The Solution to People-Pleasing
“People-pleasing” is another term for the word “codependency” a set of personality characteristics in which a person routinely abandons their own needs or desires to care for others.
While we may romanticize these behaviors as being “selfless”, they can actually be an attempt for us to control of manipulate other people or situations, in order to avoid our own discomfort or unhappiness. If other people are happy, they will make us happy in turn. So people-pleasers spend a lot of time and energy making sure that other people are well, so that they can be well.
The problem with this is that the sense of control a people-pleaser has over other people’s emotional states is an illusion. In other words- no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, we ultimately have no control over what another person thinks, feels, or does. People-pleasers spend their lives running on a hamster wheel. Our efforts never seem “good enough”, but in reality many of those things we spend so much time trying to “fix” for other people aren’t our responsibility in the first place.
How does this affect us?
Well, interestingly, in the short-term, people pleasing really helps us reduce our anxiety. People-pleasing in the immediate feels much better than the potential of making someone upset or not “going with the flow.”
But in the long-term, these behaviors are corrosive. Because we spend so much time trying to make everyone else happy, 100% of the time (and ultimately “failing” because the task is impossible), we neglect to care for ourselves. Overtime, little by little, our self-neglect snowballs into resentment, chronic feelings of stress or anxiety, fatigue, irritability, relationship strain, and can keep spiraling from there.
Sadly, when we start to notice this anxiety and resentment building- for many of us our first instinct is to go back to the people-pleasing behaviors that came first. “If I try a little harder…if I can just get so-and-so to like me…then I’ll feel better.”
Instead- I propose that if we want to stop people-pleasing, we have to first build a mindset that our own self-care matters most. Instead of turning to others to give us the validation, attention, and love that we so desperately need, why don’t we try turning to ourselves?
Interested in seeing what developing a self-care mindset can do to help you with your people-pleasing tendencies? 100 Days of Self-Care: A Workbook for the Most Important Person in your Life is available for purchase on Amazon now!
