Stop Pleasing People

People-pleasing might not sound all that bad. After all, what’s wrong with being nice to people and trying to help them out or make them happy?

But people-pleasing generally goes beyond simple kindness. The dictionary defines it as “a person who has an emotional need to please others often at the expense of his or her own needs or desires.”

You might go out of your way to do things for the people in your life, based on what you assume they want or need. You give up your time and energy to get them to like you.

This is how people-pleasing can cause trouble. The urge to have the approval of others can be damaging when we allow other people’s wants to have more importance than our own needs.

From an early age, we learned that to survive, we needed to have the approval of others. It was necessary. You understand that, right? So, from infancy until our late teens, we thrive on that approval. Because if you don’t, you’re pretty well dead.

The problem is that most of us carry that need for approval — that “survival mechanism” — into adulthood. It just takes a different form.

So there’s nothing wrong with looking for approval. In some cases, it’s helpful.

But when that need for approval runs your life as an adult, it can hurt you.

You might worry that telling someone “no” or turning down a request for help will make them think you don’t care about them.

Agreeing to do what they want might seem like a safer option, even if you don’t actually have the time or desire to help.

Many people agree to do something when they’d rather not, like helping someone move or lending money that isn’t in their budget to share.

But a pattern of this behavior can cause problems, since it tells other people that their needs come before yours.

It also shows that you might care too much about what people think about you or you compare yourself to others — a huge roadblock when it comes to focusing on your priorities and overall self-image.

Some people may abuse this, ignoring your boundaries because they know you’ll do what they want anyway.

People-pleasers often have a harder time recognizing how they really feel because they are so focused on being who other people want or need them to be.

Continuing to push your own needs to the side makes it harder to acknowledge them. Eventually, you might not even feel sure about what you want or how to be true to yourself.

You also may not be able to voice the feelings you are aware of, even when you want to speak up for yourself

For example, you might avoid telling your partner they made you feel bad, thinking something like, “They didn’t mean it, so if I say something, I’ll only hurt their feelings.”

But this denies the key fact of the situation: They hurt your feelings.

One huge impact of people-pleasing is increased stress.

This can easily happen when you take on more than you can handle with the goal of supporting someone else.

You don’t just lose out on time for yourself. You also find yourself with less time for things you really need to do.

To get the bare essentials taken care of, you might end up working longer hours or going without sleep, eventually facing physical consequences of bitterness, worry, and stress.

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