Pleasing People

OK, so what’s wrong with nominating yourself as a People Pleaser?

Because it’s almost always a cover for never prioritising your needs, wants and desires, and that limits your freedom to be authentic.

It often involves you automatically putting the needs of others ahead of your own.

Frequently letting others impose their will on you – limiting your options.

Holding back on what you want to say and passing any comment you might make through a filter of, Will it cause offence/discomfort?

When saying no is always a struggle, not just to requests made of you, but also to assumptions, such as, 'I’ve put you down for Thursday, alright?'

Then it’s not so much People Pleasing as going through life, holding the back of your own shirt.

Why would anyone choose to live their life this way?

Well, for people who operate this way, it doesn’t feel like they have a choice.

Meeting the needs of others at some cost to you stems, like so many things, from an adaptation that was made in childhood. You adapted to a given set of circumstances.

If putting a break on the demands you make on the family dynamics is rewarded, then you get pretty good, pretty quickly at doing just that. If there’s another family member who seems to have cornered the market on attention-grabbing, then it’s not unreasonable to compete. If you discover that you always seem to lose when competing in the attention stakes, then adapting to the situation by always being fine may be a reasonable choice. Sticking with this choice for the rest of your life probably isn’t in your best interests.

To borrow a phrase from a famous Scotsman, People Pleasing probably started as a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation.

There’s another piece on this website about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which suggests that once your basic needs are met, feeling safe, fitting in, and belonging become important.

As a survival strategy, for some children, not being noticed may be a smart move; it’s when that child is still dealing with the world in the same way as an adult that what was an asset has now morphed into a liability.

At five years old, in that setting, people-pleasing may have been the best option – at twenty-five or thirty-five, it may be time for a review of the options.

Don’t beat yourself up for being stuck in this People Pleaser groove. Now that you know that “it’s just the way I am” isn’t true - it’s the way you became, when you adapted, long ago, you can start the change.

Whilst you’re pondering whether to make an appointment, you can experiment with simply not being permanently available. You can switch from accommodation to negotiation. “I can do Wednesday afternoon,” may be a reasonable response to, “I’ve put you down for Thursday, alright?” In truth, your answer could elicit, “Why, what are you doing Thursday?” A question that would never be asked of the rest of the team.

Believe that liberation is possible and that the sky won’t fall in - and get some help in making the change.