How would you describe a people pleaser?

[Waitingforthesunnydays]

I keep hearing this thrown around everywhere. I think it’s becoming a bit devalued in the way everyone’s suddenly a narcissist for occasionally being a bit selfish. Someone called me a people pleaser at a group dinner the other night cos I asked if anyone wanted the last piece of shared starter rather than just taking it myself. Then someone else said “Waitingforthesunnydays is the least likely person in the world to be a people pleaser”! Amazingly two insults at the opposite end of the spectrum that were equally insulting! I don’t think I’m a people pleaser. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do unless it’s for family or close friends who’ve done a lot for me, in which case I do it cos I care. I only make an effort to make people like me if I like them and want their company. I smile a lot though, and am always polite and friendly to people, unless they’re dicks or they give me a reason not to. At a party I’m not a mingler, I prefer to hang out with people I know well and whose company I know I enjoy. If I felt someone didn’t like me and I didn’t know why (in say, a work setting) it would bother me though. Not sure I’d make loads of effort to try and make them like me but I’d be a bit miffed about it. Am I a people pleaser? Are you a people pleaser? How do you know? What do you think made you that way? How would you define it? Do you think you become less of a people pleaser as you get older?

To me, people pleasing is about trying to manage other people’s emotions for them, often due to fear of conflict or previous trauma. Rather than risk the other person experiencing and expressing a negative emotion, the people pleaser attempts to limit the range of emotions the other person will feel, eg by always agreeing or moulding their own personality to fit. It’s not about being nice and it’s very often not experienced as nice- it can feel controlling or cloying. In the people-pleaser’s defence, it’s often a trauma response.

I wouldn’t take it as a compliment in any event. If someone calls you a people pleaser, it generally means they find you insincere and weak.

Er, what?

I’ll tell you about the last time I people pleased. It was only last week. My boss came in 20% over budget. I was 10% under. He cornered me asking for help because the whole company looked bad and in utter panic, I gave him my 10%. I didn’t even think it through. I just wanted him gone, as quickly as possible, and I didn’t want to disappoint him because he holds power over me.

now, your next post will be calling me stupid, spineless and weak. You’d then expect that a people pleaser would have some need to please you, to stop the abuse, but I don’t, because I don’t care about you, and I don’t care what you think. I don’t people please you because you don’t mean anything to me.

and yes, my therapist agrees this is “A widely accepted definition stipulated in psychology”

A pain in the arse, that’s what (I’m trying very hard to
change from being one myself 😆)

*@Allthissun
“Your boss asked you for something. You provided it. Sort of the norm! Nowt to do with people pleasing”

You’re misunderstood the example. Which is fine, you don’t know my work. You’ll just have to trust me it isn’t the norm, it was a huge error, and it was people pleasing

Why are so many posts being deleted? The thread doesn’t make sense

You seem very invested in excusing it.

It's a psychological bad habit. Absolutely learned in childhood as a survival mechanism, but that adults need to learn to discard like bedwetting and thummbsucking.

I’m really confused by your posts- maybe you mean to answer someone else?

why do you think I’m excusing people pleasing?

So your boss asked you for something
and you provided it

how on earth is that being a people pleaser @Itsmetheflamingo ?

As I replied above to the poster who said the same above

You’re misunderstood the example. Which is fine, you don’t know my work. You’ll just have to trust me it isn’t the normal response, it was a huge error, and it was people pleasing

There's a good book on people pleasing or 'fawning' as it's known. It is an ingrained safety response that makes sense in certain scenarios. Eg with a man displaying predatory and worrying behaviour it can make absolute sense to play along until in a safer environment.
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn/appease.

However, many people, women especially end up with it as a default response in even normal scenarios because of past conditioning and trauma.

If anyone wants help to start to notice themselves going into fawn response and help with stopping then there's an excellent book by Ingrid Clayton called 'fawn'

It is a label that sweeps up a load of different types of people and often results in them pleasing precisely who they want to please at the expense of others who are the opposite of pleased.

So your example @TerracottaBowl of your mother not bothered about cutting off her children in order to drop everything to help someone else. Her children aren’t going to give her the thanks / praise that a neighbour / colleague / friend would give her.

Do you have a better example of when you have people pleased? To help us understand how your people pleasing manifests itself

No- sorry. That’s always going to be an issue on internet forums, that you won’t understand the nuance of the situation and will decide for yourself whether or not it meets your idea of people pleasing, as opposed to trusting that the person in question knows what they’re talking about.

Yes this is exactly what I’m saying- people pleasing is a stress response and is also known as fawn.

fawning is very common.

Ok so if that’s the only example of your people pleasing tendencies that you are willing to share, which apparently only shows it if you understand your work, then odd to include! 🤷‍♀️

Not sure. Often when people tell me they are a people pleaser, it seems to mean they are resentful and martyrish. I don't find that very pleasing! I'm a bit annoyed by all that carry on.

I suppose there must be another group who don't tell you, who are just... I'm not sure. Secretly resentful?

It's all a bit annoying really. What is it for? It seems really needy and messed up. I don't need or want people to tell lies or hurt themselves to "please" me.

It’s not odd in the context of the now deleted and quoted post, but that wasnt yours anyway

So the other poster did understand your work. Ok

Ok if it helps you to have detail (I’m reluctant to explain actually because i know you’ll continue to argue that it isn’t people pleasing)

My boss partners with division A. I partner with division b.

Division A overspent by 20% in q4, due to poor throughput, over staffing etc.

Division B underspent by 10% in part due to the good work from the people within that division to control costs and negotiate with suppliers.

My boss panicked upon seeing his results, cornered me and expressed horror at how his results would be received.

In my desperation to get away from the situation, I people pleased by doing what I Could to make it better for him in the moment.

I gave him the 10% underspend. it is not mine to give, the performance belongs to the managing director of division B and the underspend would’ve rightly highlighted their divisions good work and efficiencies to the board. That didn’t happen because I gave it away.
By doing this I also caused a further risk to division B should their future months performance deteriorate. I gave it up on their behalf, and that was not the right thing to do.

It’s a stress response. To get away from the threat. Make the person happy so they leave you alone.

Totally agree. This has really reminded me of the scene in David Nicholas’ Us where the main character is so focused on avoiding a scene that he ends up holding his son’s arms so another man can hit him.

Totally understandable given this was your boss. I’m categorically not a “people pleaser” but I’d have done the same

Yes!!!!

and the upshot is shit parenting

See? Told you you would say that. I know it’s people pleasing, I don’t need to convince you. It’s the very incident that my therapist identified as fawning.

I don’t answer to my boss for those matters. he is my line manager.

for those matters, I answer to the managing director of division B.

What a bizarre response

All I said was that if my boss came to me in a flap demanding something - I’d bloomin provide it. As most people would.

You seem very vexed by even the whiff of someone disagreeing with you

You wouldn’t thought would you? If your boss came to you in a flap asking you to do something unethical - or let’s say even illegal- you’d just do it? You wouldn’t stop to think about the implications for you?