Therapy for People Pleasing Anxiety

We all need safety, certainty and connection in our lives, but we go about it in different ways.  We overemphasize some parts of our personality and hide others based on what tends to be most acceptable (especially while growing up). 

It is an adaptive strategy we use in order to get these core needs met. This is not a character flaw, about being deceitful, or about being fake.  It’s just a part of being a healthy human that is tuned into their social environment.

Unfortunately, though, you probably recognize that this healthy strategy can be taken too far and cause more problems than it solves.  The people-pleasing strategy relies on over-emphasizing the nice, giving and supportive-of-others part of you. A typical people pleaser can become a chameleon who’s always fitting themselves into the situation at hand and the company they’re with.  

People pleasing has a lot of good intentions behind it, but it also has some uglier downsides that include:

• Sacrificing too much of yourself and then feeling resentful after you’ve said yes
• Becoming overly sensitive to rejection
• Basing your self-worth on what you do for others
• Feeling like you are losing a sense of who you are and what you want
• Having a hard time finding your voice

I have found that most people who struggle with this type of pattern are often very sincere, empathic and warm-hearted people.  Their wanting to be close to others is a healthy instinct to follow but it can lead them astray. They can slip into doing things for others in order to be needed.  All this focus on others can have them slip away from being in touch with who they really are and what they truly want.  Acknowledging their own needs can be a struggle.  

Typically these patterns of having healthy conflict weren’t modeled well for them by their caregivers when growing up.  Instead, it is common to be brought up in an environment that's either quite chaotic with lots of fighting or on the other end of the spectrum where conflict and raw emotions were stuffed and avoided.  In either situation, there is little room to learn that there is a healthy version of conflict. A willingness to have conflict is vital for healthy relationships that can deepen over time.