Humans have a habit of making connections with other humans by people pleasing. These connections are for approvals in many different phases of life. Humans have an urge to loved and liked by everyone around them, and they also want that the people who like them or they like should approve to everything they do. But without us knowing approving everything our loved ones do forces us to practice people pleasing. People pleasing can lead to mental and emotional damage to us.
Who is a People pleaser? People pleaser is a person who try to fulfill desire and needs of other person before his own needs. Due to this the person who is giving more may feel lethargic after a few times because giving becomes very tiring if we don’t take care of our own needs. It can become problematic because of many reasons.
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How did people pleasing started?
The root cause of people pleasing is the urge to be liked by everyone and be everyone’s favorite. When start to feel that the people whom we love will abandonee us one day we start to obey them even if we don’t want to. This all starts from our childhood, to be liked by our family and even parents we need to follow the rules they create for us and if don’t obey them they may not like us as before. And because of this we started to agree on everything our parents or elders told us. Because of this we developed a coping mechanism to deal with anxiety, stress and low self-esteem.
Whatever is the reason of being a people pleaser it is always very energy draining. People Pleasing can become a habit which is hard to break. And once we become a people pleaser it is very tough to become honest, we think that if we become honest, we may hurt other persons feelings. We think we may sound rude or selfish.
What can be the results of People pleasing?
People pleasing is like any other bad habit, the only difference is that there are no symptoms of this. You just never know you develop the habit of people pleasing and once to develop it there’s no turning back. This kind of behavior can always affect your mental, physical and emotional wellbeing. Given below given are some of the results of people- pleasing:
- Feeling exhausted: After prioritizing everyone else before yourself can exhaust yourself, you may feel drained emotionally and you may start hating the people around you or maybe you start hating yourself because you can’t change yourself. This may be the biggest reason that you feel exhausted.
- Identity crisis: When we start giving importance to other needs over our own needs, we may start neglecting our needs and desires. We start having feeling that we are living for others or maybe we are living on behalf of another person.
- Stress, anxiety and Resentment: As we start to give importance to needs of other ignoring our stress and anxiety levels increases a lot. Because you can’t say no to someone because are being nice to them it makes you hate the person asking for help or you start to hate yourself.
- Setting boundaries is a task: People pleasers find it difficult to set boundaries because they think that they might hurt other persons feelings. But they don’t think about their own feelings getting hurt by others.
4 Signs that you are a people pleaser:
A people pleaser is one that is nice to others but forgets to be nice to themselves. Always remember the niceness you show to other people comes at expense of your happiness and overall wellbeing.
- You over apologize: A people pleaser often finds themselves apologizing for things they have not done/ or for things they are not responsible for.
- Struggle to say ‘NO’: A people pleaser finds it difficult to say NO to anyone because they think they might be sounding rude.
- You agree with everyone: When someone ask for your opinion you don’t give honest opinion rather you agree with them even if you don’t agree with them.
- You don’t speak your feelings: You become unfair to yourself just to make others happy by not speaking what’s on your mind.
Steps to be free from people pleasing:
There are a few steps we can take to be free from people pleasing by knowing ourselves better. By understanding that what things motivate us, understanding our values and desires.
- Validate Yourself: Only if someone have different opinions then you that doesn’t mean that you are wrong or you need to affect your self-esteem for that. This will force you to see yourself in lesser light and make you prone to anxiety and depression.
- Take time for yourself: If someone puts you in a spot where you have to take a decision or if someone just dumped their decision on you and if you don’t agree with them, you can deny them by saying “I’ll get back to you” or just disagreeing politely.
- Remove toxic people: There are various ways of being toxic. But the most common is when people gaslight you of being rude when to you stop them to not step the boundaries against your will.
- Stop Apologizing: its normal to apologizing if you did something wrong, but you need to stop apologizing for things which are not in your hand.
Conclusion:
Though people pleasing is not something that kills you, but it has a huge impact on our mental, physical and overall wellbeing. By understanding all the above topics we can maintain a healthier relationship, improves our self-esteem and live a happier and more satisfied life. it’s important to make yourself our priority. Try to celebrate every small success of yourself and try to be gentle with yourself when someone is giving you a feedback or criticism.
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