Zhao Kailin – Girl with Bouquet [2002] Gandalf’s Gallery. Flickr.

“Don’t burn yourself, to keep others warm.”

 Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

Do you tend to placate others and make every effort to please them?

Being a people-pleaser may bring a very short feeling of hope and gratification, but the person who tries too hard to please will be left without their real, authentic needs met. If we are people-pleasing much of the time, we are risking becoming frustrated, driven, overworked and burnt out.

We will be missing out on leisure, relaxation, family and friendships, as we endeavour to fulfil other people’s requests and obey their wishes.

Many of us try to please others to some extent, but if this is done to excess, it can be depleting of both energy and spirit. It will mean that we cannot be our true selves, that we are only there for other’s needs.

• Trying to please everybody

The Bath – Alfred Stevens. c 1867. Wikioo

“You can get totally messed up trying to please everyone with what you do, but ultimately, you have to please yourself.”

Pierce Brosnan

Being a people-pleaser and always saying ‘yes’ to others’ demands is hard work and detrimental to health and wellbeing. It is exhausting to have to keep fitting in with other people’s thoughts and ideas and not to have developed or recognised one’s own ways of thinking. 

Pleasing others, doing what we imagine they want, adapting to their needs, being compliant, continually craving acceptance, are all a denial of oneself, of one’s identity and individuality. Needing the perpetual approval of others, whilst impossible to achieve, can be something that people-pleasers aim for and can make people feel worn out, with their own needs always going unmet.

Constantly being accommodating and longing for acceptance by others will become a fruitless and self-destructive quest.

The Fool Who Would Please Every Man, 1903, Byam Shaw. Wikioo.

• What makes a people-pleaser?

Such behaviour patterns are hard to rid ourselves of. Often, the roots of this lie in our past, with unresolved needs to be loved, seen and heard, which can continue into adulthood. 

The effects of such emotional damage in childhood can last a lifetime, unless new ways of thinking and being are established in adulthood. Many people spend their lives trying to adapt to others and have long ago lost touch with their real self.

Therapy may be needed to help with this, so that we might uncover who we really are beneath the layers of mutely pleasing others and continuous adaptation to those around us. Being able to break free of such restrictions is a liberating experience.

Perhaps we were not allowed to express our feelings, to show anger, unhappiness, discontent, disagreement. Maybe we were punished for expressing our own ideas, forced to constantly fit in with others, to adapt to their ways, to deny our own beliefs, thoughts and feelings. Thus we had to develop other selves, other personae, donning invisible masks.

Often, we have been putting on such defensive masks from childhood. Maybe we had to pretend to be other than we really were as children. Possibly all of us did this to a greater or lesser extent.

These masks we wear are a kind of protection against the fear of being discovered for who we really are, with all our faults, foibles, pain and neediness.

People who desperately need approval from others will make constant self-sacrifices in order to please others, at their own expense. They lose who they are. The cost is, indeed, high.

“I surrendered myself to the cages of others’ expectations, cultural mandates and institutional allegiances. Until I buried who I was in order to become what I should be. I lost myself when I learned how to please.”

 Glennon Doyle

Those who ‘surrender themselves’ in this way can develop a false self, which is a kind of mask, a defensive way of being that covers their inner, authentic self.

The psychoanalyst and paediatrician Donald Winnicott described the ‘false self’ as a sort of cover, used in reaction to external pressure during childhood. It defends the ‘true self’, hidden beneath.

jaci XIII. Roots of darkness. Flickr.

“Other people’s expectations can become of overriding importance, overlaying or contradicting the original sense of self, the one connected to the very roots of one’s being.”

Winnicott.

Perhaps we could reframe the ‘false self’ as being more of an ‘incomplete self.’ Being labelled ‘false’ seems a little hard, when what we are doing is struggling to feel safe and protected from the harshness of the world as we perceive it.

Sometimes this does, indeed, mean that we feel that we must live according to other’s expectations, denying our own agency and individuality. What really think, need and feel becomes peripheral or non-existent and we may have lost touch with our authentic selves.

• Love as mask-remover

Old Woman with Masks – James Ensor. 2889. Wikioo

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”

James Baldwin

In the above quotation, Baldwin mentions love as a mechanism that can facilitate the elimination of our masks. What does he mean? The masks of people-pleasing have developed mostly because we have not felt loved and accepted as our real, genuine selves.

In a loving relationship, or within a therapy that feels safe and enabling (and thus is a kind of love) we will discover that we cannot function for very long if we are continually wearing some kind of mask. Pretending to be ‘fine,’ or developing strategies to cover a sense of inadequacy or insecurity, for example, is an uncertain, anxiety-producing way of living.

“Psychoanalysis is, in essence, a cure through love.”

Freud

If we continually ‘pretend’ to want to please people, such a mask will inevitably start to be less effective in hiding our true feelings when we become close with another. When this person can see beneath the emotion-hiding veil we wear, the mask begins to slip and real feelings, such as vulnerably and fear of failure or rejection will start to show.

Often, beneath the polite and pleasing surface, there may be a good deal of anger and rage at never having felt that our own needs have been seen or met, as well as some continued fears of being rejected for them.

“You can’t find intimacy—you can’t find home—when you’re always hiding behind masks. Intimacy requires a certain level of vulnerability. It requires a certain level of you exposing your fragmented, contradictory self to someone else. You are running the risk of having your core self rejected and hurt and misunderstood.”

 Junot Díaz

Self-portrait with Mask, 1928. Felix Nussbaum. Wikimedia Commons

“Behind every mask there is a face, and behind that a story.”

Marty Rubin

If we always hide our real feelings, then we will, inevitably, be covering up our untold stories, which is a very painful and depressing way of being in the world. We may live in fear that we will never be able to really show our full, true ‘face.’

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

 Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Whilst hiding our stories and suppressing our needs to share what we have experienced and suffered may keep others’ possible critical attention away, being able to own our personal narratives, no matter how startling or shocking, can enable us to feel free and heard.

“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.”

Brené Brown.

‘Contemplation’ (1896) by Jozef Israëls. Rijksmuseum. Wikimedia commons

“If you are too afraid to offend anyone, then I’m afraid you may not be able to do anything remarkable”

Bernard Kelvin Clive

Doing ‘remarkable things,’ often involves being challenging and innovative, going against the grain, thinking differently and taking risks. We cannot do all this and be a people-pleaser at the same time. We need to learn to safeguard ourselves, and to not be afraid of displeasing people, despite others’ possible attempts to undermine us.

Pleasing – Raja Ravi Varma.1894. Wikioo.

“When you say ‘Yes’ to others, make sure you are not saying ‘No’ to yourself.”

Paulo Coelho

© Linda Berman.