People pleasing behaviours are far more common, than one might think. As a practising psychotherapist, I’ve noticed a large number of my clients, who deeply struggle with pleasing everyone around them, often feeling overwhelming emotions of anger, resentment, disappointment, hurt accompanied with exhaustion and burnout at the end of the day.
As the word suggests, people pleasing is a behaviour that is repeated over a period of time, wherein there is a heightened need to please everyone around you. The innate desire to make everyone else happy often comes in the way of helping our own self create a life that we want.
Individuals who participate in behaviours of people pleasing do it relentlessly, even when they don’t want to. These people find it very difficult to express what they feel or what they want. They are unable to say no or stand up for themselves.
When you participate in such behaviors there appears to be an innate need to be accepted & liked by the people around you. In order to satisfy this need of being liked and accepted, you may often find yourself in situations, wherein you are doing things that are either expected from others or doing things just because everyone else is doing it.
What we often don’t realize is that under the façade of the need of being accepted and liked by others lies an individual who is struggling with low self-worth. There appears to be a strong and an irrational belief underlying the behaviours, which states that as long as I am doing everything that is expected or told to me, people will continue to like me more, which would make me feel better about myself. What we fail to acknowledge is that in this process of pleasing everyone we are constantly betraying our own self.
A common misconception that I have noticed amongst individuals, who continue to please others is that they correlate behaviours of people pleasing with kindness. Most of us have grown up in families wherein we have been conditioned to be kind to others and help others wherever they need. Consequently, when a situation is presented, these individuals find it extremely difficult to say no or stand up for themselves due to a strong underlying assumption that they are being selfish or a bad person.
While there are various reasons due to which you find yourself behaving in such a manner the root cause is often to do with low sense of self-worth or self-esteem. These behaviours are deep-rooted in our subconscious programming as very often it stems from our childhood.
The important thing to note here is that you need to become self aware and conscious of your actions in order to bring about the desired change. It is extremely important that you learn to prioritise yourself first. Gaining validation from others is never going to be enough. Therefore, you need to learn to acknowledge your need in every situation. It is okay for you to draw boundaries with the people, when the situation demands for it. You cannot control the thoughts, emotions or actions of others. It is okay for you to give yourself the permission to do what you want without any form of guilt.
The behaviours of people-pleasing folk are very often deep rooted and therefore, it is okay for you to consider talking to a professional psychotherapist about the same. Therapy can really help to understand the underlying causes of such behaviours and create goals accordingly. If people-pleasing has been a part of your personality for a long time, it requires subsequent effort. Small steps lead to big changes, but being consistent is crucial.
Signs to know if you are a people pleaser
You find it very difficult to say no
You find yourself being considerate of everyone’s feelings
You find yourself apologizing very often
You resent yourself a little, because you cant say no
You feel uncomfortable knowing someone is angry/upset with you
You need others to like you in order to feel good
You find it very difficult to make decisions for yourself & constantly end up taking opinions of everyone
You pretend to be okay with things you are not
You view conflict as unnecessary & go any means to avoid it
You give a lot of your time, energy, resources for people to like you
You accept blame, even when it is not your fault
You quickly agree to things, because everyone else is
You find yourself over giving
You often find people taking advantage of you
