To think people pleasing can be very dangerous and can’t be underestimated?

[ThoseCar]

I’ve been having a huge period of reflection on my life in the past few weeks and one of the things I’ve discovered is that people pleasing, which is the subject of so many threads on MN even if not in a ‘blatant’ way, is potentially very dangerous- it can lead to people being extremely humiliated/bullied to their lives being screwed up to what may seem like beyond repair.

it’s always early socialisation - parent figures who are the cause of this - in particular my own mum saying to me as a teen angrily:

”your father and I WANT you to make friends” - rather than letting me explore my natural tendency to be a bit of a loner - has screwed up a lot of my life - it’s led to me being taken advantage of horrifically

I’ve had conversation after conversation with my 10 year old about putting herself first. But she’s still a people pleaser (like me). I’m trying very hard to break the cycle for her but it’s not working so far.

I am very aware that emotional abuse exists and what it is - I specifically said not including abuse in my post. However, not everyone who is a people pleaser is subjected to emotional abuse and some/many do it through social conditioning, expectations, personality etc.

Omg this is so true j was emotionally abused by my mum - she was an alcoholic who called me spoilt fat and selfish as a primary school child - to name but a few things.

I also think it’s difficult to close the chapter in that when I was 24 and was happier, making progress - a school friend who’s known me a people pleasing child came round uninvited to my house after a length of time of no contact. I felt that she came round cos she was lonely and saw me as a soft touch to rekindle contact - and she was right! I rekindled because j didn’t want to and was afraid to say no.

So this is an example of where we feel we’re making progress in our adult lives and water to close the childhood chapter but someone from our childhood suddenly pops up uninvited !

I know, it's tough. But I think that you can have all the conversations in the world about it, but what she will see and learn from is you modelling that behaviour.

I'm sure you're keen to break the pattern for yourself, and you'll be doing it for her too. Good luck!

This is all so interesting and quite the revelation for me.
I guess I am a people pleaser and I can see the negative consequences.
But I can also see the positives. It makes me happy to see other people happy and to help them if I can.
Surely we need to be people pleasers to have a good society and community?
Or am I confused/ naive and in denial?
Very confusing.
Where is the line between being altruistic and being a doormat?

I think it’s great that you are having these conversations and hopefully she will then be aware that she has people pleasing tendencies. As she gets older she will learn to navigate these situations - it’s hard enough as an adult when there is no peer pressure, even more tricky for a child, I suspect.

My DC were in a situation with another child who tended to boss where they could sit etc - I told them it is ok not to want to do as that child said and gave them phrases they could use, “thank you but I am fine sitting where I am” etc - part of it is validating their feelings of not wanting to be bossed, reassuring them that they are not being rude by declining and providing them with a polite but clear way of doing so.

It is difficult!

Where is the line between being altruistic and being a doormat?

I guess when it is not a two-way process of give and take?
When it is not appreciated?
When it is expected and then you are made to feel guilty if you are unable to help out for good reason?
When you feel emotionally pressured to do so?

Me too. The funny thing is my parents snobby attitude and the way we were disliked in my village as a result became a source of huge embarrassment and shame to me in my teens. This led me to constantly reassure everyone I wasn't like them and I went out of my way to be overly nice to everyone. I developed an almost irrational fear of being disliked. I became such a people pleaser, yet at the same time I had a strong sense of self esteem and I would often be very upset at how people treated me or made me feel invisible. I didn't see that i had contributed. For me for whatever reason, it was women that trampled on me most in friendships, I was never taken for a mug in relationships so I'm thinking I must have been assertive one to one, just not socially.

No you’re not naive - what you say is true.

it’s good to please people if you genuinely want to - for example there’s a very old gentleman living in my flats who I hadn’t seen this year. I took time to walk up to him last week and be friendly saying I hadn’t seen him this year - only once - less frequently than last year. I said “it’s lovely to see you Bill” - he seemed genuinely pleased to see me because me and Bill like each other and get on well / have a good connection.

negative people pleasing is, for example, not really wanting to go to a university but rolling over and going just because my mum wants me to. This can end in disaster - it really can - even if this disaster takes 2 years to occur and all seems fine at first

This! I was always taught to 'put other people first' and 'think how they might feel about XYZ.'

Which is exhausting before doing/saying anything.l! Not that people should go about life without any consideration for others, but the people I respect most are those that take others into account but fundamentally make sure they're happy. Anything else just leads to resentment/frustration.

I've realised I'm often afraid of other people's reactions to me saying 'No', but it's something I'm working on.

This sounds so interesting @TwoBigNoisyBoys . Have you found much research on the topic or do you also include anecdotal stuff too? (I've never done a degree/dissertation so have no idea!)

Yes I’m EXACTLY in the same boat as you re. your last paragraph

Yes, you are deluded.

There are no positives to people-pleasing. P-p has nothing to do with altruism or community-mindedness or generosity. It involves trying to avoid the discomfort of saying ‘no’ to other people, and trading services for being liked, because your self-esteem is so poor you don’t think people are will your friend just because they enjoy your company. It’s manipulative, insincere and doesn’t work, anyway — you just render yourself an invisible service-provider.

Sorry, I was too quick to assume you were missing out emotional abuse.

I think women and social conditioning is certainly a big issue. I think the expectations and personality ones are interesting as to me they would point to childhood emotional abuse again.

I saw my Mum put herself last everytime, she sacrificed her happiness, friends, money to care for her family (us when we were little, my grandparents through years of elder care)

Same with my mum. She basically taught me that everyone else's feelings matter more than your own do. I was a chronically shy child and if we met someone in the street she knew she would become super angry if I didnt immediately say hello to them or start up a conversation and all I'd hear for the rest of the day was "what must they think of us now?" - as if what other people think of you is far more important than what you think about yourself.

It was so unhealthy and I am utterly convinced it caused her ill health and eventual early death.

Yes agree. It’s not good or righteous to let other people get away with bad behaviour, all in the name of pleasing them.

Oh god tell me about it. My mum is always trying to "please" me by trying to guess what I want to eat, do, etc and pretending she also wants that, rather than just telling me what she actually wants. But she often guesses wrong and we end up doing something neither of us want. It's infuriating

@FindingMeno I agree, society needs nice people who want to keep others happy! I think I'll always be like this and in one sense it's something I really like about myself. I agree with OP on negative people pleasing being the issue. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish. I think for me I know by my own reaction, the problem I had for years was I would recognise it but not know how to assert myself and that led to resentment
I'm improving all the time and have found generally people have been quite respectful when I speak my mind. Thankfully I've no one in my family that's particularly problematic.

My mum was a bit like this but only to middle class well educated people s and was a snob

she didn’t give 2 hoots about working class uneducated people

i evaluate people on their personality and quality of the connection I have with them and don’t give 2 hoots about their education level/ social class

No worries at all and emotional abuse is important to highlight as it is often overlooked.

There is a recent poster who recognises her 10yo DD has people pleasing tendencies, similar to herself- I suspect (obviously I don’t know) that this is not due to emotional abuse but due to multiple factors including role modelling, social conditioning, perhaps how girls are treated differently from boys at school etc.

People are not just making their own decisions in a vacuum though. They are doing so through the lens of all our early socialisation.

@ThoseCar your mum sounds like mine! She'd trample over a WC person to talk to the doctors wife! All about what a small section of society would think of us. Dressing us expensively and laughing at how everyone would be jealous. (They really weren't, they just took the piss). She died quite young and I still struggle to reconcile this with the loving gentle mother she was to me.

society needs nice people who want to keep others happy! I think I'll always be like this and in one sense it's something I really like about myself. I agree with OP on negative people pleasing being the issue. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish. I think for me I know by my own reaction, the problem I had for years was I would recognise it but not know how to assert myself and that led to resentment

Yes. I would say that most of us (unless you are a literal psychopath) want others to be happy. Who on earth goes around hoping that others are miserable/sad? I would love everyone I know to be happy.

The distinction comes in when their happiness comes at your own expense which then causes you to feel exhausted, taken advantage of, used, mentally and physically drained and the constant repression of your own feelings can even cause you ill health over time.

I see it kinda like a seesaw - in most relationships sometimes you'll be high and the other person goes low and sometimes the other person will be higher but generally speaking it's equally balanced. If you find that you are always having to drop down in order to raise up the other person then there is something wrong there.

Yes. And mine, because she thinks saying what she wants is ‘rude’, will assume that everyone else feels similarly, and is ‘only saying things to be polite’, so she will do the exact opposite of what they specified and then be furious because they’re not ‘grateful’.

She once threw a surprise party for a family member who had specifically told her she didn’t want any kind of a party (recent)y widowed) and was furious the woman only stayed a short while and didn’t plaster on a smile.

Another time, relatives visiting from the US said they would call in to say a quick goodbye on their way from a restaurant with another part of the family to the airport but could only stay for five minutes — my mother thought they were ‘just being polite’ and had prepared a huge meal that of course they didn’t have time or appetite to eat.

They are, but, bluntly, once you’re an adult, unpicking those early scripts is up to you.