People-pleasing, or putting other’s needs before your own, may seem like a positive trait.
But people pleasers don’t recognize their emotional needs and, deep down, don’t think they are important, Israa Nasir, a therapist based in New York, told Business Insider.
People pleasers don’t simply want to make others happy, but fear them feeling uncomfortable or upset, Summer Forlenza, a trauma therapist based in California, told BI. It feels threatening and jolts them into the “fawn response,” which is when someone reacts to a threat by suppressing their feelings to appease someone else.
It’s typically a behavior we learn in childhood if we feel the need to take care of a parent or other significant person in order for our needs to be met, Melissa Stanger, a psychotherapist based in New York, told BI.
“You need to minimize your own needs in favor of theirs, either to make them the available caretaker that you need or because they don’t have room for your needs at all,” she said.
The people pleaser is often not consciously aware that they’re doing it, and this common but misunderstood pattern of behavior often leads to challenges in adult life.
Nasir, Forlenza, and Stanger told BI the common issues their people-pleasing clients bring to therapy.
1) Relationship problems
People pleasers often seek therapy because of conflict and resentment in their relationships, Stanger said. But they won’t necessarily realize that these issues are a result of their people-pleasing behavior.
“A lot of people will say, ‘I’m having this conflict with a partner, and I don’t know how to address it.’ And usually, they do know how to address it. They just don’t want to address it,” she said. That’s because they’re afraid of jeopardizing the relationship.
“The people pleaser self-abandons again and again by prioritizing the relational threat over themself,” Nasir said.
Not being honest about their feelings can create resentment over time, which will likely be communicated in other ways.
“A lot of times, people pleasers will tolerate a lot of pain before saying something, and usually they’ll say it in a very passive-aggressive or a breakdown type of way,” Nasir said.
For example, instead of communicating what she could realistically afford, one of Nasir’s clients spent above her means and became resentful toward a friend who made more money than her and suggested expensive activities.
“She had made the assumption that her friend wouldn’t understand and started to dislike her friend based on that,” Nasir said. “This happens often with people pleasers who don’t communicate their needs.”
2) Difficulty making decisions
Nasir says her people pleaser clients often experience “analysis paralysis,” finding it hard to make decisions, particularly in relation to their job, living situation, relationship, or other personal circumstances.
One client stayed in an unfulfilling job for a long time rather than applying for a promotion or another role at the company because she was so worried about making the wrong choice.
Forlenza said the stress of wanting to “keep everybody happy” adds to this indecision.
“I feel a lot of anxiety and fear at the possibility of people being upset with me for making this choice,” she said of people pleasers.
3) Emotional and workplace burnout
This can happen if a people pleaser is scared to tell their manager they’ve been given too much work, for example. Forlenza said her clients can also have a hard time taking their PTO because they worry it’ll make their co-workers’ lives harder.
“It’s just a total recipe for burnout and exhaustion,” she said.
Nasir had a client who struggled to take time off from his job in healthcare and fainted from exhaustion during a double shift.
Emotional exhaustion or “relational burnout” is also common among people pleasers, as they may feel they are always taking care of others but nobody takes care of them, she said.
People pleasers will often know how to check the emotional temperature of a room and anticipate other people’s needs very quickly, Nasir said, “so it’s a lot of cognitive workload.”
Practice speaking your mind to reduce the urge to people-please.
The first step toward changing these patterns of behavior to prioritize your own needs is improving emotional literacy, Nasir said. She gives clients a language to describe their emotions, often starting by using a feelings wheel, which maps out the primary emotions we experience. This helps clients learn to recognize what the emotions feel like physically.
The next step is learning to tolerate uncomfortable emotions. “They don’t know how to tolerate if somebody is disappointed because they always act to avoid it. So they don’t have a lot of experience in being confronted with it,” Nasir said.
It’s about being able to sit there and watch somebody be angry or disappointed with you and allow the other person to have their emotion without “fixing it,” she said.
Finally, people pleasers need to practice direct communication, which means expressing thoughts and feelings clearly and explicitly.
Stanger recommended finding a trusted friend or relative who you can role-play those kinds of conversations with. This can help you feel more confident expressing your feelings in real-life scenarios.
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