How to stop people pleasing?

[GrumpySlump]

I realised today that I have completely wasted my life trying to please everyone else. I’ve ended up living this squashed little life. How can I stop being so scared of other people’s moods and disapproval? My biggest fear is that someone I love will take their own life (family history) so I scurry around trying to smooth everything over and I still can’t please anyone. Now I’ve seen the light, what do I do next?

I don't know but maybe start with small things that you want to do without worrying about everyone else. And build up to bigger changes. I also saw a coach (she was work based but really it was all about behaviours like people pleasing and how they hold you back in your career and how to tackle them) and it was really helpful having someone to discuss with and explore the reasons behind (sounds like you know a lot about why you do it) and develop strategies. Good luck

When you say you are scared of other peoples moods and disapproval can you describe how that fear appears?

So the feeling you get, where in your body it is felt, what you think will happen if someone disapproves?

Is the concern about loss of life linked with the feeling above or a second issue?

I remember reading that people pleasing is a selfish trait - it’s often about the pleaser remaining comfortable and avoiding conflict and it’s not an act of kindness. That really made me examine people pleasing in greater detail.

Do you mind if people hate you/dislike you/ find you irritating etc? If someone clearly dislikes you can you shrug it off? Are you happy to say what you believe in even if that means disapproval?

Lots of questions but I hoped it may help you think about why you do this and what you get out of it. Because you may find that you people please for YOU not for others.

Good luck - I like Mark Mansons latest podcast series. I know he’s a bit marmite but I’ve found the new series helpful in many ways.

Sorry it posted twice

Thank you. I feel it in my belly I think, I feel sick and desperate to do something/anything to make that feeling go away. There’s a lot of catastrophising going on. So if someone is angry then rather than it being a temporary situation and something we can discuss calmly like adults. I immediately think that they will hurt either me/my children or themselves.

I cannot bear it if someone dislikes me. I will go out of my way to try and show them they are wrong and I’m really lovely. I end up nodding along to things I really don’t agree with just to keep the peace. It’s pathetic and exhausting.

Have you been hurt physically by family or a partner op? If so it may be worth getting counselling if this stems from abuse.

If not I’d try and examine the feeling next time you get it. Where is it exactly? Name it. If you have someone you really trust then say it out loud. Describe it in great detail. How it progresses, how it moves through you. What you are thinking, what’s scaring you, how you get hot or clammy or upset. By naming it you may take some of the heat out of it.

Where do you think it stems from?

Also if you pretzel yourself and try and get everyone to like you then you are unlikely to be vulnerable and get a deeper relationship with people.

I do think it’s a selfish trait and it’s about the pleaser feeling happy about themself. Maybe the need to feel like a good person or liked or comfortable.

Are you comfortable in your own skin op? It’s okay not to be nice all the time. In fact you shouldn’t be nice all the time, there are times you have to be selfish or mean. Are you happy to say no.

I don’t think it’s pathetic by the way. I think it’s great you are doing something about it. I hope you find peace with yourself. By seeing it as selfish you may be able to reframe it. As I said earlier if it stems from abuse maybe get help from a counsellor or EMDR therapy as you may do this as it has previously kept you safe in a specific relationship.

Brene Brown is the queen of shame. Her TED talk is on YouTube - might be worth a watch.

See if you can identify shame in yourself and others.

Your use of pathetic makes me feel shame is worth exploring too.

List your values. List your good points. Note in a diary how you demonstrated your values each day and how you lived by them. Build yourself up op. You are clearly good at self reflection. Then in a month rewrite your values and keep working on them daily. Live by your values. If you know your values and your strengths it’s easier to live by them.

Thank you @Namechangeragin. I haven’t been hurt physically but I’ve lived in fear of being hurt physically. I also have a fear of losing someone I love. There has been a lot of controlling behaviour directed at me (and I probably use people pleasing to control in return). I think I am hyper-vigilant and alert to the slightest threat and adjust my own behaviour accordingly. It feels like self-preservation. I am living in a deeply inauthentic way. Thank you for the suggestion of small steps @Mandylovescandy and thank you @Namechangeragin there’s a lot to unpick and I think talking it through with a counsellor is probably my best option. Thank you both 🙏

All credit to you for wanting to address this now.

People pleasing often cones about from wanting to please a difficult and or otherwise emotionally absent parent. Is this so with you?.

You sound very cognitively aware, which comes as a good thing but when I asked for trauma focused CBT, the therapist suggested we try EMDR instead as she said I was very cognitively aware but emotionally I was struggling. She was the first person who really explained what she thought was going on for me and I felt it was accurate. She recommended the book the body keeps the score: EMDR didn’t work for me as I was so hyper-vigilant I couldn’t relax and do the exercises. I would recommend EMDR if you wanted to try therapy. Its approach is very sound.

I struggled on until my early 50s when my coping mechanisms couldn’t cope anymore and I had an episode of hypomania. It was awful but also useful as, having asked for help on and off for over 30 years, I finally got help that I needed. Medication and permission to relax and zone out when stressed rather than try to fix myself and “be better”.

I do wonder if I had tried EMDR younger if it would have been enough.

All the best.

Or from having it modelled by a parent, usually a mother, as in my case. She brought up her daughters to never, ever say no, to bustle about after other people, offering services in exchange for liking, and that the other person is always exponentially more important than you in any situation. If someone asked you to babysit on your own wedding day, you would be terribly apologetic that you couldn’t do it, and you would make it your job to find the asker a babysitter and pay them. Because not doing it was your fault and would allow them to legitimately dislike you.

All of us worked very hard to root out those scripts in young adulthood, but it takes serious effort. Therapy helped.

You’ve had excellent advice from @Namechangeragin. I’d just amplify that it’s helpful that you already see it not a matter of ‘being too nice’, which is where many posters on here start (‘I’m too nice for my own good and everyone exploits me!’). Good for you for recognising that. The fact is that people-pleasing, regardless of where it stems from, is a selfish and manipulative behaviour aimed at trying to elicit a certain type of response from others and at preventing you having to deal with the discomfort of the consequences of saying no. And the other thing is that, as you’ve also realised, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t make you friends, because you’re presenting yourself as a human service animal, often to people you neither like nor respect, so no one can see you, and it’s offputting to potential friends.

You’re in a good place to start really working on this. I agree that sitting with the feelings of discomfort that go with saying no is the place to start.

Codependent no more is a good book

You need to sit with the feeling, it won't actually do you any harm, you will hate it but it will go away. Feelings aren't facts is another one that helps me so just because I feel bad doesn't mean I have done a bad thing, as well as realising that I am not some omnipotent being that can control others emotions and how arrogant of me to think I am, it's magical thinking. Also that it's usually a coping thing from childhood where keeping mum in a good temper would be helpful but you aren;t a child.

You also can't "nice" or please someone into liking you - why did so many people love Hitler? Wasn't because he was nice.

Finally people pleasing is a from of manipulation, you are doing it so you never have to feel that shaky fizzy feeling in your stomach, you are doing it for you not for them.

That is my toolkit anyway, use it or ignore !

Well done for seeing the light, OP!

It is tricky and anxiety-inducing to stop people pleasing. Why don't you start with something like, if someone asks you if you'd mind doing a really long/boring/nasty task, saying, "I'm very sorry, I'm afraid that I can't as I'm doing X". That way, you're getting out of things, but you are still being polite!

Then work on thinking more for yourself, and doing things that please you. This might mean going to the pictures on your own, because nobody else wants to see the same film, but give it a go.

Then practice saying, "No" to anything that you definitely disagree with, instead of, "I'll go with the majority..."

Also, if people don't do things for you (e.g. replacing the empty loo roll, or eat everything of yours from the fridge, or leaving things empty and putting them back), don't do it for them.

Enjoy!

I have never been a people pleaser. One effective tactic is to make yourself less and less available. People will generally give up agfter a bit and find someone else to pester.

Dont give your phone number or email to the likes of neighbours. Dont give them any personal or financial information about yourself that will cause them to latch onto you. Always be in a hurry with a phone to your ear and no time to stop and be earwigged. Have one phone for work and another which is strictly private. Your works phone gets switched off as soon as you leave the office and left behind in a drawer when you go on holiday. Never give your personal phone info to work colleagues or bosses. And always remember that phones have an "off" switch.

I have a specially comiled "bounce back" email which I use for people I dont want to respond to. It says something like "mailbox full" or "mailbox unavailable".

Oh and the older you get the easier it is to get away with not seeing, hearing or being aware of. People may think you are a "silly ld buffer" but its better than being pestered by people who steal your time.

I dont think people pleasing is selfish as such as a previous poster said, but it is about yourself and protecting yourself from feelings that seem unendurable.

It's probably about making sure you feel safe, and accepted.

But the price is high, physically (running around after people), Financially (getting taken advantage of), socially and personally (not being able to be authentic to your own reasonable likes and dislikes).

Well done for trying to do something about it. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy might be a good start.

I would say both my parents were absent in different ways. I wanted to please them but somehow couldn’t.

I’m sorry you went through that. It sounds incredibly tough. I am due to have CBT but will try EMDR if it doesn’t work. Thank you

Thanks @DahliaJug you have described my Mum perfectly. And no I am definitely not too nice! I use niceness to hide the messy parts of me. I have always had a deep certainty that no-one would like me if they actually knew me. Even as a child.

Thank you - I’ll take a look

Thanks @TorroFerney - it’s so hard to sit with those feelings. I usually try and numb them with food (or scrolling on Mumsnet)

The first step in stopping people pleasing is being aware that you're doing it, so you're already half way to fixing the problem.

I was a chronic people pleaser (horrible childhood, violent and coercively controlling father, and I've come to realise over time that my mother's no prize either). I know it sounds odd because we think of 'pleasing' as helpful but really it's about control. We do it to try and control other people's feelings (so they won't be upset or angry with us) so we can avoid the agony of our own guilt and fear. When we developed the behaviour it may well have been necessary, but then a point comes when it isn't any more.

I've seen a few books have already been recommended. I wanted to add Codependent no more by Melody Beattie (this was a massive eye opener for me) and also if you like something a bit more self helpy rather than psychology based, Mel Robbins Let Them.

I've also had CBT and EMDR and recommend it but be prepared for it to be a hard slog. My DH said when I started it that maybe it would help fix my relationship with my mother but actually it made it worse, because I had to face a lot of things I was still trying to deny, and also admit to myself that I don't really want a relationship with her.

You did touch on this a bit, but yes, when you step back from people pleasing there will be people in your life who won't react well, probably because they are used to you being that way and benefit from it. This is where 'let them' comes in - let them be disappointed, confused, let down etc - and trust that they can cope with their own feelings about the situation without rushing in to fix it for them. It will change things but it will be better for you. x.

Thank you @TheeNotoriousPIG @Friendlygingercat and @ReleaseTheDucksOfWar some fantastic tips there. I really appreciate everyone who has taken the time to reply. There’s obviously some very deep rooted stuff going on for me which I’ll need to unpick. I realise that all this people pleasing has left me feeling very lonely - I think I’ve forgotten who I actually am in an effort to fit in and I therefore can’t make an authentic connection. Like a chameleon who has changed colour so many times he can’t remember where he started! But in the meantime I will implement some of those smaller steps.

I read a couple of decent books a couple of years ago that really changed my mindset. This was one of them:

https://amzn.to/3UNBEvf

I got told I am a people pleaser at work quite recently. I was getting myself into a terrible state over trying to do everything right and react quickly to every demand; I didn't want to do anything wrong or get into trouble. None of this came from being selfish or manipulative, but from a childhood where I was taught to always put others' needs before my own and nothing I did was ever good enough.

I'd previously had counselling, which helped me to see where my beliefs came from, but it wasn't until someone said I was a people pleaser that I realised I've spent my whole life trying to keep everyone else happy at my own expense. I totally get where you're coming from, OP. It's very difficult to break the habit of a lifetime and realise that you matter just as much as everyone else.