People-pleaser: someone who pushes aside their needs to accommodate the needs of others.
The term comes from people’s need to please others to feel good about themselves.
Us people-pleasers display a set of compulsive behaviours that are borne from previous challenging relationships, whether that be family/friends or romantic relationships.
These behaviours keep us safe from the things we fear the most: rejection and feeling unliked or unloved. We suffer from low self-worth and self-esteem and can only feel worthy and good enough when we do things for others. We can only like ourselves if others like us.
- We have an underlying fear of being rejected.
- We constantly seek approval and validation from others as we can only accept our choices and decisions if they agree.
- We avoid arguments as we don’t want to upset anyone. Their comfort and pleasure are more important than our own.
- We read into every comment and action. We rerun conversations and worry that we have done something wrong.
- We do everything for everyone in an attempt to keep everyone happy.
- We accept responsibility and blame for everything, continuously saying sorry and trying to fix things even if it has nothing to do with us.
It’s exhausting.
Hopefully, the following three truths about people will help you (and me) lighten the load slightly.
Worry Less sign on a wooden table.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Truth 1: People think about you a lot less than you think they do.
We can spend hours, even days, worrying about something we have said that may have been taken the wrong way or upset someone.
We look deep into comments, conversations and actions, trying to determine what they mean about whether this person likes us, approves or is disappointed in us.
Previous situations and experiences where we made a mistake rerun in our heads, causing discomfort to remain in the present.
The truth is, the people you are thinking about can’t even remember the conversation or situation. They have not replied to your comment or text because the conversation is finished. It’s not because you have upset them. Even if they haven’t answered your question or replied about meeting up, it’s rarely because you have bothered them. It’s generally because it has slipped their mind, and that’s because you are unimportant; it’s because they have a lot on, just like you have.
We must chill out and stop reading so much into everything because the people we worry about aren’t giving us or the situation a second thought.
Truth 2: People need to take responsibility for their actions to grow.
Many people never take responsibility for their actions and happily let others take the blame. These people are drawn to people-pleasers.
However, constantly taking the blame for something that was their fault and fixing things that are their responsibility is not helping them.
We all learn from our mistakes and grow from our challenges and difficulties. Therefore, you are holding these people back from their personal growth journey and preventing them from learning the lessons they need to know.
By trying to fix things for others, we are breaking them further.
Stop apologising for something that isn’t your fault and let others be accountable for their actions, enabling them to learn and grow from their mistakes and challenges.
Truth 3: People get frustrated with someone that tries to do everything for everyone.
We run around doing everything for everyone so everyone will like or love us.
Whilst this may suit those people in your life that are takers (we people-pleasers come across many of these), the ones that love and care for you find your relentless busyness and lack of self-care frustrating.
It frustrates them on two levels:
They hate seeing people take advantage of you and the lack of self-care you give yourself.
They would like to do things for themselves and you, but you don’t give them a chance.
Give others a chance to show they care about you, feel needed and let them have the pleasure of doing something for someone else — ideally you!
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We take on people-pleasing behaviours when we are involved in a relationship (of any kind) based on someone withholding love and attention unless we do what we are told and do everything for them. These behaviours become second nature, and our self-worth depends on what we do for others.
We believe that we are only worthy of love and attention when we put others above ourselves and that we can only be enough when helping others. We need to feel needed to feel good about ourselves. People-pleasing is how we build our self-worth.
But, these behaviours damage our self-worth and cause us to lose sight of our needs and wants. We think we are helping ourselves by helping others. Whilst there is pleasure to be gained from helping others, there is a line, and you go over that line when helping others is at the detriment of your health and well-being.
People-pleasing not only damages your self-worth, but it also damages all of your relationships, increases the risk of you being taken advantage of, and gets you stressed and frustrated. The fears that led you into people-pleasing (rejection, being disliked, not being needed) grow because you are not giving yourself a chance to prove that you are worthy of love, attention and affection just by being you.
It’s hard to say no when fear is attached to it, and it’s difficult to put yourself first when you have low self-worth. It’s a challenge to stop doing things for people when that is currently what is feeding your need to be needed.
Remember this one last truth: you are needed more than you know — by yourself. So, start pleasing yourself and building your self-worth by treating yourself with the love, attention and care you deserve.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
 White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism |
 Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box |
 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: Neil Thomas on Unsplash
