We all know it: people who try to please everyone and usually don’t even seem particularly unhappy about it. This has become known as the ‘people pleaser’.
But what exactly does this actually mean? And why is people pleasing potentially a problem from a psychological point of view?
To answer these questions, it is important to understand why someone actually wants to please or be pleasing to another person. In other words, the question of motivation.
It is immediately apparent that the word ‘pleasing’ has two sementical meanings or forms of use – depending on the context:
- To do someone a pleasure
- To please someone
And with that, we have already circled the potential psychological problem. If someone does others a pleasure just to please them, they are neglecting – and in the worst case ignoring – their own needs.
This can go as far as self-denial, as many people who could generally be described as ‘people pleasers’ use caring for others, and meeting and fulfilling their needs as a kind of ‘social glue’ or ‘relationship kit’. At the same time, they think they are acting incredibly altruistically by putting the needs of others above their own needs and, if necessary, ‘sacrificing’ themselves for them.
However, this is toxic in three different ways:
- These people often believe that they are unlovable if they do not put themselves at the service of others.
- However, their behaviour is anything but altruistic because it is usually associated with the expectation of receiving something in return: Namely, to be loved or liked.
- If the expected gratitude is not forthcoming, these people are often deeply offended and quickly feel victimised by the perceived or actual ingratitude of others.
Taking care of the needs of others thus represents a kind of self-chosen, psychological relationship of dependency, the core of which is often rooted in the early childhood experience of not being loved unconditionally and simply being allowed to be – but having to ‘do something’ for the love of others (“I can only love you if …”).
If you ask these people ‘what they really want’, you often don’t get an answer at first. They have forgotten how to feel their own needs at all, because in their early years it was ‘essential for survival’ to fulfil the needs of the central people in their relationship environment. The effect could be compared to traumatisation, in which one’s own feelings and needs are split off, as the experience of ‘not being allowed to just be’ and ‘not being loved for their own sake’ is too painful to bear permanently.
Accordingly, it is a ‘learning task’ for these people to regain access to their own feelings and needs in the first place. This requires time and space to answer the question for themselves: ‘What do I actually want? What are my needs?’
Once you have achieved this, the even more difficult part begins: Standing up for these needs in established relationships!
After all, your family, friends and colleagues have probably got used to having everything done for them. This can quickly lead to reactions such as ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you not feeling well? You’re really quite weird right now…’ Because now it’s time to negotiate needs and, if necessary, to put up with the fact that the other side doesn’t react positively at first – after all, it’s also about a loss of ‘privileges’ for them.
It is therefore often necessary to develop a new language as part of the learning process – the ‘language of one’s own needs’. And this also includes learning to ‘say no’ and to communicate to the other person why the satisfaction of one’s own needs is more relevant and more important than those of the other person.
This is not easy for those affected, as ‘people pleasing’ is essentially a harmony-orientated conflict avoidance strategy and they have often never learnt to stand up for their own needs and actively demand them – without this automatically leading to conflict.
But it’s worth it! If you manage to explore your needs and take them seriously (and perhaps take yourself seriously for the first time), find a language for negotiating these needs and try them out with people who are really sympathetic to you, the result will almost certainly be a less stressful and more satisfying life.
It is therefore worth learning the ‘art of saying no’ if you really want to have relationships with other people on an equal footing.
