We are behaving like pathological people pleasers because a part of us believes others will love and care for us if we do, or abandon or annihilate us if we don’t. Sometimes both.

As a recovering people pleaser, I can tell you this part of us is misguided.

Most people will not love us because we are pleasing them all the time. Instead, they love who they really want to. So we might as well stop being the good boy or the good girl and live our own lives.

Easier said than done though.

What is people pleasing ?

I’m in my early fifties, and I’am about to switch careers to do something I always wanted to do: being a licensed psychotherapist.

Why am I doing this only now ?

The main reason has to do with people pleasing: for people around me when growing up, being a psychologist was seen as totally uncool. In fact, anything else than what they were involved with was uncool (if you hear the word “narcissism” behind this statement, you are right).

I assumed people around me right now wouldn’t find it cool either. I could have bet all my corporate colleagues would even find it totally bizarre. 

In hindsight, I was wrong and I would have lost my bet. Most of them don’t give a damn. Some are interested in what I am doing, and a few of them told me they would love to do the same. 

Sometimes, we think we are people pleasing, but in fact we are trying to please or appease imaginary people in our heads. Real people are mostly busy with their own lives.

Anyway, I’m done taking crucial decisions based on what other people think, or what I think they think. What is way more important now is what I really want and need.

So here is my definition : people pleasing is focusing exclusively on what we believe others want, need and expect from us, without balancing it with what we do want, need and expect.

It’s a kind of automatic self abandonment, and it’s rooted in fear: fear of conflict, of abandonment, of loneliness, of being uncool.

Why are we pathological people pleasers ?

We are being people pleasers because we have boundaries issues and we:

• can’t help mind read others, including strangers, to understand what they want, need, feel or think of us
• feel like we are invaded by other people’s feelings, needs and wants, sometimes to the extent of needing a lot of alone time to protect ourselves
• feel it almost impossible to not morph into the person they want us to be
• have a very hard time saying no
• feel responsible for the emotional state of others and fixing their problems
• attract people who take advantage of us
• find ourselves in unbalanced relationships, even with good, loving folks

I could tick off all items of this list as a young adult : I was a textbook example of weak boundaries.

It made it very difficult for me to ignore what my family of origin thought was a good career, and in fact weighted on all my choices.

If you relate, you can find a post on boundaries here.

We also are people pleasers because we have self esteem issues and we :

• believe we are so flawed, no one could possibly love us without us working extra hard, or concealing who we really are
• don’t trust ourselves : we believe what we think is stupid, what we feel is inappropriate, and what we want is shameful – so we might as well follow the crowd
• believe everyone is better than us
• cannot tolerate criticism
• are perfectionists
• Suffer from toxic shame
• obsess about what we “should” do and who we “should” be as opposed to what we want to do and who we are

Taking again the example of my career, it took me a long time to trust this voice in me who was saying this was what I really wanted to do, and that it was a good choice. I automatically assumed others knew better.

If you suspect you have a problem in this area, you actually can measure easily you self esteem with this free online test : a score below 15 indicates a low level of self esteem. If you are interested can find a series of posts on self esteem here.

And, we are pathological people pleasers because we have lost touch with ourselves and we :

• don’t feel our emotions, particularly anger
• don’t have personal opinions
• don’t have a clue about what we really want or need
• feel cut off from our body
• obsess or daydream a lot
• don’t remember whole chunks of our lives

All these items are signs of dissociation, which is a fancy way of saying we have lost touch with our inner lives.

I used to be downright scared of what was lurking within me, and resorted to overthinking as a way to keep this inner life at bay. I still do it when I’m stressed out.

In the case of my choice of careers, I really did not have a clue early on about what I wanted to do with my professional life. I just knew I wanted to achieve something really challenging and difficult so that people around me would at last see my worth.

The truth is I deep down already wanted to be a psychologist : in my adolescence I was reading Freud’s books, not business or banking books. But I was completely cut off from this desire. So I went with what other people around me were believing was appropriate.

All in all, the combination of weak boundaries, low self esteem, and dissociation is a powerful incentive to let others drive our life.

Sometimes, people drive our life for our benefit. This is called good parenting.

But not all of us experienced this type of parenting.

And when we are adults and let others drive our life, it’s usually for their benefit: nobody is interested in parenting us now, apart from ourselves.

But why do we have boundaries, self esteem and dissociation problems ?

People pleasing is the consequence of trauma, particularly relational trauma i.e. which took place within the context of a relationship long and important enough to change us.

Some of us have lived years with dangerous people we could not escape. That’s what we call Trauma with a big T. I know the issue well, and it leads to fawning, which is a kind of extreme people pleasing to avoid violence.

Relational trauma can also take place when we live with someone who is addicted to substances or activities. The consequences of that trauma on us is what Melodie Beattie is describing under the term codependence.

Or we may have been taught to be people pleasers when we spent time stuck in a relationship with a narcissist, who by definition is in a relationship to exploit someone and extract as much gratification as possible, while giving as little as possible.

For some of us, the issue is emotional neglect : there was no obvious neglect and no abuse, but people around us were not interested in what we were feeling or needing. At all.

Or, we may have been brought up by good people who were faced with difficult circumstances, say the illness of a sibling, or depression of a parent. We may have learned then to ease their load by doing what was expected from us and not express needs.

In all these circumstances and with varying degrees of severity, the common thread is that our needs, wants and emotions did not matter and had no space to exist.

What mattered in these relationship was needs, wants and emotions of others. They took all the relational space and commanded our ressources.

That’s what we are carrying forward with people pleasing : it’s a learned behavior and not a personality trait.

Which is good because it can be unlearned. I’m not a people pleaser anymore, and if I could turn things around, I’m sure you can too.

This whole site aims at helping our recovery from trauma, but you can find a series of articles focused specifically on recovery here.

Take care of yourself, and keep on healing !