Are you a people pleaser?
Greetings, kindred spirit!
There seems to be a subset of people who identify this way. When we find one another, we give each other the secret wink. That understanding. The pain. The torture, sometimes. Trapped inside this personality with a mind of its own brings great anguish. Ever conforming to the needs and wants of those surrounding you. And nonstop battling the inner RAGE of resentment. Failing to figure out how to squeeze in your own needs. Without your needs coming into conflict with the people you care about or even met yesterday.
After all, other people come first. That’s the hierarchy of people pleasing. The order of things. The way we organize our daily schedule and time. Kids first. Teachers first. Our spouse’s doctors scheduling needs first. Then catch a quick chance to exhale. For one. Brief. Second.
Who perpetuated this MADNESS?
I felt trapped. A victim. Oh man. Pages of my paradigm shifts have rendezvoused back to this origin point. Powerlessness. Lacking autonomy or choice. Stuck.
Blah, blah, blah.
Because of my insatiable curiosity, paradigm shifts strike me like lightning-bolt-epiphanies. To me, there’s nothing more exciting than unlocking a closed door. Peering through a portal into my subconscious. Sneaking a peek into how my mysterious inner core operates. When I faced the truth about my people pleasing, I imagined standing on the edge of an abyss my entire life. Struggling to keep balance because any moment I could slip and fall to my DEATH. Then I unlocked this new puzzle piece. It’s like someone walked up to me, rotated me 180 degrees and brought me to safety. The entire world opened WIDE, and I no longer peered down into the abyss. Now, I contemplated the vast and BEAUTIFUL creation. The wide world still equaled a mighty jungle. Yet, I obtained a new authority and permission to explore based on what I wanted. Not filtered through a series of beliefs resting upon how others regarded me.
Let me explain how this works in my mind. Let’s start somewhere obvious. Let’s discuss clothing. I grab a shirt. First thoughts: Will others like my shirt? Will women find me attractive? Will men find me intimidating? If I prefer the shirt and believe it will enhance my looks, I imagine people reacting. I IMAGINE a woman desiring me. Then my soul smiles. Now I’m accepted, appreciated, validated and wanted. My brain shoots out a dollop of dopamine, the chocolate frosting of brain chemicals.
Let’s try again. I’m walking toward the front door of Panera bread at the same moment someone else does. I grab the door. I hold the door open. They drop a thankful nod. I ask myself: Do they think I’m a good person? Yes, whispers my inner reply. Now I’m accepted, appreciated, validated and wanted.
One more time, repetition for emphasis. I’m driving my car down the freeway. I turn on my blinker but realize someone else wants to change into the same lane. I slow down and yield. I want this stranger to believe I’m a yielding, respectful, patient person. I provide the right of way. I tell myself I’m accepted, appreciated, validated and wanted.
Need I continue?
Listen up! EVERYTHING I do, think, and say filters through how someone else might perceive me. I default to the option resulting in pleasing the actual or potential person. And when I make this choice, my brain rewards me with feel good chemicals.
Okay, easy part over. The previous scenarios are WIN-WIN situations. Let’s examine a negative example. My friend calls to request a favor. My kneejerk reaction? YES! Not, ‘okay let me check my schedule and get back to you,’ or ‘I’ll consider it,’ or anything. My default answer: YES!
Disconnect the call. I reflect on the time and effort involved in the task I agreed to with cheerful acceptance. I groan. Now I must sacrifice one of my needs/wants. Grr. Who hijacked my brain? Why did my mouth say YES when my heart’s screaming NO?
Resentment. Anger. Frustration. Negative energy. Defeated. Victim. Pathetic.
I could list more negative emotions. If you’re a people pleaser, then you create your own recipe of looping mental code. The bottom line looks this way. My ingrained program is to please others. When I put their needs ABOVE mine it results in incongruent behavior. I repeated my story about my permanent wiring THOUSANDS of times. I’m giving. I’m happy. Yet, not so deep below the surface, betrayal simmered. Betrayal of my own SELF. I observed the truth. The answer originated from my mouth and body. I agreed to the thing creating my disagreeable state. So, feeling anger or resentment toward my friend held no tangible LOGIC. Why get mad and point blame back at me? This revealed how I came wired, right?
For all my non-sci-fi geeks out there (which is a significant amount) I will relate a quick story. Isaac Asimov invented “good robots.” In his stories, he created the Three Laws of Robotics. Engineers embedded this law into every line of code within the robot. A program to prevent the more powerful creation from hurting its creator. These are the three laws:
-The first law is that a robot will not harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm. The second law is that a robot will obey any instruction given to it by a human. The third law is a robot will avoid actions or situations that could cause it to come to harm itself.-
Take notice. Every single line of code reminded the robot of this immutable FACT. ANY other human outranked and through automatic default elevated SUPERIOR. Place a ROBOT and a HUMAN on the scale of equality. The human—no matter what choices it made in life—ALWAYS equaled a higher value.
Isaac Asimov understood people pleasers. Notice the parallel? Every thought. Every behavior. Every action. Every reaction. They first filter through this worldview. On the scales of equality, the person opposite me defaults to greater value. The things those people say or do is always MORE important than anything I say or do. When requested to do or be something, I ALWAYS comply. Noncompliance is NOT an option.
Who perpetuated this madness? Who programmed me this way?
Well, in a way, we ALL are programmed this way. Helpless infants dependent on our parents for YEARS. Dependent for love, acceptance, survival and thriving growth. We’re programmed to default to our parent’s or guardian’s whims and wishes. To our child mind, this is life and death. We LACK capacity to defy their demands with any clear strategy.
Now, most kids grow through and out of this, learning to rebel and exercise their freewill. They transform into their own free moral agent. Harnessing their individual POWER to choose for themselves how to live their life.
Yet, what happened to us people pleasers?
My nuanced code of people pleasing sprang from survival mechanisms. Stories I developed early and continued to reinforce through repeated childhood experiences. I recall a vivid true story which highlights my conscious decision to people please. I became the victim of bullying around eleven years old. I used to wield a loud, sarcastic mouth. A normal child’s attempt to express individuality. I ticked off three bullies. Cornering me at school, one bully PUNCHED my face.
That incident etched a deep scarring lesson into my mind. Proving stronger than everyone is IMPOSSIBLE. Yet I can resolve conflict smarter. And channel my intelligence into winning via people persuasion. When people are friends, they’ll refrain from PUNCHING me.
Brilliant insight for an eleven-year-old.
Terrible life plan for a 46-year-old.
Have I created clarity how adults stay children? We fail to dig DEEP enough. We operate on programmed scripts. Endless debate surrounding how or why the script exists matters not. Was it my parents’ fault? Was it my teachers’ fault? Was it my classmates’ fault? Why did my eleven-year-old-self FAIL to ask for help to provide a better path? Today, I’m able to examine the nuances, the options, and the possibilities. I avoid telling myself such a life-defining ultimatum story. A simplistic story. Telling myself I must please everyone and make everyone HAPPY. I must ensure no one ever punches me because that HURTS!
Ah. Avoiding PAIN. Yes. The evil, evil PAIN. We’ll blow up the entire planet to avoid pain. Let’s make global warming worse because it requires too much PAIN to stop.
Humanity gulp.
Empowerment. My therapist called it empowerment. The moment the blinding scales lifted, and I beheld the glaring TRUTH. Filtering my mental code prompting my actions, thoughts and beliefs. Seeping through this self-manufactured lens of how people react or behold me. It fueled intense resentment. My body, my unconscious mind, it knew what I needed and wanted. But my maladaptive personality kept honoring the words and wishes of others above my own. And I’ve grown too OLD and WISE to believe what my eleven-year-old-self believed. My survival doesn’t depend on what other people think of me.
Atlas shrugs.
Neo observes the bullets can no longer harm him.
Dorothy spots the man behind the curtain.
The most fascinating part is my brain continued to reward itself. Not based on reality but based on an IMAGINED reality. The simple act of imagining I’ve pleased a phantom person in my mind provided a dopamine boost. I needn’t DO ANYTHING. I go to the gym. I lift weights and work out. I imagined other people are looking at my body and approving. It made me feel great.
No one said a word!
Everything transpired within my mind. I found the mental shortcut for my desired result. My mind created stories for other people’s expectations to please them. Based on the fantasy alone, I’d feel so accomplished, so valued, so appreciated.
Imagine it this way: You’re sitting on the couch. You need your power plugged into the wall for your laptop. Your outstretched hand fails to reach. So, you always ask someone else to plug it in for you. And then one day, someone tells you, “Hey. You can reach it yourself. Stretch a little farther.” With enormous effort you stretch. You realize you no longer need other people to connect. You plugged in the power by yourself.
That’s empowerment.
People pleasers. We’re programmed to believe the lie, the false story. To function. To survive. To feel happy. We MUST PLEASE OTHERS. It’s the ONLY way to live.
Now we’ve tasted the truth. When we use mindfulness to pay attention to our own thoughts. When we use NLP to understand how to SEE those thoughts. And choose different lines of code for processing perceived reality. When we use cognitive therapy to challenge entrenched beliefs. Beliefs encoded when we were children. We’re then gifted the priceless cheat codes to the kingdom of our own life.
Empowerment. We plug into our own power and stop waiting for others to tell us, “Good job.”
I’ve heard the expression: Don’t Wait for Permission. And now I know what it means. For years, I’ve held myself back from pursuing what I love. I trembled at how other people might perceive me. Will people JUDGE me? Will people ACCEPT me? Will people CONDEMN me?
Now the truth sparkles crystal clear. What others think becomes irrelevant. For real.
Those entrenched thoughts are the hidden handcuffs of people pleasing. All this time, we believed carrying-out what others wanted pleased THEM. Nope. NOT true. We’re doing it to tell ourselves: we’re accepted, appreciated, validated and wanted.
It’s not about THEM. It’s about US. But not about our true selves. A personality persona we adopted during childhood to SURVIVE.
It’s liberating and scary. I no longer need permission. All the perceptions, judgments, and fears rest within my own mind. For the first time, I care not what people think, because it TRULY doesn’t matter. What matters is what I THINK about what I choose to do. Guess what? MY thoughts arise equal in importance to YOUR thoughts. Not more, not less. The same.
“If I publish my book, what will people think? Will people accept it? Will people hate it? How will people judge me?”
The story births and lives in my own mind. And the only person I need permission from is myself.
So. I’m still a people pleaser. Yup. Guess what? I’ve decided to please myself.
Because I’m a people too.
I can relate to this story, because I am also a people pleaser. In fact, I could say that my entire adult life up until this point is a result of people pleasing. However, I don’t think putting others ahead of ourselves is necessarily always a bad thing, but learning when to say yes or no is where the challenge lies. Timing and balance are everything.
Thank you for sharing your story as an 11 year old. Your response makes sense. I also appreciated your quote, “We’ll blow up the entire planet to avoid pain. “ Truer words have never been written. 🙂
Well said, and I agree! Balance is always everything and being able to make the conscious choice to put others ahead is a win. I’m grateful that I default to that. Now when I choose to put someone else first I do it without resentment because I no longer feel trapped by my own mind to behave a certain way. It becomes a truly selfless act because I’m doing it from want and not compelled by fear.