What Is People Pleasing?
People pleasing is when you try to make other people feel something, usually joy or happiness or appreciation of you and all that you do for them. It’s a way to put what you think other people want ahead of what you actually want, with a goal of trying to make or keep them happy.
Common Character Traits Of A People Pleaser
Folks with people pleasing habits are often:
Amazing chameleons, empaths, highly sensitive, loyal, caring, love helping others, feel responsible for the wellbeing of others, avoid conflict, have amazing work ethics, make themselves indispensable in any setting, like meeting other people’s expectations, have difficulty saying no and setting boundaries, rarely stop to think about what they want (and oftentimes don’t know what they want and need).
Even though you could say these qualities could be seen as virtuous, the side of people-pleasing habits that doesn’t serve you is when you do or say or wear or eat something you don’t want to because someone else wants you to, or you think it will make someone else happy.
This is the caveat: When your desire for approval and validation are stronger than your desire to do what you want, it can be really challenging to first know what you want and then to speak up for yourself and communicate your own desires.
You might not yet be skilled at acknowledging your wants, preferences, desires, for fear of someone not liking it, not agreeing with you, or being pleased with you. You become so used to anticipating others’ needs, you lose touch with your own.
People Pleasing As An Addiction
People pleasing gives you feel-good chemicals that make you feel good. When you do something and someone else validates you, you get a hit of oxytocin, dopamine.
The problem is that people pleasing acts as a mask and buffer. It keeps you from feeling your real feelings. So if you prioritize yourself, you will a) need to face some pain and harder feelings to deal with, and b) you’re not going to get your hit of feel-good juice!
What makes this behavior an addiction is that this hit of dopamine is fleeting and lasts only a few seconds. So you have to please another person and another and another if you want to get that dopamine that makes you feel good. And it’s an endless and exhausting cycle.
The Effect Of People Pleasing
If we constantly perpetuate people pleasing behavior, feelings of resentment may arise, because you’re not ultimately getting what you want and need, and then your ego likes to take it personally.
This feeling becomes more pronounced when you actually have the awareness of your own desires and chose to override them to not “rock the boat” or to attempt to be seen in a particular light, such as friendly, generous and kind.
Moreover, what can also happen is that you can end up in a state of overwhelm because you’re trying to manage your own wants and needs, and what you perceive everyone else’s wants and needs to be. It’s exhausting because your internal spotlight is not on yourself. It’s on everyone else.
Now it’s not all doom and gloom. You CAN show your love and support to people from a healthy, loving, kind and generous place without it being people pleasing. And the difference lies in how your choices make you feel on the inside. Are you coming from a place of fear or love?
Self-Abandonment & The Role Of Caregivers
The people-pleaser within has an inner drive to fawn (one of our nervous system’s stress response)or to mirror everyone around them. This is essentially ridding themselves of any sign of a personality so as to hide any potential for conflict, losing their loved ones, or confronting their innermost fears.
It’s an unconscious attempt to control an outcome so you don’t have to really feel, acknowledge, claim and speak your truest emotions, desires, needs, and boundaries.
When a person grows up in a shame-based environment, they may feel the need to behave a certain way in order to avoid mistreatment or to cater to their caregiver’s emotional needs.
A child’s parents or caregivers might be abusive, controlling, or emotionally withholding, preventing them from developing a healthy relationship with emotions.
In this kind of unsafe environment, children can easily become cut off from their own feelings.
They may develop a heightened awareness of their parents’ distress and abandon their own feelings, needs, and desires to tend to the needs of their caregivers.
In order to learn how to not abandon yourself, you must develop the skills necessary to trust yourself, to trust your body and intuition, and to take care of yourself.
Connecting With The Body
People pleasers tend to be disassociated from their body because they have learned that in order to be safe, they must meet someone else’s needs.
Denying what you feel leads to questioning yourself and how you feel, confusing your emotions with other people’s emotions, struggling to discern what is yours and what is not, lacking clarity with what you feel, completely disconnected from your body.
Our disconnection from our own body directly impacts our sense of safety and trust in our innate wisdom, in your intuition.
And when you don’t trust your intuition, your thoughts, or your feelings–it’s extremely challenging to feel safe to be yourself and to take action from a place of love (truth) instead of fear (avoidance).
Overcoming people pleasing behavior is learning how to re-connect with ourselves and our true feelings, to uncover and embrace those parts of us that we have pushed down and shamed because they weren’t accepted, and to invite them into our heart space.
Our biggest challenge and greatest healing is when we expand our nervous system capacity to hold that felt sensation of fear in our body.
We can learn how to sit with the raw, alive and oftentimes uncomfortable sensations that arise in our body, and release that energy in a safe and healthy way.
Step 1: Self-Awareness
Step number 1 is always self-awareness. You need to get real and honest with yourself. Here are a few reflection questions to help you shed more light on your people pleasing behavior:
- How has this people pleasing served me in the past? Does it still serve you now?
- What are the people, places and circumstances that trigger this behavior?
- How does people pleasing impact my mind, body and emotions?
- In which situations do I tend to hold my tongue and not speak my truth?
- Where am I putting other people’s happiness or feelings, wants, or desires above my own?
Step 2: Self-Regulation
In this step we come into connection with the raw sensations in our body. We are being invited to feel this energy and release it from our body. Drop into the raw emotion of the body. Trust your body’s wisdom and release the tension through breath, sound and movement. Get real with your anger, sadness and fear. Here are some tools to help you: shake, dance, pillow punch, pillow yell, cry, wail etc.
Now that you have dissipated the tension, ask yourself what is this emotion and feeling showing me? Is there a boundary to be set? Is there a situation or person no longer serving your life? Is there an action you need to take? Or maybe it’s just telling you to slow down and be with yourself. To get more rest. To get real with how you are really feeling beyond the facade.
Step 3: Self-Empowerment
The third step is where we become self-empowered to set our boundaries. And first, we must clarify our needs. Understanding the why behind each boundary can make it that much easier to set those boundaries and be consistent with them.
Use the following reflection questions to guide you:
- Visualize/reflect on your perfect day. What informed you that you had a great day?
- Which activity, experience or place nourishes your body, mind and soul?
- What brings love, joy and light into my life and body?
- What would I be doing if other people’s opinions didn’t hold me back?
- What do I need IN THIS MOMENT?
Conclusion
The goal of healing isn’t necessarily to stop getting triggered–but to decrease the frequency, intensity, and duration of those triggers. It’s within the micro-moments that you find the internal wherewithal to practice. The more you practice, the easier it becomes. And over time, that new behavior becomes your new normal.
