A People-Pleaser's Path Back to Themselves | Unfiltered 1:1 (#3)

🔓 Dive Deeper: Insights & Essays Subscribe for free on Substack to receive the key insights and top quotes from each unfiltered 1:1 session, as well as full weekly articles exploring consciousness, non-duality, and the human condition. 👉 Receive key Insights, Quotes, Articles 🎙️ Be Part of the Journey: Ready to break through your own cycles and do the inner work? You have two ways to work with me: * 👉 Book a free, recorded 1:1 session for the podcast * 👉 Book a private, confidential paid 1:1 session 📱 Join my Instagram Community of more than 350k people, who seek to live a life of truth and authenticity When we make choices in life, most of us are quietly walking the path of fear. The operating question running in the background of every decision is simple: How do I get people to like me and accept me? Arpita switched her entire career path from computer science to law because she believed a legal degree would finally give her the confidence to connect with people. But is that how true connection actually comes about? What really is confidence? And where does resentment fit into this—how is it intimately tied to the trap of people-pleasing? For years, Arpita desperately tried to make people see her. She altered her career paths, read spiritual books, and psychoanalyzed her past, yet nothing worked. She lived under the assumption that being “nice” is the only way to earn approval, and that asserting her boundaries or saying “no” is inherently selfish and harsh. But what if the exact opposite is true? * What if people-pleasing isn’t kindness at all, but a deceptive manipulation tactic? * What if expressing your raw truth is the only real way to free both yourself and others from deception? * What if the manipulative people we attract into our lives are not there to punish us, but to put up a mirror and help us see ourselves exactly as we are? * What if rejection is a blessing, and the desperate desire to make friends is the very thing making real friendship completely impossible? These are the questions we uncover in this conversation with Arpita—questions that cut straight through the mind stuff and touch the absolute core and essence of all human struggle. Here is the complete, full-length breakdown of our session timestamp. The Complete 50-Minute Dialogue Map 00:00 — The Stuckness of Self-Abandonment Arpita outlines her baseline paralysis: an overarching pattern of performing for others, an inability to express herself authentically, and a deep sense of life stagnation. Arpita: “I’m always trying to perform something for others, whether it’s in my family or my surroundings. I feel so stuck, and I’m not expressing myself the way I want. And when I ask myself what I actually want to express, I don’t even know anymore.” 05:30 — The Inherited Victim Mentality Arpita details her childhood spent absorbing her father’s chronic struggles. She describes how he cast himself as a perpetual victim, claiming he was constantly manipulated, unappreciated, and trapped by past family dynamics and ancestor superstitions. Arpita: “Papa always pictured himself as the victim in his family. Whatever he did was never enough for people. He was always stuck in his past. Now, I have so much fear in myself, and I guess somewhere I got that exact fear from him.” 12:15 — The Law School Trap: Direct Pursuit of Connection Arpita reveals she switched paths from Computer Science to Law because she felt closed off and introverted, explicitly believing a law degree would grant her confidence and a mechanism to connect with people. Arpita: “During the engineering thing, I felt so closed off and introverted. I thought that maybe after doing law, I was going to get confidence and a chance to connect with more people. But during my court internships, I got a reality check. Confidence isn’t something you get from a degree. It has to come from your inside.” 18:45 — The Pathology of Approval-Seeking I break down the mechanics of fear-driven living, pointing out that Arpita’s fear of being judged completely silences her voice and places her demands last. Michalis: “If you’re afraid to be judged, then you don’t do what is true for you. You act to please others, turn your needs into something secondary, and put everyone else first. Your father is a prime example of that path—the path of approval, which is the path of fear. Being able to see that reality should be enough for you to say, ‘That’s enough.’ Stop looking outside wondering how to connect with people. Look inside. How do I connect with myself?” 24:20 — The Illusion of the Spiritual Search Arpita admits that her attempts to mend herself through meditation and studying Jiddu Krishnamurti have utterly failed, only driving her deeper into an exhausted loop of anxious over-analysis. Michalis: “You’re looking for a method to connect with yourself. You’re looking for books or asking people to tell you how to connect with yourself, and that just creates more mental chatter. Understanding perfectly what happened in your past doesn’t change your behavior. What you really need to understand is what do you actually want? What do you actually need in life? Those questions cannot be read in a book. They are entirely unique to you.” 29:50 — The Somatic Practice of “No” I deliver the raw, non-negotiable remedy for self-deception: learning to honor real-time somatic boundaries by saying “no” and riding out the subsequent psychological storm. Michalis: “Whenever you say yes and deep down you want to say no, that’s an indication you’re living away from your connected self and authenticity. This is where you start: you stop forcing yourself to do things you don’t want to do. When you say no, it is very natural that you’re going to feel discomfort. Stay with that discomfort, and it will just dissipate. Going to therapy or reading Krishnamurti isn’t going to help you. It’s about being aware and saying no. The devil here is your inability to say no—that is the pattern.” 34:15 — Micro-Boundaries and the Myth of the “Polite Boundary” Arpita voices her terror of setting boundaries, fearing that saying “no” to draining environments (like her lingering for extra hours at her English club) makes her harsh, rude, and selfish. Michalis: “You see, you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too. You’re trying to assert your boundaries but keep everyone happy. Kindness and firmness are entirely different things. When you place a boundary, you are poking their ego image—the very image that separates them from other people. By being true to yourself, not only are you freeing yourself, you are freeing others, even if they seem uncomfortable.” 39:00 — The Selfishness of Compliance I confront Arpita’s dread of looking “selfish,” completely turning the definition on its head by exposing the hidden manipulation behind faked compliance. Michalis: “When you say yes and you mean no, you’re actually more selfish because you’re manipulating me to like you when you don’t want to do something. You’re operating in deception. If you’re hiding your reality and faking your behavior, you are living a deception, and that is the very evil thing that is destroying relationships and destroying connection. People-pleasing is a pure form of self-harm.” 41:45 — Dropping the Agenda to “Make Friends” Arpita states she wants to focus on making more friends. I command her to abandon this objective immediately, exposing it as another manifestation of her compliance loop. Michalis: “If your goal is to make friends, then your own truth goes secondary. It’s not a priority anymore because you want me to like you. You become highly sensitive to what I want and what I need, and you just do that or say that. So you need to forget the idea of making friends now. Your work is to connect with yourself. If you want everyone to be your friend, you can’t really love yourself.” 44:30 — The Authenticity Magnet I map out the natural architecture of real human connection, showing that true self-love creates an effortless, unshakeable peace that naturally draws people in. Michalis: “Imagine if you meet someone who’s really connected with his truth, which means he does not reject anything in himself. He accepts everything. Because what is inside is reflected outside, if I accept myself, I accept others. A self-accepting person is peaceful and at ease; they can just sit there silently and they wouldn’t care if you like them or not. Around them, you immediately feel calm because you don’t need to pretend. If you become that authentic person, you become a light, and all people are like moths attracted to that light because you offer them a space to feel safe and seen.” 46:15 — Shadow Work: Turning the Mirror Inward Arpita experiences a massive breakthrough, realizing why her life has been continuously plagued by manipulative people. Arpita: “I always keep asking this thing in my head, like why I get these type of manipulative people in my life. But from this, I’m seeing it clearly. I guess it was me first.” Michalis: “Exactly. That’s exactly what shadow work is. As long as you are manipulating yourself to be liked and approved, you’re gonna be a magnet and attract people who manipulate you back. The outside world is just a mirror showing you what’s happening inside.” 48:00 — Rejection as Absolute Redirection The session concludes with a stark warning against hiding in a protective cage of analysis to avoid the bite of failure. Michalis: “Imagine everyone else is irrelevant here; every judgment that people will have about any decision you make is completely irrelevant. If you keep yourself in a cage to avoid rejection, you’re not allowing reality to show you reality. You need to stop manipulating and accept that rejection is a redirection. It’s a friend because it eliminates what is false. You need to be true and surrender.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit freedomfromthemadness.substack.com/subscribe