Why Your Brain Is Like a Terrible Teenage Horror Flick

This remastered throwback to Episode 3 revisits one of the most requested and most misunderstood topics in modern neuroscience-based coaching: the real reason behind people pleasing. Dr. Charlie Hornes breaks down why your survival brain misfires in the workplace, how dopamine hijacks your decision-making, and why your need for validation is not a personal flaw—it’s a glitch in your brain’s outdated operating system. If you’ve ever spiraled after a withheld compliment or bent over backward to avoid being “the problem,” this episode shows you what’s really happening and how to intercept it.

People pleasing isn’t a personality trait—it’s a survival reflex. But because it's systemically reinforced and neurologically rewarded, your brain doesn’t know how to stop.

This episode is your decoder ring.

• Why people pleasing isn’t conscious—it’s chemical
• The role of dopamine in seeking safety, not success
• How your brain mistakes social danger for survival threat
• What reward prediction errors are—and why they wreck your confidence
• Why some bosses trigger a stress loop your brain can’t exit

• Dopamine: Seeking hormone that rewards anticipated pleasure and safety
• Reward Prediction Error: What happens when your brain expects affirmation and gets silence (or criticism) instead
• Prefrontal Cortex vs. Lizard Brain: Where judgment gets hijacked by survival reflexes
• Neuroplasticity: Your ability to rewire these patterns over time with precision—not willpower

• Why do I keep trying to prove myself to people who won’t be pleased?
• What’s really happening in my brain when I feel like I messed up socially?
• Can I stop people pleasing without becoming cold or combative?
• How do I get out of a rumination loop after a hard conversation?
• Is people pleasing ever really about the other person—or is it my wiring?

• 00:00 — Cold Open: People pleasing isn’t what you think
• 00:36 — The biological reason the phrase “stop people pleasing” backfires
• 02:15 — Why we only recognize people pleasing after the fact
• 03:45 — Feel-good hormones vs. actual threat: the confusion begins
• 06:00 — What dopamine actually does in the brain
• 08:50 — The motivational triad and the myth of laziness
• 12:20 — Rewiring the brain: why habits get so sticky
• 15:00 — Reward prediction error: the science of getting blindsided
• 17:30 — The boss story: anticipating affirmation and getting silence
• 19:15 — Why your brain can’t tolerate uncertainty
• 22:40 — Chainsaw shed metaphor: horror movies and neurological confusion
• 25:10 — Neurons that fire together wire together—only if rewarded
• 28:00 — Why nothing offends me anymore (and what that means for you)
• 30:30 — The dangerous loop of chasing affirmation
• 32:45 — Final truth: what your brain is doing, and how to interrupt it

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© 2025 Dr. Charlie M. Hornes | The Charlie Hornes Coaching Studio, LLC All rights reserved. Commercial reproduction prohibited.

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