Why Do You People-Please?
If there's anything I know about my audience/followers/community, it's this:
There are a LOT of people pleasers here.
Before you feel attacked, believe me, you are SO not alone. As an enneagram 2, people-pleasing has been a HUGE personality trait of mine for a really long time. And what I've learned through doing the work of healing as well as supporting others' healing journeys is this:
People-pleasing is really common in trauma survivors.
People-pleasing can make it hard for us to feel like we are being true to ourselves.
People-pleasing can be a coping mechanism that helps us survive.
So in this blog post, let’s discuss reasons why you might have picked up people-pleasing as an adaptive strategy.
Maybe you people-please because you learned from a young age that it wasn't safe to upset or disagree with your caregivers.
This can happen if when you were growing up, your parents were not able to stay emotionally regulated or okay when you disagreed with them, made a mistake, or did something wrong. Of course, all parents are going to get upset at their kids sometimes and make mistakes themselves. But if your caregivers consistently scared you or harmed you when you displeased them, that could have led your body to pick up on the fact that it was not safe to mess up, disagree, or make a mistake. Therefore, you learned to do whatever you possibly could to please your parents.
Maybe you people-please because you learned that the only way you would be loved and accepted was if you made other people happy.
If you were bullied, rejected, or not included by your peers, that probably felt incredibly painful and scary. We instinctively want to belong as humans- it helps us feel safe on a deep, biological level. So if you were NOT belonging with your peers, you might have learned how to contort yourself into someone pleasing, so they would choose and include you.
Maybe you people-please because you were taught that choosing others over yourself was what made you a "good person".
Perhaps you were directly taught by your caregivers or community that what makes someone good is how much they are able to help others. Is helping others a good thing? For sure. But there is a difference between being kind and being completely at the mercy of other people's needs and desires. Some of us picked up on the message that what makes you a good person is how much you're able to give and do for others and how little you need yourself.
Maybe you people-please because your nervous system correlates conflict with fear and violence, leading you to avoid it at all costs.
If you're a survivor of any type of abuse, you might have a deep embodied fear of conflict. Or maybe you watched your parents or other family members fight in horrible ways growing up. Regardless, if you learned that conflict was always some form of violence or terrifying circumstance, it makes a ton of sense to avoid conflict like the plague. One way to avoid conflict is to try to keep people happy at all costs, even at the cost of your own well-being.
Whether you relate to any of these circumstances or have your own reasons for people-pleasing…
Maybe people-pleasing was an adaptive strategy that helped you survive.
It can be helpful to see the ways that people-pleasing has helped you, as well as harmed you. We can't shame ourselves into lasting change.
I created my new course, Coming Home to Yourself as an opportunity for you to dig into this work.
This is a 5-week group program where we will discover:
what makes you feel safe?
what lights you up?
what stories did trauma give you about who you are?
how can you reclaim the narrative and write your own story?
how can you let others see the real you in a way that feels good?
and so much more…
The group is open for enrollment now until February 7th. We start on Wednesday, February 8th.
