The Truth About People-Pleasing

5 Myths That Are Keeping You Stuck

If you’re a people-pleaser, high achiever or perfectionist who secretly feels drained by always showing up for everyone else, this one’s for you. People-pleasing is one of those patterns that looks like kindness, generosity, or even just being a “good” friend, employee, partner, or parent. But behind all of that there is usually a ton of anxiety, emotional exhaustion, and a fear of being too much or not enough. And here’s the thing that really bothers me - most of the narratives out there about people-pleasing are flat-out wrong. They keep high-functioning, compassionate, perfectionistic adults (like you) stuck in cycles of burnout and resentment, because they don’t address what’s actually going on underneath the surface. So let’s get into it. Here are five common myths about people-pleasing that need to be set straight.

Myth #1: People-pleasing is about making others feel better.

This is the big one. The most common myth I hear, both in and outside of therapy, is that people-pleasing is just a selfless desire to make other people feel good. You want to take care of people. You want to comfort someone when they’re upset. You jump in to help your coworker so they’re not overwhelmed. You say yes to hosting, organizing, taking care of things because you want everyone to be happy. You go along with what others want because you want them to be happy.

Sounds nice, right? Here’s the truth: people-pleasing actually *isn’t* about making others feel better…it’s about making ourselves feel less uncomfortable in the presence of someone else’s distress.

If you’re a people-pleaser, chances are you feel deeply uneasy when someone else is sad, disappointed, angry, or hurt. You don’t just empathize with them, it’s like you try to absorb their emotions, or distract them from how they are feeling. If someone around you isn’t okay, your nervous system goes into overdrive. Your heart races. Your stomach turns. Your brain immediately starts scanning for ways to make it better. And because you’re a high achiever, your brain does this fast. You jump into fix-it mode, smooth things over, and take responsibility for feelings that aren’t even yours to manage. But it doesn’t come from pure selflessness - it comes from your discomfort at seeing someone else struggling with hard, ‘negative’ or uncomfortable feelings like anger, sadness, disappointment, hurt, etc. You might bend yourself into a pretzel to accommodate someone so they aren’t upset. You might deny your own feelings because you’re worried about them. You might even tell them to ‘focus on the positive’ because they seem really down or overwhelmed. You believe you’re trying to ‘help’ them feel better, but in reality you’re regulating your own nervous system by controlling the emotional tone of the room. 

So while people-pleasing may look like kindness from the outside, it’s often driven by internal distress. The key is to learn how to tolerate your discomfort so you can sit with someone else’s pain without trying to fix it or make things better.

Myth #2: People-pleasing is just doing things for other people.

This one is tricky because it’s partially true, but it’s not the full story.

As we just discussed, people-pleasing isn’t about helping others, it’s about us not being able to tolerate someone else being upset or uncomfortable. It’s about doing whatever we can to avoid feeling uncomfortable, which often means abandoning our own needs. It’s about saying yes when you want to say no. It’s about betraying your own limits so that someone else won’t feel disappointed. It’s about smiling while you're seething, agreeing when you’re silently screaming “hell no,” and pretending to be okay (even when you aren’t) so no one accuses you of being difficult, dramatic or ‘too much’.

Here’s what I see in my therapy practice in Denver, over and over again: clients who are high-achieving and outwardly “together” but inside they are exhausted, overwhelmed and resentful. They’re doing backflips for everyone else and wondering why they’re so drained all the time. It’s because people-pleasing isn't just about action. It’s about suppression. Suppressing your anger so you don’t rock the boat. Suppressing your needs so you don’t seem needy, or don’t have to risk being rejected if you express a need and it isn’t met. Suppressing your truth so you stay likable and acceptable. 

The emotional toll of that suppression is huge. It’s why so many people-pleasers deal with anxiety, insomnia, burnout, and depression. You are not just doing things for others, you’re disappearing yourself in the process. Sometimes to the point where you don’t even know what you want or what you need anymore because you’re so used to adapting to others’ expectations and what others tell you that you want and need.

Myth #3: People-pleasers are just really kind.

Let’s be honest. Kindness is saying something hard with compassion. Kindness is being honest and clear and respectful. Kindness is grounded. Boundaried. Intentional. People-pleasing is fear with really good PR.

It’s fear of conflict, fear of judgment, fear of rejection, fear of disappointing someone. It’s performance, not authenticity. It’s doing or saying what you think will be received well, even if it costs you your own energy, values, or boundaries. But here’s the thing: You can be kind and say no. You can be kind and set limits. You can be kind and let someone be upset with you. The problem is that people-pleasing doesn’t make space for that. It hijacks your nervous system and makes discomfort feel dangerous or overwhelming, so you default to accommodating, over-functioning - whatever it takes to keep the peace.

One of the hardest lessons people-pleasers have to learn, especially those seeking therapy for people-pleasing, is that being liked is not the same thing as being safe (even if that is what it meant when you were a child). And being kind doesn’t necessarily mean being compliant.

Myth #4: People-pleasers are insecure.

This is one of the more frustrating misconceptions, especially for the high-achievers I work with who usually seek out therapy for anxiety in Denver, or therapy for people-pleasing. Sometimes people assume that if you’re a people-pleaser, you’re a pushover and you lack confidence.

But that’s not what I often see. In fact, many people-pleasers are extremely competent. They run businesses, manage teams, have families, are executives, attorneys, medical professionals, educators, stay at home mom’s managing a million schedules, and working parents trying to balance work and parenthood. They’re organized, thoughtful, and capable. The issue isn’t that they’re insecure - if that were true they wouldn’t be so good at their jobs. The issue is that they’ve learned to equate harmony with safety, probably because lack of conflict did mean safety as a child, but now as an adult it’s difficult to separate the two. 

My clients will tell you that I love to say multiple things can be true at once, which means you can also feel multiple things at once. You can feel confident in your work and still feel terrified of letting someone down. You can believe in your skills and still be compulsively tuned in to everyone else’s moods. People-pleasing isn’t a lack of confidence—it’s a survival strategy rooted in early relationships.

So no, it’s not about being insecure. It’s about being so highly attuned to the emotional weather around you that you’ve forgotten how to check and take care of your own internal forecast.

Myth #5: If you stop people-pleasing, you’ll become selfish.

This one might be the myth that keeps people most stuck, and the one that bothers me the most as a licensed therapy who works with people-pleasing and anxiety in Denver. I hear it in therapy constantly:

“If I stop people-pleasing, what if I turn into someone who doesn’t care?”

Let me be clear about something: Setting boundaries doesn’t make you selfish. Saying no doesn’t make you cold. Letting someone feel disappointed doesn’t make you a jerk. What it does make you is human—and emotionally honest. Just like you can’t give your child a piece of candy every time they want one, we can’t jump to meet others’ expectations just because they have them. 

The fear of becoming selfish is just the people-pleasing voice trying to scare you back into compliance. Because if you’ve built your identity around being helpful, agreeable, or needed, then choosing yourself does feel radical. It feels dangerous. It feels wrong. And the people who tell you that setting boundaries makes you selfish are the people who benefitted when you didn’t have boundaries, or who don’t like the boundaries you are setting. But that doesn’t mean boundaries are selfish, because they’re not. Boundaries are about taking care of ourselves so we can show up well for ourselves and for others. They’re sustainable. They let you show up with intention, instead of obligation. They let you be generous without being resentful. And they allow you to have honest relationships built on genuine connection and not just what you can do for others.

So... what is people-pleasing, really?

People-pleasing is a coping strategy that usually develops in childhood. Maybe you grew up in a home where emotions were explosive or unpredictable, and you learned to manage the temperature of the room to keep yourself safe. Maybe you had a parent who leaned on you emotionally and praised you for being mature, helpful, or “the good kid.” Maybe your needs weren’t met unless you performed a certain role, so you learned to perform it flawlessly.

Now, as an adult, you still operate from that wiring. You make sure everyone else is okay because you don’t feel okay unless they are. You anticipate needs, manage perceptions, scan for potential conflict, and default to fixing, over-apologizing, and caretaking - even when it leaves you feeling depleted or resentful.

In other words, people-pleasing is not about being a good person. It’s about survival. And unless you examine the root of it and build the capacity to feel discomfort without immediately trying to escape it, you’ll stay stuck in a loop that looks like selflessness but feels like self-abandonment.

What to do instead:

People-pleasing doesn’t go away overnight. You’ve likely spent years—if not decades—perfecting it. But that doesn’t mean you’re stuck forever. I’ve written a previous blog where I talked about questions for people-pleasers to ask themselves before saying yes. Here are a few more things to consider:

Notice your body. Most people-pleasing behavior starts with a physical sensation: a clench in your gut, tightness in your chest, a flutter of panic. Before you say yes, over-apologize, or jump into fix-it mode, pause and check in with your body. What’s happening there? If you notice some of symptoms listed here, that is a good indicator you are trying to regulate yourself by managing someone else’s feelings.

Buy time. If your default is to always say yes, practice giving yourself a buffer. “Let me think about it and get back to you.” “I’ll need to check my schedule.” These phrases create space for you to check your motivation for saying yes so you can decide if you are saying yes out of fear of obligation, not out of capacity or genuine desire to help.

Practice tolerating discomfort. This is a big one, but it’s necessary if you want to stop people-pleasing. Learn how to stay with the feeling of “I think they’re upset with me” without rushing to fix it. That discomfort won’t kill you—but avoiding it will keep you stuck in patterns of people-pleasing forever.

And most importantly, get support from a therapist who specializes in therapy for people-pleasing and therapy for anxiety. If you're reading this and realizing how deeply this hits, you're not alone, and you're not broken. You're just running a pattern that once kept you safe but is now holding you back.

Ready to unlearn people-pleasing?

If you’re a people-pleaser and a high achiever who’s exhausted from constantly managing everyone else’s emotions, therapy can help you reclaim your time, energy, and discover who you are behind all the things everyone told you that you are, want, or need. I specialize in therapy for people-pleasing in Denver, and I work with clients who are ready to stop white-knuckling their way through life and start living more honestly - with themselves and others.

This work isn’t about becoming selfish or cold. It’s about becoming more authentic, setting boundaries, and becoming emotionally resilient. You can learn how to say no without feeling guilty. You can still be kind. You can still care deeply. But you don’t have to do it at your own expense.

If that sounds like the kind of change you’re craving and you’re in Denver CO, let’s talk.

You can learn more about my approach to therapy for high achievers in Denver, therapy for anxiety, and therapy for people-pleasing by reading some of my other blogs and checking out my website pages, or book a free consultation directly from my online scheduler by clicking here.

It’s time to stop managing everyone else’s comfort and start getting honest about your own.

DISCLAIMER: This blog is for educational and entertainment purposes only; it is not therapy and is not a replacement for therapy. Reading this website does not constitute a provider-client relationship. If you are experiencing a mental health emergency, call 911 or 988. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. See website disclaimer for more information.