“People Pleasing” – is it conscious ?
Reading time: 3mins
By Anjan Yadav
“When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you are not saying no to yourself” – Paulo Coehlo
Have you ever wondered how many times you overshared or overdid something?
In many instances of our life, we naturally feel like this or have extended action like this. It is regarded as pro social behavior or altruistic behavior .This need to go one step beyond the requirement arises from the need within to compensate for what’s lacking on our side. This is called people pleasing behavior.
People pleasing tendencies involve getting overly concerned about others and consciously altering our words and actions to cater their approval or validation. In most instances, extending help which is out of their bounds to do stuff for others and spending your time and energy to become likable and appease others. Now generally, this is seen in compassionate and genuine people who care for and have empathy for others. But this need to fill others’ wants gets people into detrimental patterns and setting situations that potentially harm their relations as they regard other’s needs as a priority above their own selves needs.
The people pleasing cycle is reinforced through social interaction and behavioral patterns.
For example, you get asked to do a task for someone who’s piled up at work and is busy, you’re working and occupied yourself, so you get triggered and assumption starts running in your mind about how would they feel if you refused, they will get mad or upset or think it’s a simple task it could have been done etc. This fumes your next actions and induces anxiety. The person usually comes up with coping strategies to deal with that anxiety inducing situation . Some of them include a person trying to avoid saying no, acting small as they are not in position to give it and trying to compensate by overgiving in other parts. They also don’t disregard or disagree with what was told to them, and doing simply what others want them to do or ask of, they get over apologetic about explaining their reason and state of presence and they try hard to be liked by them as a compensating behavior and not asking for any help from others to lessen the reciprocity.
Understanding signs that show people pleasing behavior is important to get to know the identifying marker behaviors and therefore figuring out how to relearn them in a healthy way that is not emotionally taxing.
Having a low opinion of self – people pleasers often indulge in gathering other approval to fill their low self esteem. They often engage in drawing self regard from doing things to attain S from others . It infuses a sense of feeling that you’re only liked when you’re of use and derives a constant need for their appreciation to feel good about yourself.
There’s a high tendency to be liked , it emerges from fear of being disliked for their way of being. For this , they try to seek ways to feel happiness around their companions in order to avoid being discarded. This line of thought of basing our interactive social engagement on being liked often leads us to assume being needed can give us affection and care from others. These types of cognitive schemas set repetition of such people pleasing actions . You tend to become more giving also as you attempt to feed the ego self,you have instilled hope that giving parts of yourself will be reciprocated by others in the form of love and care and it sets you on the path of overindulgence .
One of the most problematic ways is not being able to say no to things one isn’t comfortable about. It leads to vulnerable spaces open and also exploitative nature. They have a tendency to think and worry about ways saying no can hurt others like how it may channel that one doesn’t care about them , getting them upset . They might indulge in this to please them when they didn’t even were inclined towards or wanted to lend help, often due to keeping relations safe and friendly. This action often elicits a response that others are influenced to think their needs come before to you than our own, that leads to being taken for granted. People tend to ignore your boundaries and take advantage of your benevolent nature.
There is a presence of being overly apologetic in people’s pleasing personality. It has been observed that they take into account that they’re to blame for any inconveniences merely happening that would be unavoidable. There’s a lack of self concept as the pattern of pushing aside your own needs and values to make you unaware of your own self and what you truly are and you’re unable to recognise your feelings. You have a hard time communicating your feelings to someone as you tie them with other assumptions and sidelined them by minimizing the effect something had. This leads up to suppressing inner feelings and bottling up emotions which turns into outbursts later. You have a constant feeling of frustration and resentment towards self and others. You feel that you’re being taken advantage of as the reciprocity lacks from the other person. You often felt unsatisfied in relationships for these behavioral and thought patterns. You also have a huge amount of burnout stress , it’s a common thing that occurs as you’re heavily invested in other people’s work and lives as well and yours too, to attend to which adds more stress. These tendencies emerge from our past experiences and our self concept that includes past trauma in the form of childhood trauma , parental constraints , painful events . Our self esteem issues marks the most influential factor that governs our people pleasing patterns and which turns into fear of rejection as we are afraid to be an outcast and feel a sudden inherent need to suffice every person and relationship as falling short would make them lose you.
There are many ways that an individual can take up and practice to reduce or keep in check their people pleasing patterns . One of the most effective ones is engaging in putting yourself first as a priority. You need to give yourself time and energy to be efficient and productive and in turn invest less energy on others. Another effective approach to deal with people pleasing tendencies is setting up boundaries for yourself. Boundaries serve as an incredible self tool that creates an understanding and lays down what is okay and not okay and what are the limitations in parts of communication and work with interaction and relationships with others.
It’s a long way to unlearn and relearn things about yourself and others but the initiating step serves as a commitment and motivating factor to back to when you hit a bump or blocks along the road to reinventing yourself.
References
Raypole .C(2019), How to stop people-pleasing and still be nice.
