10 Nov Why Being “Low Maintenance” and People Pleasing Is Costing You Your Health with Hilary Silver
When was the last time someone asked what you wanted for dinner and you actually answered?
If you’re like most of the women in our community, you’re the one everyone counts on. You remember the birthdays. You book the doctor’s appointments, handle the work deadlines, check on your aging parents, and keep the group text alive. And somewhere along the way, “whatever you want” became your default answer. You call it being easy. Being low maintenance.
I’ll be honest with you. I do this too. I people please with my daughter because I want her to like me and think I’m cool. I do it with my husband. And when I look back at my early twenties, I can see that I took on the interests of whoever I was dating. Their hobbies became my hobbies. I genuinely didn’t notice until years later, when I asked myself where my own interests had gone.
That’s exactly why I wanted Hilary Silver on the show. Hilary is a licensed clinical social worker and master coach with 25 years in personal development. She ran a therapy practice for over a decade before closing it in 2017 to launch Ready for Love, where she helps high-achieving midlife women change their relationship with themselves first. I connected with her instantly because she is direct, she doesn’t do fluff, and she challenges a lot of the mainstream advice we’ve been handed.
You may not agree with everything she says, and that’s okay. Some of her ideas sparked strong reactions when we’ve touched on similar topics before. But if you’ve ever felt exhausted, invisible, or flat in a life that looks great on paper, I think this conversation will make you pause.
Why People Pleasing Is Not a Personality Trait
Hilary’s first point reframed everything for me. People pleasing isn’t who you are. It’s a learned behavior, conditioned into most of us when we were young.
Many of us watched our mothers defer, deflect, keep the peace, and read the room. We absorbed those patterns in two ways. Some were said out loud. Others were simply implied, and Hilary believes the implied messages often carry even more weight. Together, they shaped many girls into pleasers who kept the behavior well into adulthood.
At its core, people pleasing is a search for attention, approval, validation, and acceptance. It’s a way to avoid rocking the boat or hurting anyone’s feelings. And as Hilary explains, it began as a survival strategy. As kids, we pleased to stay out of trouble, to stay safe, or to win attention from parents who weren’t always available.
That framing matters because it removes the shame. None of this is your fault. At some point, though, it becomes your responsibility to choose differently.
The Myth of the Selfless Woman
Here’s where Hilary pushes back hard. We’ve been taught that being selfless makes us good. We praise people who would give the shirt off their back. Hilary sees this ideal as a cultural message that keeps women focused on caring for everyone else instead of advocating for themselves.
Her mission is to flip that idea entirely. In her view, selflessness isn’t noble. It harms your health and wellbeing, and it’s quietly dishonest.
I asked her how this fits with being a strong woman who runs a business, raises kids, and stays married. Her answer was refreshingly personal. She’s 54, has teenagers, and has been with her husband for 26 years. Earlier in her marriage, she did plenty of things she didn’t enjoy, including entertaining her mother-in-law to keep everyone happy. Somewhere in her late forties and early fifties, she simply stopped. Now her yeses are wholehearted and her no’s come without apology.
Whatever you believe about where these messages come from, her bigger point is this: you have to tune out the noise. That includes your mother’s voice in your head, society’s long list of shoulds, and every obligation you never actually chose. Otherwise you end up living your one life for everyone else.
Can People Pleasing Affect Your Health?
This is the part of the conversation that tends to divide people, so I want to be careful and clear.
Hilary believes that living out of alignment with who you are contributes to anxiety, depression, and even autoimmune disease. Across her years as a therapist and coach, she has noticed that women who identify as pleasers often have thyroid conditions like Hashimoto’s, along with other hard-to-diagnose autoimmune issues. She points out the parallel: autoimmune disease is, by definition, the body attacking itself. Self-abandonment and self-betrayal are a kind of turning against yourself, too. She also notes that the thyroid sits in the throat, right where so many women swallow their truth.
That is Hilary’s clinical perspective and observation, not an established medical cause. Autoimmune disease is complex, and genetics, hormones, and environment all play major roles. It’s also true that approximately 80% of all patients with autoimmune disease are women, and researchers are still working to understand why. Wikipedia
What we do have is research suggesting that silencing yourself carries a real physical cost. In the Framingham Offspring Study, women who “self-silenced” during conflict with their spouse, compared with women who did not, had four times the risk of dying over the 10-year follow-up. The study doesn’t prove people pleasing causes disease. It does suggest that what happens to your voice may matter to your body. nih
When I’ve had guests connect emotional patterns to illness before, some listeners felt empowered and others felt blamed. Hilary sees that split constantly. Her take is that the message is ultimately empowering: if you are part of the problem, you are also the solution. When something isn’t working in her life, she looks for the belief, thought, perception, or missing skill that’s in her way. Then she gets out of her own way.
As a coach, I agree. If I only tell you how unfair things are, I’m supporting you to stay stuck. If I help you see what’s possible, we can actually move forward.
Why People Pleasing Is Actually Dishonest
I shared something with Hilary that I’ve struggled with myself. I think people pleasing can actually be selfish. It’s a way to play small and avoid discomfort in the moment, and it just kicks the problem down the road.
Hilary agreed and took it further. Saying yes when you mean no, or telling someone what you think they want to hear, is a form of lying. You may not intend to deceive anyone, but you’re bending the truth to avoid discomfort or win approval. She also describes it as a subtle form of manipulation, because you’re changing yourself to produce a reaction in someone else.
That idea stings. But it also opens a door. If you want people to trust you, they need to know the real you.
How People Pleasing Quietly Damages Your Marriage
Hilary has seen people pleasing set relationships up for affairs, and she explained how it can happen from either side.
When the pleaser feels unseen and unappreciated, one person outside the marriage showing genuine interest can feel like water in the desert. Meanwhile, her spouse may have been interested all along. He just never got the truth from her.
On the other side, the non-pleasing partner can end up lonely. When your partner agrees with everything, there’s no friction, no depth, and no real person to connect with. They’ve all but disappeared from the relationship.
I’ve lived a version of this. A couple of years ago, my husband and I suddenly found ourselves with very different opinions on some big topics. We both slipped into avoidance and stayed quiet to keep the peace. That created a growing rift. The breakthrough came when we both shared honestly and truly listened, without needing to change each other’s minds. Hilary named the progression perfectly: avoiding hard conversations leads to confrontation, and avoiding confrontation altogether leads to full-blown conflict.
Signs You’re People Pleasing Without Realizing It
Many women hear this and think, “That’s not me.” Hilary suggests looking in the rearview mirror, because people pleasing is often easier to spot after the fact. Watch for these signs:
- You’re dreading something you already agreed to do
- You say yes to events, volunteer roles, or in-law obligations you don’t want
- You go to parties you’d rather skip because you said you would
- You find yourself resentful after “helping”
When you notice dread, check in with yourself. Did you not want to do this when you agreed? Or have your feelings simply changed?
It’s also common to please more in some areas than others. You might hold firm boundaries with clients but cave with your kids or spouse, where intimacy and vulnerability are involved.
How to Stop People Pleasing Without Overcorrecting
Here’s the mistake Hilary sees most often. Once women discover boundaries, they charge in like superheroes and start blaming everyone around them. She even joked that low estrogen can make this worse.
Her reminder is important: if your boundaries have been fuzzy, other people crossing them isn’t really their fault. The healthiest approach is to own your part first. Here’s how that looks in real life.
At work: Your boss isn’t intentionally overloading you. If you complete 80 hours of work without complaint, they’ll assume that’s the right amount. Instead of announcing new boundaries, open with ownership. Explain that you’ve been tracking your hours, you’ve been taking on more than is sustainable, and it isn’t good for you.
At home: Say you’ve cooked dinner every night for decades and you’re done. Rather than snapping, you might tell your spouse you took this on yourself and now it no longer works for you, so you’d like to renegotiate how meals happen. Hilary also makes a point many women don’t want to hear: yes, partners need to step up. But if you want change, it starts with what you communicate and what you tolerate. It’s a dance, and when one person stops dancing the old steps, the pattern changes.
With friends: I have a huge circle of acquaintances, and if I went to every birthday dinner, I’d never have a life. Hilary’s question cuts right through the guilt: would you want someone at your birthday who didn’t want to be there? Probably not. Her personal motto is not to lie to her to make her feel better. Recently, a close friend of mine had a birthday dinner in the middle of my launch. I told her the truth: I love her, now was a bad time, and I wanted to celebrate her separately. She was thrilled. When in doubt, tell the truth.
One tool I often coach is opening a hard conversation with “the story I’m making up is…” It signals that you’re not attacking, and it gives the other person room to explain. Hilary agreed that this kind of self-ownership keeps people from getting defensive.
Why You’re So Exhausted (And It’s Not Just Your Schedule)
If you’re constantly drained, you might blame your calendar. Hilary sees the packed schedule as a symptom. The deeper exhaustion comes from your inner world.
Think about the mental and emotional load. Add the constant self-doubt, the second-guessing, and the sense that nothing you do is ever good enough. That inner dialogue is relentless. Hilary believes self-trust changes everything. When you can say yes without debating it for a week, and say no without guilt, life gets dramatically lighter.
If you’re worried that standing up for yourself will make you seem rude or “too much,” Hilary says most people pleasers will never get anywhere close to that. People who are truly nasty are usually insecure and unhappy, which is a completely different issue. As she reminded me, the beliefs underneath the behavior have to change first. Those include the belief that you must be someone else to be lovable, and the belief that people would rather have your lie than your truth.
When Your Life Looks Good on Paper But Feels Flat
So many midlife women have the house, the career, and the family, yet something still feels missing. Hilary believes many of us built lives around expectations instead of our own truth. Maybe you chose a career young and stayed because of the income. Maybe your marriage still runs on agreements you made decades ago that no longer fit.
Hilary lived this. She once loved being a therapist and never imagined leaving. Eventually she realized the profession no longer fit how she wanted to help people. Walking away required a complete identity shift.
That’s her core message about change: the inner shift comes before the outer one. How you see yourself, what you believe is possible, and how you talk to yourself all have to evolve before your external life can follow. If you don’t believe something is possible for you, you won’t take the first step. And if you don’t feel lovable, you won’t let anyone all the way in.
Hilary suggests asking yourself honest questions about every major area of your life:
- Is this serving me?
- How do I feel after I’m with this person?
- Am I my best self here?
- Who am I when I’m doing this?
Stay or Go? The Role of Accountability in Marriage
I asked Hilary one of the hardest questions: how do you know whether to work on a marriage or leave it? She acknowledged that some women leave too soon and others stay too long. Most women who initiate divorce have been weighing it for years, sometimes decades. If the decision blindsides a spouse, that’s often a sign the discontent was never clearly voiced.
Hilary has been with her husband for 26 years, and they’ve been on the brink more than once. What keeps them going is a shared commitment to personal accountability. Her insight stuck with me: if you’re silencing yourself and resentful in one relationship and you leave without changing, you’ll likely recreate the same dynamic with someone new.
Midlife Dating and Divorce: It’s Not Too Late
For women who are divorced, Hilary wants you to know that leaving takes courage, even when the marriage was painful. I can speak to that personally. My first marriage needed to end. Today we’re both remarried, and life is better for everyone, including my daughter.
For women who never married and suddenly find themselves single in midlife, Hilary’s message is hopeful. There are still plenty of good men out there. What matters most is believing you deserve love and being discerning. And as I see it, looking for someone to complete you is a fairy tale that sets you up for disappointment. Hilary put it simply: no partner, no career milestone, and no external achievement can make you feel whole if you don’t already feel enough on the inside.
The Bitter Pill and the Magic Pill
Hilary’s closing message ties everything together. So many of us have spent our lives abandoning ourselves. It makes sense that we don’t fully know who we are or trust ourselves.
She calls her philosophy both a bitter pill and a magic pill. The bitter part is recognizing your role in what isn’t working. The magic part is realizing that means you have the power to change it. Her invitation is to look in the mirror and ask how you might be creating this. The answers are already inside you.
You don’t have to blow up your life tomorrow. Start small. Notice the next time you say yes when you mean no. Tell one honest truth this week. Your health, your relationships, and your sense of self are worth it.
The contents of the Midlife Conversations podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider. Some episodes of Midlife Conversations may be sponsored by products or services discussed during the show. The host may receive compensation for such advertisements or if you purchase products through affiliate links mentioned on this podcast.
