What You Need to Know About People Pleasing Tendencies
- Ashton Barnes
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
This blog informs readers on how people pleasing traits and characteristics can develop, and why it’s crucial we don’t shame or judge them.
The term ‘people pleasing’ has become incredibly popularized over the years and typically has a negative connotation that involves judgement, criticism, and self-blame coming from those who experience it. Those of us who have found ourselves defaulting to prioritizing other’s needs and well-being instead of our own have sometimes been looked down on and viewed as ‘weak’ or ‘spineless’. However, our people pleasing traits are often very misunderstood, and typically arise as a way to survive unpredictable environments. This is why it’s important that we view these tendencies from a lens of curiosity in order to discern how they have kept us safe rather than viewing them as personal shortcomings or flaws.
What does it look like?
People pleasing, at its core, really just means we disregard our own needs in order to meet the needs of others. We engage in sacrificial behaviors that tend to come at a personal cost for the sake of prioritizing someone else. People who identify as people pleasers generally have low self regard and self worth, so they engage in these automatic behaviors to ensure they won’t be rejected, abandoned, or ignored - meaning that these acts are not typically all benevolent or altruistic; they are done out of fear of losing connection. Some common examples of people pleasing behavior:
Saying yes to activities that you’d rather not do to satisfy someone else
Telling someone what you think they want to hear rather than what you really think/believe
Rarely, if ever, disagreeing with someone else’s opinion or perspective
Apologizing excessively even if you aren’t at fault
Consistently making excuses for others’ harmful behavior
Lack of personal boundaries
Agreeableness or over-accommodating in order to avoid conflict
Feeling like your only value is conforming to other people’s needs
Challenges with being assertive or asking for what you need
If you have ever felt like you engage in the above behaviors or actions frequently because you’re worried that if you don’t, you won’t have validation or acceptance from others, then it’s possible your people pleasing part might be activated. This is not something to be embarrassed about or ashamed of - people pleasing tendencies really just exist as a way to protect us from the potential for pain and develop as a way to keep us safe. They are coping strategies and survival responses. While it might feel like more extreme behavior, these traits have served an evolutionary purpose.
How People Pleasing Develops from a Trauma Informed Perspective
When we are children, we depend on the nurturing attention and dependability of our caregivers to show us what healthy and safe attachments in relationships look like. We depend on our caregivers to demonstrate that it is okay to have differing opinions, to act out, to make mistakes, and that being imperfect does not mean we are undeserving of empathy and love. It is unconditional. However, oftentimes we aren’t shown what safe and secure attachments look like in childhood because our caregivers withheld affection or attention unless we earned it, or they were not emotionally available to us consistently, so we had to anticipate what their needs were ahead of time in order to feel some semblance of connection to them on their terms. This is conditional. We try to appease them - even if it means we don’t get our basic needs met - because maintaining that relationship is the most important thing in the world to us at this developmental stage. This covert harm, or lack of good things versus overt presence of bad things, can lead to behaviors/actions that we later identify as trauma responses. How does lack of nurturing or unconditional love impact our behavior in relationships in later life? You guessed it - it can cause people pleasing! We learned that in order to maintain connection in our lives, we have to anticipate what others need and accommodate them at all costs.
Survival Responses
Additionally, you’ve probably heard of our fight or flight response. This is our built in biological way of surviving danger; when we are faced with threats, we typically flee the situation or fight back. However, there is another survival response that can be present: fawn. This is our body’s way of neutralizing a threat: we become accommodating, appeasing, and drop all ability to be assertive as a way of diffusing any danger/threat and finding safety. This can happen even when there is no physical danger present, but we’re experiencing a lack of emotional safety. We fawn, or ‘people please’, to make sure we survive, even if that means we disregard or shove away what we actually need
How can we learn to prioritize our own needs instead?
Because our people pleasing tendencies can develop as a way to avoid the threat of abandonment, our sympathetic nervous system (survival response system) is often always on high alert and hypervigilant to this threat. This means our bodies exist in a chronic state of tension where our stress response is highly active. In order to become more self-aware of our behavior and slowly begin to prioritize our own needs, we have to learn that we are safe in our bodies and that it’s okay to express our needs. Once we have engaged in different techniques that help our bodies feel more regulated and less physically stressed, we are better equipped at managing our emotional responses in our relationships and ensuring we are meeting our own needs. A few ways to begin activating your parasympathetic nervous system (our rest and relaxation response) and regulating your body are below:
Breathwork→ “Just do deep breathing” is a common coping mechanism that many people recommend, and it’s understandable that this won’t solve all of our problems. But engaging in slow deep breathing exercises is a way to signal safety - emotional and physical - to our brain, which can then help promote our natural relaxation response.
Gentle movement→ Any type of physical activity helps reduce our cortisol levels (our stress hormone) and then releases endorphins (our natural happy feelings). Engaging in movement that works for your abilities consistently will help promote nervous system regulation.
Intentional self-compassion→ Because people pleasing is often a trauma response, we don’t always have control over how our bodies and our nervous system react when in a situation where this behavior emerges. This is why it’s crucial that we reframe our views of this behavior as protective, and send acknowledgement and compassion to the people pleasing part of us. This can look like slowing down, taking a breath, putting a hand on your heart, and saying to your people pleasing part: “I see you and acknowledge how hard you’re working to keep me safe. You can soften back now, because I can handle what happens next.”
Start small→ Once you get in the hang of slowing down, being mindful of your bodily responses, and sending compassion to yourself, then it’s time to begin setting small boundaries or asserting yourself in your relationships. This might mean saying no to activities once per week so you can catch up on rest, being direct in one conversation per week about what you need to feel safe or happy in the dynamic, or trying once per week to express your opinion on a topic rather than agreeing with someone else by default. Starting small is less overwhelming and you will learn to tolerate the fear of abandonment because you will be more connected to yourself.
If you find yourself struggling with people pleasing or if any part of this post struck a chord with you due to your past experiences, know that therapy can be a safe and nurturing space to begin healing. Reach out to the Therapeutic Counseling team to schedule an appointment that works with your schedule!
Citations
Psychology of people pleasers. Psych Central. (2024, March 27). https://psychcentral.com/health/the-need-to-please-the-psychology-of-people-pleasing#causes
Sussex Publishers. (n.d.). People-pleasing. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/people-pleasing?msockid=24c039a561f668cc34082d5d60b9694e
Woods, T. (2023, March 24). What is the fawning trauma response?. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-sobriety/202303/what-is-the-fawning-trauma-response?msockid=24c039a561f668cc34082d5d60b9694e
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