Is it really people pleasing?

We often get told we are ‘people pleasing’. But what does this actually mean?
We think the term has become overused and we want to encourage you to take the time to dig a little deeper. You may well find quite a lot more going on under the surface…

We can see that our behaviours and responses could often be interpreted through a people pleasing lens. But what is missed when a behaviour is judged on face value, is the intentions and motivations behind it.

When you explore a little deeper, for us, we are rarely, if ever, trying to please anyone. Usually we are just trying to get through the moment/conversation/relationship unscathed.

We agree to things we might not want to do or that do not align with our beliefs and values, not to keep people happy, but because we have determined it is the quickest way to get them to stop talking! Something about the conversation will have been too much for us to process, too intense, too full of bullshit. We will have determined that the fastest way to make it stop is to agree and then go and do our own thing, we’re not doing this for the other persons benefit, but for ours. What is seen from the outside however is people pleasing.

Processing difficulties can also look like people pleasing. We have learnt how to use active listening. We smile and nod, we make affirming noise, all whilst we have very little idea of what the other person is saying. We may process what has been said later, and if needs be will find a way of challenging something we don’t agree with. From the outside though, it looks like we just agree with what everyone says, regardless of how it aligns with our values.

Then there is our tendency towards compliance. A deeply ingrained survival strategy, from when anything else put us at risk. We’re not trying to make anyone happy, our body is in survival mode as we robotically comply. Whilst from the outside this could look like people pleasing, the key is in what we do next. Once left to our own devices we will always do what we believe is right, never what we have been told to do. When given time and space to ground, process and reflect we will always go back to the person and challenge, readdress or express what we would have wanted to say.

None of these behaviours are ideal, but we do not recognise them as people pleasing either. To us, people pleasing is a co-opting of self, a loss of self in the service and needs of others.

We aspire to being able to respond to people from a congruent and authentic place, in the moment. This is of particular importance to us when people’s freedoms and humanity are being spoken away from them by another’s ignorance. We often lack the words, the confidence or the capacity and whilst we want to develop our skills in this area, we are also beginning to accept that our disabilities mean that we may never be able to get this right every time.

There is one more area that we think gets confused with people pleasing; altruism.

To us, altruism is an expression of our core values. We get it wrong for ourselves all the time, because we don’t always think through the consequences of acts of altruism. We offer to do things and make commitments that are not always in our best interests, because doing so, being kind, helpful, inclusive and acting in community, connects us to who we are.

We recognise that we need to work on being able to practice altruism within the bounds of our mental and physical capacity, but reject the idea that when we get this wrong, we are people pleasing.

We really believe that the majority of people are capable of being good, kind and altruistic, to almost pathologise something that is such an expression of our humanity by calling it ‘people pleasing’, feels wrong to us.

So is it really ‘people pleasing’, sometimes perhaps. But! How on earth can we be a ‘people pleaser’ when we are so enthusiastically opposing that label for ourselves!?!