You feel guilty saying no. You want everyone to like you, and you definitely don’t want anyone to think or say anything negative about you. You kind of hate that you’re like this but you don’t know how to stop, and part of you also doesn’t want to stop because you LIKE that people love you. It’s quite the conundrum.
If you want to stop people-pleasing, first you have to understand why you do it. There is a reason you’re a people-pleaser and it isn’t because that’s just ‘how you are’, it’s likely something you learned to do without even thinking about it. People-pleasing is about how we relate to and interact with others, so it makes sense that it usually goes back to our relationships in one way or another. And most of the time it goes back to dynamics with our parents or important caretakers in our life - but not always.
In my experience, there are a few different ways we can end up being people-pleasers that I’m going to explain below. And no, it doesn’t necessarily have to be from some messed up thing in your past, though it certainly can be where it started.
Here are a few ways we become people-pleasers and then get stuck in that pattern.
Comparison. Maybe your parents weren’t abusive, but you were frequently compared to a sibling. This may have been good natured or critical, but either way you were often compared the a sibling or another family member physically, mentally and even emotionally. Maybe they were the attractive, athletic or effortlessly good at school. You may have been told “why can’t you be more like so-and-so?”, or told you can’t do the same things that person can, and definitely not as well. Even when a parent is not intending to cause any harm, these comments hurt, and frequent comparison can reinforce the idea that we aren’t good enough because we aren’t like that sibling or person. Or, we may be afraid of becoming that person who everyone speaks about so poorly. Either way, we end up trying to meet expectations and equating or worth with how we measure up.
Roles & Expectations. Maybe you were called “an old soul”, the “mature one” or the “good kid”. I know, it seems like these are compliments and they are usually intended that way, but they can put incredible pressure on you to keep performing well and meeting expectations, because that’s the main way, or the only way you get praise and attention - if you are accomplished, good, need little emotional support or discipline. I.E. you were the “good child” while your sibling was the “wild child” or the “limit pusher”, etc. You probably enjoyed this attention (which is totally human) and didn’t even realize you were starting to believe that being a people-pleaser (aka making others happy/proud/comfortable etc) is what makes you lovable and valuable.
Other roles can be gender-specific, cultural and spiritual/religious roles or expectations from your family or community. Maybe there was pressure for you grow up to be the person your parents wanted you to be or someone that could be proud of - which is a LOT of pressure. The expectations might have been subtly or openly talked about. You may have been taught that someone else’s needs were more important or that your needs don’t matter. You may have been taught that in order to be a good [insert role here], you need to put yourself last. Repeatedly being told that your role is to make others happy or care for others above all else can absolutely lead to people-pleasing.
Abuse. Heavy, I know - but it’s important. The abuse can be verbal, emotional or physical. Abuse fosters people-pleasing because often figuring out how to please or at least not make things worse helps you get through the situation. Learning how to diffuse or avoid a temper may have kept you physically safe. Learning to read someone’s mood may have helped you avoid verbal or emotional abuse.
Emotionally immature parents or caregivers (aka - lacking emotional intelligence). Sometimes our caregivers love us, but they never learned how to manage or express emotion in a healthy way so things usually came out sideways. They said things were fine but their tone of voice and actions said otherwise, or they would explode. Maybe someone took their anger out on you or became angry when you expressed any emotion, so you learned to question and hide your own feelings. Maybe it felt like there wasn’t room for you to have feelings because your parent/caretaker had big feelings all the time, or their feelings were more important, so you shoved yours down or minimized them, telling yourself that how you feel isn’t a big deal.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is the only answer to the question ‘why am I such a people-pleaser’, but these are themes that I see and work with regularly. So how do you stop people-pleasing? Remember, it is a relational pattern but patterns can change if we want them to. Just like any other big change in our lives, we change when the risk of staying the same begins to outweigh the risk of doing something differently. When it costs more to stay the same than to try to something different. When you’re ready to stop people-pleasing I recommend finding therapist to help you work through it because lot of things come up when we start looking closely, asking questions and making changes. There is usually other stuff tangled up with it, like tangled up christmas lights, and we stop people-pleasing by working through all the knots that keep us stuck.
This shit is HARD, but you don’t have to do it alone. Find a therapist that feels like a good fit. Be gentle and patient with yourself. People-pleasing patterns develop over time, and it takes time to find new ways of moving in the world and in our relationships. But it is possible.
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