Sitting at my best friend’s desk in her room a month ago, our light-hearted conversation drifted to the heavier topic of people-pleasing. Woven into the complaints about frustrating exams and excited discussions about weekend plans, I came to the illuminating conclusion that I have. To stop. People pleasing — and here’s why.
People-pleasing is the tendency to prioritize the wishes or feelings of others instead of voicing your own. This behavior can emerge as a couple of things, be it guilt, the desire to not be a burden, or the undermining of your own sentiments. As someone who chronically avoids confrontation and deeply fears rejection, this emerges as an almost unconscious instinct.
Between my best friend and I, I’m the people pleaser, and she’s the more assertive one. This nasty habit of mine has gotten me into a relationship I wasn’t ready for, led to my taking on an academic workload I couldn’t sustain, and enabled friendships that I don’t agree with anymore. On a far smaller scale, in the way it impacts my day-to-day life, emerges as my being a little bit of a pushover.
If you ask me to do something with you, go somewhere, help you with something, I’ll do it, no convincing necessary. Hell, I’ll probably offer to do it for you in the first place. Be it about where to eat for dinner, what time to meet up to hangout, or my preferences while working on a group-project, my people-pleasing emerges as an excruciating inability to set boundaries and voice my concerns.
Now, let me clarify to any of my pals reading this — most of the time I’m as down for anything as I am simply for the fun of it, but sometimes this desire to be a good friend, or do what somebody else may want, can stand in the way of my own needs.
It’s kind of funny — my best friend and I ended up getting into this whole discussion of why people-pleasing is bad, and it can damage relationships, and it made me feel sort of silly for doing it in the first place.
Here’s the thing. People-pleasing does far more bad than good, and here’s a few reasons why.
- Poor communication. I strongly believe in the power of ample, clear communication to carry relationships. It drives me nuts when people say one thing, and mean another. Still, that’s precisely what people-pleasing is: failing to verbally express your desires, in exchange for silence and falsehoods. This leads me to the result of this, which is…
- The breeding of resentment, on behalf of both parties. If I fail to be honest with my friend about something, however menial it may be, and she in her ignorance about my preference chooses something else, I will grow a resentment toward her that is unduly unwarranted. Moreover, once she starts realizing my mood or attitude may switch when she fails to read my mind, she likely will grow frustrated with my inability to be frank with her.
- Loss of self identity. Pretty soon, disillusionment with yourself comes when you daily give light to the small pieces that make you, you, regardless of how small those may be. It may sound dramatic, but by prioritizing others over yourself, you lose personal values and goals.
- Lack of integrity. This one comes across as the harshest, but sometimes (classic people-pleaser behavior, I know) the only way to rationalize a behavior out of existence is understanding how it impacts your social existence. Integrity is uncompromising consistency to morals, which is an important contributor to one’s overall character.
As you can see, what begins as an idea of strengthening relationships with others around you in fact can do quite the opposite. So, why do I keep doing it then, if I can so clearly theorize why it’s bad?
Above all, it’s comfortable. I find it easier to agree and acquiesce to the wants of my friends, say, then complicate the situation by adding my own beliefs.
Moreover, I (and I don’t use this word lightly) hate seeming needy. Being raised in a family that almost over-emphasized manners and consideration for others, the last thing I would ever want others to perceive me as is difficult or burdensome.
As someone diagnosed with social anxiety since my youth, above all people-pleasing is a way of curbing insecurity and a feeling of awkward inadequacy in social situations. By being agreeable, I feel like I can be a more enjoyable person to be around.
This fawning response, however, isn’t all horrible. To a degree, I think everybody is a people-pleaser, and it isn’t something to shun so deeply. Human beings are social creatures, and as social creatures we require a level of cooperation between us all. People pleasing is born of that innate desire to create peace and keep society friendly and accommodating to all.
Still, I find that whenever I hear myself give in to my friend simply because I feel guilty for sticking up for myself, it makes me cringe.
To work on it, I’m trying to remind myself that in another person’s perspective, I wouldn’t think poorly of them, and welcome the difference in perspective. I have to remind myself that being assertive and sticking up for yourself isn’t a bad thing, and it doesn’t make you look stubborn or greedy — god forbid a girl says she’d rather go to In-N-Out than TacoBell.
I can’t honestly tell you I’ll never be a people-pleaser again. What I can say, however, is that I’m putting in effort to be honest with my friends when they ask me things. Shocker — nobody’s unfriended me yet. Amazingly, my friends like me for me, opinions and all.