5 Steps To Heal From People Pleasing Syndrome
1.Practice saying no — 2. Stop offering advice or doing things — 3. Turn to internal reassurance — 4. Stop apologizing — 5. Do something for yourself.
People pleasing is a disease as Oprah reminds it often. Therapist, psychologist, and author, Virginia Satir defines people pleasers (PP) as follow:
“A people pleasers often feels that they have no value except for what they can do or be for another person.” A universally accepted definition of a people pleasers is “a person who has an emotional need to please others, often at the expense of his or her own needs or desires”.
In an article published in psychology today in 2018 by Leon F Seltzer Ph.D., few characteristics of people pleasers are enumarated:
PP are like “chameleons, who endeavor to blend in, to be as much as possible like whomever they’re with. They usually have 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. Regarding their value in life as based on their value to others, people-pleasers — so adept at nurturing those around them — literally don’t know how to nurture themselves. And because safeguarding relationships is the way they’ve learned to bolster their fragile egos, they’re unable to recognize that the ultimate cost of devoting themselves to the welfare of others is nothing less than sacrificing their own selfhood. Viewing their worth and personal security as totally hanging on pleasing or placating others, they end up forgetting who they are and what they themselves need to feel fulfilled”.
…the ultimate cost of devoting themselves to the welfare of others is nothing less than sacrificing their own selfhood — Leon F Seltzer Ph.D.
Roots of people pleasing
1. Need for belonging, approval and external validation
Usually the PP have the belief that they need to please others, understand others and anticipate other people’s needs in order to be included. They use that personality (biased) trait to strive to be approved and feel validated.
2. Need for the feeling of indispensability
Most PP like to feel useful. They appreciate the fact that they are indispensable to a task, a mission, a goal and to a person. It is therefore by aiming to keep on the pleasing game that they believe this will secure their indispensability towards for example a work situation or a relationship.
3. Family heritage
People Pleasing Disease can be genetic. If the family or the environment’s culture you find yourself in is to please others, to be in the service of others, to self sacrifice etc., chances are that these values will be passed on from generations to generations. And all this in the common unconsciousness of the eventual consequences of such practice.
Consequences of people pleasing syndrome
1. People pleasing can lead to a disconnection with the inner self
I think I was born a PP. Something that may have been passed on from generations to generations. I grew up in a family where our main concern is to be sure that everyone is having a good time in our company, that our guests home are the most comfortable and that they are enjoying themselves — which is honorable, we are just practicing hospitality, welcoming to the fullest our guests. I think if there was a hospitality context, my family would be among the winners (one love fam’).
So yes, I grew up making sure everyone feels good and comfortable in my company than learning to take care of how I felt or what I really wanted. How nonsense is that? I mean why should I be responsible of how anyone’s feels if I don’t even know how to be responsible of how I feel? Highway straight to emotional fucked up individuals. Yes because you think you know how other people feel when you don’t even know how you feel yourself! And most of the time you get it wrong because the emotional guessing game is a dangerous one. You can never guess 100% right how the other person feels. The only thing you have higher probability figuring out is how you truly feel — and that’s already a challenging one sometimes. Heading in that guessing game of how everyone else feels leads one to miss out the real game: the one of figuring out one’s own emotions and cultivating the power to understand and regulate them.
2. People pleasing can result in resentment, anger and aggressiveness
PP usually do things or say nice things that no one expect them to. They do what is called in psychology “emotion monitoring”. It is the tendency to continually monitor the emotional states of others, while sacrificing attunement to one’s own emotional states. These are also common traits to empathetic personalities, who often have in parallel that need to please others by the fact that they easily capture (or think they do) other people’s emotions. The other side of the coin is that PP can end up developing feelings of resentment because they have the feeling that no one truly manage to understand them (at least not as much as they think they understand others). That accumulation of frustration can often result in anger and aggressive behaviors.
So how to start the journey to healing from this harmful emotional disease?
Here bellow few steps. These are of course a starting point, the practice of awareness and meeting each behavior with understanding can be of a life journey.
5 steps to heal from the PPS (People Pleasing Syndrome):
1. Practice saying “No.”
When you practice this, don’t legitimize the “No” with all of the reasons why you’re saying “No.” That shows ambivalence. Just be firm, and kindly say, “No.”
2. Stop offering advice or doing things (unless specifically asked)
This is very hard for people who like to anticipate what other people want or need. Use restraint and wait to be asked. If someone is “downloading” to you instead of offering advice, try to validate their feelings.
3. Turn to internal reassurance.
Remind yourself about your positive qualities instead of waiting for others to do it. Reflect on your day and give yourself positive feedback.
4. Stop apologizing.
Work hard to stop saying, “I’m sorry.” Even though you may mean well, the words demonstrate a lack of confidence. But it goes without saying that if you’re responsible of any misbehavior or else, the apologies still have their role to play.
5. Do something for yourself.
Instead of waiting or expecting other people to do nice things for you, do something nice for yourself. Put yourself first. Treat yourself to whatever pleases you. And that’s not selfish, it’s self love.
“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others.
Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval.
Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.” — Lao Tzu
And finally, people pleasing is a biased behavior/personality trait, because no matter how hard you try, you cannot fully understand and thus please another human being. It is indeed safer and healthier for one’s to go on the journey of learning to understand and please oneself instead. An interesting correlative notion to look deeper into would be self sufficiency: a post coming soon about this topic… Stay tuned. And meanwhile take good care.
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References:
“The Disease To Please: Curing the People Pleasing Syndrome,” by Harriet B. Braiker, Ph.D, 2002
“How Does People Pleasing Negatively Affect your Mental Health by Reina Gattuso, www.talkspace.com, 8/9/2018