How People Pleasing Hurts Us
How People Pleasing Hurts Us
People-pleasing is hurtful to us, even when it seems like a nice thing to do.
People-pleasing is a habit that many of us have developed (usually in childhood) in order to try to make others happy and avoid conflict.
While it may seem like a kind and considerate thing to do, as you’d know all too well, us people pleasers often end up sacrificing our own happiness and well-being in the process. Making us feel resentment, frustration, and even depression.
If you find yourself constantly putting others first at your own expense, it’s important to take action and start making changes.
Keep reading to learn more about the dangers of people-pleasing and how it may be hurting you.
People-Pleasing Can Damage Your Mental Health
When we people please, we are essentially putting our own needs and wants on the back burner. We are trading our authenticity for approval and we do this to make others happy or to avoid conflict. While it may seem like a kind act, People-pleasing can actually be quite harmful.
Your mental health can be affected, when you constantly people-please. As a nice person, you often don’t make enough time to care for yourself, and self-care is essential for maintaining mental health. When you disregard your mental health for too long, this can cause burnout and depression.
Depression comes about because it is your anger turned inwards. When you don’t feel safe directing it to the person who caused your unhappy feelings, you hurt yourself with guilt and shame instead.
“It Takes a Lot of your Mental Load to Carry other People’s To-Do Lists”
It also takes a lot of your mental load to carry other people’s to-do lists. This is exhausting and can mean you start to forget your own important things because your brain is full of other people’s worries.
Not knowing where you stand with people, and feeling like you have to keep winning their favour by helping them out, is awful.
This constant instability in these relationships, keeps you constantly on edge, making sure you haven’t accidentally offended or missed something important.
Ruminating all the time, turning conversations over and over in your head, is an unspoken consequence of people-pleasing. It can feel like you are losing your mind and going slowly insane.
Your mental and emotional health takes a toll, as you never feel like you get any peace from these people, even when you are alone.
People-pleasing Can Damage Your Physical Health
Physically, people-pleasing can be just as damaging. When we are constantly putting others first, we end up not taking care of ourselves properly.
This can lead to burnout, exhaustion, and even illness. People pleasers may find themselves getting sick more often, as their immune systems are weakened from the stress.
Being so busy all the time, without a break, means there is less time to take care of yourself, to eat well and to exercise. So it’s no wonder people-pleasing is bad for you.
Worrying about the things you have to do for others, as well as all the things you aren’t doing for yourself, can lead to not sleeping properly too. When you don’t sleep, things fall apart really quickly!
Often you get pushed into taking on risks and activities you aren’t comfortable with, just to make someone else happy or to fit in. These risks and activities can also lead to being hurt or injured.
Burnout occurs because you are only one person. You can’t do everything for everyone! When you try to push through for too long, you get overwhelmed and end up in burnout.
So there is definitely a physical cost in trying to keep the peace.
People Pleasing Can Cause You To Get Into a Toxic Relationship
Have you had this happen to you?
People pleasers don’t know how to say no, and sadly, there are people out there that will prey on the emotionally vulnerable.
Toxic people like to control others and the more accommodating their target the better.
Narcissists, in particular, are always on the lookout for new supply who are agreeable and caring.
Toxic relationships are obviously very damaging and can take years to recover from, as they frequently contain mental – or even physical – abuse.
It is extremely difficult to leave toxic relationships, so difficult in fact that many people don’t get out soon enough. If you are a constant people-pleaser, you will find it harder to spot (and listen to) the signs indicating someone is toxic and a danger to you.
Your kind heart will only see the good in them 🙁
So people pleasing can cause you harm by leading you into unhealthy relationships.
Note: Toxic people have a special skill of seeking out gentle people pleasers like us. Don’t beat yourself up if you have a trail of losers behind you.
They are usually attracted to highly intelligent, caring and honest people, so there’s nothing wrong with you at all.
You only gave someone who didn’t deserve it, the benefit of the doubt. Don’t beat yourself up!
People-Pleasing is Harmful to Your Goals and Dreams
In addition to all the physical and mental damage, being too nice can cause, it also keeps you from achieving your dreams.
You are so focused on saying yes to others and making them happy, you put what you need to do last.
This means that someday you could come to realize you are working a job that you hate and living a life that isn’t yours—all because you couldn’t say no and tell others you needed to focus on yourself.
As you only get one go at this life, it is really important you don’t sacrifice your authenticity to please others. You need to live your life the way you want to, and be intentional with how you spend your time.
Life is short and the people you are pleasing in the short term, often won’t be there in the long term. Don’t give them your precious time and start focusing on what you need to do to be successful in your own eyes.
People-Pleasing Has A Negative Impact on Relationships
People-pleasing often negatively impacts our relationships. It can keep us from having genuine connections with others as we are constantly trying to accommodate them.
Our other relationships suffer when we neglect them to go chasing after our emotionally unavailable friends or family. (Big Fat Greek Wedding ring a bell?) We spend our time trying to win over our emotionally unavailable friends and often neglect our more nourishing relationships as a result.
As mentioned above, we can attract toxic relationships because as ‘fixers’ we often choose broken birds as our love partners. These relationships are very draining and time-intensive and lead to fractures in our relationships with others.
Additionally, as niceaholics, we often avoid conflict and difficult conversations, which can lead to tension and resentment in relationships.
A Final Note
So, while pleasing others can feel like such a noble thing to do, it actually is really bad for us.
When we prioritize others all the time, we abandon ourselves, neglect our healthy relationships, experience physical and mental health issues as well as possibly end up in toxic relationships. Also sacrificing our own lives and success in the process.
Is this really how you want to spend your life?
Also, are the people we are trying so desperately to help, appreciative anyway?
Pleasing others is still a noble thing to do, but if you are going to do it, think about making this behaviour safer for you until you can get it under control.
You can do this by ensuring you are only helping out the people in your life who will also be there for you too. The ‘safe’ relationships in your life.
With small steps, you can stop the people-pleasing habit and you will find your life will be happier, more peaceful and more successful as a result.
Are you going to stop putting your authenticity aside and give up your need for approval? Let me know in the comments below.
Remember, as always lovely, be kind to yourself today.
Love
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