Episode: 120
The Surprising Link Between People Pleasing & Your Health: A Medical Doctor’s Recommendation on How to Say “No”
with Dr. Neha Sangwan, MD
Learn to say “no” without guilt—and literally improve your health.
Get the simple 3-part framework this doctor uses to say “no” when you mean "no".
Dr. Neha Sangwan is an internal medicine physician, bestselling author, and accomplished researcher.
She says that 80% of all illnesses are caused by stress. People pleasing is at the heart of that stress.
Learn to say NO and literally make yourself feel better today.
Listen on:
The goal in the end is to become a sailboat with a rudder that is influenced by the wind, but charts its own course.
Dr. Neha Sangwan, MD
Featured Clips
Transcript
Mel Robbins (00:00):
Is everybody on the planet a people pleaser?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (00:01):
What I would say to you as a doctor is people pleasing makes you physically ill.
Mel Robbins (00:08):
Dr. Neha, a lot of people feel compelled for a variety of reasons to say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. For probably almost 50 years, I was actively saying yes when I meant no. And feeling a lot of anxiety and a lot of resentment.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (00:24):
Resentment is one of those big clues that you have overextended yourself.
Mel Robbins (00:29):
It's just easier to make everybody else happy. It's just easier to do it myself. It's just easier not to say something.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (00:36):
I overheard my dad, he just made a comment. I wanted a son who was an engineer, and then I heard my mom saying, wow, I missed my calling to become a doctor. I became an engineer and a doctor, and I blamed my parents like, oh, my parents made me do this.
Mel Robbins (00:53):
How did you come to realize that you were a people pleaser?
(01:02):
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. So a couple weeks ago, I was invited to go down to the Today Show, and I love being on The Today Show because first of all, I love Hoda and Jenna. Secondly, I just love going on the Today Show because it's always super fun and it's a really fun morning and it's everything that you would imagine it would be. And when you're backstage at The Today Show, you are in these hallways where tons of people are coming and going, whether it's the folks that are working on the show or it's the people that are appearing on the show. And so you just never know who you're going to bump into. So I'm standing back there and the first person that walks by is Charlotte Tilbury, who is this very famous makeup entrepreneur and artist, and this fabulous woman who always talks like this stalling.
(01:48):
And I am a huge fan of Charlotte Tilbury. So she stops and I'm like, and she's like, and then I go, oh my God, my daughters love you and I love you. And she's like, I love you. And so we have this hug and it was so fun, and then she leaves. And so I'm like, oh my God, that was Charlotte Tilbury. All of a sudden around the corner comes this another extraordinary woman, and she's so striking. She's tall and she is wearing this vibrant, I don't even know what color it was. It was like this chartreuse meets Kelly Green silk blazer and matching wide leg pants. And she comes breezing around the corner having just got off the television with the Today Show. And she comes around and she's so striking in terms of her presence. There's this confidence and this warmth to her, and it's the kind of person that you immediately are like, I'd like to be that person's friends.
(02:41):
I see her coming. I look her in the eyes. I do the ten five game that I've told you about. She's 10 feet away. I smile, she's five feet away. I'm like, hi. And she goes, hi. Oh my gosh, Mel. And I'm like, oh my gosh, hi. I don't know you, but I feel like I should know you. And she walks up and says, I hug you. And I'm like, of course. Nothing is better than a hug. So we hug and she introduces herself and her name is Dr. Neha Sangwan. And we start chatting and I'm like, what did you just talk about? And she was talking about people pleasing on the Today Show and how your inability to say no is making you ill. And I stopped in my tracks and I was like, wait, what? And she goes on to explain that she is a medical doctor, she practices internal medicine, she sees private clients, she is also a researcher, and she was on The Today Show to explain that your habit of people pleasing, always looking at other people, always being worried about what their reaction is going to be, couching what you're going to say, the fact that you say yes when you actually mean no.
(03:54):
That's what she talks about. And I said, we got to get you on the Mel Robbins Podcast because I've certainly struggled with people pleasing. I absolutely get worried about what other people are going to think. She's here today. So get ready to get control of your life, to learn how to say no, and to get better connected with what you actually want, which is where all of this is going to begin. Please help me welcome Dr. Neha Sangwan to the Mel Robbins podcast. Oh,
Dr. Neha Sangwan (04:26):
Such an honor to be here.
Mel Robbins (04:28):
Well, I have so much that I want to talk to you about, and I guess we should just jump right in. One of the things that caught my attention is that you described this thing that we all do where we become a yes person. What does that mean?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (04:42):
It is when we almost lose an anchor inside of ourselves and we become a yes to the outside world. We become driftwood in the ocean, like we're going in whatever direction the wind is blowing us. And really, it's overwhelming because we don't feel grounded, we don't feel centered. We don't know how we're making decisions. We're just going whichever way the world is going. And boy, these days, the world is going in a lot of directions.
Mel Robbins (05:14):
Literally when you said you're like a driftwood in the ocean going in whatever direction. I thought about my poor husband in our marriage that I am such an overwhelming force, and what you're talking about is that you can become a yes to outside forces and not even realize how much you're doing it, and you lose your ability to make decisions or even to know yourself.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (05:46):
Absolutely. I mean, the goal in the end is to become a sailboat with a rudder that is influenced by the wind, but charts its own course. And so we don't ever want to go so far away from that that we're anchoring ourselves and unable to move, and we don't care which way the wind is blowing. We want to care about all of that, and we want to make sure that what we feel is that we have some input into the direction in which we're moving.
Mel Robbins (06:23):
I would never have labeled my husband a people pleaser, but when I think about how he goes through life or has, until recently, he was very focused on making sure everybody else was okay and he put himself last. And is that the same thing as people pleasing or is people pleasing something else?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (06:49):
So people pleasing is the moment that you give up what matters to you in order to appease or please somebody else so that you can belong, so that you don't have to confront conflict so that you can keep that relationship intact. So I think all of these have spectrums, right? What I'd say is at the end of the day, what you really want is that you're able to take input from the outside world, but when it's time to make a decision, you turn up the voice, the sound of your own heart, slightly louder than you can hear the voices of others.
Mel Robbins (07:33):
I love you.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (07:34):
And so that's really the end way because it's a nuance. We live in a world with other people. We care about each other. It matters to us that we belong. And so to be able to say, oh, someone's a people pleaser, or they're not. Listen, at the beginning of my life, 100%, first three and a half decades of my life, 110%, the scale was tipped so far. On one side, I'm a healer, right? I'm a doctor, I'm a coach. All of these come from that place. It's such a good intention to serve.
(08:14):
But when it goes that far, at least what I learned about myself was that it came from a trauma early on in my life where I didn't feel like I belonged. And so if I didn't feel like I belonged or I didn't understand what I did wrong, then later on I will almost overcorrect in my life to make sure no one sends me. It was me being sent away with my grandparents when I was really young and I didn't understand why am I being sent away from my parents? It's an act of love, but to a child, it felt like, wait, why am I the one being separated? So how we interpret happens early on helps us figure out coping mechanisms and strategies that we use to manage that pain or that stress that occurs
Dr. Neha Sangwan (09:07):
Later on. I went too far on in one direction. What I hope I never lose, Mel, is caring about what the people around me think, what they want, who I'm in partnership with and what he wants. So I really resonate with your husband because I think that's a lot of me, and I needed to come more into balance to become who I truly am, and I needed to learn how to sit in the discomfort of another in order to be true to myself.
Mel Robbins (09:41):
There are so many things that you have already said that I don't want to go forward yet without stopping and taking some time and unpacking it. I want to make sure you heard Dr. Neha say this image of a sailboat with a rudder and a sail that can use the outside forces to go in a direction that you want, but that you stay centered to yourself. The second thing that I wanted to put a highlighter on is when you describe that story of being a little girl and your parents sent you to live with your grandparents and you didn't understand why, can you unpack that for us? Because I had a very similar visceral experience when you heard that. When I heard you say that story, I had this visceral image of myself as a little kid going, why are you mad at me?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (10:44):
So I'm going to tell you a little bit about it and we'll just see how I do.
(10:48):
When I was three months old, my parents are immigrants from India, and in 1965, they came here to build a life. I grew up in Michigan in Grand Blanc, Michigan, and I'm the middle daughter of three. My grandmother, because we're Indian, came over to take care of the children while my parents were both working full time to make ends meet. And so my grandmother was cooking, cleaning. I have an older sister, 18 months older than me. So now there's a newborn, and you can imagine those two little ones in this whole thing. So my grandmother's there, my grandfather gets stationed by the UN in Africa to help them with their agriculture. He calls my grandmother and says, I know Neha is three months and s 18 months, but I need you here. I'll do the work of the United Nations project, but I need you to do the social world, which you do so well. My grandmother scooped me up, had a talk with my parents, scooped me up and said, I'm going to take Neha with me. You take care of Rithu. She's potty trained. I'm going to take Neha with me. We're going to have have plenty of resources there and me and everything's going to be great. And my parents thought, oh my gosh, how amazing.
(12:10):
She'll get the love of her grandmother who was going to be here taking care of her. So they sent me, fast forward two years, and my sister and my mother came to pick me up, except a three month old didn't know what was happening. But a 2-year-old sure does. And so when my parents, they came to pick me up and brought me back. I didn't stop crying for more than a month. Wow. I would just wake up, I'd be crying, where is my Nani and Nana? Where are they? And my parents who were in their twenties doing the best they knew how moving to a new country, all of these things were beside themselves with this 2-year-old who wouldn't stop crying. It took about a month, and I realized how stubborn I was, because when I was little, I would only call my dad in that time, I'd only call him, Hey, I wouldn't call him dad. I was like, Hey, you potty. Hey, you hungry. Hey you. But it took about a month of his persistence. I have to give him credit, and I upgraded him to uncle.
Mel Robbins (13:19):
Wow.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (13:21):
And I realized after about a month or two that no matter how much I cried, I wasn't going back. And so I better adjust to the environment I'm in. And I began to scan the environment. I mean, I knew what everybody wanted, my mom, my dad, my sister, the Indian community around me, my neighbors and I became such a good child that when I overheard my dad later on wanting to, he just made a comment like, yeah, the second one was a girl too. I wanted a son who was an engineer. And then I heard my mom saying, wow, I missed my calling to become a doctor. I hope one of my girls becomes a doctor.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (14:14):
Boy, Mel. My radar was so in tune to everybody else's needs, and the Indian community in general is like, Hey, so are you good at math and science? Are you going to be an engineer or a doctor? So this little girl grew up like a sponge absorbing the external environment because inside me was too painful. So I checked out and disconnected from myself and tuned into the accolades and love that I could get from going outward.
Mel Robbins (14:52):
However you could get 'em. So can you describe for us just what happened to you or what you see in your practice so that anybody listening might be able to locate them in this moment where they felt separate and people pleasing
Dr. Neha Sangwan (15:15):
Became
Mel Robbins (15:15):
A coping mechanism?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (15:18):
I remember being really young about seven years old, and my dad's parents really never taught him about emotions. And so he has a temper that I write about in my book. So my dad's temper. I wanted to figure out why I was getting bullied when I was older, but it was people who were getting really angry and blowing up and telling me to do things.
Mel Robbins (15:42):
I think it's those moments that really create this experience where we are uncomfortable with other people's discomfort or we feel as though we've done something wrong and we knee-jerk move into a mode of how do I make this? Okay?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (16:02):
How you show up as a leader today day is, as is determined, as much determined by your childhood blueprint as your wardrobe at home influenced what you're wearing. Today,
(16:19):
I want to help deconstruct the invisible connections between their past and their present moment experience. So I traced it back to being about seven years old in a yellow kitchen, standing kind of behind a plant while my parents were arguing about something and my dad got really mad. He picked up a plate, it was empty, but a plate, and he smashed it down on the table and it broke. And little 7-year-old, my mom said, Neha, can you please go upstairs, honey, can you please? I'd like to talk to your father. And so that was my cue to exit left. But I remember it wasn't until 20, 30 years later that I remember saying, oh, wow. I in that moment, came up with, don't make dad mad because if you do this time, it was the plate. And if mom wasn't here next time it would be you. I didn't do this consciously, but my little brain went scurrying up the stairs and noted to itself, danger. Anytime someone starts raising their voice, thumping, breaking, slamming cupboards with doors, whatever it is, don't, don't make any more trouble. Get out of there.
Mel Robbins (17:41):
Right? I think we all have an experience like that growing up, because the hardest thing in the world when it comes to yourself is managing your own emotions, both what you're feeling and your ability to tolerate it. And when we went to our massive audience online and started asking people about people pleasing, the vast majority, 70% of people said, I often say yes when I mean no. And the majority of the time it's at work and with friends, 82% of people responded that they feel constantly stressed, irritated, tired, and impatient. And they attributed it as being related to some conflict that they were avoiding. And you as a medical doctor have seen the impact not only in your own life but with your patients, both when you were practicing as a resident and also in your current practice. The impact of all of this pent up inability to tolerate emotion and then twisting yourself in knots to make everything on the outside. Okay. When you are simultaneously killing yourself on the inside, can you talk to us about the physical impact that people pleasing and being somebody who's so concerned about the outside, that you're not thinking about you and inside of you. What is the physical impact of doing this over time to yourself? Always putting everybody else first. And here's some of the things that people said, I avoid conflict because I'm afraid of criticism because I hate confrontation. That was a huge one. I hate confrontation. I just want to keep the peace. It makes me uncomfortable. It's just easier.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (19:43):
Well, let me tell you, it's only easier short term. It's easier in the moment. So when you come to a decision point, am I going to address this or am I going to not say anything about someone wearing shoes in the house, someone leaving dirty dishes in the sink every day? This is an everyday experience. What happens is in the short term, you have a choice. If you choose to ignore it, you take the short term high of not having to deal with it.
Mel Robbins (20:21):
It's just easier to do the dishes. It's easier not to say something. It's easier to go to their house for the holidays. It's just easier to say, I'll take the pager, or I'll do the summary of the report, or I'll handle the thing, or I'll pick it up, or I'll just say, yes, I don't want to deal with the drama. So in the moment you're like, okay, I know that this is not the right decision because I can feel resistance to it and I can feel my kind of like, but then I just take it on myself because I think it's easier. But you as a medical doctor, Dr. Neha, are here to say, no, no, no, no, no. Something else is going on. What's going on?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (21:03):
Well, you're taking the short-term high and you're going to end up with a long-term yuck, okay? You're going to end up with looking yourself in the mirror saying, does everyone think I'm a magic fairy around this house? Nobody else does anything. So what happens is, Mel, if there's a conflict between you and I, and it's between us and we ignore it, it grows bigger. It doesn't go away. We think we've just avoided it. It actually grows bigger and it changes location. And so it took me a good 10 years of me wanting to be curious about why I got bullied in my life, why I felt so tearful when I would leave people. All these curiosities led me down the path of exploring my childhood, which gave me the answers of what the unhealed experiences were for me, that I needed to heal in order to, in the present day, feel more connected, be able to talk about these stories without crying. And sometimes I do get tearful. Okay, so there's something here, Mel, that I want to say is underpinning a lot of people pleasing, and it's that we don't really teach our children. We weren't taught. And oftentimes because our parents didn't know themselves how to handle disappointment, how to handle discomfort, an underlying sense of unease in our bodies. And whenever we get physiologically or biologically, we feel uncomfortable, our body starts talking to us. We do anything we need to make that go away.
Mel Robbins (22:53):
Every single human being has that experience at some point in their childhood where you're like, scan the environment. And now based on what's happening outside, I got to become or behave or do something in order to remain safe or to be seen or to get the love or to just get them off my back. And that is that the heart of people pleasing. And maybe I should ask you this, what is people pleasing? What is it? Is it a personality? Is it a coping mechanism? What is people pleasing?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (23:28):
The way I think of people pleasing is it's a behavior that we use in order to feel safe and belong. I became an engineer and a doctor, and I blamed my parents like, oh, my parents made me do this. Until a very smart coach once said to me, really? Neha, who applied to engineering school? Who did all the problem sets? Who took the exams? Who did the 36 hour shifts in residency? I'm pretty sure it was you. So you want to tell me what you wanted more I than they wanted? You are the one who did it. And in that moment I was like, oh, I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be valued. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be recognized in the Indian community and in the world. I wanted to be a value, and I didn't want anybody to send me away. Again, it's a safety thing. It's subconscious. Of course, I didn't know it at the time, but boy, this is the value of going back and understanding the blueprint of your childhood, of understanding the decisions you made to survive and to adapt and to adjust to a world you didn't yet understand.
Mel Robbins (24:48):
Is everybody on the planet a people pleaser?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (24:52):
I think what I would say is
Dr. Neha Sangwan (24:54):
I think everybody has had the experience of giving up themselves in order to belong to another. I'm thinking it's goor mate who speaks about authenticity over attachment. That sometimes we choose attachment over authenticity and that we give up who we really are. If we know that consciously. If we know who we are, we give it up in order to stay, keep the relationship, stay attached, be part of a group. I went to med school, so yeah, engineering and med school, absolutely I did it. Now I can see that I did it with those underlying subconscious intentions. I went to engineering school because I was good at math and science, and because I heard my dad say that one day in the office I was walking by, he had no idea. I heard him. And then the second piece is the Indian community. And my mom revered doctors. My mom missed her calling. And I think that's a bigger piece underneath here, which is when you don't know, when you're not anchored to what you value and who you are, you are that driftwood in the ocean.
Mel Robbins (26:20):
And I want to go back to what I said at the very beginning, which is that I had never thought about my husband Chris, as a people pleaser because I consider myself a people pleaser. Not anymore, but that in the past, for probably almost 50 years, I was actively trying to make sure nobody was mad with me and actively trying to avoid conflict and actively scanning the environment and saying yes when I meant no and not really good with boundaries and feeling a lot of anxiety and a lot of resentment and all of that kind of stuff. And so my experience of people pleasing was on the type A end and on the you are actively engaging in something to manipulate the way other people respond to you. That's what you're doing. And I got it. I never thought about my husband on the spectrum of people pleasing. I have learned about my husband that he was so many people, and perhaps you listening, he felt like the forgotten one in the family. Nobody was there to pick him up.
(27:39):
Everybody was too busy to come to his games. He's got story after story after story. Just a couple weeks ago, his mother was reflecting with tears in her eyes about how poor Christopher, we put him up in an unfinished attic in a crib, and that was his room because we didn't want to hear him. When you said driftwood floating in an ocean, I had this visceral experience that that's what my husband must have felt like for years. And so disconnected from him himself because his experience was, it didn't matter what he said. It didn't matter what he did, nobody was coming.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (28:24):
It didn't even matter if he was crying,
Mel Robbins (28:26):
Correct?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (28:28):
He was up in the crib in the attic.
Mel Robbins (28:30):
Correct.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (28:30):
The function of your brain is to help you seek pleasure and avoid pain
Dr. Neha Sangwan (28:36):
Very basically, it's like this amazing, incredible tool that helps keep us safe in the world, seek pleasure, avoid pain. And so since we were little, if were told things like, go in your room and don't come out until you have a smile on your face, right? We're told things that when we're feeling unhappy, disappointed, when we express it, when we say it, it's wrong. It's bad. Don't go there. And it's not welcome. In this household, we grow up believing that we need to fix it. We need to fix it in ourselves and fix it in the environment because who knows what's going to happen if we don't.
Mel Robbins (29:19):
One of the things that you said that really made me go, holy cow, this is me. Is that one of the biggest red flags that you can have when you're reaching that critical stress? You're overextended, you're saying yes to too many things, is when you start resent the outreach from friends or from your job.
Mel Robbins (29:44):
Can you unpack that in the context of people pleasing and what that means when you are resenting things you normally wouldn't have?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (29:54):
Yeah. Well, listen, resentment is such a big clue. It's a big clue that your boundaries have been trampled all over and you probably never even drew them. So you may never have even told people that boundaries were there.
Mel Robbins (30:13):
Most people don't.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (30:14):
No. And yet you find yourself resentful. I've heard basically a saying, and I'm not pinning where I've heard it from, but it's basically that resentment is like me drinking poison,
(30:33):
Hoping that you die, right? That's how effective that is. And so the resentment is one of those big clues that you have overextended yourself, that you have done, you've said yes when you meant no. You've given people parts of you that you wanted to keep for yourself, whether it was your time, your energy, your expertise, your care, whatever it is. So you want to really ask yourself in those moments, wow. First of all, how does resentment show up in my body? What's the way that I am aware right now? Is my stomach sinking? Do I feel weak in my knees? What is happening? So the first thing you want to do is decipher how
Mel Robbins (31:20):
I can tell you how it is for me.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (31:21):
Yeah,
Mel Robbins (31:22):
It's a gigantic, it's a full body like, fuck
Dr. Neha Sangwan (31:27):
Yeah,
Mel Robbins (31:28):
This shit again, it's like what? It's a full thing that I feel. And the other thing that I've come to learn, this is why it was a huge thing like, oh my God, you're overextended. Is that it is also a sign of a broken process or a broken system that you're in something that needs updating, leveling up some communication pattern that's broken. It's something outdated that needs leveling up. And when I think about it that way, Dr. Neha, I don't make it personal like an attack. I'm able to go, oh, I'm really resentful right now over this, and I kind of stupid to be So something must be broken
Dr. Neha Sangwan (32:11):
That
Mel Robbins (32:11):
Needs attention.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (32:13):
Is
Mel Robbins (32:14):
That a good way to think about it?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (32:16):
Yeah, absolutely. And that's the me we world, because you may have been carrying a boulder uphill. I mean, I am guilty of single handedly trying to change the healthcare system, trying to make it be different than it is. And so once again, I'd ask you, what is your role in this? You really want to do something amazing to help people. What's your role in it? What's the environment that you're in? But the question becomes, have I voiced this? Have I told anyone or do I just vent at home?
Mel Robbins (32:49):
I love that we have started with this huge spectrum of people pleasing, because not knowing what you want or believing, it doesn't matter what you want
(33:06):
Or feeling like the only way that you're going to get the love and the safety and being seen and the validation that you deserve is by overachieving. Those are all forms of people pleasing because to your point, you are so focused on what's outside that you're not anchored to what's on the inside. So Dr. Neha, how did you come to realize that all of this was going down and you have a story at the age of 31 and practicing as a physician.
Mel Robbins (33:42):
Can you share that with us and how you connected the dots between illness, stress, overwhelm, anxiety, depression, and people pleasing?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (33:54):
Yeah. Yes. So my regular life at work was busy. 18 patients in the hospital, five days on, five days off, takes me three of the five days to recover. I'm in this whole cycle, and I still remember it. It was June 17th, 2004, I walked into the hospital. I am seeing my 18 patients last day on service. I get to sign everybody off. Somebody calls in sick, what do I say? They say, can you take the alpha pager? Somebody's sick today. The alpha pager means you also take all incoming traffic, air traffic control from all neighboring hospitals.
Mel Robbins (34:32):
Oh my gosh.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (34:33):
So what did I say last day on service? I'm exhausted. I say, sure, I'll do it. I take it five hours later. So I started at 6:00 AM It's 11:00 AM I've seen two of my 18 patients, and I turn to the nurse and I say, Hey, Nina, could you please get 40 milli equivalents of IV potassium for the gentleman in room 6 36? And she turns to me and says, Dr. Sangwan, are you okay? And I say, yeah, why? And let me just tell you truth be told. That was my first indication. I might not be. I said, yeah, sure why? And she said, because you've asked me that same question four times in less than five minutes, and I've answered you every time. Whoa.
(35:25):
And it was one of those moments where I kind of went into a little bit of shock. I don't know what's going on here, but I better pay attention. So I walked to the bathroom and I contacted a psychiatric colleague and I just said, Hey, Roger, when can I do a, I just want to consult you. Something weird just happened. And he said, sure, stop by today at five o'clock. It was 11 in the morning, and I looked at my pale weary face in the mirror and I said, how about now? And boy, that is code and doctor world for I am in trouble. And he took me in and one hour later he diagnosed me as a severe people pleaser.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (36:07):
He told me that single handedly I was trying to take care of the fact that the hospital environment was understaffed to make budget, that I was in an environment of bullying in the hospital and that I was a real people pleaser. That had started to manifest here in my work, that every time someone needed something, I was the one to volunteer. And what he told me that was really lovely is he said, I really want to acknowledge how much you give. So he wasn't making me wrong or bad. He was trying to help me understand that there's what I now refer to as me we world.
Mel Robbins (36:48):
What is
Dr. Neha Sangwan (36:49):
That? It's like any, so I'm an engineer, so I like to get to the root cause of problems, not just bandaid them. And in our world, I think a lot of times people get overwhelmed because they think about me now or they zoom way out and they think about world and I can't do anything. And when I think about problems and how I solve them or how do I get to the root of them, I realized that oftentimes it has something to do with me. It has something to do with, it has something to do with world.
(37:21):
So the environment of the hospital in general, being understaffed, contributed to my needing to take the pager, needing to do more with less all the time, even if there's no resources. So what I do, even in conflict, if I'm any conflict, you can do it anywhere in your life. If you want to think about it as what's my part in this? What's someone else's part in this? What's the role of the environment and the situation that we were in? So I call it me, we world, because it reminds me that I need to expand my perspective to understand what's happening.
Mel Robbins (38:04):
That is incredibly helpful. I also love that another medical doctor diagnosed you with people pleasing.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (38:15):
He did. He did. Yeah.
Mel Robbins (38:18):
And I love this framework, and I also love the fact that once he connected the dots medically speaking between this coping mechanism of people pleasing and taking on everything around you as a way to feel loved and needed and all this stuff, and I know tons of our listeners will resonate with this, regardless of whether you work or not, that you just take it all on. You're the one in the family taking care of mom and dad. You're the one that's always doing this. You're the one that's a volunteer at the school. You're the one that's always saying yes, you're the one that's organizing everything. This kind of stopping and going, okay, what's my part in this? What is my role to play in this? What is the role of the environment in this? Can you explain this in the context of you've got aging parents and siblings and one person feels like it's all on them? You bet.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (39:17):
So if I am, let's say a child, my parents are aging, and I'm the one being like, why do I have to do everything? Well, I need to take a moment to say, when mom and dad aren't doing well, what's my first reaction? Is it I'll pay for it. I'll be there. I'll go over. And let's say a sibling says, well, I can go over in an hour. And I say, well, that is not good enough. I need to go over this minute. Sometimes it's true that things are urgent and I need to go over this minute, but if my answer every time is
Dr. Neha Sangwan (39:57):
No, I need to take care of it right now because I need to be the good girl because I need to be the good daughter because I want to get an A, right? Whatever it is, I need to pay attention to my part in it now and so if your adrenaline starts running every single time, you want to just say, oh, what's my part in, what's my sense of urgency here? Then why does my sister or brother always think it can be done tomorrow or next week? Pay attention to what's going on for them. Pay attention to the larger dynamics of your family. What role have you been playing for a very long time in your family? Who played what role? And how does it show up with your parents? And there's a bigger ecosystem. So it goes me, we world.
Mel Robbins (40:47):
Gotcha. But the first part which I'm really starting to get is that when you ask yourself, what's my role in this? You'll inevitably find yourself having to look in the mirror and see those moments where you can't deal with discomfort in your body. You can't deal with the disappointment that it's not going a certain way or that there's some uneasiness that you feel. But what if nobody goes, what if this happens? What if that happens? And so the people pleasing is triggered by something happening in our bodies.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (41:31):
And what I would say to you as a doctor is I learned from my patients that their inability to communicate with themselves and each other makes them physically ill.
Mel Robbins (41:45):
Wow. Can you talk a little more about that? Because that really, really piqued my interest on resolved conflict, unmet expectations, misunderstandings, broken promises, heartbreak, fractured relationships, loss, separation, unhappiness, all of this stuff, all of this discomfort that we process by saying it's just easier not to say no, it's just easier to give in. It's just easier to make the world around me and work another weekend and take on that thing that isn't my responsibility to take in that it actually bubbles to the surface as physical illness, stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, all that stuff. Is that what you're saying?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (42:33):
A hundred percent. I found that stress causes or exacerbates more than 80% of all illness.
Mel Robbins (42:40):
Wow.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (42:41):
And when I realized that, I came back in the hospital and I was like, Hey guys, I figured out that stress causes or exacerbates more than 80% of all illness. Why are we not asking our patients once we physically stabilized them? Let's ask them what's at the root of their stress. And my colleagues, one at a time, gave me some version of this Neha, just like you wouldn't order a test or a diagnostic that you didn't know what to do with the result, nor should you ask a question that you don't know what to do with the answer. And I'm telling you, Mel, I got angry, I got sad, and I almost got emboldened.
(43:26):
And then we give them some cocktail of medications, antidepressant, anti-anxiety or sleep medication to help their physiology get back in sync. Now, these things are good to do when somebody is about to fall over the edge of burnout or stress or overwhelm or whatever it is, they're helpful, but as a long-term strategy, one month later, we send them back in the ring for round two with no new awarenesses of how they got there or tools to fix it.
Mel Robbins (44:00):
But I want to make sure the person listening really gets the takeaway, which is the root cause of 80% of the diseases and the health issues that people have can be traced back to the stress in their life. And you are also saying that the majority of the stress that you have control over and that this all stems even deeper to an inability individually for you to tolerate unease in your body, discomfort or disappointment. And that that is what is triggering people's inability to effectively communicate with themselves or other people. That is what turns us into people pleasers. That is what turns us into yes people. That is what is contributing to you getting sick and unhealthy and feeling anxious and stressed and that there is a solution. So tell us these five questions that you ask the people that you work with, Dr. Neha,
Dr. Neha Sangwan (45:09):
I call it the awareness prescription. So the night before they're discharged, I would say to them,
Dr. Neha Sangwan (45:17):
I am getting ready to discharge you tomorrow, and I'd like to give you the opportunity to answer five questions. Question number one, why this? Why a heart attack? Why not your liver or your left leg? Why has your body, why has this part of your body broken down and whatever comes to you is the right answer?
Mel Robbins (45:41):
Okay,
Dr. Neha Sangwan (45:42):
Question number two, why now? Why not three years ago? Why not two weeks from now? What is the message that you needed to get in this moment that you were not getting? Question number three, since hindsight's 2020, what clues, symptoms, patterns that didn't make sense? Now make perfect sense. Question number four, what else in your life needs to be healed?
Mel Robbins (46:15):
Oh, that's the doozy.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (46:17):
And question number five, if you spoke from the heart, what would you say to me? And so every patient knew what was at the root of their stress. They knew why they were sick, they knew what they needed to do. And I wonder, 'em, there's not a single patient. Thousands and thousands of them have done it. And I speak about it actually in rx, how I use this and help them get to the root of what was going on. Here's the best part, Mel. My patients families weren't the ones that started writing me after this. The patients themselves would show up in the hospital, cafeteria, would write me letters themselves and say things like, Hey, doc, you remember that lifelong migraine medication I was on? I only need half the dose. Hey doc, it's the first time in five years I've slept through the night without back pain. Hey doc, I only need a third of my anxiety medication now I think I'm making progress. And they had started to do their own work. What they wanted was that sacred exchange that we have an opportunity to have with one another where I was willing to slow down and ask them the real questions and they were willing and open to answer.
Mel Robbins (47:40):
You know what this reminds me of is this year I read about it in the Harvard Medical School Journal. I don't know what the thing is called where there was a meta analysis done of, I've got it right here, that encompassed, it encompassed 97 meta reviews of more than a thousand randomized controlled trials involving over 125,000 participants where they concluded that exercise is one and a half times more effective for most people in treating depression and anxiety than medication and therapy. And in listening to you, you not only have managed to expand this people pleasing or kind of abandoning of self or being a yes person to include all of us on some level, you have also made a very compelling case that the root cause of the things that are causing you to feel anxious or feel overwhelmed or feel disconnected or feel burnt out or sad, is your inability to effectively communicate with yourself and with somebody else.
(49:00):
And by effectively communicating with yourself, I'm assuming what you mean is coming back into your own body and finding that anchor inside yourself so that if you've been adrift and life just pushes you around and you go with the flow and you find yourself just trying to take care of everything that you now have an anchor to come back to, how do we do that? Can you teach us when you are somebody, and this happens for women in particular that constantly are saying, I can do that, I can do that, I can do that, I can do that. How do you manage your own people pleasing at work?
Dr. Neha Sangwan (49:41):
So in a work setting, know that if there's some gray zone that's happening now, it's about drawing healthy boundaries. So you're my boss. You've asked me to work the weekend or do something. So I would say to you, Hey, Mel, so it sounds like you want me to work the weekend.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (50:01):
I'm going to need to figure out if I can get childcare and see if this can work for me. Is this something that might be ongoing that we need to talk about and arrange so that we need to have a discussion on this? I wasn't aware of this as part of what we were going to be doing. And then when I got into that discussion, I would be saying, how long is this for? I would be Now the thing that people worry about is I
Mel Robbins (50:30):
Am not going to get fired. No. What I'm worried about is I'm going to get fired.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (50:35):
And so you just get to say, listen, I'd like to talk about this because I want to do a really good job for you. Help me understand what's changing about the role about the company. Because listen, it's not about me being a victim and being fired. The deal is if the company's changing, I need to figure out whether I'm still a good fit for this role, this company, this new chapter, this new phase. We're in a world moving faster than many of us definitely me can keep up with. And so the name of the game now here is going to be, can we navigate the unknown together? Can we ask these questions? Can we draw healthy boundaries? Do we know what levels of agreement we've made? And do we have the courage to speak up when something feels hard, different? Not what we want to do.
Mel Robbins (51:28):
What I want to thank you for is that I think that when the world talks about people pleasing, we immediately go to boundaries. And what you're talking about is the medical and physiological fact that people pleasing is triggered the root cause by an inability to tolerate discomfort and unease in your body. And if you can start with that, you will start to build a muscle of tolerating that wave that normally triggers you to say yes when you really want to say no. And it's in that ability to tolerate and be aware of the discomfort that you gain choice and you gain that anchor and you get reconnected to yourself, and now you have a chance to start doing the things on the surface, no, or a boundary or renegotiating agreements, all of which you have so beautifully empowered us to do. And so I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for spending so much time with us. Thank you for so much deep and profound wisdom on this topic that I thought was going to literally be more surface level. I cannot thank you enough for saying hello when we met at the Today Show. And thank you, thank you, thank you for being here.
Dr. Neha Sangwan (52:52):
God, you are so welcome.
Mel Robbins (52:54):
This is one of those episodes that it's so much more profound in terms of how it hits you, and I want it to hit you in a very profound way, and I want you to go deep with this information, and I want you to start with that connection to yourself and being the anchor that you need in life. My wish for you is not that you feel like you are clinging to a shipwreck floating around in the middle of the ocean, and whatever it is that around you is what you just kind of do. I hope you use this information to locate the power within yourself to start making decisions that really empower you and that align with what you want, not with the discomfort that you feel in the moment. And I want to make sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in your ability to do this. And when you start to make better decisions, you will create a better life. Alrighty, I'll talk to you in a few days. Thanks for watching here on YouTube. And if you loved this episode of the Mel Robbins podcast, you're going to want to watch this one next. It's awesome.
Guests Appearing in this Episode
Dr. Neha Sangwan, MD
Dr. Neha Sangwan is an internal medicine physician, communication expert, and author focused on integrating emotional and physical health.
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Book: TalkRx
Do you say yes when you really mean no? Do you avoid conflict at all costs? Are you waiting for someone in your life to change in order to get what you want? If so, you’re not alone. Most people will do anything to avoid the unpleasant sensations that accompany having an honest exchange—even if it’s as simple as declining an invitation. But not speaking directly in the short term results in a much bigger problem long-term: hurt feelings and passive-aggressive patterns that stress us out, keep us up at night, and literally make us sick. You might be thinking, Communication? I know how to communicate. Don’t be fooled. Communication is simple, but it’s not always easy.
TalkRx will lead you step-by-step to listen to your body’s signals to better manage stress, create new outcomes with even the most challenging personalities in your life, articulate your frustration and disappointment effectively, talk to people instead of about them; make agreements that stick; and more.
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Podcast: TalkRx with Doctor Neha
Doctor Neha is an Internal Medicine Physician, Coach, Speaker and Author of TalkRx™M. In this weekly podcast, Neha shares her discoveries to create honest conversations that create connection, health and happiness.
Resources
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- Forbes: How to let go of people pleasing
- Harvard Business Review: Stop being a people pleaser
- Washington Post: Are you a chronic people pleaser?
- Harvard School of Public Health: Linking childhood trauma to long-term health problems
- Forbes: 7 signs of perfectionistic overfunctioning
- Cleveland Clinic: How to set personal boundaries at work
- Harvard Business Review: A guide to setting better boundaries
- American Psychological Association: How stress affects your health
- Forbes: 7 unhealthy coping mechanisms
- The Wall Street Journal: Fix burnout - without blowing up your life
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