Do you often find yourself saying “yes” to other people’s demands when you’d rather tell them to go eat glass? Or your social calendar is so packed with obligations that you don’t have any time for yourself, but you’re afraid of disappointing anyone?
People-pleasing can manifest in many different ways, but most people who have this trait have developed it for similar reasons. Below are nine factors that may have contributed to your people-pleasing behavior. Once you learn to recognize it, you can work on undoing it a bit at a time.
1. You’re conflict-averse.
If your default setting these days is “worn thin and exhausted”, you may not have the energy to argue with people who want things from you. This is especially true if they don’t generally take a simple “no” for an answer, but instead expect you to explain and justify yourself to their satisfaction before they’ll accept your response. But some things in life need no explanation, and your personal boundaries are one of them.
Whilst it’s understandable in these circumstances that you’d find it hard to say no, this article from Healthline reminds us that conflict avoidance doesn’t do anyone any favors. Although it might keep the peace temporarily, the long-term ill effects end up being far worse than a temporary argument or sullen attitude.
2. You have a fear of rejection or abandonment.
If you’re afraid of being rejected or abandoned by those closest to you, then you may have learned people-pleasing tactics to ensure they keep loving and needing you.
This fear of abandonment isn’t limited to personal relationships either: many people end up pandering and acquiescing in workplace environments due to a fear of losing their job.
To do otherwise might result in them being condemned for being “difficult” or “not a team player”. With the cost of living rising daily, many people would rather resort to people-pleasing and making themselves invaluable at the office than risk financial destitution. I’ve been in this very situation a few times, and it was both demoralizing and humiliating to have to kowtow to a petty tyrant of a boss to keep my family housed and fed.
3. It’s an ingrained trauma response.
Not everyone was fortunate enough to grow up in a family where they received regular affection, support, or had their basic needs met. Some people grew up in environments where they were abused or had their physical and emotional needs neglected. As a result, many of these people learned how to fawn as a trauma response, according to Psychology Today. Basically, when one doesn’t feel nurtured or valued in a safe, loving environment, they learn to say and do what they know others want from them.
If you grew up in a home where you knew you would be abused, ignored, or punished if you didn’t behave as desired, you may have learned to anticipate your abusers’ needs and wants so you didn’t get mistreated. You may find that you now set aside your authentic responses to things to accommodate other people’s preferences and relinquish personal control in favor of appeasing those who have the power to potentially hurt you.
4. You have low self-esteem.
People with low self-esteem often try to create personal value by making themselves invaluable to others through acts of kindness and service. For example, a person who doesn’t have many friends might spread themselves thin in service to those in their community so that others think highly of them.
By doing so, they may eventually develop a reputation for being the dependable, “go-to” person who’s always available when others need them.
If you’ve always struggled to feel valued or appreciated by those around you, then you may have fallen into this trap as well. Once you’re in it, you may find it very difficult to start saying “no” when you’re feeling depleted, because you’re afraid that those who’ve grown to admire you may lose their high opinion of you.
5. You have difficulty establishing and defending boundaries.
If people have walked all over any boundaries you’ve tried to establish in the past, you might have decided that there’s no point in trying to create any new ones. After all, it’s not like they’re going to respect them anyway, right? Since you learned this terrible lesson early on, you may find it easier and less emotionally taxing to give in instead of dealing with other people’s anger and belligerence.
Unfortunately, a lot of people see someone else’s “no” as a challenge. Instead of respecting their response, they seek ways to circumvent the boundary like a puppy trying to find its way around a baby gate. This makes it difficult for people, especially emotionally sensitive ones, to defend themselves effectively.
Which ends up giving the oversteppers exactly what they wanted to begin with.
6. Formative or cultural conditioning taught you that being kind and saying “yes” was top priority.
A lot of people, particularly women, are raised to believe that serving others and putting their own needs last is a sign of true kindness and nobility. To do otherwise is labeled as selfish and condemned as an antisocial or ugly behavior that may bring shame to their family and/or community. It may not even be overt. Even the more subtle “good girl” rhetoric that still permeates our society by encouraging compliance and excessive kindness has a lot to answer for.
This type of conditioning may have also glorified self-martyrdom. For example, you may have grown up in a culture or religious environment that emphasized the importance of self-sacrifice and admired those who worked themselves to death, taking care of others and ignoring their own needs.
7. You hope that if you’re kind and generous to others, they’ll reciprocate.
This type of people-pleasing is an ingratiating behavior that some people take part in as an attempt to manipulate situations to their benefit. It may not be malicious, but instead may display a type of hopefulness on their part that may never come to fruition.
For example, someone may do kind things and agree to do all kinds of favors for a person they’d like to date, or an employee may tolerate mistreatment from their boss and work unpaid overtime in an attempt to ingratiate themselves. Their rationale is that if they do a good enough job, their boss will recognize their efforts and reward them accordingly. But there are many other ways to get in someone’s good books without resorting to people pleasing. Behavior like this often stems from childhood experiences in which they were rewarded highly for receiving good grades or doing things that made others happy.
8. You’re hypersensitive to guilt trips.
If you spent a long time being subjected to guilt trips and emotional manipulation, you may have ended up a people pleaser in an attempt to avoid being on the receiving end of that kind of behavior. Furthermore, you may have developed a hypersensitivity to guilt and may feel responsible for maintaining other people’s physical and emotional well-being, even if that isn’t your role at all.
Others may use this sensitivity to their advantage and have learned exactly what to say to spike your anxiety and manipulate you into doing exactly what they want. They know full well that you can’t set boundaries without feeling guilty or that you can’t bear the weight of guilt and grief that may come from disappointing them, so they come out as winners at your expense.
9. You fear that saying no will potentially limit your future opportunities.
People who have experienced periods of instability or loneliness tend to do things that will prevent them from experiencing that kind of unpleasantness again. You may have developed people-pleasing behaviors and refrained from standing up for yourself because you don’t want to burn any bridges.
In your mind, saying “no” or defending your boundaries may sabotage future opportunities, whether professional or romantic, even if they’re associated with someone who mistreats you. As such, you’d rather smile and say “thank you” when kicked on the off chance that you may benefit from grovelling sometime down the road.
Final thoughts…
Once you become aware of the motivations behind your actions, you have a good idea of how to start changing them and stop being a people pleaser. What’s important to be aware of here is that you will experience pushback from those who have grown accustomed to your acquiescence, and this pushback may be unpleasant or even abusive at times. If you don’t know how to start undoing this behavior on your own, consider working with a therapist who can help you unpack where it all came from and teach you how to become more assertive with boundaries and saying “no”.
