People pleasing will never win you respect
People pleasing is generally driven by the desire for one or both of two things.
First up, approval or validation aka please like me, respect me and fill up my low self-worth tank. This looks like not speaking your mind, going along with things to avoid conflict, compromising your own needs to do things for others and so on. Second, control. Needing things to turn out a certain way, especially in a way that feels safe and calm.
However, there is often a deeper reason that people pleasing shows up as a deeply entrenched pattern. And that reason is that it can be a trauma adaptation and learned survival skill.
When faced with danger or threat, the responses we most commonly hear about are flight or fight. Research used to focus on these as human's responses to danger because studies used to only have male participants until more recently (I know, maddening, luckily women are much more frequently included these days).
For women, we may well not win at either fleeing or fighting, and so we are likely to freeze in the face of danger to survive. This is one of the reasons why women’s lack of fighting back nor attempting to escape has be used against us in cases where we have experienced violence.
Alongside freeze, the most common response to danger for women is to try to appease or placate the source of danger in the hope that we will get away later. This is sometimes known as the fawn response.
People pleasing, keeping others happy at our own expense, and abandoning our own needs to win validation, can be a coping strategy carried over from times in our lives when we’ve faced ongoing threat or danger. If we learn that by not rocking the boat, we avoid something horrible or painful, then we might develop people pleasing as a coping mechanism and then carry on doing it as a way of avoiding conflict long after it has served its purpose and the danger has passed.
The problem is that people pleasing causes the opposite result to what we want.
We want to be liked and appreciated, and instead people pleasing causes a lack of respect from others and being walked all over.
We want to be seen as capable and confident, yet we’re seen as doormats who will unquestionably do more than our fair share.
We hope others will see how hard we work and how much take on, and see us as having leadership and promotion potential. But instead, we are seen as bad at delegating or managing our workload, unhinged when we explode at the resentment of being unappreciated, and incapable of leading a team since we cannot balance our lives, nor simultaneously manage self-care and being a high achiever.
When people pleasing is a coping strategy as a result of trauma, you might experience some or all of these:
You feel misunderstood, unseen or like no one knows the real you. That's because you aren't being authentically yourself, because you learnt that it wasn't safe to speak up or be yourself, and that keeping others happy, perhaps morphing into a person they would like or at least not dislike, was vital.
You say yes all the time even when you're already overloaded and exhausted; saying no feels impossible. Why? Because you might upset people, they might get angry you've refuse their request for support, and you feel safe when you avoid that possibility. Trauma can result in being hypervigilant to others needs to avoid them kicking off, and this becomes far more important than self-care, and saying no becomes impossible.
You keep your challenging emotions and needs away from those you are close to. Instead, sometimes you share your troubles or life story in all its gory details with a taxi driver or someone you just met, because they are unlikely to reject you, and you might never see them again anyway so there's not much to lose.
You have resentful meltdowns about how unappreciated you feel by others and how exhausted you are from helping them and never taking care of yourself, but are quickly remorseful, guilt-laden and apologetic, so you shift back in people pleasing to keep the peace asap.
You take too much responsibility for other people's feelings and behaviour, instead of recognising that it's theirs to own and choose.
If you are reading this and recognising yourself in the patterns outlined above, you are probably wondering how you move past all of this. I want to reassure you that it is more than possible to let go of coping patterns that are no longer serving you, and shift to a much better place in how you think, feel and act.
The first step in making change is acknowledging that what you’re doing now is not working, and then becoming fully ready to change and move past it.
If you are genuinely ready, book a discovery call that will help you leave behind sabotaging patterns including people pleasing so that you can create a life and career where you are genuinely respected and successful; a balanced, happy, healthy life full of self-worth.
I want you to reach a place of empowerment, feeling calmly in control and full of inner peace.
