Name: How To Stop People Pleasing | Gabor Maté
Uploaded: 2026-02-28T13:18:26.000Z
Duration: 12 min 48 s
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One thing that I love that you say about authenticity is because it's not a tangible thing.

Modal verbs - A2

The question that you ask in the book is just to notice when it's not there.

Haven't we all had the experience of being in a conversation with somebody and then afterwards.

I was agreeing in order to be liked, or I wasn't saying how it was for me because I was afraid I would be rejected, or I was just trying to fit in.

And there's a kind of, as you say, is the kind of hollow feeling about it.

The thing is to notice that without being critical of oneself.

Like, I used to feel shame around that when I would do that in the past, you know, And

Wonder why I did that, wonder what made me do that.

And the important thing about noticing it is not just to notice it so that we don't do it again, but

When you're noticing who's noticing, who's noticing, who's noticing that I'm not being authentic.

It's the authentic self that's noticing it.

So the noticing, it automatically strengthens the authentic self.

And if every time we do it, if we notice it afterwards and can sort of just ask ourselves, what was my fear or what was my belief that strengthens the authentic self?

And, you know, that's why actually a lot of us, as we get older, we actually get a lot freer.

And I've known a lot of women who are on menopause or afterwards, you know, all of a sudden they experience the freedom because they don't give a damn anymore.

You know, they'd much rather be themselves than be accepted or, you know, at the cost of suppressing themselves.

Well, the fact is, we don't have to wait till old age or.

That freedom that you see in people sometimes when it's just like, nope.

And you actually have a great passage in the book, too.

It's on page 142, the chapter before the body says no.

And there are six questions that you ask.

And it Actually is about the word no and how scary it is for us to use sometimes and questions to play with.

You just, huh, you know, where did I say no to?

But I didn't, you know, what was my story like?

What would I believe about myself if I said no in that situation?

I think especially for women, maybe, I don't know, men too.

Well, so an earlier book of mine is called when the Body says no.

And it's about the mind, body unity, about how.

I also noticed it, but the science is there.

That again, the people that tend to develop chronic illness tend to be people that don't know how to say no to the emotional needs of others.

All right, well, if you did, you'd find out that.

What's the first thing a kid says when they get to be a year and a half?

So, yeah, why don't they start saying yes first?

They do that because nature is very smart.

And nature says that if you don't know how to say no, your yeses don't mean a thing.

So in order to develop your own will and your own sense of what you value and meaning and who you are and what you like, what you don't like, you have to be able to say no.

And that automatic little no that the kid utters is like a little wall behind which their own will can develop.

Okay, then what happens is a lot of people don't know how to say no anymore.

There's a no there that they want to say that wants to be said, but

Now, what I noticed in family practice is that when people don't know how to say no, their bodies will say it in the form of illness.

So that chronic illness is very often the body saying no when the person couldn't.

And if the person develops the capacity to say no.

Given that nature gave us that no as a birthright, how did we lose it?

We lost it because we learned that in order to be accepted and attached to, we had to please others.

And so the saying no becomes a very scary proposition.

Okay, so let's say I landed in Miami next week and I called you up and, hey, Susie, should we go for coffee?

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How To Stop People Pleasing | Gabor Maté

authentic

sort

chronic

stretch