The Cost of People-Pleasing, Why We Do It + How to Stop

Do you say yes when you’d rather say no?

Do you do more emotional labor in a lot of your relationships?

Are you the one everyone counts on, while you don’t feel comfortable relying on anyone? (Maybe you don’t even allow people to be there for you?)

If any of this sounds familiar, this episode is for you. 

I had many requests to do another episode on people-pleasing, so let’s cover how people-pleasing and self-abandonment are survival mechanisms, the cost of these behaviors to us and our relationships, and how we can slowly shift into healthier ways of relating.

Prefer the audio? Listen here.

Dispelling the Myth of People Pleasing

We like to believe we’re being nice when we’re people-pleasing. I certainly did. In my young life, I didn’t realize just how much of my behavior was people-pleasing or how often I looked for validation outside of myself. 

But people-pleasing isn’t an act of generosity or being kind. It’s an act of self-protection. 

Chronic people-pleasing often stems from a trauma response, especially fear of rejection and abandonment. It can be helpful to look at it as a nervous system survival strategy. In the context of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, it’s fawning. 

We fawn when we reflexively please others to avoid perceived danger, rejection, or abandonment, and to control what’s happening.

Fawning can look like being caring, but there’s fear underneath it. It’s emotional self-defense. You weren’t born this way; you became this way to stay safe. 

People-pleasing was likely an adaptive behavior for you in childhood. Kids’ ability to adapt to their environment is pretty miraculous. No one had to tell us what to do. We knew what we needed to do to survive. 

There’s nothing to feel ashamed of or bad about if you people please. We come by these behaviors honestly. But looking at the truth makes it easier to transform them. The quality of our lives improves when we keep the good and get healthier around what’s dysfunctional. 

The Impact of Childhood Wounds (Why We People Please)

It can sometimes help to look at our original wounds to figure out why we behave the way we do as adults.

Maybe you had a volatile parent and learned to be easy to stay under the radar. 

Or maybe you grew up in a family system where love was conditional and became hyper-attuned to everyone’s moods to know whether the conditions were good for you to be loved. 

Being “the good one” can also be a way for you to feel safe. This was true for me. I felt pressured to over-function for everyone in my family system and to be a good student, sister, and friend. 

While I found safety in the performance of it, it was exhausting. 

People-pleasing is often the adult mask of a child who was never allowed to take up emotional space. 

And if you weren’t allowed to take up emotional space as a child, you may not know how to do it as an adult or feel unsafe trying. 

Why People Pleasing is Self-Abandonment

People-pleasing is self-abandonment because, in trying to keep others happy, regulated, and feeling good about us, we naturally disconnect from our needs, preferences, and identity. 

In my 20s, if anyone I dated liked hip hop or country, I did, too. I took on their likes and dislikes to avoid pushback. I shapeshifted into what I thought would make me lovable and desirable to them. 

This behavior is important to be aware of because it can be easy to lose ourselves in relationships. 

Here are examples of self-abandonment: 

Feeling exhausted but saying yes to something anywayApologizing for someone’s hurt feelings (not for anything you did)Saying you’re fine when you’re notOffering to help when you have no energy

When we people please and self-abandon, our focus is centered on others. We’re not looking inwards, which moves us away from our intuition and truth. 

If you’re not people-pleasing, who are you? 

The Cost of People Pleasing

People-pleasing behavior is often unconscious, but it comes at a cost to us and our relationships. Let’s take an honest look at it, without judgment.

When we say yes when we want to say no, we become resentful, exhausted, or blame others for what we do and don’t do. 

When we constantly apologize and assume fault for everything, we put ourselves in a one-down position. We’re telling everyone I’m wrong, I did something wrong, it’s my fault. This happens without discernment, and it’s not good for our relationships or self-esteem. 

When we automatically over-give and under-ask, we rob ourselves of the chance to receive and others of the chance to help be part of our solution. Here’s a personal example from my marriage. Early in my career as a therapist (back when I commuted from NYC to upstate NY), I started crying and couldn’t stop after a rough week. I called Vic and told him I couldn’t get on the Amtrak train back home. Like I could not make myself move (or stop crying).

Sensing how much distress I was in, he replied, “Hold on, babe, I’m getting in the car,” and drove three hours to scoop me up and drive me back home (another three hours).

As a hyper-independent people-pleaser, I had rarely let someone go out of their way for me like this. But in allowing it, I realized how much I trusted him, which flooded me with relief.

This happened years ago, and Vic still shows up for me. If I hadn’t let him in, I don’t think our relationship would be as satisfying as it is 27 years in. A deep give-and-take dynamic is necessary for interdependence, which is incredibly important in any relationship. 

People pleasers tend to keep the peace at their own expense, too. How often do you take one for the team without being asked to?

Cheryl Richardson’s quote comes to mind: “If you avoid conflict to keep the peace, you start a war inside yourself.”

Keeping the peace is a short-term plan. Every time you self-abandon to avoid abandoning someone else, you reinforce the limiting belief that your needs don’t matter. 

We pay for these behaviors. If you can feel tension in your body, that’s its way of telling you that you need to do something different and pause. 

The biggest cost may be that constantly presenting a false sense of self to people leads them to love a version of us that doesn’t exist. 

How to Shift Into Less Self-Abandonment + People Pleasing

Here are a few steps to begin shifting away from people-pleasing and into more truth-telling. 

First, pause before committing to anything and ask yourself two questions: 1) Do I have the bandwidth to do this without becoming resentful? 2) Do I even want to do it? (The second one is important. So many of us never bother to ask ourselves this!)

Second, use your body as a barometer. If you feel tightness, it’s probably a no. But if you feel expansive, it might be a yes. 

This might sound simplistic, but dialing into the wisdom of your body is helpful because it’s always there for you; you just need to learn how to listen to it. 

Third, learn the power of pausing. Say, “Let me think about it,” or “I have a 24-hour decision-making policy. I’ll get back to you on that.”

There is nothing wrong with simply saying, “I’d like to think about it.” 

These small nos and pauses help us avoid self-abandonment because we’re building discernment around how we treat ourselves. 

The truth is, saying no doesn’t push the right people away. It filters out those who only like us for what we do for them.

If someone needs you to abandon yourself to be in their life, that isn’t love, that’s control.

You don’t have to be some polished version of yourself to be worthy. You are worthy as you are. Your uniqueness is what makes you interesting. 

Don’t abandon yourself to keep others close to you. The people who belong in your life will embrace you changing, growing, and evolving, even if you disappoint them sometimes. 

Being disappointed is part of life. Perfection in relationships doesn’t exist because we’re all human beings just trying our best. 

I hope this episode added value to your life. Let me know if you had any insights in the comments or on Instagram, and as always, take care of you. 

P.S. Did you hear? The doors to Boundary Bootcamp are OPEN! If anything in this episode resonated with you, join us to learn how to break free from limiting beliefs and behavior patterns and unleash your true self: a woman who expresses herself fearlessly, meets her needs with grace, and loves herself completely! LFG!!!