The People Pleasing Trap: Why and How to Break Free
Are you a compulsive people pleaser? Is it very painful for you when someone else is mad or disappointed in you? If so, this episode is for you.
I have a lot of really, really nice clients. Too nice, really. Is it possible to be too nice? I say absolutely yes. Sometimes I myself fall into the people pleasing trap so I’m speaking with experience about how hard this behavior is to change. People pleasing in itself is not inherently bad. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to please or to help others. In fact, in some ways wouldn’t it be great if more people put more effort into trying not to hurt other people? Isn’t that what we try to teach our kids-- to be kind, to give to others?
People pleasing often comes from a really good place. We want to make other people happy, we want other people to have what they want and we want to be helpful and give back to others when we can. How could this possibly be bad?
Just like anything, even being nice can become a problem when done to excess. And this is often what I see with my patients who come in to me feeling exhausted, depleted or resentful. People pleasing can be harmful when we consistently sacrifice or don’t pay attention to our own needs, or when we are unconsciously wanting something from this behavior that we don’t get in return.
Let’s start with talking about what excessive people pleasing might look like in case you are not sure if you can relate to this. If you are an extreme people pleaser, then you most likely feel extremely uncomfortable with the idea of someone being mad at or disappointed in you. To be clear, nobody likes it when someone is mad at us. But there is a difference between not liking it and feeling the need to avoid it at all costs. Excessive people pleasers feel like they can’t stand it when they know someone is mad at them and they will do almost anything in order to get that person to no longer feel mad or disappointed, even doing things that they don’t want to do or maybe even things you told yourself you would no longer do.
For example, lets say that you made a commitment to yourself that you were going to cut back on sweets or stop drinking alcohol. And you are out with friends and they start giving you crap about how you aren’t any fun anymore. A people pleaser would feel so uncomfortable by this criticism (even if its done a teasing manner) that they would give up their own needs or their own personal commitments, just to avoid having someone think less of them.
Also, excessive people pleasers are likely to immediately say yes when someone asks them for help or for a favor. It is an immediate yes without even asking themselves the question: "is this something i want to do, or can do, is this going to be a problem for me in any way to help?" They just automatically say yes, almost with the thought, "if it’s a problem I’ll figure that out on my own time." People pleasers do not like to tell someone no. They will sacrifice their own plans or goals so that they can say yes. If they do say no, they feel like they have to have a really valid reason for saying no, and not only does the reason have to be valid, but they have to explain to you why they have no choice other than to say no, as if they are obligated to explain their own decisions.
Lastly, excessive people pleasers are often likely to experience burnout. Burnout is the experience of feeling emotionally drained or depleted. You may get adequate sleep but you still feel tired all the time. And not necessarily a physical tired, but more of an emotional or mental fatigue. The reason is that when you are automatically saying yes and spending all of your energy focusing on taking care of others, you are often neglecting your own physical and emotional health.
Maybe you spend the day helping a friend clean their house while your own house is a mess. Or you forget to stay hydrated, or you forget that when you try to clean your own home you often have a backache for the next 3 days. Even though it would be very reasonable to tell someone, “I’m sorry I can’t help clean your house right now” you feel guilty for saying no and feel you don’t have a proper excuse to say no. You are so focused on trying to be helpful and not disappointing the other person that you totally forget what you need for yourself.
Why do we do this? What drives excessive people pleasing?
For one thing, as I mentioned earlier, some of us can’t stand the idea of someone being mad at or disappointed with us. Often times we can trace this back to early childhood experiences. Maybe we had parents who were very shame based in their parenting. Maybe they were excessively critical or expressed frequent disappointment in your actions. Maybe your parents weren’t excessive but you were a sensitive kid and you took those comments very seriously.
I was very lucky to grow up in a home where my parents were not excessive in their punishments in any way, however I do know that I was a pretty sensitive kid (still am as an adult). I’m always very worried about “getting into trouble” or having my parents or other authority figures getting mad at or disappointed in me. I think some of it is just genetic or just part of my temperament.
Think back to your own childhood experiences…what might have led you to be very fearful of someone getting mad at you? Were you always this way or did you experience this fear later in your life? See if you can link your fear of someone being mad at you to any person, or situation in your past. Sometimes just knowing where it came from helps us to make sense of it and to validate our experience. Of course i feel this way i learned it from this situation.
Another way that we learn to be an excessive people pleaser is through role modeling. Was someone in your life, maybe your own mother, a people pleaser as well? Did you learn that this is what good people do? Maybe you learned in your religious community that it is always good to help and put others needs ahead of your own, and if you don't do that, it means you are selfish or bad. Think about the lessons you learned about helping others, not just by what happened to you, but by what you observed other important people in your life doing. If you observed your mother always sacrificing her own needs, putting her children or family or other people ahead of herself, then of course you would grow up to think that this is just what you do.
This was definitely the case in my own family of origin. My mother is one of the most caring, giving people you have ever met. She is always trying to help and take care of others, so I know that was a big part of my own role modeling growing up. This is what good people do. And also, for me, this is what women do. Women are supposed to put their kids first or their family first or their spouses first. Some of these messages have been hard for me to unravel as I have grown up.
People pleasers often struggle with feelings of guilt. They ask themselves, am i doing enough? Rather than focusing on all the ways in which they help, they have a tendency to focus more on the ways in which they could be helping but aren't and see that as a sign of something wrong with them. Because being selfish is a bad thing to a people pleaser, they struggle with feeling guilty when they want to put their own needs first. I see this very, very often among moms. How can we still have a career and friendships while also being a mom? "Mom Guilt" is a huge issue and it is much more prevalent among women who are people pleasers.
So what can we do about it? Are we bound to feel stuck in this pattern indefinitely? And how do you know if you need to change any of your own behaviors?
The first clue that change might be needed is to check within yourself for what I mentioned before. Do you notice signs of emotional or mental fatigue, burnout, resentment or excessive guilt? Do you see yourself at times maybe even feeling bitter--that you spend more time meeting the needs of others than you to do your own needs, and you feel neglected and just generally spent. If so, it might be time for a reset.
What can we do to change this?
All behavior change starts with awareness. We cannot change what we are not aware of. The first step is to increase your awareness of what situations you are automatically giving back, helping or saying yes to. Is this a work problem, home problem, parenting problem, romantic relationship problem or all of the above? See if you can identify situations where you are much more likely to be people pleasing and if there are other situations where you feel more comfortable and less guilty taking care of your own needs. If you are able to see differences among situations, ask yourself, what am I doing in this situation? What do I do in those situations that maybe i could transfer to this other situation. Let’s give an example.
My patient who I’ll call "Kellie" is an executive for a large company. She has a lot of responsibility and is highly respected at her job. Kellie finds it very easy to delegate, give constructive feedback to her staff and to overall be assertive in her workplace. She does not worry very much about her staff becoming angry or disappointed in her. She feels confident in her actions and if staff are upset with her, that is their concern to bring to her. Although Kellie works hard every day, she also knows that for her to stay at the top of her game, she has to take a break for lunch and other breaks during the day as needed to refuel emotionally and physically. She does not feel guilty about that because she knows she works very hard at her job and is an asset to her company.
On the other hand, Kellie is not so confident in her romantic life. Kellie has been married and divorced twice and feels ashamed about this. She has had several romantic relationships with men over the years and some of them have been emotionally and financially abusive. When Kellie starts a new relationship, she has a tendency to mold herself into a version of what she thinks her partner wants. She automatically does whatever her partner wants without much thought and feels guilty when she has to say no. She desperately wants the other person to like her and continue dating her, so she often gives of herself emotionally, physically and financially, even when her friends, family, or I am telling her to be cautious.
Kellie came into therapy for this very issue. She is aware that she keeps making mistakes in her romantic life and does not understand where this pattern comes from. She wants to be in a healthy relationship but doubts it is possible for her.
Kellie and I started to work on the origins of people pleasing behaviors in her romantic life. Kellie and I discovered that although she valued her intellectual skills, she had never valued much else about herself. She always felt insecure about her appearance and body shape and grew up with strong messages that women should always be attractive to men. Her mother put a lot of emphasis on body size and physical appearance but less importance on education and professional success. Kellie learned that although she was smart, this was not necessarily an important characteristic to have.
Kellie also heard a lot of messages about how a woman’s value is determined by how a man feels about her. She observed that although her father was a kind and loving man, he could also be judgmental about his wife’s appearance and he put a lot of emphasis on the importance of being married and having a man in her life to “take care of her.” When Kellie got divorced, she felt profound shame that she was failing as a woman. This set up a pattern for Kellie to keep searching for love, to be highly anxious that it would not last and made herself vulnerable to men who wanted to use her as opposed to have a balanced relationship with her.
Over time, Kellie and I worked on changing her behaviors. Although I think understanding the origin of a behavior pattern can be helpful and interesting, it is actually not the most important aspect of therapy. The most important aspect of therapy, in my opinion, is what am I going to do about it. I believe that there may be 1000 causes of why we do what we do and we could spend years trying to understand the why, but answering the question why am I this way does very little to answer the question, what am I going to do about it?
Kellie and I worked on taking a break from dating and she deleted all of her dating apps. We talked about the differences between how she showed up at work and how she showed up romantically. We talked about channeling the confidence she has at work and what that might look like in her dating life.
We focused on tolerating the feelings that come up if a romantic partner was disappointed in her. She was able to see how asking for money was a major red flag in a relationship, especially in the early stages, and that she would immediately end a relationship with anyone who engaged in that behavior. We discussed how, the way in which another person tolerates or accepts your no, is a very important indicator of the health of that relationship. A healthy person accepts your no. They don’t repeatedly try to get you to change your mind, or pout or get angry with you. If a person engages in any of those behaviors then these are red flags. A healthy person truly cares about your needs too, so if you say no because it conflicts with your own needs, then they should understand and accept that.
We also talked about enjoying her own company and learning how to be happy even if she was not in a relationship. Kellie did not know how to be alone. Whenever she was not in a relationship she was trying to get into one. All of her time and emotional energy went into finding the perfect match. When Kellie dropped the idea of getting into a relationship and just focused for a while on learning to enjoy her alone time, she found that there were a lot of things she enjoyed doing that she did not need to be in a relationship to do. Her female relationships strengthened as well as she had more time to spend with her extended family. She started feeling less anxious about the need to be in a relationship.
Over time, when she joined the dating websites again, she was in a much more positive and confident headspace. After just a couple quick dates that she knew immediately wouldn’t work, she found a companion and they just celebrated their one year anniversary. Although she is happy in this relationship, she does not feel terrified of losing it. They have a nice balance of doing things that they both enjoy as well as doing things separately. She was able to say recently that she feels almost as confident in her dating life as she does in her work life.
What was interesting is that this shift also helped her to be more assertive in other areas of her life. She found she became more confident in allowing friends and family to feel disappointed in her and to know she would be ok.
If you find that your people pleasing behavior impacts most areas of your life, I’d encourage you to practice an awareness skill that I’ll just call the Pause. When someone asks you for help, I want you to pause. Take a few seconds to ask yourself, if I do this how will I feel emotionally and physically. Would I feel tired, drained and resentful afterwards or would I be likely to feel energized and fulfilled? If you can’t answer that question in the moment, then your default answer should always always be “I can’t give you an answer in this moment, give me day and I’ll let you know.” Take your time to think about the impact that helping someone will have on you. No matter how small a favor that person is asking, see if you can pause before automatically saying yes.
Over time, when you practice the Pause, you will find that a lot of what you have been doing is depleting you, not energizing you. If you feel even remotely depleted when thinking about saying yes, then your answer is no. In the beginning, you may feel scared, that you will always say no and end up being a selfish person. The reality is, if you have been giving and giving, then for a while, you will need a reset to focus on saying no. You might end up saying no a lot and that’s ok. In time, once you feel fulfilled again, then you will be more likely to say yes.
Think of the empty cup analogy. If you keep pouring out your cup into someone else's, your cup runs dry. You have so little to give others and this makes you feel depleted. Saying no fills your own cup and you may need to do this over and over until your cup is full again. Eventually, you will have more in your cup to spare.
Lastly, try to learn to sit with different emotions without having to fix or change them or get rid of them. When someone is angry or disappointed in you, it is likely to trigger anxiety in you. See if you can just sit with and tolerate this anxiety. Start small. The more you learn to tolerate this feeling, the better you will get at it. It may never feel good, but we are not shooting for that, we are shooting for tolerable. We can tolerate the anxiety that will naturally come up if someone is upset with us and learn that in time, that feeling will go away on its own
Now I'd love to hear from you. What do you notice about your people pleasing behaviors? Do you find it hard to say no or to put your own needs first? What strategies have you learned to help you overcome this pattern? Find me at drlauriebruce.com and let me know. And if you could do me a quick favor I would be eternally grateful as I work to build my audience. If you can think of even just one person in your life who needs to hear this topic, please share with them this blog. And if you did not enjoy this blog, then I will tolerate the feelings of anxiety I have with your disappointment. ;)
Hope you have a great week!
Dr. Laurie
