I'm not nice, I'm a people-pleaser

How people-pleasing made me sick, how I'm recovering & journal prompts

Being ‘nice’ used to be the personality trait that defined me. It’s not like I set out to be a nice person, it just sort of happened. Now I see it wasn’t always about me being ‘nice’. I was also motivated by the desire to please other people. It turns out I am in fact a chronic people-pleaser. Honestly, this has been a difficult truth-pill to swallow. Aside from being a people-pleaser, I happen to also be nice, have a kind heart and a generous spirit at times. So to find out that I have been subconsciously exploiting that side of myself for years in the pursuit of connection and love makes me feel a bit sad. When I opened up to a few of my friends about this, I was surprised to find that they too would count themselves as people-pleasers. It seems to me that people-pleasing is more common and insidious than I could have imagined when I first discovered the term, and so I think it’s important to talk about it. 

My experience is only one, and I can’t claim to know all there is to know about the psychology of it. I don’t have any empirical data, nor studies, to share with you today. Just my story. Maybe it will resonate with you, maybe you will have your own stories to share, or maybe your experience is totally different. That’s okay; in the spirit of kicking my people-pleasing ways, I am at peace with the fact that no one needs to be pleased by this story for it to be worth sharing. 

From an early age I subconsciously worked out how to make people like me: be nice. As a child with an anxious attachment style, I quickly learned how to disconnect from myself and prioritise the needs of the people around me. After all attachment is everything to humans, especially in the early years, when we literally can’t survive without it. So when I was presented with the possibility of losing my attachment or losing my authenticity (which is another human drive we all have) I subconsciously did everything in my power to retain my attachments to people. 

If you’re worried that people don’t love you for who you are (which by my understanding is one the cornerstones of an anxious attachment style), then the next best thing is to get people to like you. How do you get people to like you? You be nice. You prioritise their needs. You never cause conflict. You do everything in your power to make them happy. It seems like a sensible plan, except that being ‘nice’ for the wrong reasons is not actually being ‘nice’ at all. 

Over time my behaviour was reinforced by the reactions my inauthentic but ‘nice’ self elicited: approval. I was told time and time again by family, school, friends’ parents and later-on employers that I am just so very ‘nice’. In high school my maths teacher told me that I was being retained in the top division because I was diplomatic and therefore a good influence on the class (as opposed to because I had any talent for maths, which I didn’t - in fact I had to do extra work outside of school to keep up). As time went on, and I started to navigate friendship groups, I assumed the role of diplomat and would tear myself in multiple different directions at one time to try to make sure everyone was happy. If conflict arose, it would feel completely unbearable. Aside from my maths teacher who I think lacked good judgment in the instance I described, it was not the fault of the people around me for reinforcing my ‘nice’ behaviour. It is simply an unfortunate reality that no-one (including me) realised why I was playing this role. 

But what I didn’t understand at the time was that I wasn’t being ‘nice’; I was people-pleasing. And there is a big difference between the two. Niceness, or kindness, is a form of altruistic self expression. One is kind when they do not expect anything in return. People-pleasing is the exact opposite. It looks like kindness on the outside, but on the inside its motivations are very different. It is when a person has an emotional need to please others, meaning they are motivated to be ‘nice’ because they are seeking validation from that person and if they don’t get that validation then they are not emotionally stable. In the process people-pleasers also sacrifice their own needs and desires in the relationship, believing they need to put others needs first in order to be liked, accepted or loved. 

For me, it gave me the illusion of being in control of my relationships (which was at the core of my subconscious insecurities given my attachment type). I started to believe that I was good at reading the people around me and that I could be in control of whether or not conflict arose and therefore how likely people were to like me (all the while conflating conflict with being unlikable and unlovable). 

It looked like not being able to say no, being preoccupied with seeking confirmation or reassurance from others about what they think of me or my actions or beliefs, mirroring what others think, feel and want, avoiding making decisions because decisions can be divisive, being fearful of honesty, agreeing to do things I didn’t like or want to do, saying sorry all the time, pretending to agree with people, and neglecting my own needs. 

I people-pleased my way through school, university, my career in law, all the way to my 30th birthday when I had a mental health breakdown and burned out so badly I had to quit my job and retreat from daily life. In the run up to this perfunctory ending, there had been many warning signs that I was oblivious to. Ultimately, I see now that over time people-pleasing leads to a loss of sense of self and an increase in chronic dissatisfaction. In my journey of rewilding, trying to work out who I my self actually am, I realised a few things:

• I was trying to control whether others were happy and would feel a strong and debilitating sense of failure when I couldn’t achieve it. This meant I was in a very emotionally vulnerable state where I was constantly triggerable. 

• By chronically prioritising other people’s needs and happiness I was driving myself further and further away from my own self, needs and desires so much so that I experienced self erasure (the feeling of not knowing who I was anymore). 

• Being subservient to the needs of others over time contributed to my subconscious belief that my needs are not as important as others which fed my sense of unworthiness and inability to advocate for myself. 

• I developed chronic stress, anxiety and depression from stretching myself too thin (amongst other causal factors). 

• I found myself in abusive situations without the tools to stand up for myself because I didn’t want to cause conflict or lose their approval. 

• I became intensely angry and resentful towards others for not ‘letting’ me be myself even though it was my choice to prioritise their needs (even if subconsciously). 

• I realised that seeing myself as ‘nice’ was a disguise for what was actually unintentionally manipulative behaviour. I was unconsciously lying to people in order to connect, which isn’t forming a true relationship. 

Whilst people-pleasing was not the only cause of my trajectory to a mental health breakdown and burnout, I am certain it played a fundamental role. I am reflecting and learning and rewilding everyday; understanding how people-pleasing contributed to where I have ended up, and learning how to shift my motivations from the desire to please others to be liked to the desire to be kind to others, and advocate for myself in the process.

The reality is, I know I don’t have to please other people. It’s not my job. It is also not who I am. I learned to do it so I can unlearn it. I don’t feel guilty or at fault because it was all a subconscious process. But now that I know I am working to change. Change, especially of our own behaviours that we have subconsciously developed to keep ourselves ‘safe’, can be anxiety inducing. But facing my demon that is people-pleasing is ultimately leading me back to myself, my health, and the relationships I treasure. 

As an adult, I have the choice: people-pleasing or authenticity. Through everything I’ve learned about myself I see that there is only one answer. I’m on the journey, but so far these things are helping me to prioritise my authenticity: 

• I reflect on my people-pleasing tendencies. It feels so very uncomfortable to begin with, but I try to acknowledge when I feel the urge to people-please and dig down into the reasons why it appears in that specific situation, or with that person, or about that specific topic. 

• Instead of blindly following the urge to people-please I consider the other options. I take a breathe and think through how else I could respond in that moment. Instead of saying ‘yes’, I could say ‘let me think about it and get back to you’, giving me time to process, consider my own needs, and formulate a considered response. 

• I learn how to advocate for myself by understanding my needs, values, and rights, knowing what support I need, and communicating this to my friends and family. All the while trying to remind myself that my needs are just as worthy as everyone else’s. 

• I remind myself how I can show kindness without sacrificing myself. 

• Every single day I allow myself the room to get to know myself after so many years of suppressing her. 

People say that people-pleasing doesn’t actually work. Apparently people can sense it and tend to avoid it because of its toxicity. I struggle to embody this understanding, I suspect because it was my world for so long until recently. But, in truth, when I think about times at which I’ve been on the receiving end of someone agreeing with my every word, saying yes all the time, and never expressing their own needs, I realise that it’s not all that comfortable or appealing. What I really want in friends and loved ones is the honour of knowing and loving them for who they truly are. And, surely, it’s possible they hope for the same in me.

Do you have experience with being a people-pleaser?

If this journal entry resonates with you, you might like to consider the following journal prompts:

• In what situations do you people-please?

• With whom do you people-please?

• What topics trigger you to people-please?

• Why do you people-please? What is motivating you?

• What validation are you seeking from people when you people-please? How can you give that to yourself?

• What needs in your relationships are you suppressing?

• When did you last communicate your needs to your friend, partner or family member? How could you go about practicing this with someone you trust and feel safe with?

• What one action will you start implementing today in order to tackle your people-pleasing tendencies?

If you would like to watch and listen to this journal entry in video format then you can do so over on my YouTube channel: