People-pleasing behaviours can look remarkably like kindness.
And most of the time, you genuinely believe you’re being kind, generous and caring. Because that’s the type of person you are.
But when you observe your motivations and feelings, you find something that was buried long ago.
A part of you trying to wake up from the dead.
Does this sound like you?
— You say yes when you want to say no.
— To show how generous and likeable you are, you pay more than you need to when you share the restaurant bill with your friends.
— Even though you want the last slice of pizza, you let somebody else have it.
— You avoid difficult conversations because you want to avoid conflict or hurting someone.
— There is the anxiety that appears when a conversation didn’t go how you wanted it to, and someone is unhappy with you. The replay in your head repeats what you should have said.
— You host a party but can’t enjoy it because you’re too concerned about making sure everybody else has a good time.
Everyone loves a people-pleaser.
And that’s your motivation.
You want to appear helpful, reliable and considerate so that people like you.
And because you feel guilty if you have the last slice of pizza.
And because you don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.
But most of all, you need to feel needed.
Validation makes you feel worthwhile.
Oh yeah, the truth is coming out now.
Let’s go dig up that buried part of yourself, shall we?
What Is People-Pleasing?
People-pleasing behaviours are recognisable patterns in which your sense of emotional security, self-worth or belonging becomes heavily dependent on keeping other people happy.
Instead of responding from genuine choice, you respond from fear.
- Fear of conflict.
- Fear of rejection.
- Fear of abandonment.
- Fear of disappointing someone.
- Fear of being seen as selfish, difficult or unlovable.
Subsequently, you can become so focused on keeping everyone else happy that you lose contact with yourself.
You choose kindness, generosity and caring for others whilst you go without. You choose how other people feel over your needs.
Yet at its core, people-pleasing is not about maintaining a self-image of a kind, caring and reliable person. It’s a strategy for maintaining safety, belonging and approval.
People-pleasing behaviours are driven by anxiety, guilt and shame.
That’s not to say kindness and caring is wrong. But it is important to make the distinction between helping someone because you genuinely care and feeling as though you have to help for one reason or another.
Because oftentimes, that one reason or another is a subconscious drive you’re not even aware of.
A people-pleaser feels compelled to help others because you don’t want people to think you are selfish, greedy or unkind. There is an unconscious motivation to feel needed, useful and liked.
Helping is sometimes, not every time, but oftentimes, a search for validation.
On the opposite side of the caring coin, you can help others without abandoning yourself.
Rather than being a people-pleaser, you become a pleaser of people, charming, magnetic and great company.
Over time, a people-pleasing attitude leads to burnout. Ironically, this is a people-pleaser’s gravest fear — the inability to be useful and feel needed. When you’re ill, you are no use to anybody.
Moreover, studies show that people-pleasers have an increased risk of contracting a disease associated with neuroimmune dysfunction, a
When you have spent years asking, “What does everyone need from me?”, it becomes surprisingly difficult to answer a much simpler question:
“What do I need?”
What Are Some People-Pleasing Behaviours?
The list below are some typical people-pleasing patterns. Do you recognise them?
- Say yes because you feel obliged rather than because you genuinely want to
- Feel responsible for how other people feel
- Avoid disagreement, even when something genuinely matters to you
- Feel guilty or anxious when establishing boundaries
- Overthink conversations because you’re worried about upsetting someone
- Agree outwardly while feeling resentful internally
- Find it difficult to identify what you actually want
- Change your behaviour depending on who you are with
- Put other people’s priorities above your own, even when you’re in need
What Causes People-Pleasing Behaviours?
People-pleasing behaviours will typically develop in childhood. There is no one single cause, and the picture will look different from one person to the next, but there are identifiable circumstances you can hang your hat on.
— When a child learns that acceptance, affection or emotional safety depends upon giving.
— Perhaps you learned that being helpful earned praise and recognition.
— Expressing anger or disagreement caused problems, so you learned to be passive and accepted.
— You were disciplined for being selfish and made to feel guilt and shame.
— Children who look after their siblings take on adult responsibilities too soon in life and adopt an attitude that you’re responsible for taking care of others
Whatever the circumstances were for you, the underlying program that becomes deeply embedded is:
“If I keep others happy, I will be accepted and needed.”
Subconscious programs like this start out as coping strategies that enable you to manage your environment. They may be useful at the time, but, at some point, the strategy unravels.
It becomes problematic.
In trauma-informed psychology, people-pleasing behaviours is sometimes discussed in relation to the fawn response — a fourth addition to the flight, fight or freeze mechanism.
A “fawn” appeases others when a threat is perceived. This may not mean a physical threat either. It can be triggered when there is a perceived threat to your emotional security — like the possibility of someone calling you selfish.
To lower the risk of being hurt, physically or emotionally, you become agreeable, accommodating and useful.
People-pleasing is not a character flaw. It’s a survival strategy.
The Cost of Seeking Approval
Initially, people-pleasing behaviours work. The problem is that short-term relief reinforces the behaviour well into adulthood.
Some people go through their entire life trying to please others whilst they go without.
Eventually, your inner child kicks up a fuss. You become resentful, frustrated and unreliable.
Then the rumination kicks in. The type of thoughts that surface are that you do everything for everybody and nobody does anything for you. People are taking advantage of you, and nobody cares how you feel.
What you fail to recognise is that you do things for others they didn’t ask you to do. You chose to do it because you needed to be needed. You wanted validation.
Ouch.
That’s a difficult insight, right?
But when you admit it to yourself, it’s an empowering one.
Don’t beat yourself up about it.
You learned this pattern when you were a kid. You thought you were doing good.
You were to others. But not to yourself.
It’s time to unlearn that pattern and pour your energy back into you.
How Do You Stop Being a People-Pleaser?
Healing the wounded parts of your Self does not mean becoming selfish, cold or indifferent to other people.
It means learning to care for others without abandoning yourself.
— List your priorities and draw a boundary around them. Include yourself as a priority. Anything outside the boundary can wait until you’re ready to give authentically.
— Learn to say no without feeling guilty. You will feel guilty at first. Sit with it. Once you become accustomed to saying no, the feelings of guilt will subside.
And this really helps:
— Ask yourself, do I have the time, energy or resources to help people outside my boundary of priorities?
If you don’t have the time, energy or resources, then you can’t help anyone because you don’t have anything to help them with.
Nobody is going to think you’re selfish. Nobody is going to think badly of you.
So stop worrying.
Once you’ve practised taking care of yourself and refusing to help others to feel needed, you can move on to expressing your needs to others.
Does anyone mind if I have that last slice of pizza? The olive just winked at me.”
You don’t have to act on every feeling. But you need to listen to your needs and desires and not be afraid to express them.
Start the process with people you trust, the people who know you’re kind, caring and generous by nature.
And certainly stop going to places you don’t want to be. You can make up an excuse if you’re not ready to say, “No I’m alright, thanks; I don’t like it there.”
Say no to something you genuinely do not want to do.
And don’t let people make you feel guilty. That’s just a test. And it’s a test you have to challenge to overcome it. Otherwise, you go back to feeling resentment, anger and disappointment.
If your friend is genuinely disappointed, that’s not your fault. How other people feel is not automatically your responsibility.
Moreover, someone can express disappointment without feeling disappointed.
Another person will agree to agree whilst feeling rejected.
The key is to recognise your value without needing approval.
Choose honesty over harmony.
Demeter and Persephone: The Journey Back to Yourself
To remember archetypes and their traits, Libera Mente assigns gods and goddesses from Greek mythology. The stories and images improve memory recall.
People-pleasing tendencies are associated with the Everyman and the Caretaker. The latter shares a relationship with Demeter and Persephone.
Demeter is the goddess of agriculture and represents the instinct to nurture, protect and provide. These are valuable qualities. But when care becomes inseparable from control, sacrifice or fear of loss, something that begins as love can become a source of suffering.
Persephone is Demeter’s daughter, a maiden and immature version of her mother. In Homer’s Hymn To Demeter, Persephone is described as having “delicate ankles” meaning she has not learned to navigate life on her own.
The immature maiden is then abducted by her uncle Hades and whisked off to the Underworld, the land of the dead. At first, Persephone is clearly depressed but cannot escape. Here, Hades the god, is a symbol of the Shadow Self — a subconscious program.
Her descent into the underworld forces Persephone to take up a role imposed upon her, a typical fawn response. Some people-pleasers cannot see another way of life.
Meanwhile Demeter is furious with her brothers, Zeus and Hades, but does not know how to reach the Underworld to retrieve her daughter. To force Zeus’ hand, she refuses to grow crops for mankind.
With the people on earth starving, Zeus has no option other than to ask Hades to release Persephone so she can return to her mother on earth.
However, a deal is struck that Persephone will spend six months of the year with her mother and six months with Hades. Persephone accepts.
Psychologically, the Greek myth reflects how people-pleasing tendencies develop because you haven’t adapted to the world and become a fawn.
The abduction reveals that people-pleasing behaviours are influenced by subconscious drives that possess you.
The reunion of Persephone and Demeter reflects the re-membering of the dis-membered part of your personality, that part of you that was buried in the Underworld.
Healing people-pleasing behaviours is not as dramatic as the Greek myth, obviously, but Demeter and Persephone do illustrate the despair you can feel when you lose connection with yourself.
If you identify as a people-pleaser and want to release the shackles of Hades, sign up for the Libera Mente life coaching program Beyond The Comfort Zone today.
The program reveals the parts of your personality that have been buried and help you to reconnect to your Self.
Alternatively, contact Rich on the contact form below to discuss solutions for overcoming your people-pleasing behaviours.
