People Pleasing why it is not good or bad.
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Hello my friends. Today we are going to talk about people pleasing as a learned behaviour. How it is no longer people pleasing when it becomes a conscious choice, even if the choice is to people please.
When pleasing yourself pleases other people, how sometimes we don't really see that and we think we're still people pleasing, but we're not. We can end up feeling a bit unsure about why we're doing what we're doing because it's such a habit.
Certainly, most of us, I think, kind of get it's not good or bad, it's simply learned behaviour. We've been taught as children to just do what we're asked to do, especially if we’re socialised as a woman, we're taught that to say “no” or something like that I not acceptable. So, it's not good or bad, it's simply a learned behaviour. I think it's really important to understand that because when we judge ourselves for people pleasing, we have all heard someone say “oh, I'm a bit of a people pleaser, you know, I'm really bad at people pleasing” (they actually mean they are really good at it) as if it’s a problem or there is something wrong with them. You can hear the judgment in their own voice, it's as if it's part of their identity and there's nothing they can do about it, that's just not true.
It's just a learned behaviour like and like any other learned behaviour we can choose to keep doing it, not do it, or just do it differently. We're all taught to brush our teeth and brush our hair as young children, now we don't even think about it, we do it all the time, we do it in the same way, day after day, that's what we learned how to do, but we don't go around saying to the rest of the world, oh, I'm just a hair-brusher, I'm just a tooth-brusher.
We all laughed because it sounds ridiculous and yet it's the same thing. It's just a learned behaviour. So that's step one. And I think it's really important to understand that.
People pleasing is so automatic that we genuinely, most of the time, don't give it any thought at all. We just do it. The only time we really notice it is later, or as we're doing it because we wish we were somewhere else, or we notice when we think about it, we feel resentful or used.
When I first began noticing my own people pleasing behaviours, I thought that I would say yes to doing things that I actually didn’t want to do because I wanted to please the other person. However, the longer I observe my own behaviours I realised I didn’t want to displease or disappoint.
That's the interesting thing about people pleasing is that we go around calling ourselves people pleasers but in actual fact the only reason we're trying to do that is because we want to avoid something.
So, we want to avoid disappointing someone else, upsetting someone else, being judged by someone else, because we have been taught as children to feel guilty and/or bad when we don’t do what other people want us to do, that we are responsible for other people’s feelings.
Ultimately, we are trying to avoid how we will feel. That's all we're doing it for. We people please so that other people will like us or be happy because we have been taught to blame ourselves and feel bad when they don’t.
I find it fascinating that it’s called people pleasing, because we are doing something because another person wants us to rather than because we want to, but actually, although I'm pleasing the other person, that's the result, right? It pleases the other person. But the truth is I'm actually doing it for me I am trying to avoid feeling bad.
The problem is that you still feel bad it just for a different reason. Now you feel bad about feeling resentful, you feel bad about complaining, we judge ourselves for not wanting to do the thing we did. We were not only taught we have to do something we were asked to do, and we were also required to “want to”.
Are you saying yes to something because you haven't given it enough thought? so you said yes quite quickly, and you haven't considered the consequences to yourself at all or the impact to yourself at all. The cost to your time and your energy or effort. Are you doing it from a place of trying to avoid or disappoint or to not upset. Do you think it's expected of you, will you feel “bad” if you don’t do it.
If any of these drive your “yes” then you might want to consider if this is something you really want to do. If after that you still want to say yes, even if it is for any of those reasons, or maybe because you are just not ready to start saying “no”, then go for it because this is the first step, 1) awareness 2) conscious decision-making step 3) is trying a different action.
One of the key questions we can ask ourselves is, If I say yes to this, what will I feel? that's how we can begin to know it's people pleasing. Be straight up with yourself, ask yourself, “am I doing this because I genuinely want to, or am I simply wanting to please this person to avoid upset or conflict.
Seems so simple and it is in theory, but like most things in reality it is not so easy, it takes courage and practice and self-compassion because sometimes it’s just easier to use old habits, and as humans we are hard wired for easy & safe, change is neither of those things.
When we're people pleasing or when we're looking outside ourselves to feel something about ourselves or to avoid feeling something, our self-worth and experience is dependent of how others treat us, because we have been taught that pleasing and helping others is what makes us valuable. We're invested in each other's experience and emotional state it’s a difficult place for either person to show up authentically, because whatever the other person does, you make it mean something about you. If you feel like you're guilty, you might blame them for that, if you feel like you're a good person, you also give them the kudos for that.
When we have a healthy independent relationship with ourselves, we understand we contribute to relationship, we can be close and we can be together, but we don't end up all enmeshed and intertwined in each other's feelings, we don’t require them or us to behave a certain way to be acceptable or lovable. We know our worth no matter how the other person treats us, they can feel disappointed, and we let them because it is part of the human experience, we can feel disappointed and not blame others for that.
We need to build up to this stuff, if we're too quick to force ourselves to change a behaviour, just because we become aware of it, we make ourselves feel worse. So, we notice we're people pleasing and just to make sure we don't people please, we say no to everything. Do you know what I mean? But then what happens is we haven't yet built the skills or adjusted our learned belief systems or our thinking, to prepare ourselves we become flooded with the feeling of badness that comes with the old patterns that are still in play.
Alright my friends, have a great week. :)
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