Unlearning People Pleasing: Stepping into Your Power with Healing the Mother Wound

So many women yearn to feel at home in their own power—to lead with clarity, softness, and unwavering truth. But often, what stands in the way isn’t a lack of desire or potential—it’s the unexamined legacy of the mother wound. At the heart of this wound lies a survival strategy that many women know intimately: people-pleasing. In my work and in my life, I’ve seen that healing this deep relational imprint can be the most transformative step you can take toward stepping into your power.

It’s a quiet kind of liberation, the kind that settles in your bones when you meet a powerful woman. Stepping into your power might feel intimidating or sound cheesy but when you get to stand next to one you might be asking yourself how this could be also possible for you. Stepping into your power is the opposite of people pleasing and the bridge between the two is healing the mother wound.

I felt that sense of possibility when I met Radha, an Australian, senior meditation teacher. It was back in 2010 when we spent a few days together in a villa in New Delhi. Our time was filled with rich conversations and deep presence.

Radha doesn’t fit the typical image of a spiritual master. In India, she wears bright saris and red lipstick. At home, mini-skirts and high heels. She needs no white robes or pretentious formalities to signal her wisdom—hers simply radiates from her presence.

I felt the same inspiration again when I stood before Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the revered author of Women Who Run with the Wolves. I travelled to the high desret of Colorado to spend in week in her retreat to learn about the power we gain when we bravely visit our inner hell.

With a wide headband circling her head, a shamanic drum in her hand, she spoke directly to my self-doubt, disarmed it, and sent it to be devoured by the desert snakes. I felt how being in her own power activated my own.

Many of us have had similar experiences. Sometimes they inspire us, at other times they can incite jeaouosy. But we have no doubt when we feel the embodiment of another women's power and whatever the feeling—we know we want to have the same embodiment of our own power.

Activating your own power

In my work with women on healing the mother wound I see exactly when they activate their power—when the old shaming stories about their power drop, habits of pleasing are cracked and beliefs about their worthiness gain strength and movement.

These changes are not loud or glittery. They are grounded. Quietly but with unmistaken determination they shoot roots into their innermost being.

But for many women, this kind of embodiment feels far away—often because of the mother wound and the people-pleasing behavior it breeds.

Over the past decade as a Life Alignment coach and Hakomi therapist, I’ve supported women who long to live with greater presence, self-trust, and belonging.

A common thread in their stories of many women I worked with is a lifetime of people-pleasing—suppressing their needs to stay “good,” agreeable, or safe.

Some women already recognised their patterns: always saying yes, avoiding conflict, being overly attuned to others while disconnected from themselves.

But some women who haven't yet realised that their exhaustion, perfectionism, or emotional over-responsibility stem from trying—consciously or not—to earn their mother’s love, avoid her rejection, or manage her moods disfigure their power with each attempt to satisfy their mother or someone else whse love they feel they need to earn.

People-pleasing is a brilliant survival strategy in childhood. But as an adult woman, it's a cage that keeps us from her power.

And because I care about women being in power I accepted Cora's invitatin to talk about people pleasing and healing the mother wound in her summit. Check it out and the free tickets:

People pleasing as survival strategy

This strategy starts in the relationship with your mother when attention, care or love was conditioned through some form of hard work. For instance:

• Your mum was highly critical or repeatedly shaming

• Your mum was neglectful or emotionally/physically absent

• You were a mum surrogate to your siblings

• Your mum struggles with addictions or a chronic illness

• Your mum expected you to parent her, manage her feelings, or live out her unmet dreams

These are examples of relationshis where you had to subjugate your needs, wishes or personality just in order to win the öosition of being a child and to be seen, cared for or loved.

These situations led you to internalise a belief that you must earn love and safety by being easy, compliant, or invisible.

The places we feel stuck are sign post to our power

Imagine a twig drifting downstream, only to be halted by a large stone. From the twig’s perspective, this is the end—an obstruction, a failure. But then a white swan lands nearby, picks up the twig, and uses it to build a nest and what used to be an obstacle is suddenly a resource.

Sometimes what feels like the place we’ll always be stuck is actually the beginning of something sacred.

Wherever we feel blocked—by fear, guilt, or the chronic urge to manage others’ perceptions—that is often where our power is trapped, held hostage by beliefs like:

• “If I speak up, I’ll lose love.”

• “If I set boundaries, I’ll be rejected.”

• “If I shine, I’ll make others uncomfortable.”

These beliefs are inherited—not innate. And they can be transformed.

True power doesn’t come from external validation or perfection. It comes from within.

Healing the mother wound isn’t about blaming your mother—it’s about liberating yourself from patterns that no longer serve you.

It’s about recognising that your people-pleasing was once a wise strategy—not the woman you’re here to be.

It’s about gently peeling back the layers of conditioning to remember who you were before you learned to earn love through self-abandonment.

Unlearning people pleasing for stepping into your power with healing the mother wound explores how the mother wound—rooted in early dynamics with our mothers and shaped by broader cultural forces—often gives rise to people-pleasing patterns that disconnect women from their authentic power. True liberation begins not in becoming someone new, but in remembering who we were before we learned to earn love by abandoning ourselves.

Want support for your people pleasing tendencies from someone who worked with many women who thought they'll never be able to say no and set boundaries without feeling guilty and found out they can? - > Then click the button below to schedule a free call to explore how this could work for you:

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Shelly's helping women who've had a complex relationship with their mother and want to unplack the way it impacts their current life challanges so they can become unlimited personally & professionally