People-pleasing may look like kindness on the surface, but underneath it often hides fear, insecurity, and a longing for approval. In this episode of Born to Be a Butterfly, we’re uncovering the spiritual cost of living for others’ validation instead of God’s truth. You’ll learn why people-pleasing keeps you stuck in cycles of anxiety and resentment, how it distorts your identity, and why Christ calls you to freedom from this destructive pattern.

Together we’ll explore practical, Bible-based steps to set healthy boundaries, break free from toxic expectations, and start walking in the confidence of who God says you are. If you’ve ever struggled with saying no, felt drained by trying to make everyone happy, or feared rejection, this conversation will help you trade approval-seeking for God’s peace.

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Born to be a Butterfly © 2025 Nina Pajonas All rights reserved. The content of this podcast is for informational and inspirational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect those of any affiliated organizations. For the full disclaimer, visit ⁠ninapajonas.com

Hey friend.

NIna Pajonas: Welcome to Born to Be a Butterfly, the podcast where we embrace transformation, healing and growth. I'm Nina Pajones and I'm so glad that you're here.

Today's episode is for those who have spent their lives trying to keep everyone else happy,

often at the expense of their own well being.

People pleasing can feel like a loving and selfless act,

but in reality it can leave us feeling drained, resentful,

and far from the purpose that God has for us.

So today we're going to break free from the people pleasing and learn how to find our worth in Christ.

Let's dive in.

What is people pleasing?

At its core,

people pleasing is the tendency to prioritize others needs,

desires and expectations over our own.

And often we do this out of fear of rejection or guilt or a deep desire for approval.

People pleasing can look like saying yes when you want to say no,

avoiding conflict at all costs, over committing yourself to avoid disappointing others,

feeling responsible for other people's emotions and last but definitely not least and one that I struggled with for the longest time,

constantly seeking validation and approval from other people.

It doesn't happen frequently anymore,

but every so often I'll find myself trying to get approval from someone about something that I'm doing now. The good news is I catch myself quicker when I find myself doing that and I can adjust.

Or if I've already done it and it's after the fact,

I reflect on what it is that I did. And then I look at the reasons why I felt inclined to seek that person's approval,

why I felt I needed their validation about something that I was doing, about a choice that I was making.

Because if I'm in a healthy place mentally, emotionally and spiritually,

I really shouldn't be looking for that validation.

So those moments where I falter and I kind of slide back into old behaviors,

I always analyze what was the driving force behind that? Why was I feeling insecure?

Because usually it's that insecurity that's creating my need to seek the validation from others.

Here's the truth about people pleasing.

It isn't rooted in kindness,

like I was just saying. It's often rooted in insecurity, in fear, and even in pride.

It's the belief that our worth is determined by what others think of us. But God never called us to live this way.

Nina Pajonas: And these are some of the questions.

NIna Pajonas: That I personally have started to ask myself when I'm struggling with wanting to gain approval from somebody or validation when I'm struggling with that in a situation I'll ask myself,

am I seeking to please society or my Savior?

Am I choosing sin or salvation? It might seem like a big leap for me to ask this question of myself, but it's really not. Because if I'm trying to conform to the ways of the world,

I'm not allowing myself to be transformed by God.

Instead,

I'm being molded by worldly desires and worldly behaviors. Because I'm following after people. I'm running after them for approval and recognition and validation and all these other things. But I'm not supposed to be running after other people for their approval.

I'm supposed to be running after the Lord.

That's whose heart I'm supposed to be chasing.

So it is a very valid question.

Am I choosing sin or salvation? Am I choosing society over my Savior?

Because if I'm choosing something or someone of the world, I am quite often going to be choosing sin, right?

Another question to ask ourselves is isn't people pleasing just a form of pleasing ourselves?

Isn't it living in my own will instead of the Lord's?

Nina Pajonas: And again, hear me out when I say this.

NIna Pajonas: If I'm looking to please others, I'm probably doing it with a selfish motive. In my heart, I'm seeking to gain their approval because I I want to be seen as something valuable to them.

But I shouldn't be concerned about whether.

Nina Pajonas: I'm valuable to them.

NIna Pajonas: The only thing I should be concerned about is being of value to the.

Nina Pajonas: Kingdom and the King.

NIna Pajonas: If I'm seeking to please people,

my focus is on the temporal, not the eternal.

And that will only lead to brokenness because people are flawed. So there's nothing good that's going to come of it.

The next thing I want to discuss is why is people pleasing such a hard habit to break?

Number one,

fear of rejection.

We crave acceptance and often fear that saying no or setting boundaries will push people away.

Number two,

need for approval.

Many of us were conditioned to believe.

Nina Pajonas: That our value is tied to how.

NIna Pajonas: Well we meet other people's expectations.

Number three,

avoiding conflict confrontation can feel uncomfortable and a lot of people are not good with it.

So sometimes we do whatever we can to keep the peace, even at the cost of our own well being.

And number four, we have a distorted view of love.

We may believe that saying yes to everything is the loving and godly thing to do,

even when it leaves us feeling empty.

But God didn't call us to live in bondage to other people's expectations.

So how do we break free from people pleasing?

Let's talk about Three biblical steps to overcome this struggle and start living in the freedom that God intended.

Number one, Renew your mind with God's truth.

People pleasing behavior thrives when we believe the lie that our worth is tied to what we do for others.

But Romans 12:2 NIV tells us, do not conform to the pattern of this world,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is.

His good,

pleasing and perfect will.

We need to replace the lies with God's truth.

You are loved not because of what you do,

but because of who you are in Christ.

Your worth isn't determined by other people's opinions,

but by God's love for you.

But whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.

And that's the NIV version, by the way.

It says here that fear of man will prove to be a snare.

And a snare is a trap.

And that's exactly what I was talking about earlier.

It's a snare. It's a trap. When we think that the opinion of man is more important than the opinion of God.

The more you soak in these truths, the more you'll realize that you don't have to earn love because you already have it.

And again, this goes back to we cannot earn the Lord's love. We do not deserve the Lord's love.

None of us do.

But it is the priceless gift that we get because we are his children.

It is an agape love. It's a sacrificial,

unconditional love.

Nina Pajonas: It is the most beautiful version of.

NIna Pajonas: Love that we could ever experience. So whenever you start to feel like you're trying to earn someone's love, just.

Nina Pajonas: Remember that God loves you infinitely and unconditionally. What a peaceful feeling that is. It causes no anxiety, no fear, because.

NIna Pajonas: Perfect love drives out fear.

Nina Pajonas: Again, that's scripture, and I encourage you.

NIna Pajonas: To look it up.

Nina Pajonas: Another thing we need to do is set boundaries without guilt. And I discussed this in the last episode. If you haven't listened to that episode, I would encourage you to do so because boundaries are an essential part of living a transformed life in Christ.

As I mentioned in the other episode, Jesus Himself set boundaries. He said no. He withdrew to be alone when he wanted to pray to the Father. He didn't heal every person in every town or meet every demand that people made of Him.

So if Jesus, who was perfect, didn't meet every demand, why do we think that we should?

We have to focus on seeking to please God, not people.

At the end of the day, people pleasing is a form of misplaced worship. It puts the opinions of others over God's opinion.

NIna Pajonas: It puts the approval of others above God's approval.

Nina Pajonas: It has us seeking others constantly instead of seeking God in everything. I'll refer to Galatians 1:10 NIV. Am I now trying to win the.

NIna Pajonas: Approval of human beings or of God?

Nina Pajonas: Or am I trying to please people? If I was still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

NIna Pajonas: I love this piece of scripture, especially.

Nina Pajonas: The part where it says, if I were still trying to please people,

I would not be a servant of Christ.

Because it's true you can't serve two masters.

A servant could have only one master, one Lord. And I do have a Lord. We have the Lord,

and his name is Jesus Christ.

Let us be a servant to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

Let us be his hands and his feet,

and let his hands and his feet chase after him and his approval,

no one else's.

When we shift our focus from making everyone else happy to honoring God,

we find peace. And I could speak from personal experience.

NIna Pajonas: On a lot of this.

Nina Pajonas: My people pleasing tendencies began when I was a child.

And I'm talking very young. I'm talking about elementary school.

And my people pleasing was a trauma response.

My mother had addiction issues when I was a child.

When she gave up custody of us to our father, she wound up leaving the state of New York.

So I suffered from severe abandonment issues.

And those issues followed me for most of my life.

And it was the fear of being abandoned again by somebody that I loved that inspired me to do everything in my power to please the people that.

NIna Pajonas: I loved so that I wouldn't lose them.

Nina Pajonas: I never wanted to feel that pain again. And so I thought, well, if I can just keep everyone happy, then they'll never leave me and I'll never have.

NIna Pajonas: To feel like this again.

And I'm getting emotional just talking about it because it's a really.

It's a very heavy weight to carry and it's a horrible way to feel.

Nina Pajonas: And it's not healthy for anybody to.

NIna Pajonas: Wield that type of power over you.

Nina Pajonas: Because trust me when I tell you.

NIna Pajonas: When you behave in that fashion, when.

Nina Pajonas: I behaved in that fashion, people picked up on it.

NIna Pajonas: They realized how desperate I was for their approval. They realized how, how much I wanted.

Nina Pajonas: To keep that Friendship or keep that romantic relationship to the point that I would do almost anything to not have them leave.

And so that meant I just did everything in my power to please them. It didn't matter if it made me happy.

It didn't matter if I was miserable doing the thing that I thought was going to make them love me or like me. It didn't matter.

All that mattered was that they weren't going to leave, and then I wasn't going to feel that pain.

So that's why pleasing them was the priority.

I was never the priority.

Which is really odd when you think about it, right? Because at the end of the day.

NIna Pajonas: I don't want them to leave because.

Nina Pajonas: I don't want to hurt again.

So I am, in a way, doing it for myself,

but I lose myself while doing it so I don't feel that pain again.

NIna Pajonas: Does that make sense? It's a weird concept, but if you.

Nina Pajonas: Think about it, it's true.

NIna Pajonas: I know it's hard to get our head around the fact that it could be both, but it is. It is.

Nina Pajonas: It's really strange when you think about it, because we're trying to please people to avoid pain,

right? In my case, I was trying to please people so I wouldn't lose them, but I was losing myself in the process.

I'm explaining all of this because that's what drove me.

It was my fear of loss because of my abandonment issues.

I can't tell you what drives you. I can't tell you what your motivating factor is. Only you know that well. You and God. And so what I will ask you to do is really dive deep and think back as to when this type of behavior started in your life.

Was it like me?

NIna Pajonas: Was it in your childhood?

Nina Pajonas: Or was it in your teenage years after a failed relationship or a trauma?

I don't know what it is, but you do need to know what the reason is.

You have to find out what the root of the problem is.

When we have behaviors that are not healthy, we need to look at where these things started and why they started.

There was a reason, there was something that triggered this reaction in your story.

And it's incumbent upon you to find out what it is.

When you understand when,

how, and why a dysfunctional behavior began, you then can analyze it and see the lies that you were telling yourself. And you could start speaking God's truth over that. That's how we affect change in our life.

It helps us to correct that behavior.

NIna Pajonas: It helps us rip it out from.

Nina Pajonas: The roots because we know that it has not been serving us well and we know we do not want to live that way anymore.

I have found in my story,

and I can only speak for myself,

but I have found that the best way for me to develop a new habit, a healthy new habit, is to understand how the unhealthy one started in the first place.

I need to see where my thinking was wrong.

There have been instances where God has clearly shown me where my thinking has been off and where I need to make adjustments. And a lot of them were from a long, long time ago.

In fact, when I wrote my book From Broken to Butterfly,

which is my memoir, God revealed so many things to me through it. And one of the things he revealed to me very early on in the process of writing the book was my people pleasing behavior.

And when exactly it started and why exactly it started and how all of it. He showed it to me and I wrote about it. And when I wrote about it, I was saying to myself and to the Lord,

I didn't realize that that dysfunctional behavior began when I was that young. I didn't know, I didn't see that the pattern had gone on for that long.

So that's why I'm saying try and look back over your story and see where and how it started with you. Because there's just so much good information about yourself that you can glean from that.

And it helps you move forward in a really powerful way because you know yourself even better and you have even more reasons to establish a new behavior, a healthier behavior,

because you've looked at.

NIna Pajonas: Yourself and you've looked at your story.

Nina Pajonas: And you've looked at your life so honestly and you've seen what that behavior has done and what it's cost you.

So that's why I'm encouraging you. Try to get to the root of it. Try to see where it all began.

Now I'd like to go over some practical steps so that you can walk in freedom and not be bound by other people's expectations.

Number one, pause before saying yes.

Ask yourself, am I doing this out.

NIna Pajonas: Of love or out of fear?

Nina Pajonas: And now I'm going to give you a little tip that I learned very early on in recovery, that most people in recovery learn very early on because it's so helpful. And that is practice the pause.

And essentially what that means is you.

NIna Pajonas: Want to pause before you react because.

Nina Pajonas: Reaction is emotional and responding is logical. That's what we're going for. So pause before you say yes. They don't need an answer immediately.

NIna Pajonas: Give yourself A second to process what.

Nina Pajonas: You want to do versus what you think you should do. Okay.

And again, ask yourself, if I say yes, am I saying yes because I'm fearful of rejection or I fear they're going to get angry? Or am I doing this because I love them and I want to help them?

If that's the reason you're saying yes, that's fine. That's sincere and that's a healthy yes.

So pause and respond.

Don't react.

Number two, Practice saying no in small ways because it builds your confidence when you need to set bigger boundaries. A small no is a lot easier than a big no.

And a big no would be a situation with a lot more pressure for you to do what they'd like you to do or a situation that just means a lot more to them.

When those big occasions come up and you really need to say no and set a boundary, you're not going to be able to do it if you haven't started out with the small stuff.

NIna Pajonas: As my sister says, it's hard to.

Nina Pajonas: Go from zero to hero. Right? So start with the small stuff, the small nos, the less intense situations where you have a lot less to lose.

NIna Pajonas: 3.

Nina Pajonas: Pray for strength.

Ask God for help.

And I would also suggest that you try to meditate on the scriptures that we went over today because they were really powerful.

Number four. Celebrate your progress.

Breaking free from people, pleasing.

It's a journey. I'm letting you know now it's not, again, something that's going to happen overnight.

Transformation does not occur overnight.

Every step you take towards stopping this type of behavior is a really important step.

It happens over time.

Celebrate those situations where you know, you would have said yes and you said no.

Celebrate the fact that you're looking at this behavior and you're deciding that it's no longer serving you or God well and that you're changing it.

NIna Pajonas: Celebrate that.

Nina Pajonas: That's okay.

Talk to yourself in a positive way. When you've done something that you know is a big step in the right direction for you,

give yourself a pat on the back. It's okay.

I tell women that I minister to all the time that they need to give themselves grace and give themselves credit.

Give yourself a pat on the back when you've made a positive change. I'm not saying to pat yourself on.

NIna Pajonas: The back so hard that you like fall over.

Nina Pajonas: I'm not saying that. But I am saying to give yourself credit,

to acknowledge that you did the hard thing. There's nothing wrong with that.

Before we part ways, I'd like to pray over you. Father God, we come before you recognizing that we have spent too much time trying to please others instead of seeking your approval.

Help us to break free from this pattern. Thank you for loving us unconditionally. In Jesus name, amen.

NIna Pajonas: If this episode spoke to you today.

Nina Pajonas: I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to send me a message on Instagram or email me@ninapagonesmail.com and if you know of someone who struggles with people pleasing, please send this their way.

It just might be the encouragement that they need.

Don't forget to follow Born to be a Butterfly so you never miss an episode.

Until next time. Remember,

the Lord can turn your wounds into wings. You were born to be a butterfly.