Why Am I Such A People-Pleaser?
No doubt if you were drawn to read this, you may be identifying with being a chronic people pleaser.
☑️ You struggle saying “NO”
☑️ Buried under an endless to-do-list, and burnt out, exhausted.
☑️ Stuck in relationships where you give more than you get
That is just a few examples of a checklist for a people pleaser, and you may think, well now what? There are many different perspectives and dynamics here that come into play when it comes to the why we do this behavior or set of behaviors. The main component driving our inherent people pleasing ways, is a deep unconscious fear of rejection or abandonment.
Emotion always drives our behaviors, and in this case fear is keeping you stuck in the cycle of people pleasing.
Commonly, you’ll see people pleasing along with one or more of these traits:
-low self-esteem
-overachievement
-strong need for control
-type A personality style
I personally identified with all of the above, how about you? I people-pleased to a fault, and most often at my own expense. I betrayed myself, I over sacrificed myself to burnout, lived in anxiousness over what others thought of me, and it consumed most of my thoughts. I believed I had to make everything look perfect, my kids, my home, myself, my relationship, and if I didn’t I was worried what others would think of me. I was worried I would be rejected, judged, or forgotten. I was trapped in a vicious cycle of needing to control everything on the outside, because deep down I feared being rejected and abandoned. This fear was unconscious, meaning I wasn’t even aware that I did this behavior because of my fear.
So, this leads us to the why… Why was I such a people pleaser? Why are you a people pleaser?
Well, what it boils down to is people pleasers start off as parent pleasers. Mind blown? If this was a lightbulb moment for you, it is probably because it makes so much sense to you. It brings you back to your childhood, and remembering who you had to be to be accepted and loved, or who you thought you had to be.
People pleasing behaviors evolve as a way to maintain connection and closeness with parents who are inconsistently available to their children. A lack of parental attunement is a big part of what causes people pleasing.
Many times, parents of people pleasers are too worried about their own troubles to tune in to what their children are feeling and thinking.
Or they may frequently mislabel or misinterpret their child’s signals and feelings.
People pleasing parents are often in a state of emotional overwhelm, leading their children to treat them carefully, as if they were fragile.
Sometimes these people pleaser children act more like the adult in the relationship, and take on a caregiving role towards their own parents.
In the end, the parent struggles to be emotionally connected and available to their child in a consistent way. The child picks up on this and moves to protect their parent and their feelings so the child can remain connected.
Thus, leading to the cycle of repeating this behavior throughout your childhood to now show up this way as the adult. It’s a behavior that we adapted to survive and deal with our environment at the time, but it doesn’t mean you have to continue to live this way in your adult life.
You get to take control over how you show up, and free yourself of the belief that you have to worry about others in an unhealthy, all consuming way. This is about unlearning the ways of the past, to learn new ways for your present. Your own mental well being and health depends on it.
Learn to love to say no and be okay with boundaries. I help women learn how to remove their people pleasing ways, and discover a new healthier way of living.
As always, thank you for being here with me,
