7 important tips to help you manage people-pleasing tendencies

The term “people-pleasing” has a lot of negative connotation to it. But I don’t think everyone is as passionate about helping others as a person who identifies themselves as a people-pleaser. At our best, we have a lot of capacity to care, support, and be someone’s best friend. But when we’re not at our best, our people-pleasing tendencies can lead us into a lot of trouble. So let’s address how to turn people-pleasing into a strength.

First things first.

Why do some of us develop people-pleasing tendencies?

Let’s go back to the very beginning. When we are born, it’s not enough to be fed on time or to be well rested. Of course, those things matter for survival. But people-pleasing tendencies develop when we miss out on the fundamental need for love and care.

For example, you may have deeply loving parents but one of them is always traveling and so you develop abandonment issues. Or, another sibling is born and the attention now gets divided between you two.

As innocent kids, we don’t get these bigger concepts of “dad is traveling” or “baby sister needs mom more”. Sometimes, parents aren’t so loving, and even then, we don’t assume it’s their fault. We innocently assume that we’re responsible for the love gone missing.

And then we begin to “fight for love“, in every which way possible, to bring that love back.

In some cases, getting good grades helps bring some positive attention back to us. So we might develop a high-achieving personality. Or we might become really assertive and push around to get our way if we see that it works. In other cases, we decide to take on the role of the helper, always being there to jump in and make others happy, so that they can also be happy with us.

There are several such fascinating adaptations in our personality! And today we’ll focus on the tendency to be people-pleasing.

7 Tips I Teach My Clients to Help Them Overcome People-Pleasing Habits

When we’re not at our best, we experience unhealthy relationship dynamics (aka lack of boundaries), a sense of overresponsibility, feelings of guilt and shame when we can’t meet expectations, and then some. I’m going to start by offering the following tips and am excited to hear from you in the comments below how they land for you.

#1 – Boundaries don’t require the other person to change.

It was a game-changer for me when I realized that setting boundaries doesn’t mean that I simply speak firmly and hope someone will change their behavior. If anything, a good boundary is one that doesn’t even depend on the other person changing their behavior at all. Here’s an example:

Let’s say you don’t like it when someone speaks to you about certain sensitive topics. A boundary would look like this, “If you are unable to stop talking about these things, I will need to put a hard stop to our conversation and walk away”.

Do you see how this is different from simply asking someone to stop talking about something, in hopes that they will? It also eliminates any explanation about whether how we feel in this scenario is valid or not. I’ve often found that we will overexplain why we feel hurt, and then can feel invalidated if the other person continues their behavior or dismisses our emotions altogether.

This approach of letting ourselves and others know what we can do gives us our power back in the scenario. Without relying on the other person’s ability to be any different. And then ironically, it encourages behavior change at their end too.

#2 – Remember that you are A resource, not THE resource.

When someone comes to us for help, we may want to drop everything we’re doing and help them out! That’s a classic people-pleasing tendency. As deeply caring and helpful individuals, it’s hard to see someone struggling. And at the time, helping them can mean that we overlook our own needs.

So whether you’re a fully booked-out doctor who still keeps taking on new patients, or a corporate employee who works long hours to make your boss happy, consider adding this powerful word to your healing dictionary: resourcefulness. What does it mean?

When people come to us with their problems, it’s because they are looking for a solution and believe we might have one to offer. However, resourcefulness reminds us that there’s more than one solution. And so it becomes easier to say no to them when we can redirect them to a different solution. We become a resource that helps them get in touch with other resources.

So for example, as a doctor with an overflowing schedule, you could have a list of referrals to send new patients away to. In this way, you are helpful AND don’t have to be as directly involved with the helping. Similarly, in the corporate world, delegation and teamwork become important skills versus being the lone wolf and feeling overly responsible for running the show.

#3 – Use resentment as your personal guide.

When you’re struggling to say no, here’s a powerful prompt to help you assess what you should do next:
“If I say yes to this right now, will it make me resentful later?”

Pause and really imagine how you will feel once the task is done. If the vision doesn’t light you up, find a way to guide the person to a different solution (refer to tip #2).

Important: Prolonged periods of resentment can lead to regret. So over time, those seemingly helpful “yeses” become very unhelpful and unhealthy for everyone involved! If you’re already at the stage of experiencing regret, I’ve written a special guest article on the subject here to help you navigate it.

#4 – Sometimes, it’s NOT your problem to solve.

Another common trait in people with people-pleasing tendencies is to take too much ownership of the situation. If we’ve made a mistake, we will blame ourselves and then put ourselves into corrective action. There’s nothing wrong with that. But for instance, we might walk on eggshells around someone in fear of trying to hurt them, without recognizing that their being triggered isn’t all about us. Sometimes, there’s literally nothing you can not do to trigger someone!

Another example is when I work with new life coaches, I will commonly see them assessing and then reassessing everything a prospective client said if they said no to working with the coach. No matter how great our work is, some people will just not resonate with it and there’s nothing personal about that.

And so, while I’m a big cheerleader of accountability and ownership, I am also as big an advocate of reminding my clients that there’s more to the picture. Sometimes, the healing balm is in recognizing that there are other forces at play. Maybe it’s bad timing, or someone else’s mistake too. Or it’s just the cosmos doing its own divine thing (read this).

It can be hard to admit this because people-pleasing is associated with alleviating tension through problem-solving. So, not being able to do so can bring a sense of helplessness and frustration. So my first encouragement here is for you to affirm to yourself:

• It’s not all on me to fix everything, all the time,
• Things can still go wrong when I give my best and that’s okay,
• People are allowed to be disappointed or upset, and I don’t have to fix that.

Related: How to make positive affirmation statements more effective in your healing journey

Now let’s explore these feelings of helplessness and frustration a bit further.

#5 – If you can’t help, do this instead.

I know that being able to help is our inherent nature. However, as we all have experienced at some point or the other, there are situations beyond our capacity or control, which can either be frustrating, or healing. Here’s what I mean:

Let’s say that someone you love is struggling with their health and are unwilling to get help. Can you take a step back and recognize their soul’s wisdom? What if this is exactly what their soul needs from them? This idea might sound crazy at first – who in their right mind would want to self-sabotage themselves in this way! But this is a deeper reflection that I’m seriously inviting you to consider.

And as you think about this, step into trusting that there’s something bigger out there looking after this person. It’s not all on your shoulders to carry.

#6 – Acknowledge & heal feelings such as guilt and shame.

One of the biggest challenges with people-pleasing is that it leads to burnout, compassion fatigue, and shame for not being able to do more (how ironic).

Learning how to feel and heal our emotions is some of the deeper work I do with my clients in our 1:1s. If you’re just getting started, I’ve also created a free masterclass that teaches 3 powerful tools to deal with our negative emotions. You can sign up for the monthly newsletter and get access to the class here:

#7 – Practice being pleased with yourself.

I’m saving the deepest insight for last. Remember how we explored the origins of people-pleasing tendencies? Let’s address that now.

Chances are that the people who are least pleased with us, are not our people to begin with. In other words:

• Their core values and focus areas in life will be different from ours (for example, they might prioritize endless hours of work for money, versus you prioritizing work-life balance);
• The goals and dreams that light you up may not even make them blink twice (for example, their idea of a good life might involve marriage and kids, versus your aspirations for purpose and traveling);
• When you take a moment to reflect on their lifestyle and mindset, you might realize that there’s very little that inspires you about them.

Having had my fair share of such encounters has really taught me to validate my own dreams, values, and journey. One of the most effective ways I do that is by imagining my Future Self looking back at me in this moment, and listening to what she would say. More often than not, I realize that I am very happy with how the journey is shaping for me! And that it’s okay if the other person can’t see that.

Concluding Thoughts

There are so many more tools and insights I can add to this list! For now, I would really like to emphasize that people-pleasing isn’t always a bad thing. It comes from a deeper-rooted desire to care, love, and look out for everyone’s well-being. We just want to become aware of the times when our care is positioned as an attempt to bring back love or validation. In those moments, we now have all the different ideas discussed above to help us come back to being our true selves.

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