Potential Causes
Finding out where the excessive need to please others come from could be a good first step on your journey to recover from people pleasing.
Trauma
People pleasing may have started out as a trauma response. Many of you likely heard about the fight or flight responses to traumatic events. Some of you could have also heard about the freeze response. Have you heard of the fawn response? Fawn is a trauma response, when a person learns to be cooperative or to meet the needs of others to survive. Like fight, flight or freeze, fawn is an unconscious conditioning that occurs due to experiences of traumatic events and our responses to survive to them. Our brains are wise, they decide during times of danger which of these responses will get us to survive with the least amount of harm. If fawn was your response to past trauma that allowed you to survive, it may also become a second nature to you. Great news is, our brains have neuroplasticity and rewiring it is possible. So just because this has been your automated response so far does not mean it is your life sentence.
Family/ Society
You might have had a caregiver who consistently prioritized others' needs over their own, often sacrificing their own well-being and perhaps at times even yours. Their people pleasing behaviors may have been admired by those around them or it may have kept them safe, reinforcing the idea in your mind that putting oneself last is a virtue.
Alternatively, you might have had a parent or parents who placed emotional expectations on you that were unrealistic for your age. For example, your caregivers may have expected you to act as a mediator during their marital conflicts.You may have felt that you were responsible for the communication between two adults even though you were just a child. Or you may have felt that you had to navigate an adult’s feelings finding yourself as the emotional caregiver of your actual caregiver. Perhaps, you felt responsible for fixing your others’ moods and even got praised or rewarded when you could.
There may also be cultural reasons that may lead you to believe that saying no to others or disagreeing with others is rude or putting self before others is selfish. There may also be a gender component to it. In many communities, women are expected to be nurturing, empathetic and collaborative. While these are wonderful qualities, at times the expectations of these qualities could weigh heavy during times of conflict.
Potential Costs
It is a good idea to spend some time to understand the potential impact people pleasing or conflict avoidance may have on your life. This could allow you to have a stronger commitment to recovery as you would have a clear why. Here are two potential costs:
Loss of Authenticity
If you act out of fear of others’ reactions, instead of your own values and desires, you may lose who you are or who you want to be. If you consistently say yes to things that you do not want to do, or agree on things you do not actually agree with, you may create a misperception of who you actually are to people you are in relations with. Your relationships, your friendships may not be genuine. Your loved ones may not know of your needs. You may feel resentful to a point where you may avoid your loved ones or out of characteristically lash out on them. Your self-worth gets determined by how much you meet other people’s needs or validation.
Loss of Resources
We all have limited resources including of our time and energy. Replaying conversations in your minds and worrying excessively about how others might have reacted to what you said or did would be such a poor use of time. Instead of using your mental energy to focus on solutions, or enjoying the moment you are in, you could get caught up in unproductive, relentless and anxiety provoking thoughts. Such people pleasing would also cause stress in your life. Chronic and excessive stress could lead to poor quality of life, lower cognitive functioning, sleep disturbance and even to physical health problems.
You deserve to have genuine and deep relations, be your authentic self and have more time and energy. If you believe, people pleasing is holding you back, I encourage you to reflect on its impact on your life and see if this is an area where you need to commit to for personal growth. If you are interested in learning more about strategies to overcome people pleasing such restructuring of core beliefs, please check out next week’s post. If you would like to talk to a counsellor about people pleasing, please book an appointment by clicking the below button.