The topic for this blog is people pleasing. My reasons for picking this topic are that I wanted on this occasion to write about something that many of us experience in our day to day life. Perhaps it is a current issue for us, or maybe we have experienced it in the past. People pleasing for some people may be something that they don’t recognise that they are doing due to many reasons. So, let’s think of why people might be doing this.
What is people pleasing? Is it normal?
Let’s acknowledge that to some degree we do want to please people that we care about. Being attuned to others needs, thinking about them and doing things for them is not a bad thing. However, we do need to balance thinking and doing things for others and being able to feel that we can be our own person and think about ourselves and do things in line with our wants and well-being. When this ability is compromised and/or damaged and it begins to affect a person adversely, then it is useful to stop and think about oneself. Let’s look at some examples of situations involving people pleasing to make sense of it.
Do you find yourself often agreeing with people, the majority viewpoint or preference of others over your own and seem to go with the flow even though it’s not what really works for you?
Do you let go of things that you would like to do for yourself to make others happy and then feel unhappy within?
Do you pre-think people’s views, ideas, preferences, and actions and fit in with them or the situation to make them happier even if it is not in line with what you want and think? Or perhaps you feel they will be disappointed with you if you did something different, so you become agreeable?
Do you disappoint your partner by not being considerate of their needs or what they may want from you and the relationship because you are thinking too much about the needs of the immediate or wider family and not disappointing them, but instead disappoint your partner?
Why and how does people pleasing happen?
As a person you may have grown up learning to put others before yourself and thinking of other’s needs primarily before yours. Maybe whilst growing up more emphasis was placed on being thoughtful and thinking of others often, this can be linked to people’s family dynamics, culture, circumstances, values, roles and relationships. You may have learned that they need to put others’ needs first as that is what is expected of them. Additionally, it may be really hard to think of oneself as this is difficult to do having little learning or experience about this in life. Feeling that you are not worth thinking about, worrying that putting yourself first is selfish, being concerned that others will be disappointed in you or receiving negative responses when you have put yourself first may mean that you engage in people pleasing. One or many of these factors can affect a person to please others and be overly concerned about how others feels about them and how they are viewed by others. I have touched on just a few reasons here that may be present for people, but there are many more.
What are the consequences of people pleasing?
The consequences of people pleasing are that you may find it hard to think enough about yourself, your needs, desires, wishes and wants. Therefore, you fall short in thinking about yourself and your well-being. It may also be that you feel disappointed in yourself, or your life as you maybe living in line with what others may want from you and you feel you don’t have a strong enough voice or identity. This can undermine your sense of who you are as a person and can influence your levels of self esteem and self worth. In the long run, you may feel insecure, self-conscious, and doubtful of yourself resulting in depression and anxiety, or even relational difficulties affecting work, friendships and relationships. You may feel deeply unhappy within yourself and connect with feelings of inauthenticity and emptiness. Your happiness may feel contingent upon making other people happy and therefore, you are in a cycle of feeling unhappy and only happy when you act in ways to make others happy before you can feel happy.
What can you do to lessen and/or stop people pleasing?
So, the question is what can a person who identifies with people pleasing do? It can feel difficult to know how to change longstanding patterns when we have been a particular way or lived like that for some time. It may feel nerve-wracking to start to think and behave differently and worry about if others will notice this and what they will think, say or do.
Firstly, you may find it important to be honest with yourself and see if you can figure out what makes you engage in pleasing people? Then it can be helpful to think of the situations linked to this and what impact does this have on you and your day to day life? Once you have a bit more understanding about yourself and situations, it might be helpful to think about how you may think and behave differently so that you can begin to consider alternative ways of being and responding.
You may find it helpful to have a mindful approach to situations involving people pleasing as they arise so that you can be aware of how you naturally tend to respond and take some time to notice to patterns and consider responding in different ways. It might also be helpful to consciously begin to try out different ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving to situations and people to slowly notice how you would like to respond in the future.
Slowly, beginning to take forward new ideas into your day to day life is important and necessary to begin the process of change. Making notes or journaling what you notice about this process, how it feels and what happens when you do this may also help you to work through experiences that arise. You can also begin to learn and understand more about yourself. Remember being patient and compassionate with yourself is important as change can bring on varied challenges and experiences.
Speaking to people you trust openly about your tendency to put them or others first and/or think of their needs above yours might be helpful. Sharing with others that you would like to work on that to think about yourself as well as them may be an important step in getting support from people in your life with whom you have close relations.
It might be helpful to also hold in mind that whilst we change parts of who we are and our personality undergoes growth, people in our network may not necessarily be receptive to the changes we are making. Reasons for this are that as we change whether that be through our thinking, feeling or behaving that affect our ways of relating to others, the dynamics changes and therefore, people may need to adjust or do things differently. As relationship dynamics change, so do roles and relationship patterns and so, this can cause discomfort to other people for a few reasons. For example, reasons may be that they are used to us being a particular way and/or us changing becomes disadvantageous for them.
Finally, it’s important to hold in mind that change hardly occurs in an upward trajectory, we move forwards and sometimes backwards and even stand still. Be kind to yourself in this process and seek out help from self-help book and therapy is needed.