I was talking to an ESL Danish friend recently, and whilst his English is probably better than mine, we had a language barrier when I started talking about people pleasing. He asked me a few times to define it for him, eventually he said ‘But why are you calling it that? Do people not know what those words mean? Why isn’t it called Dishonesty-You-Try-To-Make-Yourself-Feel-Better-About-By-Calling-It-Something-Cute?’
This one of of the reasons I love English Second Language friends, when I am trying to sanitise my bad behaviour with therapy talk, they usually call me right out on it. I have benefitted from the compassionate reframing of things, usually with the help of therapy, but I can get a bit slippery when I’m avoiding my motives by using a different word. I can then forget that I know exactly what I’m doing. I can forget that if I want to compassionately reframe something, I have to get into the reality of the situation.
I can intellectually understand why I have people-pleased in the past - it’s been safe, it’s a way to receive the maximum amount of love, I have genuinely wanted to help people so they didn’t feel as helpless as I have felt in the past, and I have wanted a sense of control. I have experienced unfair consequences when people were not pleased with me, whether it was to blame or not. I’ve wanted to have a handle on the happiness of everyone around me, and taken responsibility for it, because when you blame yourself for everything you get very good at over-claiming responsibility. I have had to people please at work for fear of losing work as a freelancer, especially with a ‘please, don’t throw me out in the cold’ attitude with people who employ me, I’m still a bit fucked up around upper-middle class people.
I have said yes when I mean no for fear of losing friendships, and caused harm anyway when the truth came out. The reality is, I have had to find out the hard way that people pleasing is not loving, and even though it can seem like a noble or almost cute shortcoming, my being indirect is absolutely infuriating for myself and everyone around me. Superficially agreeing to everything, chronically undercutting your own needs that someone may have a positive opinion of you, presenting an entirely false self and overpromising without the certainty that you can deliver is a form of emotional dishonesty that creates future tensions, and an internal sense of gnawing that when it turns outwards, can leave you feeling like to hate the people closest to you.
People pleasing will not result in universal approval -