People-Pleasing No More

Alaina Malik, MHC-LP

The internal debate of making others happy over yourself stops here. People pleasing is a common habit formed by an individual’s beliefs of love and loyalty. Often when one wants to please others, there’s an infatuation with showing appreciation to others - demonstrating your loyalty as a performance of your trust or compassion for the relationship. The performance of sacrificing your internal desire for what would make someone else happy can be seen as a gesture of kindness. However, as well-intentioned as that kindness is, it’s actually more harmful to the people-pleaser than it is helpful or kind. It’s an empty gesture of kindness because of self-sacrifice.

To break people-pleasing tendencies lies in the answer to your internal debate: what do you value? What do you honour? This may sound like easy questions, but it still pulls at both sides of the debate: the tear between obligation - what you think others expect of you - versus internal desire - what you want. The hardest part in choosing your internal desire is understanding where your want comes from. This is where your values become powerful.

What your value is at the core of who you are. If you value friendship, let’s break that down: what about friendship is important to you? What are the standards that you like to uphold? If this standard you hold was taken away from you, would you still think you’re a good friend? If the answer to that last question is no - then that’s a core part of what you honour in friendship.

When you align with your values, the core of who you are, then it becomes easier to know why you feel torn when you please others vs please yourself. Spend time thinking about what you value in friendship, dating, family, career, finances, love, happiness, excitement, sadness, stillness, etc. There are so many facets to your belief system and it’s worth learning how strongly you hold onto your views.

Now, granted, there is also a fear present within people-pleasing tendencies - the fear of reducing the quality of the relationship if you don’t show love and appreciation in full. This is where trust comes in, and so does the ‘empty gesture of kindness’. Although it seems kind of you for putting another’s needs in front of your own, when you do it out of the fear of losing, it’s actually manipulative - to the person and yourself. Your love and loyalty aren’t based on how much you secretly demonstrate sacrifice; especially if you’re sacrificing your happiness. You know your core belief of love and loyalty, even if it’s scary to admit. Trust yourself for a moment when deciding between obligation vs desire. Trust that you’re worthy of your value and because of that trust that others will respond to you with that same worth. Loving yourself is embedded into every human, channeling your values can help mitigate the internal struggle of people-pleasing and instead change it to being a truthful and authentic person who genuinely cares but isn’t scared.