PEOPLE-PLEASING

 

People-pleasing is more than just being nice to people. Anyone would recommend being nice to people. But people-pleasing is a pattern of behavior in which you consistently put all others before yourself even to the detriment of your own health and wellbeing. It can leave us feeling unable to express our needs, likes and dislikes, and unable to hold boundaries or even keep ourselves safe. We say yes, when actually we want and need to say no. We feel resentful of being taken advantage of, but unable to change it by asking for anything different. And the fear of disapproval never disappears because there is always the possibility of putting a foot wrong, making a wrong choice and displeasing someone – even if that person is someone we don’t like or spend time with.

While it is in us all to care about the approval of our peers, people-pleasing takes it much further. If we grow up in an environment in which it is not safe to disagree or express difference, if disapproval is expressed with rage or contempt, then as children we learn how to survive that environment. Keeping other people happy becomes a survival skill that we hone and perfect throughout childhood. It is only later, as adults, that those behavior patterns become detrimental to our relationships. We second-guess every move we make, always tentatively trying to work out what others are expecting of us. It may even prevent us from making new connections as we hold back on interactions when there is no guarantee that the other person likes us back.

Living a life of people-pleasing is further complicated by the fact that other people don’t always voice their disapproval with criticism. We can fear and feel disapproval even when the other person never says a word. When we don’t have that information, our mind starts to fill in the blanks for us. We are each at the Centre of our own spotlight of attention and we tend to imagine that others are focused on us too, when in reality, everyone’s spotlights are usually on themselves. So we can often make the assumption that others are judging us negatively or disapproving when they may not be thinking about us at all. So, if we have this brain that is set up to care a great deal what everyone else is thinking, or maybe we notice a tendency towards people-pleasing patterns, how do we live alongside that? How do we ensure that we can have those meaningful relationships but not become trapped by constant worries about disapproval and judgement? And how can we pick ourselves back up when disapproval from someone else stops us from living in line with what matters to us?

#HumanNature