So I said 'yes' does that make me a people pleaser?

When I ask a client if they see themself as a people pleaser,  I usually get a resounding NO! Nobody wants to admit they are a people pleaser and it's clear that this behavior is seen as negative. Here's an example: 

Angela is a 33 year-old, graphic designer. She is hard-working, a team player, and a skilled designer. She is dependable and caring to her colleagues at work as well as friends and family. She is usually busy helping others and prides herself on being there for others. Recently, she noticed a growing sense of dissatisfaction and feeling emptiness after spending time with her friends or family.

In the therapy process, Angela talks about how her friends, family, and co-workers aren’t there for her like she is for them. She begins to admit to herself that she feels unappreciated and alone. Finally, she is surprised to discover anger and resentment.

Angela is a people-pleaser. She goes out of her way to be helpful. She says “yes” so people will like her and focuses on things she can do to gain approval and avoid disappointing anyone.

In the safety of the therapeutic relationship, she is able to see the truth about feeling empty and alone despite having many friends and family: they lack genuine caring and depth of connection. Over time, resentment has built up around feeling unappreciated, and even, used. And now, Angela is tense in her interactions with friends and family, which amplifies the sense of disconnection. 

Angela learned to become a people pleaser when she was a little girl. She learned by being useful and meeting others expectations, she received attention, approval, and love. She was dutiful in helping their parents with household chores and errands, performing tasks in the classroom to aid their teachers, and eagerly agreed to do her friends’ homework. Not only that, approval, acceptance, and love were actively withheld if she did not meet expectations or tried to ask for something for herself. Angela started believing she was not lovable or good enough just as she was and her needs were not important as long as others were happy. 

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The Cost of People Pleasing
Some people pleasers deny their people pleasing behavior. They defend their selflessness and caring as noble. They chase away any suggestions that there are adverse impacts to their mental and emotional well-being. Yet, their symptoms — feeling dissatisfied, unhappy, unappreciated, alone, empty, tense, and resentful — clearly point to the personal costs: 

• Diminished Self-Worth: Constantly seeking validation from others erodes self-esteem; self-worth is dependent on external opinions and praise.
• Negative Beliefs: Diminished self-worth connects to beliefs like “I’m not lovable” and “I don’t deserve love”. 
• Exhaustion: People pleasers overextend themselves, saying “yes” to others means more work and responsibilities resulting in chronic stress, burnout, and illness. 
• Inauthentic Self: Focusing on others and ignoring own needs, means adopting others’ beliefs and not knowing own values, thoughts, and passions; not knowing your Self.

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Changing People Pleasing Behavior 
Therapy can help you recover from people pleasing behavior. You have spent a lifetime being a people pleaser and bypassing your own needs. It will take time, patience, commitment, and effort to change. You will need curiosity and empathy to change. Attuning to yourself and asserting your needs is not selfish; it’s an essential step towards building authentic, deeper, fulfilling, and joyful relationships with others and yourself.

People develop a sense of self, heal, and change in relationship with someone who is available, empathic and attuned to them. The experience of being in a compassionate, kind, and authentic relationship with a therapist provides a path to understanding the roots of people pleasing behavior. The therapy space is a non-judgmental and nurturing space to experience new ways of relating without taking care of the other person in the room. The therapy relationship itself changes the people pleasing behavior. 

Changing people pleasing behavior requires a gradual shifting in your internal landscape. 

• Self-Reflection: making space to be curios about what feels true inside. Identifying and articulating own values, beliefs, desires, and needs.  
• Practicing Self-Compassion: cultivating an attitude of kindness and understanding towards yourself. Acknowledging you have needs like everyone else. Gently observing and having compassion for the inner part that is critical and judgmental, that says it selfish and self-indulgent to think about your own needs.  
• Setting Boundaries: With self-reflection and self-compassion, you can slow down the automatic impulse to say “yes” so there is space to hear the inner part that wants to say “no”. Practicing saying no, expressing desires and asserting needs.
• Challenge and Change Beliefs: noticing the inner part that anxiously says: “if I say no my friends won’t like me and stop being my friend.” Self-compassion will help ground the anxiety, so you can be more curious about the beliefs that underlie your people pleasing behavior. Gently exploring the belief that you don’t deserve love and you are not lovable and notion that your worth is contingent upon the approval or opinions of others. Replacing these negative beliefs with “I am lovable” and “I deserve love for just being me.”