What Being a People Pleaser Does to You

As a recovering people pleaser, this has been hard to finally get into. About 4 years ago, I realized that I had grown used to being used to doing what other people say only because they said it.

In a large way, a part of it stemmed from my lack of trust in myself.

To me, always, outsiders were right and I was always wrong. I was a yes man.

After almost 20 years of being this person, here’s what I realized.

First, you can lose the point of a relationship. Personally, I did. Simply put, relationships or friendships survive because friends or partners gravitate to you because they like you. They like what makes you ‘you’. I lost the idea of that. I thought I had to always change myself to be liked. I had to be a different person to be deserving of a relationship, for someone to want to be with me. But that’s not true. Friends are friends because they like you just as you are. Whether quirky or dry. And guess what, they like you that way because they’re probably that way as well.

The next thing I found out was, you can lose your joy or happiness in everything. Pleasing people all the time cages you. At least for me, it did. That was because most of what I did was not in alignment to my passions and desires. Rather, they were in agreement with what other people wanted for me. I was no longer happy. I was slaving away on tasks that brought me little fulfillment. To some extent, I forgot what I wanted for myself. I forgot what makes me happy. I lost touch with myself. I did find some happiness pleasing others but I found it alone. I would spend my day doing what others wanted and spend my nights with teary eyes. And I didn’t really know what was wrong.

It turned out that all I had to do was stop shutting myself out and focus on what truly made me smile.

Also, you might find yourself chasing for validation in others. If you’re anything like me, your source validation was not built in you. That could be because most of the things you did were not done because you wanted to. Like me, you might want people to see you, praise you and validate you in everything you did. For me, It was only after someone points out what I’m doing and likes it that I believe I’m doing the right thing; that I believe what I’m doing has potential. I lost belief in myself and what my hands could do. I never saw anything I did as good if no one saw it too. And that led to a loss of self confidence.

You might lose your sense of direction. The thing about pleasing people is everyone has different opinions. They have different ideas on the best paths to take and when you let their voices and wishes impact your life so much, you lose your sense of direction. It was as if I was being tossed by the wind. If a person says a path is good, I’d follow with no question. If another person points out a different path, I’d change course without questioning it. Or I’d try to merge it. Regardless, I had no direction for myself and so I never made progress for myself. If I ever made progress, it was for someone else’s vision for my life. Never mine and that kept me in a pit of unhappiness.

When ‘people pleasing’, you might lose my voice. I lost my touch on things because my voice was just a combination of the numerous voices all around me. I was fashioning myself to be a jack of all trades because I wanted to please anyone and soon all my work became lifeless. They didn’t have a sense of me in them because I simply wasn’t in it. Nothing really was. Or maybe, my emptiness was the only thing in it. I lost my voice in the sense that I didn’t know who I was anymore or what I liked. I had merged myself with what everyone else preferred that I did not know what I preferred.

Finally, you might become very conscious of yourself. When ‘people pleasing’, you deliberately act in a way that pleases the other person and you are aware and mindful of those actions. My attitude towards others was one that I had built on untrue grounds and I did so because I wanted others to like me. Thus I was always conscious of myself and my behaviour to fit the persona I had created in hopes that they would continue to like me. As I grew, I realized how taxing that is on the body and mind.

Okay, enough of the negative words, it’s time for some positive words.

The thing about ‘people pleasing’ is that it comes from you. It’s a choice you make. And you can choose to deliberately stop making choices like that.

I’m not going to say it’s easy because it’s not. It took years and tears and solitude to get out of it myself. But once you make the decision to stop, it helps in making other little decisions that add up to a happier authentic you.

I hope we all come to that place of being comfortable the way we are in our own skin.

It’s kind of cheesy but I’ll be here with you every step of the way if you need help.

Until we meet again.

Bye!