People pleasing should not consistently traumatize the people you are trying to please
Lately, we have been diving into the impacts of people pleasing, and there is a lot to unravel, especially when you consider that we have all been socialized into people pleasing a little bit differently, depending on our various and intersecting identities.
We’ve been having conversations with each other on our team at CCI as well as with our clients about our identity stories through the lens of people pleasing.
We’ve been asking questions like:
How has people pleasing shown up over the course of your life? To what extent are you or are you not a people pleaser? Have you been around people pleasers? How does this show up now in your role at work?
The lesson I learned growing up was that what other people thought of me was important to my safety, but was not a reflection on my worth.
As a woman of color, the idea of relying on others to determine my worth feels frankly kind of unthinkable. In the white dominated communities I grew up in and continued in as an adult, even though I was surrounded by very “nice” white people, what I realized was that those nice white people, especially when in positions of authority, were pre-disposed to not like me, so people pleasing was kind of a losing proposition that to this day feels futile if not downright dangerous.
I did internalize that though in many ways.
Being used to not being seen or valued for who I was (rather than the value that could be extracted from me) groomed me to accept unacceptable behavior as a young adult, both personally and professionally. I still don’t always notice when I’m doing invisible work or being taken for granted - making this visible is a constant practice. And I didn’t think I could please people but I did think I knew best and could fix things, which also lead to behavior that was harmful and unhealthy to myself and others.
Part of my healing is unlearning those behaviors.
I still to this day chafe at people pleasing though, especially towards those in positions of power. I’ve had a “truth to power” streak in me since I was a young adult, even if, as a petite Asian woman, I don’t present as particularly radical or rebellious. Sometimes that turns out to be an advantage - I “pass” as quiet and submissive, although not typically for very long, and that can also be quite upsetting to people.
Some other questions we’ve been asking:
How does people pleasing harm you?
How does people pleasing harm others?
How does people pleasing impact brave-safe space and psychological safety?
Especially for white women, there is a narrative about how people pleasing harms ourselves by virtue of putting other people’s needs in front of our own.
What is less talked about is how people pleasing harms others.
Danae Aicher on the CCI team recently observed, in a team discussion about the definition of “niceness,” that ”niceness does not consistently traumatize the people you are trying to be nice to.”
Oooof. That really hit home for me because what we see so often is the opposite - that attempts at niceness, especially from white folks towards BIPOC, often actually do end up causing consistent trauma to the point where the “recipients” of the “niceness” just want to be left alone.
The same could be said of people pleasing.
People pleasing should not consistently traumatize the people you are trying to please.
And yet this is so often what happens.
People pleasers can be EXHAUSTING to be around.
For me, first of all, if someone is trying to please me, what that can feel like is that they are trying to get me to like them, which means that they are trying to control or manipulate me. Especially when you add in other power dynamics, whether it’s race, gender, or institutional power, and I don’t take kindly to being controlled.
There is also a sense for me with people pleasers that if I am not pleased, they will freak out and feel unsafe which, again, especially when you add in power dynamics, means that my safety may also be threatened. And either way, my safety is bound up with theirs because they have made their safety my responsibility.
In extreme cases, being around someone who has a chronic need for external validation, admiration, attention and reassurance can have the impact of gaslighting and emotional abuse, especially when accompanied by self-centering, projection and lack of empathy. This is a dangerous form of people pleasing that is often is less about pleasing others, in fact I would argue it is not about pleasing others at all, and instead is all about being liked. Systemic power and privilege can feed into this tendency by providing an outsized sense of entitlement as well as the ability to cause harm, even without the conscious intention to do so.
Further, historically as well as presently, white women wanting to be liked threatens Black lives, which threatens all our lives, although not equally.
The same can be said, although differently, for white men who get to tantrum and rage if they don’t get what they want.
In short, people pleasers can be extremely dangerous, and a culture that cultivates people pleasers can cause a great deal of harm to those already more deeply impacted by systems of oppression.
And let’s face it, a hierarchical culture IS typically a culture that cultivates people pleasers. A culture that offers gold stars to some and not others is going to attract or create gold star seekers.
Earning gold stars buys you conditional safety but this is not true psychological safety, which should not be conditional.
Even those who seem like the opposite of people pleasers, who seem strong in their opinions and determined and single-minded in their vision - they too demand a kind of allegiance that leaves no room for a different viewpoint. It’s not a long stretch from “being pleased” to “appeasing.” To this kind of person, not being “pleased” or “agreeing” or “following orders” is not acceptable.
Of course, it’s not inherently a bad thing to want to please people.
What we’re seeing though is that the desire to please people is the very thing that is getting in the way of people actually being pleased.
In some cases, people doing a little bit of DEI work actually results in them causing more harm in their good intentions than before.
This is often because the work is still driven by the desire to be liked. By definition, this is self-centering, manipulative, and exhausting for all involved.
Wanting to be liked is pretty natural and human. Needing to be liked to an extent where it becomes a priority and an underlying if unspoken and unconscious driver behind everything you do? Not helpful. Likely harmful to others as well as yourself.
Needing to be liked can also be a trauma response and/or other mental health issue. Not being a therapist, I had a long talk with my therapist about this and some of the skills or tools we talked about include:
Distress tolerance skills so we can handle the discomfort of not being liked and regulate our emotions accordingly without taking it out on others
Grounding in the facts, for example, writing down the worry and looking at what facts support that worry and what facts go against it - when we can see what are facts and what are assumptions or projections we can be better equipped to respond appropriately
Identifying thinking traps or cognitive distortions such as catastrophizing, fortune telling, all or nothing thinking, mind reading etc.
Radical acceptance - if the worst case scenario is true, then what? What can you change, what can’t you change, and what do you choose not to change?
Thought diffusion - understanding that feelings aren’t facts and reframing thoughts like “she’s mad at me” to “I think she’s mad at me”
Here’s what we would suggest at the interpersonal and organizational level:
Consider how people pleasing gets in the way of the organization’s mission and values by promoting some of the characteristics of white supremacy culture such as right to comfort, fear of conflict, and paternalism. Who does people pleasing protect or coddle?
Shift from “people pleasing” to a focus on self-identified needs, while bringing a power analysis in order to balance those needs - after all, who is it that is typically centered in our people please efforts? And are we making assumptions about what others would be “pleased” by based on our own needs (golden rule rather than platinum rule)?
Look at community needs based on solidarity and mutual benefit rather than pitting the needs of one another against each other - it’s not a zero sum game.
This requires a willingness to be wrong, to not know, and to be transparent about learning and growth.
Consider what would be in service of the mission, and does everyone have what they need to do their best work in service of that mission? This does not mean sacrificing people’s needs in service of the mission (which generally only works in the short term), but meeting people’s needs in service of the mission (thus keeping the long view in mind).
Create a culture where it is possible and actually recognized and rewarded when people or teams, rather than rushing to fix things in order to please certain people, instead slow down, an investment that generally pays off in the long run (we often say that you “slow down to speed up”). The reason to slow down is not to follow the same process but more slowly, but instead to do the work of considering self-identified needs, bringing a power analysis, keeping the long view in mind, and forwarding the organization’s mission.
Banner photo by Delphine Ducaruge on Unsplash
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