Why high-performing women can’t stop people-pleasing and why it leads to resentment

I want to tell you something a coach said to me once.

I was sitting with her talking about the resentment. The feeling I had been carrying for a while and hadn’t told anyone about, because who talks about resenting the people they love? I was describing it. The jug everyone kept drinking from and nobody was refilling. And I felt so guilty just saying it out loud. Because these were my people. My family. The life I had genuinely chosen.

And she looked at me and said: don’t feel guilty. You don’t resent them.

You resent yourself.

And I laughed. Because it was so obvious. And I had completely missed it.

Because the guilt about the resentment… that was the worst part. Feeling resentful and then feeling ashamed of the resentment on top of it. This double weight of: I shouldn’t feel this way, what is wrong with me, I chose this life. And underneath all of that, the question I hadn’t let myself ask yet.

If the resentment was never really about them, what was it actually about?

It was about me. Every time I said yes when I meant no. Every time I chose everyone else’s comfort over my own truth. Every time I swallowed what I actually wanted and gave them what they needed instead, and then wondered why I felt so empty. The resentment was the signal I had been ignoring. It wasn’t pointing at them. It was pointing at me, and at the part of me that kept abandoning herself.

Welcome back to Unscripted, a Momtoring podcast. The show for the ambitious working mother who is everyone’s default and is finally ready to hear her own voice again. I’m Andi Salcedo, coach, working mother, and founder of Momtoring, the coaching brand and community behind this show.

Last week we talked about burnout, the signal we keep overriding, the one that looks like keeping going. Today I want to go to the layer underneath that. Because the burnout is the symptom. And what’s underneath it, what’s been generating it, is something that started much earlier than motherhood. Something that started before you even had the words for it.

Let me tell you where I think it starts.

My mom tells me that in my threes I was stubborn. Fiercely, relentlessly stubborn. If I didn’t get what I wanted, I would throw myself on the floor and cry until I was done. My mom would stand there and patiently wait. She wouldn’t reward the tantrum. Which, by the way, I think was the right call. Who wants to raise a child who gets everything she screams for either.

But somewhere in learning to stop throwing myself on the floor… somewhere in learning that the screaming didn’t work, that compliance made things easier, that being easy to love felt a lot better than the alternative… I learned something else too. I learned that when I had a need, I wasn’t going to be listened to. So I stopped. Not just stopped throwing tantrums.

I stopped expressing my needs at all.

That lesson traveled. Into every classroom, every workplace, every relationship. And it got reinforced at every step, because the world rewards the woman who overdelivers, who stays late, who never asks for anything. While working at P&G and at PayPal, I was the woman who was always available, always a team player… the capable, committed, dependable one. And I took pride in it.

And when I became a mother, when someone literally depended on me to survive, the whole thing just ran at full capacity. All day. Every day. No off switch.

I remember when they asked me to take on Mexico, on top of my Latin America and Caribbean portfolio at PayPal. I had just come back from maternity leave. I had a six month old at home. I was leaving at 5pm sharp every day so the nanny could get home. And they asked me to take on an entire additional market on top of everything else.

And I said yes.

Not because I felt I had no choice. But because their needs were the only needs in the room. I never even paused to ask myself what I needed. What I was carrying. What this would cost me. The question didn’t even arise. Because somewhere in me, the answer was already decided: their needs come first. Mine come after. If there’s anything left.

The same thing happened at home. My therapist at the time pointed something out. She noticed that I would come in on Mondays exhausted, and when she asked what we’d done over the weekend, the answer was always the same. Twenty things for the girls. Nothing for me. And she asked: is there anything you do for yourself before you feel like you’ve sufficiently delivered for them?

And the honest answer was no. I needed to feel like I had earned it first. Like I had delivered enough to deserve something for myself.

That is not a scheduling problem. That is a worth problem. And you cannot solve a worth problem with a scheduling tool.

So what was the belief running underneath all of it? My needs matter less than everyone else’s comfort. It was like a computer program, that told me that wanting things for myself was the problem. That being easy to love meant making myself easy to be around.

So here’s what I’ve come to understand. And this took me a long time to see.

For me, it was the toddler on the floor. That’s the moment the belief got installed. But I want to pause here, because your moment might look completely different. Maybe it was a classroom where you asked for something and got shut down. Maybe it was a family dinner. Maybe it was something so small you barely remember it. But somewhere along the way, there was a version of you who learned to stop asking. Who decided her needs weren’t worth the disruption. Who made herself smaller so the room could feel easier.

She’s still there.

And every time you advocate for your own needs, every time you pause before responding and actually ask yourself what you want, what you need, what is true for you right now, you are doing something more than setting a boundary. You are going back to her. You become the one who finally listens.

Because that’s what she needed then and never got, not someone to give her everything she wanted, but someone to say: I hear you. Your needs are real. Your voice matters. You are worth listening to.

And the only person who can give her that now is you.

That’s not just self care. That’s reparenting. It’s going back and giving yourself what you needed then, someone who thought you were worth hearing. Someone who didn’t make you earn the right to have needs. And it starts, it always starts, with you hearing yourself first. Before you answer anyone else. Before you manage the room. Before you decide what everyone else needs from you.

What do you need? What do you actually want? Is this yours to carry?

Those questions, asked honestly, before you respond, are the reparenting. Every single time.

And I want to share how I started to understand this differently. It wasn’t in a coaching session or a book. It was watching my own daughters.

Denis and I talk about the girls regularly, and without really thinking of it, we have implied in our conversation that one is the easy one, and the other one is the difficult one.

And I hate that. I catch myself saying it and something in me tightens. Because those tags carry something. The easy one learns that being easy is what makes her lovable. That going along, not pushing back, not asking for too much, that’s what earns her place. And the difficult one learns that her wanting is a problem. That the fire in her is something to manage rather than something to celebrate.

And neither of those is what I want for them.

My youngest, Eilis, the difficult one… she is a mirror into who I was before I learned to stop asking. She will request something, and if she gets a negative response she will move on to why, and why, and why again. Then she will come back to the same request from seven different angles. She has expressed, with complete conviction, her formal disagreement with household rules and their impact on her personal freedom.

Sometimes, no, most of the time, I find it exhausting. That constant pushback, the relentlessness of it. But I honestly love that she knows what she wants. And she asks for it. Unapologetically.

And I hope she keeps that fire. I just hope she learns to channel it in a way that’s persuasive rather than, let’s say, exhausting.

Then there’s my oldest, Sofia, the easy one. She accepts the no, doesn’t push back, moves on. And I watch her sometimes go quiet when she wants something and it breaks my heart. Because I recognize that too. The wanting that learned to make itself small. I have to actively encourage her to ask. To say the thing. To believe it’s worth saying.

Both of them, in their two very distinctive versions, have inspired me to change. And because actions speak louder than words, I started making space for my own needs and wants. Because I want them to see me ask and take up space. I also want them to see me choose, sometimes, to put another person before me, but that choice is a conscious one. It’s not running by default. I want to let them see that their mother thinks her own needs are worth hearing.

Before I tell you about my neighbor, I want to name something. Because this is what all of it comes down to.

Every time someone asks something of you, your boss, your partner, your children, a friend, there is a moment. A fraction of a second. And in that moment, you are either responding from a full place, from genuine choice, from knowing what you want and need right now, or you are responding from the script, not from yourself. From the little girl who decided her voice wasn’t worth the disruption. From that old learned belief that says their needs come first and shrinks your stomach as you say yes.

That fraction of a second is everything. Because the response that comes from the wholeness in you, the yes that’s genuinely chosen, the no that comes from knowing what you need, that response doesn’t cost you anything. It doesn’t leave you empty. It doesn’t generate resentment. It’s yours. It came from you.

And the response that comes from that old belief, even when the words sound the same, even when nobody else in the room can tell the difference, you can feel it. Every time. In your body. In the slight shrinking. In the way you step a little further out of the room.

So before you go this week I have just one question. The one that got lost along the way. The one that nobody asked and that you stopped asking yourself.

What are the hopes and dreams that got lost along the way, while you were busy being everything for everyone else? And what would it mean to finally ask yourself that question?

You don’t have to answer it today. But I’d like you to let it follow you. On the commute. At school pickup. In that quiet moment after everyone’s asleep.

Because she, that little girl who learned to stop asking, she has been waiting. Not for permission from anyone else. For yours.

If you have questions and would like for me to answer them in this show, email me at hello@momtoring.com or DM me on Instagram @andi.momtoring. Your questions become future episodes.

And don’t forget to follow this show, because next week we are going to explore why it is so hard to set boundaries, even when we know all the boundary-setting tips and frameworks.

I’m Andi Salcedo. This is Unscripted. And I’ll see you next week.