Breaking the people pleasing cycle

Dr Jo Leather is a Psychotherapist and EMDR practitioner working in Manchester, UK and online.

One of the most common things my clients want to work on is changing their pattern of people pleasing.

People pleasing can look like:

·      over-functioning

·      always putting yourself last

·      never meeting your own needs

·      avoiding conflict

I have found people pleasing to be especially common in anxious, care-giving, neurodivergent and/or ‘parentified’ clients.

Understanding the roots of people pleasing

Anxiety.

People pleasing can sometimes be connected to the reassurance seeking safety behaviours often found with Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). A common fear of clients who present with GAD is worrying about ‘people being mad at me.’  

Masking.

People pleasing can also sit with ‘masking’, one of the well-known strategies neurodivergent folk adopt to ‘fit in’ with societal norms.

Care-giving.

People pleasing is often associated with care-givers (parents, carers for poorly relatives, eldest sibling dynamics etc). For parents especially, people pleasing  can be driven by an ‘I’m never enough’ parenting guilt.

Parentification.

People pleasing can also be found in adults who grew up in unstable childhood circumstances where their roles were reversed with the adults in the family. This can happen within abuse or neglect settings, or within other vulnerabilities such as parental addiction/illness. If you’ve grown up walking on eggshells, your nervous system learned as a child to tune into the emotions of others as a survival mechanism. As an adult, you may then be hypervigilant about the emotions of others.

A key therapeutic task will be learning that you are not now responsible for what other people feel.

What are the risks of people pleasing?

Never meeting your own needs is completely exhausting! People pleasers risk burn out which can impact all parts of their lives.

It can also ultimately lead to people pleasers feelings resentment towards the very people they have been trying to please – so it is completely counter-productive as a pattern.

Where does the work start?

Setting boundaries is an important part of healthy relationships. As adults, we can work on defining our own self-concept independently of thoughts and feelings of others. In therapy sessions, you can explore setting new boundaries (and then holding them) with your therapist.

Scenario

You get a message from a friend/family member/co-worker with a request that you do something for them that you don’t want to do. Your people pleasing instinct is kicking in strongly and you have an urge to accept...

What would it look like to not respond immediately while you consider your options?

Could you send a holding message saying “Let me think about if that can work for me. I’ll get back to you.”

This might feel strange as it’s a new pattern for you. But try not to confuse new with unsafe - they are not the same thing although your nervous system might get them confused...

Leaving somebody 'on read' for an hour isn't the worst thing in the world while you decide how to set your new boundary.

Making the changes

You may face initial resistance from others when you start implementing new boundaries. This may feel scary at first so remember this is ongoing work in progress. You can discuss your new feelings in your next therapy session…

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