The Keys to saying “no” to people pleasing. By Alice Worthy, The Modern Doula

My favourite part of being a doula is helping women get out of the passenger seat and into the driver’s seat of their pregnancy and birth. Most of the time, women don’t even realise they’re in the passenger seat, but after reflecting on their journey, realised they had ended up there, feeling like that was the only option. 

Thanks to gender stereotypes that have stuck around way past their use by date, women have been conditioned to people please. From a young age, we’ve been taught to be polite, quite, kind and pleasant. We’ve been conditioned to do as we’re told, not to speak up, and to never rock the boat. Whilst it might feel good to be accommodating and agreeable in the moment, over time, people pleasing slowly chips away at our confidence, our connection to ourselves, and to our emotional and physical wellbeing. Pleasing others comes at the cost of our own health and wellness, and the impact of this during pregnancy and birth, contributes to the astounding statistic of 1 in 3 women walking away from their birth feeling like it was traumatic. When we people please, we inadvertently move ourselves into the passenger seat when we really should be, and want to be, driving. 

We commonly see people pleasing show up in the pregnancy and birth space because questioning authority feels icky. We don’t want to be seen as a difficult patient, we don’t want to be the one that ever puts our baby at risk, we definitely don’t want to upset our superiors, or worse, sound like a stupid little girl. But when we put our health care provider’s wants and needs ahead of our own, when we say yes to things that don’t feel right in our gut, we end up in the passenger seat of our own birth, one of life’s biggest and most memorable transitions. 

What others have to say 
When I began writing this, I wanted to do a pulse check: I know that people pleasing is common, but would this article resonate with anyone? I did a poll on my Instagram asking if people had felt they people pleased ‘a lot’ in pregnancy/birth, ‘sometimes’ or ‘never’. It was a confirmation of what I already knew. 88% of mums felt they had people pleased either a lot or sometimes in the birth space. But it wasn’t until I dug deeper, asking for those who felt comfortable to share their stories, that the individuality of each one really broke my heart. 

There were common stories of women feeling as though they didn’t want their midwife to be ‘mad’ at them, and therefore have an uncomfortable environment in the birth suite, feeling like they couldn’t ask questions for fear of taking up too much time and space in an already stretched system, to feeling fear of repercussions of going against what was routinely recommended. Some women even felt pressure to people please their partner, feeling as though they didn’t want to embarrass them by fully expressing the primal nature of birth.

So why does people pleasing happen in the birth space?
Whilst we’ve come a very long way in advancing medical technology that does save lives, the over medicalization of low risk birth has resulted in us losing confidence in our own bodies, losing the ability to speak up for what we think and feel, trusting our gut instinct, and has conditioned us to look externally for validation that we’re “doing it right”. Our people pleasing tendencies overpower us and we end up saying yes to things we don’t understand the impact of. 

But if we look back, our ancestors were used to birthing in circles of women – their aunties, cousins, mothers, grandmothers, sisters. Birth stories, learnings and support were passed down generation from generation, and women were never left to birth alone. Today, 97% of births happen in hospitals, often with only 1 other support person of our choice, under the medical supervision of a health care professional who is tending to many other women at the same time. We rarely have continuity of care, and have only brief check-ins every few weeks during pregnancy. We’ve lost our powerful ancestorial role models to guide us, and often our only experience of birth is the horror stories we hear from friends or our own. Without this generational support, we have a lack of education, trust in ourselves, and we pass the keys of our birth over to someone who we think must know better.

So how do I get in the driver’s seat?

Practice having two way conversations in your conversations during pregnancy. 
Having a two way dialogue requires you to be an active participant in the conversation. It might sound like listening to your health care provider, and then asking their reasoning behind a recommendation. It might sound like asking for more information surrounding a certain policy, or even sharing your reservations about something, or sharing your thoughts and feelings and asking for alternative options. Questioning a medical professional takes practice and confidence, but you must remember: asking questions doesn’t make you rude or difficult, and you’re entitled to know all the information.

Ask for time and space to come to your own decision.
People pleasers will feel the need to give an affirming answer right away. They might feel guilty for making someone wait for an answer, or for disappointing them. Please know that you have the right to take as much time as you need to feel completely comfortable in your response or answer. If you know you are easily persuaded in the moment, practice saying things like “I’ll let you know my decision at my next appointment.” Setting these boundaries ensures you’re giving yourself time and space to listen to your intuition.

When you speak, don’t apologise for your decision or your boundaries.
You’ve shared your thoughts and feelings. You’ve asked all the right questions. You’ve asked for time and space and you’ve finally come to a decision that feels completely your own. Now, the key to standing in that power, is not apologising for a damn thing! Remember “no” is a complete sentence, and you don’t need to justify yourself because you’re in the driver’s seat now. 

For more on pregnancy, birth & beyond, follow @themodern.doula on Instagram.