Three reasons why it’s hard to quit people-pleasing

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you know I’ve talked before about the high costs of people-pleasing.

I’ve also talked at length about what causes people-pleasing.

But why is it so hard for people to quit people-pleasing?

More recently, I’ve gotten several comments on my posts from people in their 50s and 60s stating that they’re relieved to have a name for what has shaped their lives for so long.  And they wonder if they can make changes.

I absolutely believe that people can change—in any season of life, and for any number of reasons. 

With proper support and education, I’ve seen clients of mine disrupt patterns and dynamics that have been decades in the making.  I’ve seen it happen in my own life, too.

So, if change is possible and the stakes are high, what keeps people-pleasers from making changes?  Why is it so hard to quit people-pleasing?

The short answer is that people-pleasing is protective.  It’s actually a really great adaptation in the face of a difficult situation—a way to secure love and connection in a family, even in the face of unpredictability and threat.

The longer answer, well… read on:

1.) Rejection (fear of, and actual)—

Photo by Katherine Chase on Unsplash

At core, people-pleasers fear rejection.  We all do, in fact—but people-pleasers have had the experience of being rejected by their caregivers in overt and covert ways frequently enough that they come to (understandably) doubt the constancy of others’ love.  They feel that they must perform or “earn” love by behaving in pleasing and helpful ways.

What does this rejection look like in practice?  It could be more obvious examples—like a break up or losing a treasured friendship—or, something more subtle—like getting the silent treatment from a family member for hours, days, even weeks at a time.  Silent treatment is a form of rejection.  It is a kind of emotional abuse.

Children who grow up to be people-pleasers come from households where love and affection is contingent on performance.  And this isn’t just academic performance I mean.  The requirements can be as varied as the family system they emerge in.

For example, in one household, the tacit rule might be to show very little emotion.  This sort of ‘pull yourself up the bootstraps’ mentality runs deep in American culture.  You might recognize it in the family you come from, too.

So, the (unspoken) rule in this family would be something like, “Don’t talk about your feelings and we’ll get along just fine.”  People who break this rule get branded as sissies, drama queens, too sensitive, too emotional, too much.  All of these labels are a form of judgment and rejection.

Every people-pleaser I know has gotten the message that they are “too much.”

The tragic paradox of this situation is that a people-pleasers’ “unpleasant” feelings will understandably bloom and heighten in a family like this, which just brings about more and more cycles of rejection and conflict.  Feelings soothe when they are named and acknowledged compassionately.  If a family can’t furnish this tending to, the people-pleaser is stuck.  They often become the “identified patient” in a family system, expressing dysfunctional patterns of the family and being the person to end up in therapy.

The silver lining here is that people-pleasers often come to therapy and can get help, while many of their other family members remain in denial about the part they have to play in the family dynamic.  If a people-pleaser can get past the trauma and hurt of feeling like the black sheep of the family, they can begin to reflect on the family they come from and that “not all is as it seems.”

In another family, the rule might have to do with excellence and achievement.  Perform well, be at the top of your class, and we’ll love you.  A child in this family develops what Terrence Real calls performance-based esteem.  Essentially, all of your feelings of self-worth come from what you do rather than who you are.

This person doesn’t have a sense of their own intrinsic worth.  While they might be a bright and shining star academically or professionally, they learn not to take risks and their creativity and voice is often stifled out of fear of failure—something that wasn’t permitted in a family that expected perfection.

Adults from families like these often attain high levels of achievement and impressive careers—but they struggle with workaholism, perfectionism, feelings of emptiness and shame.  They struggle to cultivate hobbies, and they often feel adrift when there is leisure time, opting for activities that are passive and numbing (Netflix, anyone?) over activities that are generative, creative, and foster connection between body, mind, and spirit.

A person from this sort of family never had the safety necessary to explore their own preferences or creativity.  They were too busy trying to “take the temperature of the room”—that is, trying to figure out the feeling states and needs of others nearby so they could anticipate and take care of the needs of others.  Therapists sometimes call this role-reversal or parentification—when a child or teen is taking on the role of soothing, nurturing, or tending to parents or other adults.

The bottom line is that children who grow up to be people-pleasers live under a kind of threat—the threat of rejection.  The threat of “or else.”  Do this, or else I won’t love you anymore.

Is any wonder that people-pleasers are reluctant to relinquish these strategies?

2.) Reinforcement.

People love it when you over-function.

You get accolades and compliments and admiration and it does a great job of boosting your performance-based esteem… for a little while, at least.

They get to benefit from your overfunctioning.  Everyone wins!  Except not really.

Chances are good you’ll face a lot of resistance if you stop your people-pleasing behavior, particularly from the people closest to you.

3.)  Lost.

Often, people-pleasing continues because the alternative isn’t clear.

Even if someone works through the fear of conflict, the crippling guilt that comes with boundary-setting, and many of the other hallmark features of this condition, there is still something missing.

People-pleasers often default to caregiving and pleasing behaviors because they haven’t had the safety or space to develop alternative ways of being in the world. 

They don’t tend to have hobbies.

They may take great pleasure in being of service to others, so much so that they have a very hard time receiving care or nurturance from others.

This “adriftness” – this lack of self-direction, this needing another stimulus to set a course by—is a quiet but pernicious result of the emotional neglect that is part and parcel of people-pleasing.

And, one of the lessons that people-pleasers get growing up is this:  love is pain.

All of the daytime television programming with soap operas, most romantic comedies, and pretty much all of lifetime TV for women is, I’m sure, made for people-pleasers.  (I say this with much love, as a people-pleaser in recovery myself.)  When you get an incoherent mixture of warmth and affection tangled with rejection and dismissiveness, your nervous system gets primed early on to expect these twin pieces—love and rejection, love and rejection, love and rejection.

What does this look like in real life?

“I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop”

“It’s just a matter of time before the shit hits the fan”

“Everything is going fine and it is freaking me out”

“I’m scared to relax—it feels like if I do that, I’m courting disaster.”

Entertainment models life.  Watching those shows and reading those angsty stories echoes this early trauma of love & rejection together.  There is no happily ever after to a people-pleaser—and thank goodness, because that would be kind of boring.  Or, that’s how it may feel to a people-pleaser.  Why?

Stable and nurturing can feel boring or uncomfortable to a people-pleaser.  Sometimes they can even unconsciously try to unravel or sabotage a relationship, looking for the seams and the fault lines because they’ve had things fall apart so many times before.

Why do this?  People-pleasers expect relationships to be tumultuous and tenuous.  Their nervous systems are primed for pleasure and pain to occur together.  They move toward what is familiar– even if it is painful.

And that’s why people-pleasing can be so hard to quit.

The good news is that our brains and our nervous systems are responsive and can change throughout the lifespan.

Change is possible.  Therapy can help.  If you’re in Austin, Texas and you think you might be a people-pleaser, let’s chat.  I am scheduling free, 30 minute consultations for prospective new clients.