What Causes People Pleasing, and How to Interrupt the Cycle
It might surprise you to know that, even as a coach who literally specializes in this area, I find the term “people-pleasing” pretty cringey.
And still, I’d be lying if I told you there wasn’t some part of me deep down that quietly knows it’s something I’ve struggled with for most of my life. And if that resonates for you too, here’s the first thing I want you to know: that’s really, really normal!
So instead of dissecting what causes people pleasing like it’s somehow proof of your brokenness, or some ‘disease’ you have (🙄) let’s take a slightly different, more compassionate and nuanced approach, shall we?
Instead, let’s zoom in on this topic of people-pleasing through the lens of why some of your relationships might feel lopsided at times.
Plus we’ll explore how you might start to compassionately understand why that happens in the first place, and how you can take steps toward doing things differently.
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🎙 🎧 Prefer to listen to the podcast version of this article? You’re in luck! You can either press ‘play’ on the episode below, or queue up this episode up in your podcast player of choice by searching for the show, Let’s Talk it Through. Enjoy!
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Why Some of Your Relationships May Feel Lopsided
Right off the bat, I want to acknowledge that you might not fully resonate with the term 'people-pleasing' — either because it feels a little reductive, extreme, or oversimplified. It might not be quite nuanced enough for you, or maybe it's just not a term you see yourself in.
All of that is totally understandable! To be honest, the term 'people pleasing' doesn't really land in any kind of meaningful way for me either.
But I'm willing to bet you're here because at least some of these are true for you:
You're a deeply thoughtful person
You naturally have an acute awareness of the impact of your actions
You're very plugged in to the emotional states of the people around you
You're good at keeping the peace, and someone who's generally happy to help.
You generally dislike conflict and tension, and when you see opportunities to avoid it — either by taking one for the team or glossing over your own needs in order to smooth things over — you're often inclined to do it
Those are some seriously beautiful qualities. And in many ways, they may feel like a lot of what makes you YOU! They're worthy of celebration, and I'm not about to tell you there’s anything broken about them.
And.
Along with those gifts of yours, there's a good chance you've learned to seamlessly bump other people's needs and priorities higher up on your list, while yours might gradually get pushed further and further down your list.
Now it’s important to clarify that we're not necessarily talking about EXTREME sacrifice or self-neglect here.
I think there's a more radical picture that can come to mind sometimes when we talk about people-pleasing, like Mother Teresa level sacrifice, or extreme martyrdom—giving away all the clothes off your back, or never doing anything nice for yourself. And when we hear those descriptions, or picture those types of people and behavior, I think it's easy to think, "Oh, that's not me."
But there are a couple of things I want to point out here.
Most of us with people-pleasing tendencies learned this behavior at a young age, as a way of creating safety and connection when we felt alone or afraid.
In other words, you aren’t wrong or broken for the ways you've learned to keep yourself safe!
And still… when we distance ourselves from that term 'people pleasing' and tell ourselves that it has nothing to do with us, we miss some huge opportunities.
We might miss out on the chance to:
examine some of those behaviors with curiosity and compassion for ourselves,
build awareness around when we’re doing them,
understand them on a deeper level without shame, and
consciously decide if and how they're still serving us, and/or whether we'd like to explore other options.
Many of Us Learned People-Pleasing as a Tool for Self-Protection
To help illustrate what causes people pleasing in a more compassionate and nuanced way, I’d like to introduce a metaphor. A friend of mine recently shared this analogy with me, which I believe originally came from the brilliant Madison Morrigan, and I just love it. Forgive my paraphrasing, but essentially she says: think of these pleasing or accommodating behaviors as a winter coat.
There was a season in your life when keeping other people happy was like a protective winter coat that kept you safe and warm. But now if you’ve moved in the heat of summer, that same coat could now be causing you discomfort, or even harm.
The same coat that once kept you safe — alive, even! — suddenly becomes a danger when the conditions and the context change.
So this is our opportunity to acknowledge the coat and how it once served us, become aware of the harm it might be causing us now, and explore how you'd like to safely and consciously start to remove it.
And one of the arguments for deciding and exploring how to remove the coat goes back to why we probably adopted these tendencies in the first place: We learned, probably at a young age, to keep other people happy and comfortable because we were likely rewarded for it — with love, approval, safety, inclusion, etc. So it makes perfect sense that we might start to feel like people-pleasing is a way of building connection.
But that's what we're going to unpack. Because upon closer inspection, we can start to see how people pleasing actually inhibits true connection in so many ways.
Small Decisions Add Up to Bigger Imbalances
In my experience, one of the biggest giveaways that connection is being inhibited in any relationship is when we start feeling quietly resentful that it feels lopsided.
Even when that pattern isn't an extreme one or stereotypical one, there's still that sum of a lot of tiny micro decisions. Those small acts of bumping someone else's need or their request, or their priority ahead of your own, whether that's ahead of your needs, your existing plans, your vision for the future, your needs, your preferences, or your priorities.
And it might not even be that clear-cut or literal for you! Sometimes it can be as simple and subtle as deciding that somehow, it makes more sense to inconvenience yourself with emotional labor, or disappointment, than it does to inconvenience another person—and then making that same decision time, after time, after time.
Our daily micro decisions add up, and tip the scales. And many of us do this all day long in small ways without skipping a beat or ever really noticing!
Part of it stems from true compassion and kindness. Part of it likely comes from social conditioning. Part of it comes from our quiet fears (which we're about to get into!). Part of it can be chalked up to this really common self-negotiation tactic of, "Oh, it's just this one time" or "Oh, it's just this one thing" or, you know, telling ourselves that someone else's need is truly more urgent or somehow more important than our own.
So with all those arguments stacked on top of each other, it makes sense that we might cave each time. And then before we know it, there's a pattern. And over time, the scales in our relationships get tipped bit by bit, until suddenly, one day things feel lopsided and quietly fraught.
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What Causes People Pleasing, and Where It Comes From
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: you aren’t broken. You’re not doing these things for no reason, or because you’re somehow weak or spineless. There are very real motivators we can point to that power a people-pleasing habit, and the two biggest ones we’re going to look at are (1) fears and (2) unspoken rules or expectations.
01 | The Fears that Drive People-Pleasing
There are a handful of core fears that tend to drive people-pleasing — and the list we’re going to walk through came from an article written by KJ Hutchings. She does a beautiful job of summing up many of the beliefs and fears that tend to drive people-pleasing into these four simple buckets.
We’ll walk through these four buckets, and as we do, I’d encourage you to pay attention to what they each bring up for you.
How strongly you identify with each of these is going to have a lot to do with things like what you experienced in childhood, what those relationships were like, and how you were socialized with regard to gender.
Fear #1: the fear of anger and conflict
This is when we see anger as a "bad" emotion—which is something many of us learn at a young age. We receive the message that anger is either a 'bad' emotion, or that it should be pushed down and suppressed because it damages or even breaks relationships. Maybe you never got to see examples of what healthy anger even looks like when you were growing up! Or, maybe you were on the receiving end of anger a lot, and that was a really scary experience.
With those types of experiences and cultural messaging, especially if you were socialized as a girl when you were young, it's no wonder you'd grow up trying to avoid those feelings at all costs if you carry the belief that they're dangerous, or that being an angry person is the kind of thing that drives people away.
So instead, we develop the skills to sidestep conflict and diffuse situations quickly, by accommodating other people and keeping them comfortable.
Fear #2: the fear of being disliked or the fear of criticism
This is where we believe that what we do = who we are, and that the two are intrinsically linked. And if that’s the story in your mind, then of course being criticized for something you did would feel deeply personal. It feels tied to your worth. And living under capitalism means we're all constantly receiving this message that we're only as good or worthy as what we can do or product, so of course we've made that connection between our outputs and our inherent value.
So understandably, to avoid the kind of pain of criticism that feels like a rejection of who you are as a person, you might go out of our way to avoid being criticized, which often shows up as people-pleasing. Makes sense, right? Again, these are wise, reasonable coping mechanisms you've developed!
Fear #3: the fear of social abandonment or rejection
Humans are wired for connection. And so, the thought of being abandoned and left to fend for ourselves socially is not only scary on a biological level — it’s also really painful.
If this fear is ringing true for you, think back to your childhood. You’ll probably find a key relationship or some key relationships where this idea of being abandoned or rejected impacted you. It might have been from parents or caregivers; it might have been from peers or friends, or other close relationships. But we're talking about that fear of being abandoned, and that feeling of desperation when you believe you have to earn love and approval so that you won't be rejected and abandoned by your 'wolf pack'.
If that fear was present for you in key relationships growing up, it's really understandable that you might have developed a 'survival skill' of doing what you can to keep those people happy in exchange for those feelings of safety and belonging.
Fear #4: the fear of losing control, or not being needed
Many of us believe (even on an unconscious level!) that our value or our worthiness is linked to how strongly we’re needed by other people, and how much value we can provide by helping in those relationships.
And if you see our value as transactional in that way—as a thing to be earned—it might feel comforting in a way, because that logic says you're in control of that transaction. You might wind up telling yourself that you can cement your value to the people you love by doing more, helping more, and proving how valuable you are.
And by that same logic: if suddenly you aren’t needed, you’ve lost control over that transaction. Your value is no longer a thing you can control, and you might start to fear what that means.
When our brains tell us, “the only way to guarantee love is to prove how valuable and helpful we can be,” it’s our mind’s twisted way of trying to keep us safe. Making sure other people need us feels like a way of locking in those relationships and staying bulletproof. The logic is flawed, of course, but it’s a self-protection mechanism.
02 | The Rules and Expectations That Drive People-Pleasing
The big thing I want to point out here is that these are usually unspoken rules and expectations. And there are two specific sets of expectations we’re going to look at: the rules and expectations we quietly hold for ourselves, and the ones we hold for others.
Expectations we hold for ourselves
In many ways, people-pleasing comes from an inner sense of obligation.
You might believe certain things about how you should behave for all kinds of reasons, like the very valid fears we just talked about. And those beliefs can go on to hold you hostage. It's why you might often feel trapped or guilty at the idea of saying no, or disappointing someone.
There’s a book by Dr. Harriet Braiker called The Disease to Please: Curing the People Pleasing Syndrome that outlines a list of rules that we may quietly and maybe even unconsciously hold ourselves to. She calls them the 10 Commandments of People Pleasing—and a few examples of those commandments are:
I should always be nice and never hurt anyone's feelings.
I should never say no to anyone who needs or requests something from me.
I should always be happy and upbeat and never show any negative feelings to others.
I should never try to burden others with my own needs or problems.
So, I’d invited you to pause and reflect. What are some of the unconscious rules YOU hold yourself to? Did any of these resonate? Did they bring up others?
You might find it helpful to jot down some quick notes on that front, and even to come back to this later and explore that question in more depth.
Expectations we hold for others
So in addition to those commandments we hold for ourselves, Dr. Braiker also shares in her book a list of what she calls the Seven Deadly Shoulds, which reflect the unspoken expectations for how we deserve to be treated in return for being thoughtful, caring, or generous.
The opportunity at the heart of this list is to begin to see the ways we've been trying to silently bargain in our relationships — as in, "I deserve to be treated a certain way because of how I treat you."
This is also the list that I think can stir up a lot of feelings. So I’d invite you to just gently notice how this list strikes you, and which ones feel for you in some way:
The Seven Deadly Shoulds:
Other people should appreciate and love me because of all the things I do for them.
Other people should always like and approve of me because of how hard I work to please them.
Other people should never reject or criticize me because I always try to live up to their desires and expectations.
Other people should be kind and caring to me in return because of how well I treat them.
Other people should never hurt me or treat me unfairly because I'm so nice to them.
Other people should never leave or abandon me because of how much I make them need me.
Other people should never be angry with me because I would go to any length to avoid conflict, anger or confrontation with them.
This is a great opportunity to jot anything down that came up for you, and/or to ask yourself how many of these ring true for you. Maybe you've never realized the sorts of expectations you carry, or how they play out in your relationships!
Also, think about what happens for you when these expectations don't get met. What do you feel? Anger, indignation, betrayal, resentment... what comes up?
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Seeing these fears and these rules spelled out can help you start to understand why you may fall into people-pleasing habits, with some real compassion for yourself.
While these rules and expectations are common, reasonable explanations for why we show up the way we do in our relationships, they can also wall us off from the freedom and joy of being fully ourselves, experiencing fulfillment, and getting our needs met.
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Breaking the Cycle Starts With Shifting Your Thoughts
Is this something that’s affecting you physically, seeping into other relationships, or affecting your sleep? These could all be cues that there's something significant going on that's worth mentioning.
Now that you have all this information about what drives people pleasing behavior, what can you actually DO with it?
First, notice what comes up for you as you hear and think about these fears and rules. Which ones jump out at you? Which ones give you that little twinge of “ope, that’s me!”? Even just that awareness of what fears or expectations might be driving your behavior can be a powerful tool!
There’s a model we can look at here, that comes from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and it’s a three part model consisting of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. bIt basically says that our thoughts shape our feelings, and our feelings shape our behavior.
In other words: if we can interrupt or change our thoughts, it shifts how we feel, which then impacts how we show up.
What does it look like to shift your thoughts? Here are three small things you can try to interrupt a habit of people-pleasing by focusing just on shifting your thought patterns.
3 Simple Strategies to Help You Interrupt the People-Pleasing Pattern in the Moment
Notice it. Notice when you’re slipping into unconscious people-pleasing, and get curious about what might be driving that behavior.
Name it. To take this a step further, see if you can name the fear, or the rule or expectation that’s driving your behavior, to increase your awareness and understanding. You might try naming it out loud, or in a journal, or even just in your mind.
Pause, and slow down. So often, people-pleasing is habitual and it happens before we even recognize what it is. This is where it can be really powerful to give yourself a second to slow down, be with what’s happening, and make a conscious choice about how you want to proceed. This can even look like telling the person(s) you’re talking to that you need a minute to process, or collect your thoughts!
Even if you don’t make any radical changes in your behavior, that’s ok! The bigger point is that these simple strategies can help you interrupt an unconscious pattern, and increase your awareness around it.
And over time, they can help you get to a place where you’re ready and equipped to start making different, more conscious decisions more often about what’s right for you, and how you want to respond in any given situation.
