People pleasing

[whatausername]

So I've come away from my "usual" boards to ask some questions that I think might be related to being a woman and how we are treated by society. Be gentle because my head is full of cotton wool as I'm sick atm but I'd like to hear some others' views. Why do we people please? Why is it so hard to break away from this trait and is it actually related to being a girl/woman? Where is the line between a naturally helpful disposition and an instilled characteristic to please?

I don’t think it’s unique to being female at all. Maybe more prevalent amongst females? I don’t know.

It’s usually rooted in parent pleasing during childhood. Children have competing needs for authenticity (being true to their feelings) and attachment (being attached to the caregiver for safety/survival).

Attachment needs always trump authenticity, as because of the child’s vulnerability, they risk (or at least perceive that they risk) death through lack of protection. If the parents are scary (eg harsh or abusive) and unattuned (maybe because of their own stress, trauma, grief etc) or unable to regulate emotions the child shuts down feelings to maintain connection with the parents.

When the child hits adulthood, they haven’t learned to be in touch with their feelings, needs, wants, desires, and they carry over the parent-pleasing strategy. But that’s not a good strategy for life and relationships as an adult.

Where is the line between a naturally helpful disposition and an instilled characteristic to please?

I think you’re asking how does empathy develop vs people-pleasing. Children need to go through a naturally narcissistic stage where the world revolves around them and their needs. Then when they’re toddlers they learn to say ‘no’ (defining the difference between them and their parents) - they become their own person from there - assuming the parent accepts that they’re a separate person and allow them to express and develop their boundaries. Empathy develops naturally after that - once you’re in touch with your own needs, you can have a good understanding of others’ needs.

People pleasers get stuck in the narcissistic stage, always looking to please the parents and never developing to learn their own feelings/boundaries. So the healthy kind of empathy never develops.

Look up Gabor Matè and the School of Life on YouTube for some psychology explanations.

What a lot of food for thought, thank you!

I don't have a link as I learnt it so long ago but I believe that what used to be called 'women's intuition' has been proven to be more reasonably called servant / subordinate intuition. People put more effort into anticipating needs when they've been taught that it's their job to see that everything runs smoothly.

I think messages as women as providers of logistical and emotional support are very pervasive.

I’d like to follow this discussion as I’m the opposite - I seem to have missed out on the part of female socialisation that makes you want to people please, nurture, put yourself last etc. It’s never been in my nature. So I’m interested to see what others have to say about it as I see it discussed a lot on here and wonder how and why I’m not like this.

Personally I think it’s nurture over nature - the poster above has described childhood developmental stages and how they shape your adult personality very well. I don’t subscribe to the idea that women are innately nurturing and men innately tougher, I think this is largely down to nurture - not just the ideas you’re brought up with but the ones we absorb from society as well. I am a great believer in attachment theory, so the attachments you had with your primary caregivers as a child will shape how you regulate emotions and form relationships as an adult. If you were taught from a young age to quash your needs this will have an impact.

@TedMullins interesting to hear about your experience. Do you feel like you had a nurturing childhood and that’s why you haven’t developed people pleasing tendencies? Or do you think it’s a different reason? Are you female/male?

@whatausername pondering your question about whether/why it’s maybe more a female thing. I wonder if there’s biological factors or conditioning at play. I remember reading in Complex PTSD by Pete Walker that women tend to internalise anger (so develop depression in the kind of un-nurturing environment I described above) and men tend to externalise it (so develop aggression, expressed outwardly). This was definitely true in my dysfunctional family of origin - my brother became very aggressive and pushed back against my abusive mother a lot causing big explosive and physically aggressive arguments in the house, whereas my preferred strategy was to internalise my feelings, keep the peace, float under her radar, be very compliant, and I developed depression and people pleasing tendencies. My anger was still very much there, it just took a lot of therapy to bring it out and then the depression lifted. I can’t pinpoint any difference in our conditioning/upbringing that led to that difference between me (female) and my brother. In fact my mother, because of her experience of injustices in her own childhood, was always at huge pains to treat us equally, though she naturally responded to us on the basis of how we responded to her. I wonder how this plays out in other families.

Btw I think it’s interesting how the tendency for women to internalise and men to externalise anger mirrors our biology - the vagina inwards and the penis outwards. So I wonder if it’s something inherent in female/male makeup, hormones etc that contributes.

But then I also think it’s socialisation - eastern ideas of balance - the yin/yang, psychology ideas of the anima/animus and how each sex being in touch with the what is traditionally the opposite sex’s qualities is the ideal, and that integrated picture is possible regardless of sex. E.g. if men get in touch with their traditionally feminine qualities (being, reflection, feeling etc) and women get in touch with their traditionally masculine qualities (doing, leading, risk taking etc) we become more rounded, integrated, content, creative people.

Personally I think I learned this behaviour from my mother and grandmothers. All were constantly running around after and facilitating others to the point where I don't actually know what things they enjoyed doing purely for themselves. In later life my mum became disabled which meant my dad switched into caregiver mode and this lead to a lot of guilt developing in my mum as she felt useless and worthless that she couldn't do those things for him and that her role as she saw it had vanished. I have found it hard to stop people pleasing especially at work and it's made me feel also like I don't really know myself or what I want from my life.

@Heroicallyfound I’m female. my childhood is an interesting one. My mum was definitely nurturing but my dad wasn’t. He had mental health issues and would have angry outbursts where the whole house would have to tiptoe around him. When I was a teenager he often belittled and invalidated my feelings. He also talked a lot about his cynical outlook on life and would say things like people will always screw you over and let you down, you can’t trust anyone, etc. He didn’t lift a finger at home and my mum ran around doing everything. But instead of internalising that as “what women should do” I think I felt an innate desire to rebel against it. In some ways I took after my dad more in terms of selfishness and laziness, even though he was also the source of pain and invalidation.

One thing I do give my parents credit for though is they always said to me to do/be who I want and follow whatever path makes me happy. They never did or said anything that taught me I should behave a certain simply because I’m a woman. Like I said though I find it interesting I didn’t internalise my mum’s example and instead have always felt this innate urge to rebel instead of conform

@TedMullins interesting, thanks for sharing