friends, it can definitely shake your confidence a little, and it can definitely make you rethink the boundaries you’re setting, am I doing the right thing? And it’s all a learning process, and you’re going to make mistakes, and it’s just part of the process, and it’s scary and it’s hard, and it’s so worth it.

[Dana] (15:13)
Yeah, I mean, it kind of brings to my mind the reason to have either a therapist, who is an objective third party that doesn’t have a dog in the race, they don’t have any kind of reason to see you any kind of way, so they’re totally objective, but also finding other supportive people in your life that you can say, hey, because I know that when I’ve taught people boundaries before, sometimes when someone is brand new to it, they’re saying no possibly more than maybe is healthy, but it’s so new to them and they’re so excited about the ability that they can actually say no, that they run around doing it everywhere. So it’s kind of nice to be able to have that person to say, hey, here’s a situation, this is what I did, what are your thoughts, and it sounds like you had some people like that.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (16:10)
Yes, yes. And I love the idea of having a therapist, that’s somebody that’s helped me on my journey as well, and I recommend it for everybody, everybody needs a therapist.

[Dana] (16:22)
Oh girl, I’ve had mine, I’ve been to therapy myself. I mean, to be honest with you, because I’m gonna take this a little bit deeper and then talk about the need for a therapist, because sometimes these relationships that start shifting, they are family relationships. Because you have the friends, and that’s hard enough, but then sometimes we’re talking about close family relationships that cut pretty deep. And so when we start wading into those waters, and setting some boundaries that possibly maybe should have been set a long time ago, or we didn’t have the guts, or we didn’t have the support, or we didn’t have the knowledge to set those boundaries before, and when that pushback comes, that pushback can be pretty extreme. And so, having a therapist at those points where you can go, because to be honest, and I’ve shared a little bit of my journey, I’m not gonna go into all that right now, but you need someone that you can go to and say, hey, am I doing the right thing, I’m kind of all twisted up in my head, I feel like I’m doing the right thing but I’m not sure, what are your thoughts on this? Did you notice any issues with family members, or not so much, in your journey?

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (17:50)
I’m so thankful that my husband is so supportive of this journey. And I remember the day that I was like, you know what, I think I’m going to be a life coach, and he’s like, “cool, let’s do it.” And so my husband has been super supportive throughout this journey. And my immediate family also, I don’t have a close relationship with extended family, but my immediate family has been very supportive. I don’t think they quite understand what I do sometimes, and I don’t think that they always agree with my choices, however they kind of keep that to themselves. And I think that I’ve tried to set that precedent where, I’m not gonna take somebody putting down my choices. If you want to talk to me about my choices, I’m okay with that, and happy to talk through it and listen to any feedback, however, I’ve set such good boundaries. I love that you call yourself the queen of boundaries, because I feel like that’s needed. I do take things to heart, and I don’t want to hear somebody criticizing my choices, and so I’ve tried to set some really firm boundaries around that. But I’ve been lucky, I’ve been really lucky with my immediate family, with my husband, so I’m thankful for that.

[Dana] (19:17)
Yeah, and I’m sure there’s different levels, because when you’re on this journey, and I want to make sure that I’m thinking of the listeners and the different levels that they might be in their life where they’re hearing us speaking together about this, because there are some that are kind of setting their boundaries and they’re getting support, and it’s okay, and their boundaries are received, and then you have other levels, and then you have the real hard levels where there’s people out there that are trying to set boundaries, like say for example someone who is in a relationship with either an alcoholic person, or someone who is abusing drugs of some sort, or someone with a significant mental illness, like a personality disorder, or narcissistic, some kind of thing, where those situations are hard, and to say that their boundaries would get criticized is to say the very least.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (20:18)
Yes, yes, yeah, you’re so right about that. And it’s putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes as well, again, you never know what somebody else is experiencing. And so what works for me might not work for somebody else, and it’s finding out what works for you and how we can best move forward with that. But you’re so right, that’s going to create a whole other level of hardness.

[Dana] (20:49)
Yes, well, and I wanted to point out, you launched Kindfulness Coaching, and to kind of segue into that, because sometimes when we are setting boundaries in places where boundaries have not been set before but were very much needed, then we are interpreted as being anything but kind. And so I think I would really like to hear about your kindfulness coaching, and also helping people who are trying to set boundaries, and, you know, what if I have listeners out there who are like, I don’t feel like I’m a very kind person because I’m setting boundaries and I’m getting all this pushback and feedback of people telling me that I’m hateful, I’m a bitch, I’m this and that, because I’m setting boundaries, how am I being kind? Yours is kindfulness coaching, so help them kind of reconcile those two things.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (21:49)
Yeah, so when I came up with the name of Kindfulness, my thought was, in being kind to yourself. And for me, setting boundaries and self-care and making yourself a priority is all about being kind to yourself, and also giving yourself a break. You’re not going to make the right or the best decision all of the time, and that’s okay. And I think part of that is giving yourself the grace to say, you know what, I had the best intentions when I did this, it didn’t work, so what can I try next? And so it’s that idea of, we all make mistakes, we’re all gonna flounder. And I think the idea of being kind to yourself is kind of the premise of the work that I do. We always put everybody else first, we’re always giving and giving and giving as women, especially, and without having that energy, sometimes it’s really hard to give back to yourself. And I really want to, people have helped me to be more kind to myself and be more forgiving and take away that perfection, people-pleasing attitude, and that’s what I want to give back. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to not have the best ideas or the best decisions all the time, that’s okay. We still need to be kind to ourselves and take care of us, because we are the only way that we’re gonna make changes and be better at what we want to do.

[Dana] (23:30)
I love that so much, because I think when most of us think about being kind, we naturally think about being kind to others. We don’t really think about, you know, when you see those people that have those t-shirts or those baseball hats that say “be kind,” I think we naturally, when we see that, we think they’re meaning be kind to other people, we don’t stop and think, what does it mean if I’m kind to myself? What does that mean, what does that look like, would I be behaving any differently if I decided to be kind to myself? I like the way you turned that around and started that first.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (24:21)
Yeah, it’s just, it’s hard, it’s really hard.

[Dana] (24:21)
Well, and you deal so much with people, women especially, that are stressed and overwhelmed, and kind of helping them to find their way out of that forest of all the needs, and how do they make their way out of that so they can keep their wheels on? Because I remember telling my patients, if your wheels fall off, then how do you think you’re going to serve anybody? You know, and so it’s our responsibility to keep our wheels on. So what have you found in your expertise and your experience with your clients and your patients has been most effective in helping them to kind of combat this overwhelmed feeling, this so-stressed-out feeling, and making their way through their to-do lists, that never goes away, by the way.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (25:14)
Yeah, exactly, exactly, I can definitely relate to that. So for me, when I first start with somebody, I don’t necessarily go into goal setting. I don’t love the word goals, I try and flip that around and think about priorities, and I help women to identify what’s most important in your life, is it your career, is it your family, why you’ve come to me, why you’ve come to this journey, let’s get down to the deep-down priorities of what you want your life to look like. And so we do some digging, and I ask a lot of questions to really get to know somebody and what’s important to them, and I use that throughout our work together. Any decision making, any boundary setting is always going to go back to what are your priorities. And so we build a little bit more of a relationship with boundaries in that way, because we can say, oh, I’m setting this boundary because, this is what’s important to me, and so bringing things back to your priorities has been really helpful for a lot of my clients. We don’t make decisions without going back to our priorities. So that’s really where I like to start, and I think that grounds people, and it gives people, you know, you get those people who are very evidence-based and want to see something happen right away, and well, let’s keep going back to this, we’re not making any decisions without going back to this, and so it helps to kind of ground people a little bit.

[Dana] (27:00)
I like that, that makes a whole lot of sense. It kind of gives a platform to stand on, to build from. It’s sort of like, if you think about building a house, you need the foundation first, and then you build the framework on the foundation. So that’s what I hear you saying. So from your perspective and your experience, what does burnout look like? I mean, I think we all know when we say burnout, but what does that look like, what is the definition, how does that feel?

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (27:33)
Yeah, so I think we oftentimes don’t know we’re burned out in the moment, and that’s the hard part. It’s that chronic stress that’s going to build up, and it takes away from your ability to think, process, do, in the way that you would like to. So, for me, it looked like I was tired every day. I would come home from work and my husband would say, “what do you want for dinner?” and I’d be like, “I don’t know, I can’t even think through this decision.” And I felt very much like I was just going through the motions. And in the moment, I didn’t know that I was burned out, and I think that’s the really hard part, especially for women, that you don’t always know you’re going through it until something happens and you kind of get this wake-up call and you’re like, oh wow, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be, I’m not supposed to just show up every day, do this job, go home, go to sleep, wake up and do it all over again tomorrow. There was no passion left. There was no joy in the work that I was doing. And so for me, that’s what burnout looked like.

[Dana] (28:51)
Wow, I would probably say, and I’m just going to venture a guess, I’m going to go out on a limb and say probably 50 to 75 percent of the women listening to this podcast are going to align with that, just slogging their way through their days, just trying to get the boxes checked so they can fall into bed and get up the next morning and do it all again. So what do you think, how could they differentiate, because a lot of that feels like depression. So do you feel like that they coexist, that one causes the other, or that sometimes we feel like we are depressed and then we end up in the doctor’s office wanting, you know, some kind of medication when actually it’s more of a burnout issue? What are your thoughts, Jen?

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (29:33)
Yeah, I think that they can be very easily confused. And I think that’s where a therapist comes in as well, to kind of help you separate the two. But I think, for me, I like to get in before burnout, so more of that prevention, of here are some things that we could do so you don’t get into that place. But I do think that they could be very easily confused. And, you know, therapy, medication, if that’s not going to do anything for burnout, there has to be a lot more, like a change in your routine, a change in your mindset, those are the things that are going to support you in overcoming that burnout. So they can get really easily confused, and I think that if it goes on for a really long time, and daily habits and routines aren’t helping with that, likely depression might have come in as a factor as well.

[Dana] (30:33)
Yeah, that’s a big deal in trying to differentiate those two things. And I think too, when you have women that are driven by nature, and I include myself in this group, that we tend to push ourselves to the max, to the absolute max, and even though it’s fun and we’re full of passion, we flirt with burnout.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (30:36)
Yes, yep, yes, yes, because I think a lot of us feel like we have something to prove, like, I can do this, I can help and do my own job, I can, you know, I don’t need to ask for help. All of these things that, as high achievers, we want to be able to prove that we can do this.

[Dana] (31:24)
All right, now unfortunately our time is up, I feel like, Jen, I feel like you and I could just sit and talk for probably another hour, because this is really good stuff. I mean, because we know as women what it’s like, being mothers and what that feels like, and I know a lot of our listeners are right there with us just resonating, going, oh my gosh, they know exactly what we’re going through, because we are all together. So let me make sure that my listeners know how to access you, if they want to learn more, if they want to see what you have to offer. Now, what I have is a website called KindfulnessCoaching.com, is that where they go? Okay, KindfulnessCoaching.com, and I will definitely put that in the show notes and everything like that. So before I wrap up, is there any last-minute thoughts that you feel like we didn’t cover, or that you want to kind of toss in there before we wrap up today?

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (32:27)
Yeah, no, just the overall idea of being kind to yourself, and how important it is to make yourself a priority. You are the person that’s going to change where you go. So wherever you want to be, you have the ability to get there, and only you can do that.

[Dana] (32:45)
I love it. Jen, thank you so much for spending your time and your effort and your energy to come and be with me and to really reach out and bless our listeners on Phoenix in Flame.

[Jennifer Schwytzer] (32:48)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

[Dana] (33:00)
Now listeners, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have heard multiple things today in this podcast that you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I am gonna absolutely think about this and apply these things. And you might think, well, you have a friend or a coworker or a relative that you’re thinking, I know just the person that needs to hear this podcast. Send it out, we’re all about growing our Phoenix in Flame community and reaching out to one another, and support and acceptance of one another. So take the podcast, copy and paste the link in texting, in email, blast it out on your favorite social media sites, let’s get it out there and get the word out. And if anybody wants to go, we’ve got, first of all, number one, KindfulnessCoaching.com, that’s gonna get you in touch with Jen and Jennifer Schwytzer. And again, that name will be spelled out, you should see it on your podcast app. And also if anybody’s interested, you can also go to DanaSkaggs.com, there’s boundaries courses, there’s self-studies and group courses and things like that, if you want to learn more about what Jen and I have been talking about today, we’re both offering stuff to help everybody out there. So guys, I hope you’ve had a wonderful day so far, and I hope the rest of your day goes fantastic. This is Dana on Phoenix and Flame.