You may ask, surely pleasing others is a positive thing? Helping and supporting our friends and loved ones, facilitating their happiness, has to be beneficial to both the receiver and the giver, doesn’t it? Certainly, good deeds and taking action that helps others in need of support is a positive and worthwhile human trait.
However, there is a fine line between acting in a way that pleases people and feeling responsible for making others happy at the expense of self. This is often evidenced by overcommitting in order to ‘please’ or ‘appease’ those around you, resulting in exhaustion, resentment and stress.
People Pleasing is a term used to signify a behavioural pattern where an individual prioritises the wants, needs, and feelings of others over their own needs and wellbeing.
The behaviours associated with People Pleasing can stem from various factors. These include a desire for acceptance, fear of disapproval or a prevalence towards avoiding conflict. Past experiences, especially from childhood, are often responsible for these as a result of early conditioning to seek self-worth through accommodating others.
People Pleasing can also be defined as a type of dependency given the need to look to others for validation and becoming dependent on that validation to sustain a sense of self and give meaning to your place in the world.
This pattern of People Pleasing can create difficulties and be detrimental to our overall wellbeing for the following reasons:
Loss of Identity - Constantly prioritising others may lead to neglecting our own needs . This can often result in losing a sense of who we are - what values we want to live our life by, what and who we consider important and our goals for the future.
Burnout - Overcommitting to please everyone can lead to exhaustion, stress and feelings of failure when it becomes impossible to meet all the competing needs.
Exploitation - Being overly accommodating might encourage others to take advantage of us. In turn, this can lead to resentment and frustration with the realisation that others are not paying attention to our needs, which remain unmet.
Neglecting Personal Boundaries - Suppressing our desires and opinions to maintain harmony or avoid rejection or conflict can have a significant impact on our ability to remain self-aware and make decisions in our own best interests.
Of course ,there are times when People Pleasing may be helpful, and potentially necessary to ensure our safety, such as:
Building Relationships. Accommodating others' needs, along with our own, can strengthen bonds and foster goodwill.
Finding fulfilment in Helping Others. Being able to support and help others in their endeavours, without compromising our own needs, can provide an uplifting sense of fulfilment.
Workplace Collaboration. Being open to consider and support the needs of colleagues can enhance teamwork and our value as a team member – in turn enhancing our own satisfaction within the work environment.
If personal safety is at risk or threatened. In these circumstances it may
be helpful to please or appease in the short term to minimise or eradicate any risk.
While being considerate and supportive is a positive trait,
chronic people-pleasing can lead to burnout, resentment,
and a diminished sense of self-worth.
The key to maintaining a healthy balance between helping others, whilst retaining a sense
of self and well-being, rests in:
Self-awareness, Assertiveness & Clear Boundaries
When taking action to move away from people pleasing behaviours, it is helpful to do so by taking small and incremental steps of change, such as expressing a view on what you want for lunch instead or your usual "I don't mind" or, that you're not available to help your colleague right now but will help later in the day. Becoming familiar and at ease with these smaller expressions of assertiveness can be built upon over time.
If these People Pleasing behaviours resonate with you, be assured that a range of tips and strategies exist to promote a more healthy balance between being supportive and considerate towards others whilst maintaining personal boundaries and wellbeing.
NOTE : We will focus on Self-awareness, and the Defining & Maintaining of Personal Boundaries in future Blogs, coming soon!
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