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

It is, absolutely, always a total negative.

Being generous or altruistic, when done freely, is obviously a good thing. People-pleasing is neither.

Yes - I think that’s why I jumped so quickly to define it!

And it’s very hard to comment on the previous poster and what you’ve mentioned is all possible. As the @ItDoesntHaveToBeASnowman has mentioned, she is also a people pleaser so it may be her who is the victim of emotional abuse as a child and this has become generational trauma in terms of her daughter’s need to people please too.

I’ve tagged you @ItDoesntHaveToBeASnowman because I wanted to acknowledge you are here with us! You may, of course, have had an abuse free childhood - I’m just trying to say that people pleasing can pass from generation to generation because of how harmful emotional abuse is. I’m also not blaming you for your daughter’s people pleasing as it could be down to multiple factors and it is also incredibly hard to break emotional abuse cycles as it can feel physically dangerous to stop people pleasing.

There’s another book by Gordon Neufeld Gabor Mate called ‘Keep your children close’ which looks at the important of parent orientation vs peer orientation particularly in those pre teen/teen years - maybe that would also be a helpful resource in relation to your relationship with you daughter and how to help with her need for external validation. The fact you’ve spotted it and are thinking about it and talking about it already make you a brilliant parent though and it’s how any cycles that are potentially there are broken. It might just take time.

But sometimes the game’s not worth the candle. When the dcs were small there was always That Child who would come and stare at the swings when a dc had just got on.

I’d always say, “Come on, let that child have the swing.” Child would look smug. I would tell dcs that the child was rude and horrid and we would stalk off feeling superior. I hope I wasn’t teaching the dcs to be wet blanket people pleasers but to take the moral high ground and avoid a fight!

But, respectfully, there is no manual that says ‘Other people’s needs and wishes are more important than your own.’ You seem to be suggesting that, if everyone people-pleased, it would be fine, because everyone would be doing things they didn’t want to because they thought they had to.

If I were finding the idea of someone pleasing themselves that triggering, I’d be examining my own behaviour.

argh !! My mum WAS an actual doctor! She’d done excellently career wise so I don’t get her need to be snobbish !

My mum died young sadly through drunk

“play stupid games … “ etc

I find people pleasers are often annoying and I often find that I question their true motivation for trying to please everyone else. Sometimes it seems more about them wanting approval and to be seen as nice than what anyone actually wants. You often have to second guess what ‘people pleasers’ actually want and it just makes things complicated. The very worst kind of ‘people pleasers’ are those that say yes to things then bitch about it afterwards. These are zillions of threads started by posters who fall in this category.

Ive a friend who looks after a neighbours two dogs when they go on holiday and she hates doing it and thinks they are cheeky to ask. However she always says yes whenever they ask. It’s ridiculous. I actually think she is being unfair on them. I’d hate to ask a favour of someone and for them to secretly resent me when they agree to do it.

I get asked to do favours for friends and relatives but I find it easy to decline if it doesn’t suit me. I think it means people are actually happier to ask because they know if I do offer to help it’s genuine.

I also think people use the phrase ‘people pleaser’ as a cop out for their own mistakes. If you know you’ve made bad decisions (as we all can do from time to time) I think some people try and make it more palatable by calling themselves a people pleaser. It’s as though they are absolving themselves of any bad decisions because they are such a ‘good’ person.

I see a difference between people who think themselves people pleasers and people who really lack confidence.

The very worst kind of ‘people pleasers’ are those that say yes to things then bitch about it afterwards.

@ZepZep i dint see that as people pleasing. That’s avoidant behaviour - my dh does that. He doesn’t do it so I’m happy. He does it to protect himself and avoid confrontations. (Hence tge moaning afterwards btw)

No, you were teaching them that your discomfort at watching another child wait and stare was more important than their desire to continue to play on the swing they had just got on.

That’s classic-people-pleaser territory, the inability to tolerate the discomfort of someone else who is being discommoded by your behaviour.

Only here it wasn’t your own behaviour, it was your child’s.

Your child didn’t mind making the other child wait. It was you who couldn’t tolerate it. The other child wasn’t making a fuss, or you weren’t being harassed by an aggressive parent, it was just that you immediately thought the other child’s need was more important than your child’s.

That’s how children get conditioned into people-pleasing.

Yes it is and you just end up being used. I've people pleased all my life because of my DM and last summer taught me that even after decades of friendship and support people scatter and spread lies when you need them.

I'm always telling my two to put themselves first.

But people-pleasing is by its nature avoidant. Peoole-pleasers can’t cope with the discomfort of saying ‘no’, so they avoiding it at all costs by continually doing things they don’t want to do, hence moaning about it or secretly resenting it.

Yep, I agree there.
And to be fair, there is the fact that this behaviour WAS the expected norm for women of those generations.
Women people pleasing was just one of the way patriarchy expressed itself.

But surely that proves to you, if you needed proof, that people-pleasing doesn’t work. It doesn’t buy you friendship in exchange for services rendered, if that’s what you thought you were getting in exchange for ‘support’.

I’ve people pleased most of my life.
I never moaned about it. I thought it was me being kind and caring. I thought it made me a good person.
So I did it all very willingly. Not under duress and thinking from the word go that I’d rather do somethings else.

You’re right - people pleasing isn’t always a negative because everyone around you can benefit. Family, friends, colleagues - you’re the reliable person who they can depend on. But at what cost to your own sense of self?

I agree that we can’t all just do what we like without a care for the people around us. We live in a society - we need to work together. I think people pleasing is different to having empathy and helping others. You can be an incredible friend, daughter, colleague and not people please because you have good emotional intelligence and know that helping others is important and enjoyable.

People pleasing in its sinister form is the fear of saying no to requests, the fear of being disliked or not loved because you say no. So agreeing to help a friend/family member when you actually just need some time alone after an awful week, agreeing to a social thing when your body is telling you it needs rest or taking on a colleagues work to help them even though you’re about to miss your own deadline. It can be exacerbated by emotionally immature people who use guilt or other forms to emotional manipulation to force you to push aside your needs for others. Obviously if you skip out on things all the time because you don’t want to, you could be being selfish but simply thinking about what you actually want first before deciding what to do is important. Putting your needs after everyone else’s isn’t healthy or authentic and healthy selfishness (self care, boundaries, listening to your MH needs) will help you be a better, healthier person on the long run.

Same. My mum couldn’t and can’t deal with others’ emotions so I learned to never vocalise them or ask for what I wanted and hate confrontations. Only in mid 40s am I realising how problematic that has been.

I'll always be someone who will naturally want to support or help. Too many people take advantage. I'm sure even I could. It's human. Learning excellent boundaries is great. I found I lost people just putting in the basic ones.

I'm saying that societal expectations are that a 56 year old widow shouldn't be going out clubbing because the demographic for that is much younger, alcohol influences behaviour, and while i shouldn't care, I'm living in a small town where I'm quite well known and don't wish to become gossip fodder or the subject of an intervention. And yes, this ties in with being a people pleaser, because any fleeting pleasure I might get from head banging for an hour is likely to be outweighed by problematic encounters with people.

You see everybody's situation is unique, and informed by so many factors that while there can be patterns in the behaviour of people who have various common denominator, there are also nuances that might only apply to a specific situation or person.

Somebody alluded to people using their problematic "pleasing" behaviour as an excuse for not taking responsibility for their own lives. This plays perfectly into the conundrum of childhood conditioning. You push back, you get slapped down. You comply, you're a doormat. It's like being in a game where everybody else has the rules but they're off limits so devising a "winning" strategy feels impossible.

For me, the mental gymnastics i have learned to do, do suck the joy out of life, because I am constantly evaluating interactions and trying to find the optimum solution for all concerned, even me these days. The fear of "getting into trouble" is very real, and some of my experiences around that are very intense, because when I have absolutely been in the right, and stood up for it, the consequences have been extremely negative.

My inner narrative is "pathetic, pull yourself together, what's wrong with you, no wonder your life is a shitshow" and I'm exhausted from it, so I've exiled myself and at least I have fewer options for chaos to erupt. It's a bigger issue than just being a people pleaser, but that facet of myself is part of the problem. So maybe I am avoiding responsibility.

And this is why I'm having counselling.

Completely agree, it's so common in women. My parents bullied me and minimised my feelings,as a result I was taken advantage of by so -called friends, was unable to stand up for myself, bullied, was in an abusive relationship, and my health has suffered.
When I reached menopause ( and joined Mumsnet) I realised this wasn't normal, my feelings did matter, and I could stand up for myself.
I'm in a much better place now, and don't hesitate to maintain boundaries and say no when I want to, but I'm bitter about those years wasted with people taking advantage of me, and how it's affected my health- as a kid i remember lying awake grinding my teeth in frustration at how my parents treated me, and my digestion ruined from overeating to self- soothe. It makes me so angry now, but I'm trying to let go of it so it doesn't affect the rest of my life.
I'm nearly 60 and my 92 year old dad still thinks I shoukd be running after him, despite the way he continues to treat me. I've gone low contact, but I don't think he realises yet.
I hope you find happiness OP, if you've suffered the same way.

I was reading the replies and just thinking this too.

A little bit of niceness helps the world go round.

The Gen Z women seem to be less socialised into this and sometimes I feel taken aback at how devoid of pleasantries they are, esp in a customer facing role. (I feel really old writing that!) But the world needs a little warmth, to take the chill off.

Exactly- stand your ground if you just got on the swings! Say “we’ll be 5 mins then it’s your turn”. Some random kid is not more important than yours.

I have an innate hope that people will have reasonable basic behaviour that doesn't trample all over your space. And when they so so often don't I do find it exhausting. Because I'm vulnerable with poor health, it also makes me feel stressed out.

I have istorically lost it a few times. I have had a whole life of people in my family behaving appallingly and I took it. I'm aware that the very rare occasions I've gone loco are reactive abuse. So preventing that is really important for me. ( I'm generally decent, don't road rage or throw weight about).

One time however I went crazed at a neighbour who parked their 2 cars in the one only space for me. There was a build up of CF behaviour, walking in their dog shit outside my house, husband snorting up green phlegm outside my window.

I really regretted it as I was so angry I called her a c**t when spoken back to for saying stop parking there please. 😬 It's a lesson to get things in early and clearly let people know who you are. I was way too nice and accommodating.

I live in Hassociation and yes the stereotype is a thing for many in it. I'm also living that stereotype being such an uncouth potty mouth - even though I said c bomb in a wonderfully educated voice 😆.

So now, I tell myself that GUILT is better than RESENTMENT. ( Excellent advice I read). Don't ever let it get to resentment because it's so unhealthy and some of us with difficult pasts could over time become too reactive. And we are then the problem.

I'm a child of drinkers. Narc family ( yes they absolutely are with cross into really dark sociopathic traits).. Years of therapy. 15 years in fact.

I've skimmed through most of these and agree with so much. I'm still annoyed (20 years later) about a counsellor I had in my early 20s. He suggested I was manipultive and when he said it I was surprised and upset. I have spent so much of my life trying to be unobtrusive, never inviting any conflict at all, even when I know I am in the right, and keeping everyone happy. I didn't reply with how I felt about what he said, didn't disagree, I came away from those counselling sessions feeling worse about myself! I'm always the one that says, "no, you go ahead, I don't mind" when actually of course I mind! But I'm never going yo say that.

I'm trying to raise my dds differently. They know the importance of being polite but also will stand up for themselves and I actively want them to put themselves first when required. I've had to change to so they can see me modelling the behaviour I want in them. I'm not where I want to be yet but getting there.

Unfortunately, this tells your child that the other child’s unreasonable expectations or wants trumps your own child‘s wants - what has ultimately happened is that your child missed out in preference for the other.
This is not being superior- this is being a doormat. Sorry to sound harsh but that’s what they are being set up to become.
What you could have said and role modelled is - my DC is still having their turn but you can be next and we will call for you when they have finished in 10min. That shows consideration for the child waiting without your child having to give up.

I think you’re throwing a lot of different things together here. Some of this sounds like just smalltown stuff. It’s not ‘people-pleasing’ to be afraid to do something you want to do because you’re afraid of being the subject of gossip. You have the option of travelling elsewhere to go clubbing, if you want to, or indeed, of moving elsewhere if the bad elements of living where you do outweigh the good. It does suggest a pattern of hyper-focus on other people’s responses to you, rather than your responses to them, and a hype-vigilance about ‘getting into trouble’, or what you perceive to be trouble. Which, yes, is a type of avoiding responsibility, because it makes other people responsible for what you do or don’t do.

I come at this from the perspective of someone only a couple of years younger than you who had a very fucked up childhood I’m only really dealing with now, in therapy. I’m not unsympathetic.

My phrase is. The needs of others is is important BUT SO ARE YOU