**How People-Pleasing Kills Intimacy (And Honest Conflict Builds It) โ€” Transcript & Summary | SozAI** Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/people-pleasing-kills-intimacy-honest-conflict-builds-it/ Heidi Priebe explains how people-pleasing and faking agreement create pseudo intimacy, and how honest, self-responsible conflict builds real closeness in insecure attachment relationships. ## Key Takeaways - People-pleasing undermines intimacy by replacing the real self with a performed version. - Honest disagreement, though risky, is the path to deeper connection. - Healthy conflict aimed at mutual understanding builds intimacy; winning arguments destroys it. - Insecurely attached people can gradually learn to stay connected to themselves during disagreement. ## What the video covers - Intimacy requires being known, which includes sharing disagreement and dissent with someone close. - People-pleasing, or self-abandonment and faking agreement, is a low-risk, low-reward choice that leads only to pseudo intimacy, a shared fantasy. - Voicing dissent is high-risk, high-reward: it may lead to rejection, but it opens the possibility of real connection. - Conflict, understood as two people honestly working through differences, is a key ingredient in building intimacy, unlike yelling or insulting. - Insecure attachment styles (anxious, avoidant, fearful-avoidant) tend to trigger panic at moments of disagreement, pushing people toward appeasement. - Ego defenses, like calling a partner irrational to dismiss their feelings, create pseudo intimacy when both people accept a distorted story. - Conflict aimed at winning or proving who is right prevents intimacy; the goal is mutual understanding. - Not every small thought needs to be voiced, but authenticity about significant differences matters. - Earning secure attachment involves gradually adding healthy conflict and staying in touch with your own internal truth. - Staying connected to yourself is necessary to remain in genuine connection with others. ## Chapters 1. 00:00 Introduction to intimate relationships 2. 01:27 Why people-pleasing blocks closeness 3. 02:50 The moment of internal dissent 4. 04:16 Low-risk path: self-abandonment and pseudo intimacy 5. 05:39 High-risk path: voicing dissent and conflict 6. 07:01 Conflict, rejection, and ego defenses 7. 08:39 Earning secure attachment and staying authentic Answers ## Questions about this video What does Heidi Priebe mean by pseudo intimacy? Pseudo intimacy is a shared fantasy of agreement that occurs when one person hides their real opinion to avoid conflict. The two people feel connected, but they are not relating authentic self to authentic self. It is a false closeness built on pretending. Why does she say people-pleasing is low reward? Because faking agreement only leads to pseudo intimacy, the relationship is built on a version of you that doesn't exist. The other person responds to a mask, so real connection never forms even though it feels safer in the moment. Does Priebe think conflict always goes well? No. She acknowledges conflict is risky and can lead to rejection or abandonment. However, when both people are committed to understanding each other and handling it with self-responsibility, conflict is a major factor in building lasting intimacy. ## Full Transcript โ€” Download SRT & Markdown 00:00 Speaker A hey guys I'm Heidi PRI welcome back to my Channel or welcome if this is your first time here this month on this channel we're going to be talking about Intimate Relationships so what I mean by that is relationships with people who we tend to 00:15 Speaker A co-regulate with or consider attachment figures so that can mean a romantic partner it can mean a parent or a family member it can mean a close friend but in any case what we're going to be going over is not just how to devel Vel the 00:30 Speaker A skills internally to work through your own wounding which is much of what we focus on in this channel but also how to develop the tools to create deeper intimacy inside of our relationships which is in large part about recognizing 00:44 Speaker A which Tendencies keep us away from it so today what we're going to be starting off with is an exploration of the concept of people pleasing I generally don't love the term people pleasing I feel as though it's a little bit of a 00:56 Speaker A projection so often when we're doing things because we want to feel validated or liked or like we are kind people we call it peop pleasing but it actually works against us when it comes to developing intimacy intimacy requires us 01:12 Speaker A to be known and being known by another person means sharing the ways in which we disagree with them or have dissent inside of the relationship and what we're going to talk about today is how that constru of people pleasing of 01:27 Speaker A believing that to be close to someone we always have to give them whatever it is that we think they want from us gets in the way of us developing actual sustainable relationships so what we think is bringing us closer to people is 01:41 Speaker A actually often driving a wedge between ourselves and them so first off we're going to talk about this concept more generally and we're going to look at the sequence of events that makes people pleasing lead to a lack of intimacy as 01:52 Speaker A well as how that could happen differently and then we're going to go over how this tends to uniquely show up in insecurely attached relation relationships so relationships where both people have insecure attachment Styles whether that is avoidant anxious 02:07 Speaker A fearful avoidant any combination of those and then we're going to look at how we can start slowly changing the pattern if that's the type of relationship you find yourself in so that you're no longer evading intimacy through people pleasing and instead 02:22 Speaker A you're staying more connected to yourself and consequently more connected in an authentic way to your partner or to your friend or to your parent or to whoever it is that you would like to develop more intimacy with so we're 02:34 Speaker A going to start by going over what this generally looks like there's often a moment in relationship that causes Panic inside of most of us who air insecurely attached whether that's anxious avoidant or fearful avoidant the moment of panic 02:50 Speaker A will show up differently but it will be there where we realize that someone we're in close connection with thinks differently than us about something so we have a moment of internal dissent inside of the relationship maybe they share an opinion that we don't agree 03:07 Speaker A with maybe they say something to us that we think is a projection so they're saying something about our character or about the way we're acting that we don't agree is true to our experience maybe they're saying something about 03:18 Speaker A themselves that we don't agree with or that kind of strikes us as not true about the ways in which we've observed their character whatever it is we arrive at this moment of explicit internal dissent so we do not agree with 03:31 Speaker A something that the other person is saying or explaining to us and when we arrive at that moment we have a couple of options one is the lowrisk low reward option which is to self- abandon and fake agreement so basically pretending 03:46 Speaker A that we believe or think the same thing that they do even if that's not necessarily true now the reason why this is low risk is pretty obvious we bypass the risk of conflict which we might fear will lead to rejection or some sort sort 04:00 Speaker A of emotional upheaval that we're not prepared to deal with but it's not always as obvious why this is low reward the reason this is low reward is because the only place that self-abandonment and faking agreement can lead us to is 04:16 Speaker A pseudo intimacy pseudo intimacy is what happens when both people are collaborating on a shared fantasy now both people might be conscious that this is the case or only one might be conscious that it's the case so someone says something to you you disagree with 04:32 Speaker A them but you don't tell them that you tell them I agree that's totally true let's go with what you think now they are in a fantasy that the two of you think the same thing the reason it's a 04:43 Speaker A fantasy and not reality is because in actuality you do not think the same thing as them so you have presented a fantasy version of yourself to them which they are now in relationship with and you are in a false relationship as 04:57 Speaker A well because if you are pretending to agree with something that you actually don't agree with especially if it's relatively significant you are not in genuine relationship with the other because the other is giving you input whether that's validation or affection 05:12 Speaker A or appreciation based on who you are pretending to be and real you the actual you who has those opinions behind that mask is no longer in relationship with this other so the best you can have in that situation is pseudo intimacy this 05:28 Speaker A idea that you are connected and that you are on the same page when one or both of you knows that that is not the truth so you're not connecting authentic self to authentic self now let's look at the 05:39 Speaker A other option when we're presented with this moment of recognizing descent inside of ourselves the other option is highrisk high reward which is voicing your descent this can lead to a multitude of possible outcomes so letting someone know either I disagree 05:54 Speaker A with you or that doesn't resonate for me or there's something that I feel angry about related to what you said whatever it is that is at odds with how you believe the other person wants you to respond getting overtly brought up can 06:09 Speaker A lead to a variety of different responses one is that the other person can self- abandon they can actually go into that fond response or that insincere response back off what they said pretend they agree with your perception of things and 06:23 Speaker A then you're back inside of that pseudo intimacy sharing dissent can also lead to that big bad thing we're all afraid of which is rejection or abandonment maybe the other person is not ready to hear that you don't agree with them 06:35 Speaker A maybe they're unwilling to entertain your point of view because in some way it's threatening to them and the way that they see the world and so instead they're going to cut off contact with you temporarily or permanently and 06:47 Speaker A you're going to find yourself partially or totally out of connection but there's also a third option and this is the one that unfortunately though most of us never consciously want to go through it is the only thing that's going to end up 07:02 Speaker A building more Intimacy in moments where descent is experienced and that is experiencing conflict now when I say the word conflict most people immediately think of yelling and screaming and insulting each other but insecure relationships healthy self-responsible conflict is a humongous factor that goes 07:23 Speaker A into building intimacy and the reason for that is because conflict is the thing that occurs when two people are at odds in the way that they see the world or their relationship or each other and they are willing to share those things 07:37 Speaker A to arrive at a new understanding now is that an optimistic view of the outcome of conflict yes totally conflict can go in a lot of different directions so we're not here to push under the rug the fact that this is a risky option again 07:53 Speaker A high risk High reward when you engage in Conflict when you're willing to say I disagree with what you were saying or I feel a sense of anger or frustration or rejection in relation to what you're saying anything you share with another 08:10 Speaker A person that implies anything other than alignment with their point of view has the potential to lead to conflict and get you into a space where you're trying to work out ideally through honest means what you can arrive at in terms of 08:22 Speaker A figuring out the truth of course not everyone knows how to fight fair not everyone knows how to handle conflict and especially in instances where we're more threatened by the conflict or what it would mean if we were not right than 08:35 Speaker A we are interested in preserving the relationship that conflict can once again lead to rejection or abandonment so this is not the no-risk option but if conflict can be handled well if both people can be more committed to finding 08:51 Speaker A the truth and preserving the relationship than they are to cling to their own stories about how they see the world there is the potential to move into this beautiful stage where you're exploring and finding ways to integrate the conflicting points of view that you 09:06 Speaker A have and this is without a doubt one of the most beautiful components of secure relationships is that people are actually able to challenge each other with care and compassion work through the ego stuff that comes up when they're 09:20 Speaker A in disagreement and as a product of both people having different perspectives on the world actually arrive at a greater more expanded View of what they originally thought was the truth and the very cool thing about going through that 09:35 Speaker A stage where you're both able ideally to lay your cards on the table and go here's what I think and feel in an honest and vulnerable way and that part matters and the other person is able to do the same if you can work through that 09:50 Speaker A stage with mutual humility and a commitment to preserving each other's dignity you can arrive at true intimacy true intimacy is when you are in a shared reality rather than a shared fantasy when you have true intimacy with another person you are privy to the 10:09 Speaker A internal world of what they truly think and what they truly believe and they are privy to your internal world as well and this is also an area where something really cool and kind of magical can happen which is that through both of you 10:23 Speaker A sharing your conflicting perspectives but respecting each other enough to take each other's perspectives ser seriously and entertain them honestly you can arrive at a much greater understanding of the world and how it works as well as yourself and how you work and this other 10:39 Speaker A person and how they work than you ever could have arrived at on your own because this is precisely how we grow through relationships right it's not about finding someone who yes man everything you do or who you put up on a 10:52 Speaker A pedestal and replace all of Your World Views with their World Views it's about finding someone who thinking genuinely challenging is yours because you have true respect for them and because they have true respect for you so something that's worth noting here is that it's 11:08 Speaker A really hard to get to intimacy if you don't have that mutual respect if one person or the other is more attached to the idea that they are right and the other person is wrong than they are to entertaining the other person's 11:20 Speaker A worldview as true to them and figuring out where the wires are getting crossed it's almost impossible to arrive at intimacy intimacy can only occur in relationships that are not treated as a zero sum gain so believing that every 11:34 Speaker A argument has a winner and a loser that one person is right and the other is wrong is a way to never achieve any form of intimacy and you might be sitting here thinking but there's instances where the other person is obviously and 11:47 Speaker A blatantly incorrect they are saying something that I know to be false and in that case the idea is to focus Less on what is the objective truth and focus more on what what is the subjective Truth for this person if I have a 12:03 Speaker A partner or a friend who believes something that I think is blatantly unequivocally wrong we are in an intimate exchange the moment that I let them know that that's what I believe it doesn't mean I have to be cruel about it 12:17 Speaker A it doesn't mean I have to belittle them or write them off as irrational or unintelligent it just means that in order for me to truly be seen by this other person I can't be holding this secret descent they can go on being 12:30 Speaker A wrong and I can go on believing they're wrong and as long as we're both aware of that fact we can actually still be in Intimate connection that magical thing that happens of arriving at a greater truth or a more expanded perspective 12:43 Speaker A through integrating your opposing points of view doesn't always happen but it's also not necessary for intimacy all intimacy means is that we're not keeping significant secrets from each other we're not lying or self- abandoning in an ATT attempt to keep in the connection 13:01 Speaker A again beyond what is reasonable this does not mean that you have to let your partner or friend know every time you think they don't look so great today or other things that don't necessarily create large problems within the 13:12 Speaker A relationship so it doesn't feel like it's something you're holding back so intensely that you're just living This Lie by being in the relationship but the important thing to note here is that if you look at this flowchart there is 13:22 Speaker A never a route to intimacy that includes self-abandonment or people pleasing as soon as we are consciously being dishonest with the other person we're taking the opportunity for intimacy off of the table altogether and the only way to start working our way towards 13:38 Speaker A Intimacy in relationships is to be willing and Define strategies which we're going to speak at length about for the remainder of this month for staying in connection honestly again this does not mean being brutal or harsh or malicious in our honesty but it does 13:54 Speaker A mean giving ourselves a Fighting Chance at establishing real intimacy with people by refusing to pretend we agree with things that we don't so this is kind of the traditional route towards either forming or avoiding intimacy but what I want to spend some time talking 14:10 Speaker A about now is how this shows up in mutually insecurely attached relationships so there's this factor that comes into play when you're dealing with mutual insecure attachment which is the role of ego defenses and when I say ego defenses I don't mean this in a 14:26 Speaker A negative sense entirely there certainly negative things that come out of this what I mean by an ego defense is any sort of action that we take that is not completely authentic but that serves some survival purpose for us all insecure attachment 14:42 Speaker A responses are ego defenses this is not synonymous with the term egotistical if you are playing out an attachment Behavior you are not necessarily on an ego high but what it means is that you are temporarily abandoning authenticity whether you're aware of it or not and 14:57 Speaker A you usually are not in order to behave in a way that you believe on a deep instinctual level is going to ensure your survival whether that means keeping someone close or whether it means keeping yourself self-reliant now what's 15:10 Speaker A so tricky about ego defenses inside of relationships is that when we are in an ego defense so when we are acting out our attachment wounding or a trauma response we often believe that what we are saying or doing is the truth I think 15:26 Speaker A that many of the most challenging interactions people have especially inside of romantic relationships are the product of ego story clashing up against ego story and both people being resistant to looking at the actual truth either because it's too threatening or 15:42 Speaker A because they actually don't have the skills developed to know what the truth is so let's give an example of what this looks like let's say you are in a relationship with an insecurely attached partner and they share an ego story so 15:56 Speaker A they share something that comes from their own defensive patterning as though it is the truth and they truly believe that it is so this might look like a partner telling you that you are being a rational or that your feelings are in 16:09 Speaker A some capacity false or made up when you do not believe that that's true or an ego defense might look like your partner accusing you that you don't love them or don't care about them based on something you said or did when your truth is that 16:22 Speaker A that is not true and you do feel as though you care about and love them both of these are examples of ego defenses being shared as though they are true because the person sharing them actually believes in that moment or overall that 16:35 Speaker A they are true so how do we deal with this this leads us to a new potential Choice point where we have the option should we so take it and often this happens unconsciously for a lot of us to 16:46 Speaker A adopt their ego defense or their worldview as our own so we're being told that we're rational and especially when we're children this is something we are highly susceptible to and instead of going wait a minute this feels like a 17:00 Speaker A very real experience for me like a very real emotional response that I'm having as a result of the environment I'm in we go you're right I must be behaving irrationally we adopt their ego defense as our own worldview and now we are back 17:14 Speaker A in pseudo Intimacy in this case both people are sharing the fantasy that something was irrational or had no basis in reality when in fact that's not the case this is a very common form of pseudo intimacy that happens between a 17:28 Speaker A avoidant leaning parents and their children if their children are adopting and developing the same type of avoidant patterning or let's say your partner keeps accusing you of not caring about them or not loving them and you start to 17:40 Speaker A really question yourself and internalize that and go well I thought that I loved and cared about them but maybe I'm wrong maybe I'm actually a very terrible person who doesn't care about other people now you're adopting that ego 17:54 Speaker A story as your own story about yourself and you are once again in pseudo intimacy you both believe that you are truly a callous and uncaring person who lacks empathy when in reality that might not be the case but of course this could 18:09 Speaker A go another way it is possible that when your partner or your friend or your family member shares an ego story you might have that moment of dissent of going wait a minute that doesn't totally Sound True to me in this moment I'm 18:25 Speaker A going to trust my intuition I'm going to recognize that I don't have the same story about the world that this person has which by the way has nothing to do with right and wrong noticing descent is just noticing I don't agree with what's 18:39 Speaker A happening there's Discord here and then you're back at that choice point where you can go low risk low reward or high-risk High reward and the cool thing is that a lot of what earning secure attachment is is about adding in a 18:52 Speaker A moment of pause between someone else sharing and you accepting it as truth or immediately rejecting it both of which could be an ego response the more security we earn the more flexibility and freedom we have in our thinking so 19:08 Speaker A instead of automatically needing to either accept a premise when someone offers us one or reject it depending on what feels more adaptive for us we can actually add in a moment where we pause and check in with ourselves where we 19:23 Speaker A entertain what they're saying think about it ask ourselves in is this something I agree with or don't agree with and then choose our response from there this doesn't mean that we're always going to go into conflict sometimes if it feels unsafe to engage 19:41 Speaker A in Conflict momentary self-abandonment in the interest of keeping ourselves safe is a viable option but what's important is that we don't mistake it for True intimacy we understand that if we can't be honest with someone we also can't have intimacy with them we we can 19:58 Speaker A have other forms of relationships maybe they're a friend that we can share activities with or maybe there's someone who we can catch up with now and again but if there isn't the ability to be honest there isn't the capacity for 20:09 Speaker A intimacy I was at this Workshop one time where we were doing an exercise that centered around accessing our own humility so we would sit in front of another person and ask them some question or something that we were 20:21 Speaker A struggling with in our lives and then we would practice taking whatever answer they gave us as the absolute truth so just considering and being willing and staying open to the idea that whatever they were saying however ridiculous and 20:35 Speaker A some people went really ridiculous with it just for fun was the absolute core truth so what does it feel like to entertain that and I remember sitting in front of the person who was my Guru in that moment when I was the one in the 20:49 Speaker A energy of humility and asking them how do I stay in touch with the people close to me and the guy I was doing the exercise with looked at me and said to stay always in touch with the other 21:02 Speaker A prioritize staying always in touch with the self and after we finished the exercise he kind of laughed about it and he was like I don't know I just kind of came up with that on the spot and I was like no 21:13 Speaker A no that was one of the truest things I think anyone has ever said to me in my life the idea that in order to stay in connection with other people we have to be in brutally honest connection with 21:25 Speaker A ourselves is absolutely true when it comes to maintaining intimacy because to stay in true connection with another we have to be able to share what's true and alive for us with them and we cannot do that if we are not in touch with 21:41 Speaker A ourselves our own thoughts our own feelings our own beliefs the only way to stay in that connection is to stay perpetually connected to self if there's one thing any of us take away from this video it's that the idea here is that 21:57 Speaker A intimacy can cannot exist where self-abandonment is occurring we have to be willing to share what's true for us risk rejection risk abandonment risk conflict and I want to note that the healthier the relationship is the less likelihood there is that sharing descent 22:15 Speaker A is going to lead to abandonment or rejection so the healthier that your relationships get the more likely it is that conflict is actually going to be a really generative process that brings you to that magical third space of 22:27 Speaker A understanding something with great nuance and complexity than you previously were able to but to Kickstart that entire process you have to be really committed to staying connected to yourself your in the- moment thoughts feelings body States and being willing 22:42 Speaker A to not abandon your connection to any of that all right I think that's all I have to say for today on the topic of intimacy people pleasing or self-abandonment and how authentic connection to ourselves and other people is what actually gets us to those deep 22:59 Speaker A forms of connection that have the bones to withstand even the greatest relationship challenges as always let me know what your thinking feeling experiencing as you go through this video I love you guys I hope you're taking care of 23:11 Speaker A yourselves and each other and I will see you back here again really [Music] soon Topics: people pleasing intimacy attachment styles conflict pseudo intimacy insecure attachment relationships authenticity 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