How To Stop Being A People Pleaser : 7 Strategies To Stop People Pleasing
Are you a people pleaser?
Do you feel responsible for other people’s emotions?
You feel like you have no boundaries? How about your self-esteem?
If most of the answers are positive and suddenly you felt that your shadow side is illuminated, then I am sure that you can define yourself as a people pleaser.
What makes person a people pleaser?
Usually you can see yourself as a people pleaser if you :
- Are preoccupied about what others think and feel
- Agree with people’s opinions even when you disagree
- Always fear of saying ‘’no’’ to others
- Taking care of others but not taking care of yourself
- Are afraid of being abandoned or rejected
- Neglecting your own needs
- Stuck in relationships & friendships where you exhaust yourself by giving but not getting back
- Are seeking for other people’s approval
People pleasing is painful, I know that, because I have been there for way too long.
Are you a people pleaser? Here’s why!
It starts with pleasing your parents. Then your friends, then others.
Your people pleasing personality is shaped by how your parents behaved and reacted when you behaved or misbehaved.
A lot of people pleasers are born from authoritarian parents, who offered little support, comfort, approval and reward.
If you have parents like this it’s more likely that you had to work really hard to get recognition.
This is the root of people pleaser personality aspect.
Parental emotional inconsistency is what causes people pleasing.
Often times they are too busy with their own lives and emotional state, that they don’t pay much needed attention to their kids needs.
If you had parents that were emotionally when you were a kid (or even physically unavailable, leaving the family and rejecting you), I am 100% sure that you have a little or more aspect of people pleaser personality.
Why?
Because I have been there.
Little back story about me : when I was a kid, my dad left our family, as kids think of absolutes, it was very painful and subconsciously I decided that I am not worthy of even my dad’s love – first check of feeling like I have to people please to be loved and approved.
It didn’t end there – my mom had an emotional breakdown.
Even though she did take physical care of me, I didn’t receive emotional soothing (and this is where everything went down from there), because she took it very personally and was heart-broken.
Now I get that, but as a kid, I thought that I am not even good enough for my mom’s love as well.
That’s the second checkpoint of where my people pleaser personality started.
My mom wasn’t emotionally available not for a little bit, and I had to prove myself in many ways that hurt me and made me feel small and unworthy.
I was never good enough.
With my closest friends, I started to be aware of my people pleaser aspects that even dictated my life, my thoughts, my behaviors.
Because if I couldn’t please my parents, I wanted to get approval from my closest friends.
And this is where I realised that I don’t even know who I am as a personality, because all I did was people pleasing everyone around me. Not being able to stand for myself, always waiting for validation and approval, caring for what others think of me to the level that even the smallest sentence could make me cry and depressed, not even thinking about saying my own opinion and confrontate others.
And if I didn’t get that, it made a bigger scar in me that I am not good enough.
Because I thought I was small and unworthy. My self-esteem was at the lowest possible.
It took time and hard lessons, but today I can tell you that I am in my own power, not caring about what others think (because if people are rude and disrespectful, it’s their own shadow aspects that are projected in other people’s realities), and totally knowing who I am, not pleasing anyone to get validation..
I am my own authentic self, enjoying the world, and having great friendships with good amount of respect and boundaries.
That’s why I decided to write about my journey towards healing my people pleaser personality, and here’s how I did that!
How To Stop Being A People Pleaser : Strategies To Ditch People Pleasing
1. GET TO THE ROOT CAUSE
As I said, I became 100% aware of where that people pleaser aspect came from. In my case it was both of my parents.
For you it may be your one parent’s, sister’s, brother’s, friends, peers, teachers validation – basically everyone that you put on a pedistal and who’s opinion you truly care about and seek for.
I understood that aspect of my being aware, but didn’t want to admit it, and threw in my shadow self.
For a long time it dictated my life, but now that I am accepting it, it no longer has power of me.
You may become aware just like that, but if you have problems with getting to the root cause, hypnosis + subconscious meditation can help for that.
Ask yourself who and why you want to please.
2. ACCEPT YOUR PEOPLE PLEASER ASPECT
This one’s hard, because your ego doesn’t want you to accept your shadows. But once you admit that you have this personality aspect, it no longer has power over you and your self worth journey can start.
By accepting I mean becoming aware, writing about it so you can totally see that you have this people pleaser personality and maybe even speaking out loud to someone you admire.
For me it was my boyfriend, we are together for 10 years already, and as I care about his opinion, I started to tell every single detail about where and how I have been a people pleaser.
It was a massive release for me, and suddenly I felt free and started to grow my self worth.
3. KEEP IN MIND – IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE EVERYONE
You must first understand that people-pleasing is a waste of time and energy. You can try to do what you think other people want you to do, but you can’t control whether or not they’re pleased.
When you have this awareness in your mind, you truly and deeply can heal yourself, because everyone’s different, everyone’s having their own realitites and personalities with childhood traumas.
Also, it’s good to remind yourself that whenever you spend time being a people pleaser, you steal that valuable time from your own life and paying attention to what’s really important.
4. LEARN TO SAY NO
If you feel like something’s gonna hurt you or throw back into your people pleasing aspect, say no.
For example, you have a blog post to post today and you really want to make sure it’s well written, as well as it’s going to take a good amount of time + you have been neglecting your self care need so you decided that this is the night for it.
Suddenly a person (who you tend to always people please) wants to go shopping or have a lunch with you. Now it’s the time to LEARN TO SAY NO.
It will take time for you to be able to say no comfortablly, at first it’s scary, I know, because you fear that you’ll hurt someone or will make them emotional and sad.
But what’s more important is that you would post your blog post in time, and you’ll feel satisfied with your work and then to feel rewarded you can spend some time with self care routines.
Tell your friend that tomorrow’s a better day for you, and if they start to be mad and tell how horrible friend you are, is that relationship really valuable to you? If you can’t tell them your own needs? Ditch people like that, it doesn’t help in your self development journey.
5. SAY HOW YOU REALLY FEEL
This one’s maybe very confontating, but if we think about it, we need confrontation to really grow as personalities.
If you have fight with your best friend or even a parent, don’t be afraid to say out loud how you feel (it is pretty scary if you have always shut your mouth and acted like you aren’t there and that your opinion doesn’t matter).
In this point remember that maybe they don’t have a people pleaser personalities, but they may have other shadow aspects they are projecting onto you without realising it.
I once saw a thoughtful quote that said at the end of the day we all are grownups that act like wounded children, walking around our childhood traumas and fears.
If the relationships are meant to be ended, stop yourself from getting into a dark place (like you once always did) and think that it’s the end of the world. In this scenario you better work on your self worth.
If someone’s aren’t emotionally available for you to feel safe, heard and seen enough, is it really worth to keep nagging them and yourself while throwing arrows at your own self worth? I don’t think so.
6. FOCUS ON YOUR NEEDS AND VALUES
Now that you have accepted your people pleaser aspect and worked on saying no and setting boundaries for yourself, it’s time to focus on your own needs.
If you have always felt like your opinion doesn’t matter, you are not good enough and smart enough for someone or something, I am sure that you don’t even know who you are and what you actually need without all the programming from others.
Make time to discover yourself.
You can use self discovery journal prompts and write it all out :
- What needs to be healed?
- What do I really want out from my life?
- Am I able to forgive others?
- What skills do I have that may create my dream life?
- Where am I putting in too much energy?
- Where am I not putting in enough energy?
- What would life look like for me if I created more balance?
- What needs healing?
- What needs releasing?
- What needs accepting?
- Are my current routines getting closer to my goals? If not what can I do to change them?
- What is one behavior holding me back from living my best life? (it can even be scrolling on social media)
7. REMEMBER – YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE LIKED BY ALL PEOPLE TO FEEL WHOLE
As someone who comes from a family that didn’t see me as a kid and didn’t stand up for me (not even talking about being there for me and my needs), I know how hard it is to finally become whole again.
You can’t please everyone and you don’t need to be liked by everyone to finally start living your best life. It’s totally not worth to wait for someone’s approval to feel like yourself.
Self development is something that can help you with this – books, videos, podcasts, blog posts, ted talks, but most important – listen to your intuition about everything.
Healing from people pleaser personality aspect will take time, I promise that, but when you finally are at the point where you are not afraid of speaking out loud, standing for your opinion, saying no to what no longer serves you – you take your power back.
Let me know in the comments below if you have suffered from people pleaser personality and how you healed from that/you need healing for.
Take care of yourself and don’t forget about your needs!
Be kind,
Rebecca
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This lovely post was written by wellness and lifestyle blogger Rebecca at byrebechij.com
Check out more of her content here!
RESOURCES:
- Anxiety Relief Guide (Training)
