How we're taught to be people pleasers

Reminder: I am so excited to offer a FREE 60-minute webinar on all things therapy for this community. This won’t be recorded, but it will be offered TWICE. First on May 17 at 6pm ET and second on May 28 at 12pm ET. Sign up on Eventbrite to ensure your spot. Feel free to forward this to friends so they can get in too!

In our first conversation club of the month last week, a group of us started to discuss people pleasing and how culture, family, and gender socialization impact the way we are taught or modeled or encouraged to be people pleasers. I want to break down specific examples and issues that may contribute to your learned people pleasing for you to reflect on.

But first, if you’re not sure if you are a people pleaser, here are some key signs:

1. You feel responsible for other’s emotions

2. You act like, or adopt the emotions, of those around you

3. You can’t say no and/or you apologize often

4. You’re known to be a giver in your relationships

5. Conflict is really upsetting or distressing to you

6. You’re not sure what it means to be authentically you

Family Dynamics, Trauma and People Pleasing

We often talk about freeze, flight, or fight as common trauma responses. But another very common trauma response that I see in immigrant families is fawn — or appeasing a threat/people pleasing to keep the peace. Essentially people pleasing may have become a survival mechanism to keep you safe.

Your hyper-vigilance in monitoring how others are doing to ensure your own physical or emotional safety may have caused you to learn to make yourself small, falsely agree, put others first, and believe that your value is rooted in your ability to be perfect, silent, or agreeable.

You may have been raised in a family environment that was chaotic and/or abusive, so you learned to be quiet, “good” or “perfect” in order to keep the peace and ease the tension/manage the stress you felt.

You may have learned from a young age to be overly concerned or involved in your parents’ or others’ lives and issues so you struggle with being a “chameleon” of sorts where you contort yourself to fit other people’s needs — even today.