SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Catholic Sobriety Podcast, the go-to resource for women seeking to have a deeper understanding of the role alcohol plays in their lives. Women who are looking to drink less or not at all for any reason. I am your host, Christy Walker. I'm a wife, mom, and a joy-filled Catholic. And I am the Catholic sobriety coach. And I am so glad you're here. Today we are going to talk about people pleasing. You probably know a lot about it. Maybe you've even told yourself that you'll work on it. But here's what nobody tells you. Pleasing isn't necessarily a problem. God wired you to please. The problem is who you are trying to please. And this shows up everywhere in how you serve at your parish, in how you handle your family. And yes, even when it comes to your drinking. Not wanting to be the odd one out, not wanting to be a wet blanket on anybody's good time, not wanting to feel rude about declining a drink or not having alcohol available for your guests. And then, of course, there's how you reach for the fastest thing that feels like self-care when you've just given everything to everyone else. Today, my guest is going to talk about this. Andrea Baer is a Catholic author who believes imperfect stories help us connect to the human spirit. Her writing spans grief and loss as well as the work of unlearning people-pleasing tendencies. Her first novel, Grieving Daughters Club by Elk Lake Press, weaves both of those threats together.com, and is currently working on a nonfiction book on people-pleasing and false virtues. Outside of writing and serving the Lord, she spends her time with family, teaching history, and volleyball practice. You can find her at AndreaBearAuthor.com. You're a volleyball coach?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Yes, I am a volleyball coach, but I I we need to preface that it's not a high competitive. We're talking like low-grade volleyball coach. But yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

I think that's great. Well, welcome, Andrea. I'm so glad to have you on the podcast today. Thank you, Christy.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah, I've been coaching for a CYO or Catholic Youth organization. So since my children were young, and I just enjoyed it because it was a time that I could spend with them. And so I'm not perfect at it, but you know, I always say the best time you can spend on it, the best thing you can spend on a child is time.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Oh, I love that. And that is so, so true. I actually, when my older boys were in high school, they played football their freshman year. And so I coached cheerleading. So I didn't have a cheerleader on the team, but my I was going to the football games with the cheerleaders, but also with my boys. And so that was really fun. It was kind of my way of being able to like be with them without being with them, you know, like not being like overbearing or anything. I wasn't great at it, but it was so fun. I'm not perfect at it, but you know what? We have a good time. That's right. All right. So I guess let's just kind of jump into why you're here because I know so many people in my audience probably just turned up their volume a little bit and leaned in a little closer as soon as they heard about people pleasing. Because I think it's something that so many of us can relate to. So what actually drew you into writing about people pleasing? I know you're working on this book, but also connecting it with false virtues. That's what I love the most, is how you're connecting people pleasing with false virtues. And I'm just wondering if maybe there was like a moment that a light bulb went off or you know, something kind of cracked open for you personally. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

So, first of all, I want to emphasize that it is not wrong to please. Um, you please your husband by making him a good meal. You want to please your boss. So you want to make sure your work is done well. God has created this desire in us to love and to be loved, and he wants us to please him. So it there's nothing wrong with pleasing. What's wrong with people pleasing as opposed to God pleasing is that sometimes that is not necessarily intended for the right purpose. And I think that's what people have to understand is people pleasing tends to be centered on self, not others. It just happens to be the guise of others. We want them to see us a certain way. We want them to like us. We're using that as a way for our own self-fulfillment. And so that's what oftentimes I think when we hear the word people pleasing, we hear that it's wrong. And, you know, I I struggled with this most of my life because I look back at times where people pleasing actually saved me in pretty bad situations. I would always think of, I went to Cavit school and I had this beautiful sister named Sister Odetta. She's still with us. And I always used to think, what would Sister Odetta think if she saw me doing this? You know, instead of what was G, what would Jesus do? What would Sister Odetta think? Because that was kind of my moral compass. I didn't want to disappoint her. On the and so that helped me from making a lot of poor decisions. And I'm grateful to that. Because I know that if I hadn't had that, I probably would have had a lot of more negative things that I would have chosen to do. In hindsight, though, it also led me to a lot of not appropriate decisions because the one virtue that people pleasers have is obedience. And we're very obedient. We like to follow the rules, we like to help others, but with everything that we have, the devil will try to distort the virtues that we already have. So it's not a matter of that we're pleasing, it's not a matter that we're obedient. It's that he will take things that are good and holy and then he will manipulate them. You and so as I started writing this, so to give you a little backstory, most people pleasing is typically it's not a disease, it's not uh addiction, it's usually a symptom that's manifested from some type of trauma, some type of toxic situation. Or in my case, I'm kind of a second-generational pleaser. My mom grew up, my grandmother, I love her dearly. She struggled. She had a lot of wounds, and she had a hard time really being like a mother figure. She struggled with alcohol as well. And so my mom took the role of the mom early. Um, her father died when she was 12. And so she had to kind of grow up. So she became kind of the matron of her family. And with that, she was always the caretaker. She was always the peacemaker. She was always the buffer. And those are typically characteristics that people pleasers tend to possess. And so growing up, I see that behavior. One of my relatives, one of her siblings, also had that same behavior. So for me, that was natural. That was natural to serve other people and it was expected. And they would just jump in and I would marry my husband, and he's not a people pleaser. And, you know, he's just such a good man, but he pointed some of these behaviors out. And I found that I would constantly put myself in situations that I created this big web because I was so worried about what others would think of me, or I was so worried about putting others out, even though I was completely put out. And so this really kind of came to head about 2018. My mom had passed away. She had glioblastoma, brain cancer. She struggled with this for many years. My father had also a disease, uh, muscular dystrophy. And this came on late in adulthood. And my dad, I loved my father. I did not always like my father. He was definitely not a people piecer. To give you kind of a personality description, if you're in my age group, you probably know the show Seinfeld. He's kind of like a cross between Doris Costanza and Kramer. Just a very strong personality, has no filter, uh, sometimes would be a little rude and it was embarrassing. And now I felt this obligation to take care of him. And I always felt that desire to take care of my parents. I I wanted to, but it was very clear he wanted to be taken care of a certain way. And it was very difficult, and we butted heads. And in the course of that, everything started to fall apart because my cheerleader, the one who lifted me up, gave me all my validation, was not there anymore. And so when you take that away, you start to really question for me, it was almost like a self-worth. My mom would praise me beyond praise, even if I didn't need it. And so then not to have that, you start to look for it in other places. And I think that's the that's kind of the heroine of people pleasing. And I say that, you know, in quote end quotes, because you are craving that praise. You are craving and that desire to be received, to be glorified, to recognize your worth. And that's the problem with people pleasing is you're trying to find your worth from the world, and you're not trying to find your worth from God. And so I didn't realize this because I'd always had it. I mean, I grew up, my mom and dad were married, I had a good home. My mom sheltered me from a lot of those behaviors because she had to deal with them. And that's the other part, and I would I would like to speak to your audience too is if a person is going through where they they've lived through trauma, they've lived through people with addictions, they protect the next generation. The downside is that they pour into them everything that they didn't have. And so then when you have somebody who's had all of that poured into, we've received all these rewards that we didn't earn. I guess that's the best way to describe it. And so my mom praised the heck out of me. I didn't earn any of it. And so then I was seeking it from everybody, every place. So I am also a very high achiever. I like to go out and do things, and I can't just do things partially. I have to do them big. There's a bake sale. I'm not gonna just donate cupcakes, I'm gonna get a corporate sponsor, I'm gonna promote it on social media, I'm gonna do all these huge things. I can't just be satisfied and content with simplicity. So when my mom died, grief has a way of crippling you. And I found that I couldn't continue in the same manner. I was so involved in my children's school, in my church, in my job. And I just couldn't function. And yet I still tried to. And I remember uh speaking of volleyball teams, this was right around the pandemic. I had a hard time saying no. And my daughter's team multiplied into three teams in front of me. There were so many girls, nobody else wanted to coach. And I just thought, oh, well, I've already done it. That was the justification. So I could probably do again and again. And I was in such burnout, and this was right around 2020. And I know most people struggled during the pandemic. For me, it was a reprieve because I could not say no. I really could not say no. So I during that time, it allowed me a little bit of just reflection of what am I doing? Why am I spinning myself? Why do I feel this need to say yes to everything? Why do I feel this need to not let everybody down? And so a lot of prayer. The Rosary really helped me. Mary helped me see, she put the right people in front of me. And so my father died in 2024, and our relationship in the course of those last years really started to heal. There was a lot of strife within us because my mom had been the buffer for so many years. And with her not there, everything kind of came to a head. But in the same time, it was also very beautiful because we did have a lot of healing. And after he passed, I just started looking at all the things that God had accomplished, not me, that he'd accomplished in our life. And I started to just write, it just was journaling, no particular rhyme or reason. And I saw this pattern. A lot of it was centered around my own need to control, my own need to make everybody happy, my own need to be busy with tasks. And I started to put these together and I noticed it was a vice over a virtue. And so I started putting all these together. And I have a friend that I know that is an editor, and I had sent this to her just for her to see. And she said, you know, you're writing a lot about false virtue. And I hadn't even realized that I was doing that. But every chapter that I had sent to her, it said the word false in it. And then it kind of clicked. You're right. This is exactly what people pleasing is, because on the exterior, it looks good, it looks holy, it appears pleasing, it appears pleasant, but the interior is a bad fruit. It's a rotten fruit because you have to come from a place of love.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Thank you for sharing all of that and about your family and and everything. As you were talking, like a few things came up for me in the beginning when you were talking about how people pleasing is just more focused on self. And so, like I wrote down pride and you said control, and then there's fear, and you know, wanting to appear a certain way for people, not wanting to let people down. And I think that as you said all that, I'm like, people pleasing like self-care gets a bad name. But like you said in the beginning, it's okay. There are some instances where people pleasing is good and holy, in fact, right? But then there's the distorted version, the counterfeit version, if you will, of that pleasing that then just is on us, or you know, we're afraid, like we don't want people to be mad at us or think poorly of us, or like what you were saying, being a high achiever, you know, you want to make sure that you maintain that. But then with self-care, like that gets a bad name too, because we need self-care, we need to have rest. And so many women turn to alcohol or scrolling or binge watching Netflix or, you know, whatever it is, food, to just say, oh my gosh, I just need to take a minute for myself. And instead of asking, what do I really need in this moment, or how can I turn to the Lord in this moment, it's we just reach for reach for that counterfeit version or reach for the thing that we think is going to make it easiest. And with people pleasing, you know, it's kind of like that too, because you don't necessarily want conflict or you don't necessarily want to have somebody be disappointed. But yet it's just going to happen. It's just part of life, and you can't do it all. I related so much to what you said too about the pandemic because our family, my husband and I were having a really hard time saying no too because we'd gotten very involved in our pairs. Our older boys were in scouts, like we were doing all the things we had. We actually had a family calendar. I'm a co-coordinator of a very large women's Bible study. My husband's involved in Knights of Columbus and that managed to. So our calendar was just packed. And we had to get this calendar just like chalk full of everything. And then when everything shut down, it was like, oh my gosh, we just like ripped it off. And then, like, the next month had nothing on it. It was the weirdest thing. But it allowed us to say, What the heck were we doing? What were we doing? It's not that all those things were bad, but what could we set down? What were we doing because we thought we had to, or we were afraid of disappointing somebody or looking bad, or you know, people would always say, Oh, your family does so much, and all those good accolades, like you said, but then it gets to the point where maybe it not maybe, it was got to a point where it was prideful, actually. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

I think you well, and you're hitting it right on the head, is a lot of it is pride. We don't even realize we're doing it. If you think about it, let's go back to the very first story of creation. Eve is there with the serpent and she's looking at the forbidden fruit. And what's the word that is described in there? It was pleasing to the eye. It looked okay. It looked right. It appears to have this false persona to it. And I think that's the part where we look at things and we go, oh, that's okay. What's a second, third volleyball team? I mean, you know, I've done it before. I know what I'm doing, I can handle this. My kids need to have these sports. If they don't, they're going to be left out. You know, we we have this idea that if we do certain things, it's going to fill our cup. It's going to make give us more value. And oftentimes, and again, it goes back to the devil is distracting us from what we're called to do. And he can do that in so many ways. He can do it with toxic things, but he can also do it with holy things too. My problem was it wasn't that I was doing difficult things. I was doing really good things. I was participating in my church. I was helping my children, but I was spinning in circles because, and that's what the devil can do is he can distract you by doing all these wonderful good things from and keeping your attention away from what you're called to do. He can also do that with vices, he can do that with drinking, he can do that with anything, even with self-care, because sometimes we can justify self-care. I need a ladies' night, I need a a spa day. And at the end of the day, when those things are done, they're not really fulfilling. They take you away temporarily. But it really comes down to the desires of our heart. And God is there. Whether you believe in God or not, He has placed that desire in your heart and He's constantly trying to get our attention. And I think that's what I came to realize with people pleasing is I had this desire to be loved. I had this desire to be needed. And so I'm looking at it through my church community. I'm looking at it in my husband. I'm, and you know, my husband used to say to me, and this would annoy me, Christy. This would just annoy me. I can't be your happiness. I can't give you happiness. That has to be your choice. And he wasn't saying that he doesn't want to make me happy. He wasn't trying to say that he wants to do things that are pleasing to me, but he was trying to tell me that my worth is not from him. My worth is from God. And I didn't quite understand that. And I still get annoyed when he says that, I'll be honest with you, because that makes him right. That makes him right. And I don't like that sometimes. That's the prideful part I have to try to get over. But when he is right, that is our worth is not from the world. And the devil will constantly try to tell us we are worthless. And so he will tell us that our worth is going to come if we do X, Y, and Z, or we'll try to hunt for it because that's that desire that God has placed in us. And so the devil will try to redirect it. He'll do whatever he can to keep us away from God because he knows God loves us. And that was the part, Chrissy, that I had to learn is that, you know, in my own story, mine was about accolades, accomplishment, doing as many things as I could to get the praise. But when that praise roller coaster goes up, it's gonna eventually come down. So what do I do to get that another fix of praise? And I was in confession one day and I finally admitted this this problem that I had. And I had been praying, I have a very special devotion to our Lady of Sorups. And if you want to know what your advice is, she will point it out to you. And she does so in such a loving way. And it finally occurred to me that this was really consuming me. So I'd gone to confession and I remember this priest telling me, he said, God loves you no matter what you do or what you don't do. His love is unchanging. And I sobbed so hard. I sobbed because I knew God loved me, but I didn't believe it. I felt like I had to earn it. I constantly felt like there was a task connected that my love for him and his love for me was transactional. And it wasn't until that very moment, like this huge heaviness just lifted up. And like in grief, they say that tears, there are different types of tears, that there's actually your body, when you're crying tears of grief, there's this toxicity, these chemicals that actually come out of your body and you feel tired and you feel exhausted. And when I was in that confessional, I cried so heavy. I felt this release completely. It was almost like I could let go of that. I could let go of this desire that God is, that I have to prove myself. And I think as Catholics, we don't understand the role of faith in works because we look at works as a transactional, like we have to earn God's love. That's not what works is about. And so I think that's the part that I've really had to just break down and dissect. His love for us is never ending. It's unconditional. We don't even have to believe in him, and he will never stop loving us. But he wants us to seek him. He wants us to seek him. You know, he's a gentleman, he's not gonna get in our way, he respects our free will, but he desires us. And he also does want us to please him. And when I say that, we have to be careful because we don't want to interpret that as that we have to earn his love. Seeking him and pleasing him are about if you love someone so much, don't you want to do something for them because you love them? You know, if you have a husband, you want to please him, not because you're earning anything, because you love him so much and you're so grateful for all the gifts that he gives you. You want to show him and you want to share that with him. And so that's really what God is asking us is he wants us to desire him. He wants us to seek him. And that in itself, that in itself, we can do it so imperfectly, we can mess it up, but we continue to seek him. That is truly what is pleasing to him. And I and here's how I can prove this. If we look at Jesus' life, the first time Jesus goes into his public ministry, he's getting baptized. And what does God say? This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Jesus hasn't done anything yet. He's just got baptized, and God is already pleased with him. He hasn't done anything, and yet he's showing us right then and there it's because Jesus has already sought his father. He is going to do his will, he is in alignment with him. And then that same word is repeated when he goes to Mount Tabor and the Transfiguration. And that's right before he's this is about a week before he's going to have the passion. And he's reminding his apostles, he's reminding the people how much he is pleasing to him. So I it's all there for us. God shows us that he loves us and he wants us and he's giving us everything that we need.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Yes. Oh wow. So much jump out there. But you I really appreciated you speaking into the identity of everybody who is listening right now, because that's such a big part of the work that I do. And the reason why is because I've done a lot of inner healing sessions with women specifically. And I have to tell you the the lies that come up every single time, every time. So I am unlovable, I am not worthy, I nobody likes me. I mean, it's just like these things you would see this woman interact with her, and you might think that she's a very confident person, you might think that she has it all together, and then all of a sudden, all of these lies come out, and they're very childlike a lot of times too. And I think it's what you were talking about, those wounds that we carry, right? Those that trauma and those wounds, what is underneath that? What is underneath the people pleasing, what is underneath the vices? It all comes down to those wounds and how we've just gotten through life, right? Just kind of like hobbling along, trying to make sure that we get through it, that we are loved, that we can seek love. And I think that as you were talking about this, you said it so beautifully to seek the Lord. And and Jesus was the perfect example. That's all he did before his baptism was to seek God, and he was pleased with him. And that's what he wants most. That's what he desires most. And we can't do that when we're trying, when we're worried about our image, when we're worried about fear of man instead of fear of the Lord, because that's that um that gift, fear of the Lord isn't being scared of God, but it's wanting to please God because we love him so much. And when you even think about it just as a parent, how you are with your children, how you just love them just because they're yours and you know, they don't have to do anything for you to love them, especially when they're babies, they don't do anything. They're a lot of work, but they're so darn cute and you just love them so much. And then when we think of how much infinitely deeper God loves us than how we love our kids, it's just mind-blowing to think of that. But it can be so hard, especially if you've had a hard relationship with your own, with your earthly father. Like that was something that was really hard for me. I used to always say, I know God loves me, but I just don't think he's that interested in me. Like he doesn't really, I don't know. He I know he's there, but he just, I don't think he really listens to me or my prayers or what, you know, whatever. And it took so many years, and it took a lot of seeking him and then just being still and also receiving. Receiving, I would say, is the hardest. But I really was that performative for so many years. I think that's why my husband and I got so inundated with saying yes to so many things in our parish and at my our kids' school was because we felt like in order to belong, in order to fit in, we had to earn by doing constantly.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Yeah. Well, and you know, you bring up a really good point is you're going into something, you're you're keeping busy. I think we go into it unknowingly. What I found was I was so busy, I wasn't prioritizing my family because I became so on fire with my faith. I was leading Bible studies, I was running major events and galas, and I would justify it all because it was all for good. But what happened was is my own life was not rightly ordered. And I think that's the part, even in relationships, in toxicity, nothing was ordered properly in my life. And that's where God comes to the top, then your husband, your spouse, and then your children. I was going out and I was doing, and I said it was for God, but it really wasn't for God. It was for me because it was filling me up. I would keep myself so busy so that I didn't have to feel. And the one things that I did feel, it was like an adrenaline. It was the feelings of you're doing so many good things. You're doing so many beautiful, amazing things. And I needed that was really for me. It wasn't for my church. Now, I will say, were all those things done in vain? Were did God not bless those things? No, because I don't get to decide it. Only God can decide what is fruitful. But I also realized when I looked at back at my parents, because uh both of my parents now are past, my father was in my life, and I remember going to to confession, and I remember my priest because I was struggling with taking care of him. I would I even admitted I don't like him. And he said, You don't have to like him, but you are called to love him. And that really hit me. And he said, He is your cross, and the only way to Jesus is to carry your cross. And that was really that hit me hard because I wanted a different cross. You know, I can do all of these churchy things. I can be, you know, I can be exteriorly holy, but I don't want to carry that cross. That one's a hard one. And I I look back now and I go, if my mom had been the one to go second, I would not have gotten to know my father. And I would not have been able to care for him in a way that was loving. And I remember my priest friend, Father Joe, who the one that kind of counseled me, he said, he said, if your father needed to go to the hospital, would you take him? And I said, Yes. I didn't hesitate. And he said, That's love. He said, Love is not a feeling, love is an action. And he and so that's what we talk about when they talk about faith in works, because works is charity. It's an action, it's a love. He said, You don't have to like your father, you don't have to condone his behavior, but you are called to love him. And we do that through our sacrifice. We do that by not looking at our own personal gain, our own benefit, but loving someone for the sake of what they need, not what we want. My problem was is I had been in such a habit of giving, giving, giving, but I was expecting that to be received in return. And that's where people pleasing can kind of go in circles because we're doing it again, very transactionally. We're doing it from a place where we want to be loved too. We're giving, giving, giving, and we're expecting the same in return. My mom had done that for me for years. It was transactional, but she was filling up my love tank and I would fill up hers, but the cycle wasn't continuing. And so what I had to learn is what was really love, what I thought love was, and my father showed me how to love. He showed me how to carry love, to model love. And my husband helped me understand and point it out to me. And so I was so I'm so grateful to that because I would not have seen that web, you know, and that's that's what's really hard sometimes of people pleasing, because it is oftentimes really, really difficult to recognize because it's usually covered up with so many good things. Not always, but a lot of good. And so we just think, oh, well, it's good. It should, it should be fine. But if you it really comes down to rightly ordering your life. I had to honor my father. I had to honor him as being the head. I had to be okay with decisions that he made in his life that I didn't agree with. And there were some things that, you know, I'm not gonna say on the air, but they were not holy things that my dad decided to do. And I had to allow him to do that. That doesn't mean I was okay with it, and that means that I was not going to be led into sin. We are not obligated to follow somebody into sin. In fact, God is telling us if there is an order and they are leading you into sin, you are not required to follow that. So, but I had to allow him to kind of do those things. He wanted to live by himself. He wanted to live in a big house that was falling apart. And I had to allow him to a degree, even to the point, and and this is where it's kind of gray area because some people might disagree with me, but I knew that if I jumped in, he would immediately use that as an opportunity to try and cancel me. So I had to be okay with every decision he made. And not from a place of I told you so, dad. It was more of okay, I have to honor where we are in that place. By doing that, it actually helped my father become less prideful because I was I was motivating the pride. I was motivating his pride by my own fear, by my need to control, to come in. And what I realized is like, no, I have to take that. Once I did that, God started putting everything into the right place. There was a great amount of forgiveness. And I will tell you this forgiveness is multiplying because my children saw me with the forgiveness that I had for my father. And because they were starting to be resentful of him for things that he had done. And when they saw that I was forgiving, they started to forgive too. So that's where you really, you know, not that everything you do is perfect, but you have to know what to prioritize in your life.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

I'm so glad that you told that story because I'm sure that a lot of people can relate to that, where and I've heard women say that they had very, very difficult relationships either either with one or both of their parents. And at the end, they were the ones that were taking care of them. And as hard as it was, every single one of them it thanks God for that opportunity to. But like you said, it's not a cross you would choose, or even in the beginning, say, Yeah, totally, I'll take that out. It's something that you have to really go through to be able to accept it. And then how beautiful that your husband was there to be able to accompany you through that and just point out that was the Holy Spirit obviously working through him to help him help you understand and see what was happening. Because sometimes we don't see it in until it's like way further down the road in retrospect. And I'm sure there's a lot of things that you saw much later, but the fact that he could point that out to you to help you with that, I'm sure was so helpful for you and really helped to soften your heart. And I love what the priest said about those actions, even when we don't necessarily feel like this overwhelming love for somebody. We love them enough that we wouldn't let them suffer. We love them enough that we would do, you know, take care of them in a way that they need to be taken care of. And that's that's love too. That's the same with forgiveness, right? We don't have to feel an emotion to forgive. We don't have to say what they did was okay. We don't have to even say that, you know, we want to hang out with them or anything, but yeah, it's something that it's for us to be able to grow and be sanctified through and heal. And you needed that healing with your dad. So you had to walk that really difficult road, it sounds like, to be able to heal those parts of you.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Well, and I think, and you you brought that up, I think you have to feel like this feeling of forgiveness. You don't have to feel anything. You don't have to justify or condone the behavior. And I think that's sometimes what holds people back is if we allow forgiveness that their behavior is okay. No, we don't have to be okay with the behavior. I think there's this idea too that when we forgive, uh, there's we open boundaries. And you you should have boundaries. I mean, I learned with my father, one of the things when I would come over to take care of him, I remember my therapist would tell me, always take a nap before you go so that you are refreshed. Because if you're vulnerable, then your guard is down. And that's when I would get cranky and rude. And I mean, my father could turn, he could, oh, he could get me from like zero to like 100 and like that. He was the one person that could trigger my lack of patience and just this anger would come out of me. And so I had to learn certain boundaries. I also had to learn that I wasn't everything for him. That didn't mean that I didn't play a role in his life, but I wasn't his happiness either. And I think with people pleasing, we tend to take on this savior syndrome, this like that we're almost like a false god that we have to be the rescuer. We have to take care of somebody from their despair and their agony. And God doesn't promise that for us either. You know, we are supposed to, he doesn't promise that our walk is going to be easy. He put his own son through the most incredible amount of suffering. How could we be any different to not be able to go through some of that sorrow? But I think that's where we have to remember sorrow is not forever. It's not indefinite. These crosses are not meant to uh have us nailed on. Jesus did that for us. But we are called to carry them and we model that. Simon carried the cross and we are called to carry the cross with Jesus. But Jesus died on the cross for us. We don't have to hang ourselves up on the cross. We don't have to, we allow him to lead us and to help carry that cross. And he promises us there is a resurrection. And I think that's the part where we don't get to decide how long we carry the cross. Sometimes that can go on for years. There was a six-year difference between my parents' passing. Those were some of the hardest years of my life. But those were also the most purgative. And I remember this is about two or three years in after my mom had died, and I had confessed again to my same priest friend, Father Joe. And I was knee deep in my church commitments. And I remember saying to him, because I had prayed the rosary every day, and I I admitted, I said, Father, I don't think it's working. I said, I've been praying this every day. And I said, I feel more miserable than when I started. And he said, That's a good thing. And I thought, what do you mean? And he said, It means you're being purified. Sometimes, in order for us to get better, we have to get worse. And I'm sure, you know, people are listening, that rock bottom is intended for a reason because that is not the final place. From that point, you start to heal, you start to go up. And I realized that my purgation was actually lasting longer because I was fighting against it. I didn't want to change. I wanted everyone around me a change. I wanted everything in my situation. I wanted everybody to go to church with me. I wanted them to be holy. I wanted them to be a certain way. I wanted my father to cooperate, stick with the plan. And nothing, nothing was happening. It was all actually, I was actually creating more toxicity in my family and kind of chaos. My need to try and save everyone. And Father Joe told me, why are you trying to do God's will? You just need to love. And when he said that, it just really hit me because I had never thought that I was trying to be in such control because all my intentions were purely good, but I was trying to be God. And so I think it really kind of opened my ideas that we have to allow things to happen in our life. We have to allow these difficult moments and these seasons, they're not forever. But God always works good, even in the most difficult and the most tragic situations. If we rely on him, he will always bear good fruit. He will always turn something very beautiful, even in a place of darkness. And I want to read a scripture if that's okay, Christy. This is one of my favorite scriptures. And as I was writing about people pleasing, and it's from Ephesians 5, verses 8 through 10, and it says, For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. And try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. And I love this because it talks about what is right and true. It's talking about rightly ordering your life. It's talking about that you were once darkness. You know, we are from original sin. We are going to make mistakes, but now you are in the light of the Lord. He always is there for us, he always gives us hope. This is not a place of darkness that stays. And the devil tries to make you think that it's going to be like that, but it's not. That's when we we have despair. And really that's a false, that's a false sorrow. Sorrow is something that you know we endure through, but despair is there's no help. Where sorrow, there is hope.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

I think it's really easy to think that things are gonna stay a certain way forever. Like there's never gonna be that light at the end of the tunnel, but there always is. The Lord is is always, he always comes through and he's there for us. But sometimes it can be a long time, sometimes it can be six years of struggle. I mean, Mother Teresa had what, like 40 years of her dryness, or I can't remember what she called it, but I I can't imagine not feeling the Lord's presence for that long and doing the good work that she did so lovingly, and how she poured in not just to all the people there, but her the sisters as well, feeling that, you know, and it teaches us. I I love how you were talking about the purgative nature of things. And and I always say, I hope that the Lord takes some purgatory off per moment, whatever it is, some time off purgatory for it. I mean, I'm grateful for purgatory, but you know, we I do feel like there are times in our life if we really show up and learn the lesson we need to learn and detach from the thing we need to detach from in that season, that the Lord uses that, obviously, he uses all of it. But so one of the things I was wondering about, because we've talked a lot about the people pleasing and all of that. But what if there's a woman listening and she's like, okay, I definitely recognize all of this, that I'm I'm doing this, I I people please, not like I'm trying to manipulate people or I'm not trying to I'm not trying to be a prideful person, but now I can kind of see what that is. What do I do about it now? Like how do I how do I fix that?

SPEAKER_01 48:29

Yeah. Well, first of all, be gentle with yourself. You're not gonna fix this overnight. And this is coming from somebody who likes to get right to the core of things and fix it all. Be gentle with yourself. Uh what has worked for me, and I can only speak for me, is deep prayer. Prayer has helped me so much. Adoration, spending time with God. God also wants us to participate in the world. Uh, you know, the thing is, is we have these vices. Uh, I had a tendency to think also that I had worked on many of these virtues and I looked at them as like a mastery, like I was going to achieve a medal because now I have more patience. You will always fall at some point because of concupiscence. We are going to fall. So be patient with yourself. Work on one area that you see as struggle in your life. Go to counseling, go to therapy, but spend time with God. Ask him for your help. And what I found is that that prayer that I spent, even though I was fighting against it, God put so many beautiful people in my life to help me because he could see that I could not figure this out on my own. So I'm not telling you exactly play by play how to do it. But what I would say is invite him into your life. Because if you don't have God walking with you, there's only one part. We're only tending to the physical, but not the spiritual part of us. And that's that's the part that oftentimes our pride comes in. I can do this myself. I can figure this out. There's nobody around me. I can take care of this. And that's where the devil will he will attack us in those areas. So acknowledge your shortcomings. That's our humility. Ask for God to put the right people in your path. And I truly believe my husband is such a gift because as much as I didn't want to admit some of his qualities, I needed those to observe what people pleasing wasn't or what it was, and how to look, how not to be that way. Not that I need to be my husband, but I needed to have other examples of people in my life that weren't doing those behaviors. I found in my own journey, like my struggle with patience was a big part of that. And so I pray to Mary. I asked her to intercede for me, teach me some of the different methods. And one thing that I found, patience, I didn't have a right understanding of what that was. So anyone who's listening, I would say start with prayer. Ask God to direct you and guide you. Find an area that you struggle, use that and try to look for ways that can help you correct it. But don't be afraid to receive. And I would also say don't have an expectation of what that's going to look like. Because that's the part too where, you know, we pray to God and we expect a certain outcome, and He will produce it in such a different way. My praying The Seven Sorrows of Mary, I'm sharing in her sorrows, we have made her sorrowful. We crucified her son, we brought sin into the world. And she's so merciful to us and so loving and so forgiving. So when we pray that prayer, it's really powerful. She reveals to us the areas that we need. And to kind of go back really quick on the traditional rosary, there are 15 promises attached to the rosary that were given to Saint Dominic. And one of them, I believe it's the fourth one, and you may want to look these up. But it says, Mary will help remove all vice and turn things into virtue. And that's what I didn't see when I was originally praying the rosary, because I looked at the rosary as like a genie rubbing a lamp. She's gonna just do everything I need. She's gonna grant me wishes. Um, she's gonna take care of all my problems. And I didn't realize what it was really doing was transforming me. And and I I can't sing the praise of that, the God's glory anymore, like as much as she has done for me. It it truly has, that that prayer has transformed me. And I didn't see that until I had to get into Mary's sorrow because I was so full of pride. And nobody would have known that, but everything was crashing down in front of me.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

Yes. Thank you for mentioning that. I you're the second guest that has mentioned praying the sorrowful, the seven sorrows of Mary. And if you want to find out, you know, I haven't done it.

unknown 53:39

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

I'm afraid, but I think I really want to do it. I I feel like the Lord is pressing upon my heart to do that because uh you're the second person that has brought it up.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

I'll tell you this, Christy. I before that prayer, I thought Mary was a snob. Oh and because I I couldn't relate to her. She had the perfect child, she had parents that didn't weren't rude to her, nobody talked back to her. I couldn't relate to her. How could she understand my life when she, in my opinion, had everything perfect? And what I didn't understand is she suffered more in her perfection because she was sinless, she endured more. And she wasn't resentful, she wasn't bitter, she didn't hold these grudges. And as I started to pray that and I really kind of sat into Mary's suffering, she started to show me my own family in those mysteries. So, for example, when Jesus is lost in the temple, I thought of my own children and some of the bullying that had taken place in their life. When I'm trying to think of one of the other mysteries, when Simeon at the very first mystery is that Simeon has promised that you know, as the sword shall pierce your heart. I thought of all of these things where that I couldn't intervene in my children's life. I had to allow their sufferings to take place as a mother. I can't go in and rescue them. When Mary is standing on the side of the road to Calvary and she's watching her son, and I have to sit there and I have to watch, and I can't do anything but just suffer with my children, but separately. Then Mary finally became real to me. And when that happened, that's when she opened up this huge my prayer life, changed, my devotion changed. It really was a purgative. That's where I started to accept the suffering. I started to accept this sorrow. And it and I'll tell you this there are two sorrows of Mary that are also in the joyous mysteries of the rosary. When Simeon presents at the temple, and I just mentioned them, and then when Jesus is found in the temple, those are joyful mysteries in the rosary, but they're sorrows in Mary's seven sorrows. So how can something be joyful and sorrowful at the same time? And what I realized is those exist. When you endure, when you accept that, you no longer focus on the pain. And that's what I Mary started to show me.

SPEAKER_00 56:28

I love that you said that because I think so often we're afraid of the sorrow, we're afraid of the pain. And that's why we numb or we get busy, or we, you know, people please are get controlling, or you know, have have these different vices and coping mechanisms, if you will, because we just don't want to feel. And I also just found it really interesting that you pointed out that she suffered in her perfection and why. And it just was like this light bulb to me, where I'm like, well, we're always trying to run from feeling all of that. And she didn't have anything to mask any emotions that came up, to mask any hardships, and she had a a lot, and she just felt every single one fully present, fully in it. And I think I'm so glad that you brought that up because I think she is such a beautiful model of that, of being that person who could just feel it all and be completely present in the most immense suffering a mother could ever imagine.

SPEAKER_01 57:53

She she really is. And I think what we sometimes forget is that Mary could have justified everything. She could have said, My son is wrongly accused. I don't think this is right. She could have gone to pilot, she could have protested, she could have said, I demand justice. And she did none of that. She stood there, she endured along with her son because she knew there was a greater plan. Now, I'm not saying to people that are listening, suck it up, buttercup. I'm not trying to say, like, you know, simmer and stew in your misery, because misery is a very different thing than sorrow. Sorrow is purifying. Sorrow is recognizing that this is going to pass. In the midst of Mary's sorrow with their son on the cross, there's also a thanksgiving because she knows that Jesus is fulfilling everything in the Old Testament. She knows that Jesus is the Savior. She knows he's the Son of God. So she allows that. Another good way to compare that is labor pains, right? We're going through labor, it's a pain. And yet at the same time, beautiful life comes out as a result of it. Um, I'm gonna get a little biblical. And when you look back at the story of Adam and Eve, and God, the minute they're banished from the garden, he basically tells them, Because you have done these things, women, you're gonna feel pain. You're gonna want another husband, Adam, you're gonna till the ground. Those are punishments, though. And I think that's what we we tend to hear. We hear curse the ground, but he's not cursing us, he's cursing Satan. But he's telling us, because you have done these things, what he's actually doing is those are a mercy because sin is now entered into the world and we have to atone for it. Okay. Now, again, it's not a work, we're not earning his love, but sin cannot go back into heaven. So our suffering is really actually sanctifying. It's a very beautiful thing. And he, so that's really a mercy that he gives to Adam and Eve. Women, you're going to experience this pain and childbirth. But guess what? You get this beautiful child afterwards. Adam, you have to work the land and blood, sweat, and tears. But guess what? There's going to be so much abundant fruit that comes from it. So I think when we start to really kind of look at the sorrows in our life, how does God work beautiful fruits to them? I think that's what we, when we start looking at it from a very different lens, the struggles, even the things we have no control over, because I didn't have control over my dad, I didn't have control over my children, I have control over my husband. The only person I could control was me and the way that I looked at everything. And I think that's something that we have to remind ourselves is God has control and He will work everything through this, even if I don't understand any of it. He will continue to bear good fruit. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:03

Yeah. I'm wondering as you say that, I know we probably have to wrap up, but one other thing that I was wondering about because we talked about it earlier on is, you know, we we want to do these things to please people. We want to do these things to please God. I mean, we are given charism so that we can work with other people, you know, to build up the kingdom, to help one another. So there's definitely we are called to do things and and to help where we can help. So how can we do that practically speaking and from a place of love without it being, or maybe that's not the right question. Maybe it's how do we recognize if we're doing it just for people pleasing, or if we're doing it because we feel called to do it, or because it is something that we really want and need to do. Like it's something for us.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:04

If you feel fear, if you feel anxiety, if you feel anxiousness, or you feel worry, those are usually indicators because those aren't coming from God. God does not give us fear, he allows things to happen and he works good through them, but he doesn't he doesn't push us to fear, he doesn't push us to anxiety. He comes from a place of peace. So I would say definitely take it to prayer. Um, the more you start to pray, the more you start to hear God's voice and you start to recognize the difference. Because again, the devil will direct you and make you think everything that you're doing is really good. Be kind to yourself. If you don't recognize it right away, that's okay, but just continue to keep seeking. You know, another thing that I think is important is I'm in a season now where I have been saying no because I said yes for so many years that I was scared to say no. And there's that word fear, right? I was scared to say yes because I had said yes or so many million times. So using prudence, looking at what is the order? Am I serving God? Am I serving myself? Am I doing this for his glory or am I doing it for my own? If I say yes to something, how much of that takes away from my family, from my time? And it really, I think, depends too on where you are in your seasons of life. You know, my children now are starting to get older. Uh, my my youngest is 13, so I know that she still needs me. My commitments are I really try to be conscious of the time that I spend outside the home so that I'm present in the home. But I know my older children are starting their life. So I know that I don't need to be here all the time. But when they were younger, that should have been more of a priority. So I think it really depends on where you are in your seasons of life. But I would really say if you feel fear, if you feel anxiousness, if you feel worry, if you feel pride, and pride sometimes it's not hard, easy to recognize. I would say hesitate. Don't act on those. Just because you feel something doesn't mean you don't need to act immediately. Take it to prayer and really discern where that's coming from.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

I remember one time I was at a table with a bunch of moms, and there was one of the women there, and she did a lot of things for my son's school. Like she was always volunteering and doing things like that. But we were all at a table and we were discussing different projects that needed to be done. And I remember her pausing and saying, I think that would take away from my family. She was so discerning about it. And I just assumed that she was just, she said yes to everything because she did so many things. But when she stopped and said, you know, my family comes first, so I want to make sure that I have enough time for that I'm spending enough time with them. And I don't, part of me was like, what? Can you even do that? Can you even because I was under the impression that I had to just do all the things, and if I was asked, I needed to do all the things that I was asked to do. And that was helpful. I didn't necessarily all of a sudden do that, but all these years later, I remember it and I was like, that was so good for me to see that. And I think that's a lot of what you're talking about, just making sure that everything is rightly ordered and that also you said to make sure not to have that fear or any of those other types of feelings that come up where we're like, that is not of God, that is from the enemy. And as we develop our prayer life, we can recognize the Lord's voice versus the enemy's voice. I work with my ladies on that all the time. And then something you said earlier was when we root our identity in Christ, when we know whose we are and and in who we really ultimately are called to please first and foremost, that can help guide our decision as well. Before we go, I just want to thank you first of all, just for being here. This went so much deeper than just a people pleasing episode. I'm very grateful for your time. But Andrea, why don't you go ahead and just let people know where they can find you? Because I'm sure, like me, they're gonna be so excited to hear when your book is out and probably pick up your other. book. So mention that again. Was that in relation to your dad, like your journey with your dad as well?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:12

So actually this was in Journey with my mom. It's greeting Daughters Club. And it was when I first started writing, it was a fiction story. Because I just was so raw I couldn't write I couldn't write reality. So I had to write from kind of a storytelling. But it it is loosely based off of a group of women in my Bible study. And I like to I call it my Catholic steel magnolias. So if you know that movie because it's really about all these women and kind of their struggles in life and really about that we all grieve in some way. But we're here to help each other. And I think that's what we have to remember is God is not abandon us. He brings beautiful people in our lives to help us, to guide us, to direct us because he loves us. And so you know we may not see him in our life but he brings people and that's his gift to take care of us. Because he wants to please us too. It's not again it's not one way. You know delight in the Lord and he will grant the desires of your heart Psalm 37. Grieving Daughters Club is fiction and you can get it on my website AndreaBare Author.com and AndreaBare just like the animal B-E-A-R. And I'm also on Instagram and Facebook. You can look up same thing Andrea Bear Author and yeah I think that's it. And no you have a podcast also a new podcast. Yes and so I did have a Catholic grief podcast for many years and I have stepped away from that. I really do feel called to kind of go into this new season and my podcast is called Be Fruitful. And it's again it's talking about the fruits of how God wants us to bear fruit in each other's life. And I will be talking about some false fruits on there as well. But I hope your listeners will check it out and I would love to hear you know what's going on in their lives and you know topics that you guys would like me to address. And so I'm so grateful Christy to be a guest on your show. I really think what you do is so beautiful and such a haven for so many people on their walk. So thank you for all that you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:30

Oh thank you so much Andrea for being here and for sharing and I will have Andrea's links in the show notes so you can get in touch with her in all numerous ways. And I do hope you'll check out her podcast as well. So thank you again so much for being here Andrea it's been such a blessing having you well that does it for this episode of the Catholic Sobriety podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I would invite you to share it with a friend who might also get value from it as well. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a thing. I am the Catholic Sobriety coach and if you would like to learn how to work with me or learn more about the coaching that I offer visit my website the Catholic Sobrietycoach.com. Follow me on Instagram at the Catholic Sobriety Coach. I look forward to speaking to you next time and remember I am cooking for you I am praying for you