People-pleasing is something a lot of people struggle with and it is a hard habit to break. It can be addicting, guilt-ridden and a huge struggle in people’s lives. Today’s video is on where people-pleasing comes from, why we do it and how do we stop.
People-pleasing a lot of the time comes from when we were a child. You may have noticed yourself trying to please the kids on the playground or you would try to make sure you did not disappoint your parents. It usually stems from the home where your parents were really hard on you or you watched them be a people pleaser themselves. You may have felt like you could not say no and felt like your boundaries were crossed. Or maybe you felt like they did not acknowledge you so you would try to please them any way you could.
You most likely were not taught how to communicate things or how to say no. And that it is okay to not have every single person like you. As a kid, you did not know you could say no or knew you could exercise that right to say no. Not only that but you may have been in situations where you did not have a lot of friends or you dealt with social anxiety and you were afraid if you did not do what they wanted you would be alone.
We may people please to avoid feeling bad or avoid the fear of rejection. We may people please to avoid looking bad. We wonder if we don’t do something will it make others thing poor of us? We don’t want to deal with people not liking us or feeling isolated. Or out of fear of letting others down. We may do it out of fear of confrontation, it can be scary and make us feel like we are in trouble. To avoid those negative feelings we will people please.
Another reason we may people please is because we give to others what we wish others would give to us or what we wish we could have. So that means going out of our way for others because we wish they would for us. It is subconsciously a way to make it clear to others what it is that we want. We may also be trying to fill an empty space. If we feel like somethings missing we will compensate it by overly taking care of others to fill that empty gap.
People pleasing can also help us feel validated because we have a hard time finding validation in ourselves. We may struggle with self worth and self love that when we people please it helps us find that validation we can’t find in ourselves. If others are showing they’re please with us, it can make us feel like we can be pleased with ourselves.
It is important when we start conquering our people pleasing issue that we pay attention to what we are telling ourselves. You will need to build yourself up and talk yourself through it and tell yourself you are not doing anything wrong. You are doing something to better your life and that is perfectly healthy. Your brain originally associates people pleasing as healthy so you need to re-associate that taking care of yourself is healthy.
When you people please you lose yourself. You become who everyone else wants you to be and you don’t have a grasp on who you are. That is why the first thing you need to do is to figure out how you feel. Before someone asks you to do something, figure out if it is something that you genuinely want to do or are you doing it out of fear.
Something that can help you is to weigh it on a scale of benefit vs. hurt. If something were to hurt you more than benefit you or be neutral then it is something that you can let go of. Also, you can not do something just because you don’t want to do it. That is a good enough reason.
It is important for you to understand and accept that not everyone is going to be happy with you and what you do. it is not your job to please everyone or make them feel better. If people in your life give you a hard time for saying no, then they are people that don’t respect you and you may think twice about having them in your life. Usually, people say okay sure no problem! We usually build things up in our heads of how it is going to go and we react out fear. in actuality when we do it we realize it is not that bad.
Allow yourself to say no and even give yourself permission to say no. Practice saying no. A lot of the times we wind up doing the thing we were trying to avoid which is disappointing others. This is because we may catch ourselves saying yes to everyone, we wind up making someone unhappy. You can’t do everything and that is something you will have to accept within yourself.
What do you want to do? It is important you do things for yourself. At the end of the day, all you have is yourself. If you keep trying to please everyone you lose yourself and you will wake up one morning not knowing who you are. That is when resentment, anxiety, and depression start. When you do what everyone else wants, you lose your sense of control and power because you are going based off of what everyone else said. So it is important to focus on you and your wants and needs. You need to make yourself happy first.
You determine what and who you want in your life. It is important to set boundaries . Boundaries are fences you create that help keep you mentally and physically safe/comfortable. You get to decide what you will and won’t tolerate. It is important you stick with your boundaries and the things you say. If you go back on your boundaries then it leads you to unhealthy habits/unhealthy people in your life.
What do you guys think? Do you struggle with people pleasing? Leave it all in the comments below!
