First of all- it was a journey! It didn't happen overnight.
But we also weren't trained to be people-pleasers overnight.
If you identify as a people pleaser or have someone in your life who is, you're probably intuitively aware of this already. Certain family dynamics, values, cultural responses, and environments lead us to a place where we learn to people please to get our needs met.
Those can be physical needs (food, shelter), emotional needs, or psychological needs.
At some point in our lives, many of us start to hit a wall with people pleasing. It's no longer helpful. It used to help us build friendships, attract partners, and stay comfortable at work, but now?
Not so much.
The resentment towards those friends is so overwhelming that we're turning down plans with them...
That guy you were seeing casually mentions the other woman he's dating... (ummm what?!)
You feel sick to your stomach and dread going into work everyday...
Yep- been there!
Over years of my own work (therapy & embodiment practices), I started to chisel away at people pleasing. But what was the final straw?
My friend Liza (name changed).
Liza is a grade A people pleaser- she actually still is (thus the privacy!).
Liza and I became friends at first over similar hobbies and interests. We were also both people-pleasers and were therefore "very go with the flow". We were friends but it also never really felt like we could progress past a certain point in our friendship: probably because we were both constantly shape-shifting, so how could we really get to know one another?
As the years progressed and I stepped away from people-pleasing, I started to see our friendship from the outside more and more.
Liza never tells people what she actually wants- instead she agrees to everything, gets super resentful, and then blows up on all of us in the group chat. When this happens, she'll go on social media and post paragraphs about how upset she is and how lonely she feels.
It started to feel like a blow to the face: here I was, her friend, asking for her opinion, her thoughts, her feelings about things but instead of telling me- she would stuff it, blow up, and post all over social media?! Ummm?!
I felt hurt, confused, frustrated, and disappointed. Why couldn't she just be honest with me before it got to this point?
And that's when I realized---
duh duh duh
This is what it feels like to be on the receiving end of people-pleasing.
Oh sh*t.
That day, I realized that "people pleasing" is actually "people frustrating".
It's frustrating to never know where someone stands, what they think, and what they actually want.
Our friends are good people and they love us- they don't want to hurt us unintentionally. People-pleasing automatically sets your friends up to fail. They will inevitably hurt you unintentionally because they don't know where the boundaries are. It's our job to tell them.
I went to coffee with Liza to check in. She wasn't particularly receptive to the conversation- and that's okay. Everyone has to get there on their own time in their own way.
Her inability to acknowledge how much people pleasing was harming our friendship was the death knell though.
I stepped back from "friend" to "acquaintance". We're still friendly, but I can't be close friends with someone I can't trust.
And I try to think of that lesson moving forward:
Wonderful human beings don't want to be lied to to be appeased
They want honesty and clarity so they can show up as themselves too
They want trust as a strong foundation of the relationship so y'all can grow together
And the funny thing is- once I stepped back from my relationship with Liza, more honest ones took its place.*
The more authentic I was (bye bye, people pleasing), the more my people could find me. The friendships I have now are way more solid: I can trust that they say what they mean and vice versa. No more friend-anxiety!
I hope the best for Liza, I know how uncomfortable the experience of people-pleasing can be: for both the people pleaser and the people surrounding them.
Looking for help to heal from people pleasing? Or have an idea of what you need to do but want to get there faster? I can help. Book a free consult today!
*This is something I talk about a lot with clients: when we make big changes, sometimes it takes a minute for our people to show up. So we can be caught in a liminal space of grieving past relationships, anxiety around the future, and uncertainty. Totally common and probably worthy of its own blog post.