The Surprising Link Between People Pleasing & Your Health: MD’s Recommendation on How to Say “No”

Mel Robbins 0:00 Is everybody on the planet a people pleaser?

Dr. Neha Sangwan 0:02 What I would say to you as a doctor is, people pleasing makes you physically ill. (upbeat music)

Mel Robbins 0:08 Dr. Neha Sangwan, a lot of people-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 0:10 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 0:10 ... feel compelled for a variety of, 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 0:24 Resentment is one of those big clues that you have overextended yourself.

Mel Robbins 0:29 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 0:36 I overheard my dad. He just made a comment like, "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 0:53 How did you come to realize that you were a people pleaser?

Dr. Neha Sangwan 0:57 Um... (upbeat music)

Mel Robbins 1:02 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 'cause, first of all, I love Hoda and Jenna. Secondly, I just love going on the Today Show 'cause 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. And so I'm standing back there, and the first person that walks by is Charlotte Tilbury, who is this very famous makeup, uh, entrepreneur and artist, and this fabulous woman who always talks like this, darling. And I am a huge fan of Charlotte Tilbury. And so she stops, and I'm like, "Ah," and she's like, "Ah." 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 she 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 other extraordinary woman, and she is 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. Like, there's just this, like, 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 friend." So I see her coming. I look her in the eyes. I do the 10-5 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, (gasps) "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." (laughs) And she walks up and says, "Can I hug you?" And I'm like, "Of course. Nothing is better than a hug," and 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

Mel Robbins 3:22 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 gonna say, the fact that you say yes when you actually mean no, that's what she talks about. And I said, "Uh, we gotta

Mel Robbins 3:58 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 is 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 gonna begin. Please help me welcome Dr. Neha Sangwan to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 4:26 Oh, such an honor to be here.

Mel Robbins 4:28 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 4:41 (laughs) It is when we almost lose an anchor inside of ourselves and we become a

Dr. Neha Sangwan 4:49 yes to the outside world. We become driftwood in the ocean. Like, we're going in whatever direction the wind is blowing us, uh, and really, it's overwhelming, uh, 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 5:14 I literally, when you said you're like a driftwood in the ocean going in whatever direction-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 5:20 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 5:21 ... I thought about my poor husband-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 5:24 Hmm.

Mel Robbins 5:24 ... and our marriage, that I am such an overwhelming force-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 5:30 Hmm.

Mel Robbins 5:31 ... 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 5:46 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 like anchoring ourselves and unable to move, and we don't care which way the wind is blowing. We, we want to care about all of that, and we want to make sure that what we feel, uh, is that we have some input into, uh, the direction in which we're moving.

Mel Robbins 6:23 I would never have labeled my husband a people pleaser.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 6:27 Mm.

Mel Robbins 6:28 But when I think about how he kind of goes through life, or has until recently, he was very focused on making sure everybody else was okay, and he put himself last.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 6:43 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 6:43 And is that the same thing as people pleasing, or is people pleasing something else?

Dr. Neha Sangwan 6:50 So, people pleasing is the moment that you give up

Dr. Neha Sangwan 6:54 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?

Mel Robbins 7:12 Mm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 7:13 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, the voice, the sound of your own heart slightly louder than you can hear the voices of others.

Mel Robbins 7:32 I love you.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 7:34 And so that's the end, you know, that's really the end way, because it's a nuance. It's a, 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. The, all of these come from that place, it's such a good intention-

Mel Robbins 8:13 Yes.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 8:13 ... to serve.

Mel Robbins 8:14 Yes.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 8:14 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, right, 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 m- I will almost overcorrect in my life to make sure no one sends me o- you know, it was, it was me being sent away with my grandparents when I was really young, and I didn't understand, why, why am I being sent away? For my parents, it's an act of love, but to a child, it felt like, wait, why am I the one being separated?

Mel Robbins 8:52 Mm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 8:53 So, you know, how we interpret what 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 9:07 later on. And I went too far in one, on one di- 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, I really resonate with your husband, (laughs) because I think that's a lot of me, and I needed to come ba- 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 9:41 There are so many things that you have already said that I don't wanna 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 described that story of being a little girl and your parents sent you to live with your grandparents, and you didn't understand why-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 10:23 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 10:24 ... can you unpack that for us? Because I had a very similar, like visceral experience when you heard that, when you, when I heard you say that story, I had this visceral image of myself as a little, little kid going, "Why are you mad at me?"

Dr. Neha Sangwan 10:42 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about it, and we'll just see how I do.

Mel Robbins 10:47 Okay.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 10:48 Um, 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, uh, in Grand Blanc, Michigan, and, um, 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, okay, and you can imagine those two little ones in this whole thing. So, my grandmother's there. My grandfather gets stationed in the, uh, by the UN in Africa to help them with their agriculture. He calls my grandmother and says, "I know Neha's three months and Ritu'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, uh, had a talk with my parents, uh, scooped me up, and said, "I'm gonna take Neha with me. Uh, you take care of

Dr. Neha Sangwan 11:58 Ritu. She's potty-trained. I'm gonna take Neha with me. We're gonna have lot, we'll have plenty of resources there and me."...and everything's gonna be great. And my parents thought, "Oh my gosh, how amazing."

Mel Robbins 12:10 Right.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 12:10 Like, she'll get the love of her grandmother, who was gonna 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 two-year-old sure does. And so when my parent ... They came to pick me up and brought me back, I didn't stop crying for more than a month.

Mel Robbins 12:37 Wow.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 12:37 I would just wake up. I'd be crying, "Where is my gran ... Where is my nani and nana? Where are they?" And my parents, who were in their 20s, doing the best they knew how, you know, moving to a new country, all of these things, were beside themselves with this two-year-old who'd, who wouldn't stop crying. About ... It took about a month, and I, I realized how stubborn I was. Because when I was little, I would only call my dad, in th- in that time, I'd only call him, "Hey, you." I wouldn't call him "Dad." I was like, "Hey, you, potty. Hey, you hungry? Hey, you."

Mel Robbins 13:10 (laughs)

Dr. Neha Sangwan 13:11 Um, but it took about a month, uh, of his persistence. I have to give him credit. Uh, 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, you know, my sister, my, the Indian community around me, my neighbors. And I became such a good child that when my, when I overheard my dad later on wanting to, um ... He just made a comment like, "Yeah, the second one was a girl too." Like, "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 wish, I hope one of my girls becomes a doctor."

Dr. Neha Sangwan 14:14 Boy, Mel, my radar was so in tuned to everybody else's needs, and the Indian community, um, you know, in general is like, "Hey, so you're good at math and science. Are you gonna 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 them. So can you describe for us, uh, just what happened to you and/or what you see in your practice-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 15:04 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 15:04 ... 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 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 15:15 ... became a coping mechanism?

Dr. Neha Sangwan 15:17 Yeah. I remember being really young, um, about seven years old, and, you know, 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, I wanted to figure out why I was getting bullied when I was older, but I, I ... It was people who were getting really angry and blowing up and i- and telling me to do things.

Mel Robbins 15:41 Mm. I think it's those moments that really create this, this experience where we are uncomfortable with other

Mel Robbins 15:52 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 is as, is determined, as much determined, like, by your childhood blueprint as your wardrobe at home influenced what you're wearing today.

Mel Robbins 16:18 Hm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 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, um, and, and my dad got really mad. He picked up a plate. Uh, it was empty, but a plate, and he smashed it down on the table, and it broke. And little seven-year-old, my mom said, "Neha, can you please go upstairs, honey? Can you please ... Uh, 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, uh, "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." Right? Like, I didn't do this consciously, but my little brain went scurrying up the stairs and noted to itself, "Danger. Any time someone starts raising their voice, thumping, breaking, slamming cupboards, w- 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 I-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 17:45 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 17:45 ... think 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.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 17:54 Mm-hmm. That's right.

Mel Robbins 17:54 And when we went to our, you know, massive audience online and started asking, um, people about people pleasing-The vast majority, 70% of people said, "I often say yes when I mean no, and the majority-"

Dr. Neha Sangwan 18:11 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 18:11 "...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-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 18:27 Yup.

Mel Robbins 18:27 ...that they were avoiding.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 18:28 Yup.

Mel Robbins 18:28 And you, as a medical doctor, have seen the impact not only in your own life-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 18:35 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 18:35 ...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-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 18:54 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 18:54 ...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, and here's some of the things that people said. Um, "I avoid conflict because I'm afraid of criticism, because I hate confrontation." That was a huge one. "I hate confrontation." "I just wanna keep the peace." "It makes me uncomfortable." "It's just easier."

Dr. Neha Sangwan 19:41 Mm-hmm. Well, let me tell you, it's only easier short-term. It's easier in the moment. So when you have, uh, you know, 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, uh, leaving dirty dishes in the sink, uh, w- every day?" This is an everyday experience. Um, what happens is, in the short term, you have a choice. If you choose to ignore it, you take the short-term high of, uh, you know, not f- 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

Mel Robbins 20:32 of the report," or, "I'll handle the thing," or, "I'll pick it up," or, "I'll just say yes 'cause I don't wanna deal with the drama." So in the moment, you're like, "Okay, I know"-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 20:43 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 20:43 "...that this is not the right decision, because I can feel my resistance to it, and I can feel my kind of like (sighs) . 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, well, you're taking the short-term high, and you're gonna end up with the long-term yuck. Okay? You're gonna end up with looking yourself in the mirror saying, "Does everyone think I'm a magic fairy around this house-

Mel Robbins 21:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 21:13 "...like nobody else does anything?" So what happens is, Mel, if there's a conflict between you and I-

Mel Robbins 21:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 21:20 ...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, uh, 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. Right? And sometimes I do get tearful. Okay, so there's something here, Mel, that I wanna 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, the, 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 to make that go away.

Mel Robbins 22:53 Every single human being has that experience at some point in their li- their childhood, where you're like, scan the environment, and now, based on what's happening outside, I gotta 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 what, I, I, 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, 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 wanna tell me what you wanted more than they wanted? Like, you're 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 of value, and I didn't want anybody to send me away again.

Mel Robbins 24:24 Hmm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 24:25 So 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. You know, um, I'm, I'm thinking it's Gabor Maté who speaks about, uh, authenticity over attachment, uh, that sometimes we choose attachment over authenticity-

Mel Robbins 25:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 25:14 ... and that we, we give up who we really are, if we know that, uh, 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.

Mel Robbins 25:28 Yeah.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 25:28 I went to med school (laughs) .

Mel Robbins 25:29 Yeah.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 25:30 So yeah, engineering and med school, um, absolutely, I did it. Now, I can see that I did it, uh, with those underlying un- subconscious intentions.

Mel Robbins 25:44 Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 25:45 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 26:21 And I want to go back to what I said at the very beginning, which is that I'd never thought about my husband, Chris, as a people pleaser-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 26:29 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 26:29 ... because I consider myself a people pleaser, not anymore-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 26:34 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 26:34 ... 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, uh, avoid conflict, and actively, uh, scanning the environment, and saying yes when I meant no, and, uh, 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 with 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. And I never thought about my husband on the spectrum of people pleasing. And so I have learned about my husband that he was like so many people, and perhaps you listening, he felt like the forgotten one in the family.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 27:37 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 27:38 Nobody was there to pick him up. Everybody was too busy to come to his games. He's got story after story after story. Just a, 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 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 28:27 Oh, 'cause he was up in the crib in the attic.

Mel Robbins 28:30 Correct.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 28:31 The function of your brain is to help you seek pleasure and avoid pain.

Mel Robbins 28:35 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 28:36 Very basically.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 28:37 That's... it's like this, this, this t- amazing, incredible tool that helps keep us safe in the world, seek pleasure, avoid pain. And so when we... since we were little, if we 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 make... 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 You know, 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, like, that critical stress, you're overextended, you're saying yes to too many things, is when you start to resent the outreach from friends or from your job. Can you unpack that in the context

Mel Robbins 29:48 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, uh, 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, and yet you find yourself, uh, resentful. And the, the how... I've heard basically a, a saying, and I'm not pinning where I've heard it from, but, uh, it's basically that resentment is like me drinking poison-

Mel Robbins 30:32 Right.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 30:33 ... hoping that you die.

Mel Robbins 30:35 (laughs)

Dr. Neha Sangwan 30:35 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, uh, 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 you know.

Mel Robbins 31:19 I can no- I can tell you how it is for me.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 31:21 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 31:22 It's a gigantic (groans) . Like, it's a full body like fuck.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 31:27 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 31:28 Ugh, this shit again. Like, it's like, bleh. It's like a full thing that I feel.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 31:33 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 31:33 And the other thing that I've come to learn, this is why it was, like, a huge thing, like, oh my god, you're overextended, is that it is also a sign of a broken process.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 31:43 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 31:43 Or a broken system that you're in.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 31:46 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 31:46 Something that needs updating, leveling up, some communication pattern that's broken. Like, it's something outdated that needs leveling up.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 31:56 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 31:56 And it, when I think about it that way, Dr. Neha, I, I, 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, kinda stupid to be, so something must be broken-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 32:11 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 32:11 ... that needs attention."

Dr. Neha Sangwan 32:13 Yeah, you made it-

Mel Robbins 32:14 Is that a good way to think about it?

Dr. Neha Sangwan 32:16 Yeah, absolutely. And that's the me/we world. Because, you know, you may have been carrying a boulder uphill. I mean, I am guilty of single-handedly trying to change the healthcare system.

Mel Robbins 32:27 (laughs)

Dr. Neha Sangwan 32:29 (laughs) 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-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 32:53 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 32:55 ... of people pleasing. Because not knowing what you want or believing it doesn't matter what you want.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 33:05 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 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.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 33:27 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 33:27 So, Dr. Neha, how did you come to realize (laughs) that all of this was going down? And you have a story at the age of 31 and practicing as a physician. Can you share that with us and how you connected the dots between illness,

Mel Robbins 33:47 stress, overwhelm, anxiety, depression, and people pleasing?

Dr. Neha Sangwan 33:53 (laughs) Yes. So, my regular life at work was busy, 18 patients, uh, in the hospital. S- 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'm, I'm, you know, 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 I said, so what did I say? Last day on service, I'm exhausted. I say, "Sure, I'll do it."

Mel Robbins 34:39 (laughs)

Dr. Neha Sangwan 34:39 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 ml equivalents of IV potassium for the gentleman in room 636?" 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."

Mel Robbins 35:22 Whoa.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 35:25 And it was one of those moments where I kind of went into a little bit of shock. Like, 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, um, when can I do a, you know, I just want to consult you. Something weird just happened." Uh, and he said, "Sure, stop by today at 5 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 in doctor world for I am in trouble. And he took me in, and one hour later, he diagnosed me, uh, as a severe people pleaser. He told me that single-handedly

Dr. Neha Sangwan 36:08 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....um, 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 that?

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 Band-Aid 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, right? And when I think about problems and how I solve them, or where- how do I get to the root of them, I realize that oftentimes, it has something to do with me, it has something to do with we-

Mel Robbins 37:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 37:19 ...it has something to do with world.

Mel Robbins 37:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 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, like if I'm... Any conflict. You can do it anywhere in your life. If, you, you want to think about it as, "What's my part in this? What's someone else's part in this? What's the environment? 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 38:13 (laughs) He did, he did.

Mel Robbins 38:17 And-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 38:17 You know what? Yeah.

Mel Robbins 38:18 And I love this framework, and I, 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-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 38:35 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 38:35 ...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.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 38:43 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 38:43 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. That this kind of stopping and going, "Okay, what's my part in this? What's the, uh, 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 to, you've got aging parents-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 39:09 Yep.

Mel Robbins 39:09 ...and siblings.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 39:11 Yep.

Mel Robbins 39:11 And one person feels like it's all on them.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 39:15 You bet. So, if I am, let's say, a, 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, I'll, 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-

Mel Robbins 40:10 Hmm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 40:10 ...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 did, have you been playing for a very long time in your family? Who played what role, right? And how does it show up with your parents? And there's a bigger, you know, 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?"

Dr. Neha Sangwan 40:58 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 40:58 ...you inevitably find yourself having to look in the mirror and see those moments where you can't deal with discomfort in your body-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 41:10 Yep.

Mel Robbins 41:10 ...you can't deal with the disappointment that it's not going a certain way-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 41:14 Yep.

Mel Robbins 41:15 ...or that there's some e- uneasiness that you feel-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 41:19 That's right.

Mel Robbins 41:19 ...but what if, what if nobody goes? What if this happens? What if that happens?

Dr. Neha Sangwan 41:22 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 41:22 And so the people pleasing is triggered by something happening in our bodies.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 41:30 Yeah. 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 made th- makes them physically ill.

Mel Robbins 41:45 Wow. Can you talk a little more about that? Because that really, really piqued my interest. Unresolved 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 okay 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 42:33 100%. I found that stress causes or exacerbates more than 80% of all illness.

Mel Robbins 42:40 Wow.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 42:42 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've 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."

Mel Robbins 43:18 (laughs)

Dr. Neha Sangwan 43:20 And I'm telling you, Mel, I got angry. I got sad, and I almost got emboldened.

Mel Robbins 43:26 Right.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 43:26 And then we give them some cocktail of medications, antidepressant, antianxiety, or, 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-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 44:03 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 44:03 ... 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.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 44:14 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 44:15 And you are also saying that the majority of the stress, that you have control over.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 44:21 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 44:22 And that this all stems even deeper to an inability individually for you to tolerate unease in your body, discomfort, or disappointment.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 44:41 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 44:41 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 45:08 The five qu- I call it the awareness prescription.

Mel Robbins 45:11 Okay.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 45:11 And so the night before they're discharged, I would say to them, "Uh,

Dr. Neha Sangwan 45:17 I'm getting ready to discharge you tomorrow, and I'd like to a- uh, 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, w- 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 20/20, 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 Ooh, 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 why they were... what was at the root of their stress. They knew why they were sick. They knew what they needed to do.

Mel Robbins 46:33 Hmm.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 46:33 And I them there's not a single patient, thousands and thousands of them have done it. And I speak about it actually in, in TalkRx, how I used this and helped 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

Dr. Neha Sangwan 47:12 back pain. Hey, doc, I only need, you know, 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 ha- we have a- 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, um, this year, I read about it in the Harvard, uh, 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 a hundr- it was, it encompassed 97 meta-reviews of more than 1,000 randomized controlled trials invi- 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-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 48:22 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 48:23 ... in listening to you, you not only have managed to expand this people pleasing or, 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. And by effectively communicating with yourself, I'm assuming what you mean is coming back into your own body-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 49:09 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 49:09 ... 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? Like, 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, w- know that if there's some gray zone, that's happening. Now it's about drawing healthy boundaries. So, you're my boss. I'm, you've asked me to work the weekend or do something. So, I would say to you, "Hey, Mel, uh, so it sounds like you want me to work the weekend. I'm gonna need

Dr. Neha Sangwan 50:02 to figure out if I can get childcare and see if, if this can work for me. Is this something that might be ongoing that we need to talk about and, uh, arrange so that, you know, we, 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, I would be... Uh, now, the, the thing that people worry about is maybe I'm not paid.

Mel Robbins 50:30 "Am I gonna get fired?" No. "What I'm worried about is I'm gonna get fired."

Dr. Neha Sangwan 50:35 And so you just get to say, "Listen, I'd like to talk about, about this, because I wanna 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? Can, do we know what levels of agreement we've made, and are, 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, what I want to thank you for is that I think that when the world talks about people pleasing, we immediately go to boundaries...

Dr. Neha Sangwan 51:36 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 51:36 ... and what you're talking about is the medical and physiological fact-

Dr. Neha Sangwan 51:41 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 51:41 ... that people pleasing is triggered, the root cause, by an inability to tolerate discomfort and unease in your body.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 51:49 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 51:49 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 wanted 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.

Dr. Neha Sangwan 52:12 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:12 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, uh, deep and profound, uh, wisdom on this topic that I thought was gonna 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 happens 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. All righty. 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 gonna want to watch this one next. It's awesome.