What is the problem with people pleasing?
Samantha couldn’t work out what she was doing wrong. She had made everyone in the office a cup of tea and had jumped up to rectify the situation when she’d realised that she hadn’t put sugar into her colleague’s tea. She’d settled back down at her desk when her colleague had made a throw away comment that Samantha was tiring and that he couldn’t work her out. What did he mean? How was she tiring? She’d only gone to get sugar for his tea and he’d pretty much insulted her. She’d always considered herself to be easy going and helpful – far from tiring. When Samantha arrived for her therapy session with me she was furious at her colleague but also despairing. There was something about her colleague’s comment in the office that had felt quite shaming. It seemed that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t truly win the respect of anyone in her life. We had talked about Samantha’s tendency to people please in the past but Samantha had always considered this to be a compliment “yes, I do like to please others, I would hate to be considered unkind or selfish”.
People pleasing sounds rather innocuous; who wouldn’t like to be pleasing to others? What kind of monster wants to go around displeasing others? Samantha and I spent many months exploring the darker aspects of people pleasing – the negative impact it can have on the self and others whom you think you are pleasing.
The first thing to be clear on is that people pleasing ultimately comes from a need to control – the need to control other’s perception of you, to control other people’s feelings and to control the emotional climate in a room. That is not to say that the people pleaser is aware of this need; they would likely consider themselves to be the least controlling person they know. This need to control does not come from any malice but is likely to have emerged as a solution to an early fearful situation.
What causes people pleasing?
There is more than one route to compulsive people pleasing and each person’s story will be unique. However, it is common for people pleasers to have grown up in an environment where at least one caregiver was either emotionally volatile or fragile. Perhaps one of their caregivers would lose their temper easily and did not do well with disagreement or natural childhood rebelliousness. Perhaps, as a child, the people pleaser intuitively recognised that their mother or father was struggling emotionally. Samantha’s mother had experienced her own trauma growing up and this had made her quick to anger and easily offended. Samantha had learned, quite early on, that she needed to be agreeable and helpful in order to keep her mum calm enough to look after her. Sometimes people pleasers were the most pleasing things in their caregiver’s lives, they intuitively sensed that they were the only thing that their parent was living for. This heavy burden, of having to keep their caregiver happy, calm, or even alive becomes a survival mechanism mostly out of awareness.
Negative effects on the self
There are a number of negative effects that people pleasing has on the self.
1. Not knowing own needs
When we are busy attuning to other people’s expectations of us we lose sight of what we might want or need. This may not seem like an issue until you realise that years have passed by and you have no idea what you want, like or require to be happy. Often there is an emptiness that comes with chronic people pleasing. Samantha was convinced that she was boring and was convinced that I found her tedious and ‘like nothing’. This wasn’t the case. Samantha simply felt boring, like there was nothing of substance to her because she hadn’t made the space to discover what she needed or desired.
2. Rage and resentment
Constantly putting one’s own needs aside and responding to what others require will ultimately lead to rage and resentment somewhere down the line. People pleasing can lead people to feel overlooked, taken for granted or burnt out. Sometimes the anger can show up in an explosive outburst or it can turn inwards and become quite masochistic; criticising or harming the self. Other times the resentment can leak out in a passive aggressive way that pushes people away.
3. Loneliness
Loneliness is not about the number of friends you have in your life or the frequency with which you have company. It is possible to be surrounded by people and to feel horribly lonely. What people need in order to feel less lonely is a particular quality of relating; feeling that you can show up as your authentic self and be accepted by others. It involves a level of intimacy that can sometimes feel risky; revealing what you truly feel or think and others being able to hear it (even if they do not fully agree). Deeper reciprocal connections with others help us to feel less lonely. When the people pleaser is preoccupied with reading others’ facial expressions or trying to pre-empt what they might need, they tend to push the self aside and never experience themselves as being known or understood. Of course, it is not realistic to expect that one will be completely known and understood at all times, but chronic people pleasing means that this is never truly experienced by the people pleaser; even fleetingly.
4. Feelings of unworthiness
At an early point in their life the people pleaser believed that they needed to please others to feel psychologically safe. Quite early on they adapted to the needs of the key adults in their life and felt unable to be difficult, destructive, messy or rebellious. This means that they may have missed the opportunity to experience being in relationship with an other whilst also being immensely irritating. As a result of this adaptation to others’ needs, the people pleaser connects their sense of worthiness to helping others and being as non-irritating as possible; which is not a true sense of worthiness at all. If one’s sense of worth relies solely on the opinion of others it is fragile, flimsy and easily squashed. Often the people pleaser wonders whether people are friends with them because they truly like them or because they adapt to what the other person wants them to be. There can be no substantial sense of worth because it is hard to know whether one is loveable or simply useful.
5. Tendency to attract exploitive friends or partners
Linked with this question of being loveable or simply useful is the added complication of the type of people that people pleasers draw towards them. Often people who are quite self absorbed, thoughtless or exploitative are instinctually attracted to people who push their own needs aside. People pleasers become exactly what the other needs them to be and this can sometimes lead to unhealthy co-dependency in relationships. People pleasers often find themselves with friends or partners who can be controlling, self-obsessed and insensitive. It is often the case that something compensatory happens in relationships; one person carries all of the need, desire and wants whilst the other has none. All the while the people pleaser appears to have no needs, their partner or friend has them all.
Negative effects on others
Despite the best intentions, people pleasing can paradoxically cause displeasure in others.
1. Lack of trust
As humans we communicate our feelings in a multitude of ways that go beyond what we actually say. We pick up on non-verbal cues through body language, facial expressions, tone of voice and even silences. The person who works so hard to please others and negates the self often communicates their own displeasure through non direct ways, silences or barbed comments or guarded body language. Sometimes the people pleaser can demonstrate positivity and enthusiasm verbally but something about it feels inauthentic. This disconnect between what the people pleaser says and what leaks out often leaves others wondering what the truth of the person is. When the people pleaser appears to be positive about everything and never expresses their own thoughts or desires, it can be hard to trust what they really feel.
2. Feeling depleted
What did Samantha’s colleague mean when he commented that she was tiring? I imagine that he was communicating something of the experience of being in the company of a person that often seems to be on edge; perusing others’ needs and not fully being able to rest. It can be a challenge to fully relax when there is the sense that the person that you are with cannot be fully present or at ease. Of course, not everyone will feel this in the company of a people pleaser, and nor will every people pleaser provoke this in others, but some people will intuitively sense the energy that goes into actively being acceptable to others and this can feel depleting to the person witnessing it.
3. Bringing out the worst
Just as people with a tendency to people please can attract people who are self absorbed, people pleasing can also train those around you to take too much. When we constantly put aside our own needs to cater to others, we are inviting others to take up more and more space and sometimes that is to the detriment of both.
4. Not able to be themselves.
It is a tragedy that the people pleaser is not fully able to show their difficult, messy or embarrassing parts of self. Often the need to hide the true self means that some people around you may find it difficult to be themselves in turn. The desperate need to control the emotional climate in the room, to make sure that everybody is happy and that there is no conflict, can mean that others find it a challenge to be themselves. Chronic people pleasing can help to create an atmosphere that feels constrained and inhibitive and far from pleasing. Of course, the atmosphere in a room is nobody’s sole responsibility but it is always worth reflecting upon who your behaviour actually pleases.
How to stop people pleasing
As people pleasing often results from some element of distress in early life, it is rarely something that can be changed by merely deciding not to do it anymore (although it is sometimes possible). The first step is acknowledging that people pleasing is something that you engage in, and that this is not always for the greater good. The task then would be to make space to connect with what you want and need; a process that often takes time, curiosity and patience.
If you recognise yourself as having a tendency to people please and would like some help, feel free to contact me here: contact