Destroying the People-Pleasing Mentality
A Long Road to Recovery
About six months ago, I wrote a piece related to people-pleasing tendencies. I talked about how I had done self-reflection and was starting to understand why I was struggling with people-pleasing. I wrote that piece thinking that that was going to be the last time I’d talk about people-pleasing. Yet, here we are.
I’ve come to learn after spending an hour sobbing in bed, that I am still struggling with people-pleasing issues. It wasn’t a tendency or habit six months ago, it is a personality issue that has yet to be fully addressed, that’s wreaking chaos in my life.
As I waited in bed, hoping that my family would come and comfort me (maybe if I sob loud enough someone will hear) I started to slip into deep, dark thoughts. I hate myself, why did God make me this way, I will never be a good Christian, I HATE MYSELF. I’ve never been one to contemplate suicide but if I was, it would have been in that moment. I was completely defeated and an emotional wreck (if that wasn’t already clear enough).
Realizing that I was being really dramatic, I pulled up my metaphorical pants and crawled out of bed. Wallowing wasn’t getting me anywhere. I had to address the problem at its core. So I opened my laptop and started doing some research on how to stop being a people-pleaser.
Before I dive into my findings, I want to talk about where people-pleasing comes from and how it can be diagnosed.
Are You a People Pleaser?
One of my favorite psychological recourses is Psychology Today. They have a mass database of psychologists who write about things like this from a very scientific, and sometimes personal perspective.
On the Outside
People pleasers often have the following attributes:
Organized
Easily liked
Appeasers
Generous with their time and energy
Loyal
Readily accomodating
Joyful all the time
Now, just because someone might have one or several of these attributes, does not automatically mean they are a people-pleaser. Many of these attributes are inherently positive, however, there are ones like “readily accomodating” that are particularly deceiving as being good when in fact they do more damage than help, especially when paired with the following “internal” attributes (listed below).
What Is Happening on the Inside
While the outside appears to be a well put together person, they perhaps are feeling this way on the inside:
Fear of failure or rejection, or losing approval
Self-denial and denial of problems
Ignoring personal needs and rights
Loneliness and isolation
Excessively concerned about satisfying or appeasing others
Insecure about personal abilities
Emotional exhaustion from trying to be “good enough”
Easily falling apart under pressure
Just because someone might be struggling with people-pleasing tendencies, does not mean that their motive is always to please people. For someone like me, there are times where I aim to appease people in order to stay out of conflict or have them approve of me. Typically it’s when they approach me for something and you can quickly pick up on my hesitation as I weigh whether it’s worth the conflict or to just do what appeases them. That would be my people-pleasing tendencies. But when my motive is simply to glorify God, to be a good person/Christian/etc, or to be a good friend, I am acting genuinely, generously, and not in a people-pleasing way. It’s the matter of being able to spot when and where your motives shift to people-pleasing and learning how to stop that shift.
People-pleasers grow up, unable to validate themselves, relying on the validation of others. They develop behaviors that only inflate their people-pleasing problems. (The following list is abridged by Seltzer from the following article)
- Loss of integrity, identity, self-respect, and self-esteem
- Constant self-criticism and self-belittlement
- Nagging sense of guilt and shame about not really being “good enough” for others
- Chronic insecurities in personal interactions (for they’re feeling okay is so conditional and dependent on others’ approval)
- Inability to sustain healthy relationships with healthy boundaries
- Inability to trust, accept or perceive as heartfelt others’ kindness or positive feedback
- Difficulty or inability to manage, lead or supervise others (for fear of offending — or displeasing — them)
- Inability to effectively control their time, whether at work or at home (mainly because of problems saying no to others’ requests)
- Inability to stay with or accomplish personal goals (because they’re not a high-enough priority for themselves)
- Inability to make decisions
- Burnout, whether at work, home, or both (partly because people-pleasers don’t know how to relax — or don’t feel they can let themselves relax — and partly because they’re forever driven to prove their worth to others, such that not constantly doing something triggers in them anxiety or guilt)
Now that we’ve got that all out of the way, let’s dive into the origins of people-pleasing.
The Origins of People Pleasing
From a young age, children learn to submit themselves to their parents’ wishes. People-pleasing starts to manifest when a child begins to internalize their parents’ reactions. When a child does not do what the parent wishes and a parent withholds support, attention, or encouragement, the child experiences a certain level of discomfort that triggers a feeling of rejection or abandonment. This instills in the child a need to avoid that discomfort, therefore avoid conflict with the parents.
As the child grows older, they struggle with differentiating between abandonment and parental disapproval. They start to sacrifice their individualism as they become more dependent on their parents for their security and identity.
“The longing to feel secure, prompting behaviors of compliance and conformity, necessarily had to prevail over the not-quite-so powerful yearning to hold onto their true selves.” (Seltzer 2008)
Some children can’t seem to figure out how to please their parents, so instead (based on the child’s temperament) may swing the other way and end up depressed or angry-defiant, becoming rebellious. (That’s a whole ‘nother blog post in itself).
For parents, you might feel this is no consolation for you like it’s all your fault for your children having personality dysfunctions. However, there is a certain element of luck (or in this case, misfortune) that leads to a child developing into a people-pleaser. If a parent can understand their own parenting style and personality flaws though, they can help prevent their children from internalizing issues that manifest into personality problems and disorders.
This is but no means perfect advice, as I am not a parent myself, but I have done some research so I wanted. toput together a list of things that could help.
Reminding Children (Often) that They Are Created in God’s Image
One thing I think would have helped me is to have been reminded more often by my parents that God loves me, no matter what, and then to have been shown how to love myself.
Parents aren’t capable of being checked in and engaged with their kids 24/7. I think it’s pretty much impossible. But it’s important that kids are reminded that God loves them and will never abandon them. It instills a sense of security in God that is much healthier than co-dependency on their parents, who are humans dealing with their own set of problems.
Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep
This is the quickest way to betray the trust of our children, triggering a reaction of fear of abandonment or rejection. It doesn’t always manifest into people-pleasing, but it definitely makes a child question what they must have done wrong for their parents to break a promise, which can lead to self-esteem problems.
Don’t Pretend Like You Know Everything
I think many parents play the “I’m right because I said so” game because they want their kids to respect them. I think that kids are more likely to respect their parents especially as they grow older, knowing that their parents are open about what they don’t know. Rather than pretending like they know everything, being open about the limits of a person’s knowledge and reaffirming a child through “why don’t I look into that and then I’ll let you know,” encourages a child to be curious and intuitive, rather than painting an unrealistic image of the parent as being all-knowing.
Try To Control Your Anger
Discipline is part of how a child learns right from wrong, however, when a parent gets visibly, physically angry, it can have adverse effects on a child. Growing up, my dad was always really quick to anger and get worked up over things, often times the anger was coming from a place that had nothing to do with the topic/conversation/argument at hand, but was in fact from bottled up emotions or personal frustration. Regardless, he would take it out on us kids, and as kids, we couldn’t tell the difference. Because the anger was unpredictable, we felt the need to tiptoe around dad when he was especially angry on certain days, which only made him angrier because we were trying to “appease him” and not actually learning our lesson.
I think it’s important to be emotionally honest with your kids, and it’s also natural to have undealt with feelings that are brewing inside. We can’t always be perfectly composed all the time around our kids, especially when we live with them. But we are expected to try our best to control our emotions when disciplining our children.
Let it Go
Some personality types (cough cough, me) make for borderline terrible parenting types. I can be very controlling, because when I am not in control of a situation, I feel helpless and vulnerable, which can make me feel belittled or not good enough.
Controlling parents tend to be really nitpicky about their children’s behavior, which doesn’t give their children much room to learn and grow on their own. It feeds a co-dependency mentality, which instills a child’s dependency on the parent or parents for their security, safety, and identity. This can lead to deeply rooted people-pleasing issues.
“Typically having unresolved issues with controlling parents, they can themselves be attracted to dominating, manipulative people — people, ironically, who are perfectly suited to perpetuate old patterns of parental abuse.” (Setlzer 2008)
How to Stop Being a People-Pleaser
Ok, so now we get to the good part. Sigh, most of this blog feels a lot like sad news, am I right?
The path to ending people-pleasing behavior isn’t an easy one. Six months ago, I thought it was. Boy was I naive. So you have to be prepared that this isn’t going to be some monumental overnight change, especially if your people-pleasing tendencies are deeply rooted.
Cut the Ties
Early adopted people-pleasing typically has deeply rooted ties to survival, either regarding oneself or the family. Those ties have to be cut. Your survival and the survival of your family does not depend on whether or not people approve of you.
Stop and ask yourself, does this truly threaten me?
The answer is almost always no. Like, literally 100% of the time. I can’t think of an instance where you choosing between being true to yourself vs. sacrificing to people-please is life-threatening. And even if there was an instance, you must place yourself higher and learn to truly love yourself, because nothing is worth sacrificing who you are. God made you, you. Don’t be so quick to give that uniqueness and specialness up.
Do Not Be Afraid
Fear is something that is innate within us, but it can often be attributed to things that are not actually life-threatening. Fear can have ties to social situations, status, self-image, and popularity which produces anxiety, depression, and people-pleasing, amongst other personality issues. Part of breaking up unnecessary fears is being honest with yourself and having a firm foundation that you can build your self-worth and image upon. And what better to build on than God’s grace?
When you build that foundation on God, you also have to honor that foundation. In John 12:41–43, it is written that even after many people saw Jesus perform miracles, they could not profess their belief “for they loved the glory that comes from man, more than the glory that comes from God.” That firm foundation of grace and love from God is a blessing that should not be squandered. It’s a perpetual promise to accept you for you, regardless of you mistakes or flaws. It should be respected and served whole-heartedly, as well as defended and professed. You cannot please man and God.
Build Your Foundation on Solid Ground
“They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:8)
Rooted in a relationship to God, someone who is constant, never breaks His promises and loves us beyond all our mistakes and sins, we can rely on our validation from an overflowing source that can never be taken away from us. Like a tree planted near a lake, it draws it’s water from the lake and doesn’t rely on the rain to come and supply it with sustenance to bear fruit and survive. We don’t have to rely on people’s opinions of us in order to thrive.
You Don’t Owe Anyone, Anything
You have to be careful not to take this one to the extreme. Obviously, if you make a deal with somebody or a promise, you are expected to uphold your end of the agreement respectfully. However, in daily life, you are not obligated to:
fix anyone’s problems
make anyone happy
change yourself to avoid conflict
be silent about your rights
Fix Who You Serve
I wrote this whole blog post here about what it means to serve something bigger than ourselves because we have an innate desire to obtain an unconditional love that surpasses our brokenness, flaws and imperfections. As a people-pleaser, you mistake that unconditional love as being “liked” by others, so it’s a constant chase after the approval and validation of others that never leads to the unconditional love we need.
Like building your foundation on solid ground (God) you serve that foundation in order for it to function for you. By serving God, you don’t have room to chase after serving others, and you are met with that unconditional love that you desire.
Remember Who Gives You Your Identity and Worth
You will be faced with naysayers and bullies your entire life. In fact, people-pleasers are more likely to attract bullies and dominant, controlling personality types. Exciting news, huh?
Like Jesus, as Christians, we are expected to face opposition, especially of the antagonistic kind. Just being human guarantees us that we will be faced with conflict and opposition from others. They say that the first step to wisdom is fearing God, not man. I didn’t know what that meant until I put two and two together. Fearing man means we serve man. Fearing God means we serve God. Fear carries a certain level of awe or reverence over something that we believe has power over us and our life. If we fear man, we do not fear God. Between the two, I would rather fear an all-powerful, Creator than mankind. God is capable of so much more than man is.
With that, God gives us our identity and worth, through the foundation we’ve begun to build on his Grace and love for us. If God is who we fear and revere, wouldn’t we also be inclined to have confidence in our worth if it’s defined by God Himself? 2 Corinthians 10:29–31 talks about how God values even the lowliest of creatures, he’s even numbered the hairs on our head. If He values even that, how much more must He value us! THAT should determine our worth, which trumps any need to find validation or approval from others, negating and destroying any people-pleasing mentality.