Therapy for People-Pleasing in Denver CO
You want everyone to be happy.
You take care of others before taking care of yourself and you’re starting to feel resentful, even though you’re not sure why (because you wanted to take care of everyone be helpful, right?) .
You’re so focused on others you’re not even sure what you want or need.
You get upset frustrated when something didn’t turn out the way you wanted (it’s not that you’re ungrateful, but you imagined it so differently).
You get frustrated when your significant other didn’t do something the way you would do it (and it drives.you.crazy.)
You’re good at your job, maybe too good, so they keep putting more on your plate.
You don’t say no, to your boss or anyone, because you’re afraid of disappointing others or letting them down. So you just deal with it, even though you’re getting frustrated. Better to be frustrated than risk disappointing someone right?
You delete and re-write the same text, email, work proposal or instagram post because it just doesn’t feel right, and you can’t hit send/publish it until it feels just right(perfect). You replay conversations in your head, criticizing yourself and worrying what the other person thought when you said that one thing. Or think oh god, what if you didn’t say the right thing?! You worry about upsetting or disappointing others and you want everyone to like you. You know on some level that yes, you don’t like everyone so it isn’t realistic to expect everyone to like you but…you still want (need) everyone to like you.
You worry that you’ll never do enough, or even worse, you’ll never be enough.
Sound familiar?
YOU ARE NOT ALONE, AND YOU’RE NOT CRAZY.
There are reasons you operate this way, and none of them are because you did something wrong, or because there is something wrong with you. In fact, being a people-pleaser and/or a perfectionist is something that likely makes you really good at your job and meeting others’ expectations. Sometimes (often) to your own detriment. But not all of it is bad - sometimes you like doing things for others, or surprising your boss and others around you by showing them what you can do.
Here’s the good news: You don’t have to give that up. You can find balance and fulfillment in your work and relationships without changing who you are. You can find worth and value apart from what you can do for others, and stop bending over backwards to make everyone else happy while you feel miserable, exhausted and resentful. You can learn how to say no without feeling guilty. You can learn how to be okay with some people not liking you - or at least keep it from tanking your self-worth or feeling like a total failure because that person doesn’t like you.
I help clients find a balance where they get their needs met, and still enjoy doing things for others and performing well at work, without all the stress, guilt or resentment.
People-pleasing is a relationship pattern and it’s one you can unlearn. I’ve been where you are and can tell you it is possible. And on the other side of people-pleasing - where you no longer feel the intense urge to people-please or get really upset when someone doesn’t like you or disapproves of you, but you still care about people and helping and doing things for them? But it feels balanced and not obligatory? AND you can say no without feeling guilty? That feels incredible.
FAQs about People-Pleasing
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Your motivation. Are you doing something because you genuinely want to, or because you are afraid of what will happen if you don’t? If it’s fear-driven or you’re only saying yes because you don’t know how to say no , that’s people-pleasing.
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Yes! In therapy we’ll identify the root cause of why you became a people-pleaser and address it so you don’t feel compelled to people-please all the time, especially when it is at your own expense. You can build confidence, learn how to set boundaries and say no without feeling guilty, and learn how to tolerate when others don’t like you or are upset with you. And if even thinking about someone being mad at you makes your skin crawl, you’re in the right place and it doesn’t have to keep being this way.
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It can. It is a behavior we learn in order to be accepted, to keep ourselves physically and emotionally safe, or both. You only became a people-pleaser because it served you in some way. Maybe you had to navigate a parent or caretaker’s volatile moods so you learned to keep the peace, or maybe you only got acknowledgement or attention when you performed to others’ expectations in sports, school or some other endeavor. The good news is that it doesn’t have to keep being this way.
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Yes, people-pleasing and anxiety usually go hand in hand. When we are concerned that someone is unhappy, upset or disappointed with us we feel anxious so we go harder with people-pleasing in order to relieve the anxiety. The problem is that we’re usually doing it at the expense of ourselves or our relationships which creates anxiety, and we’re trying so hard to please everyone that we end up upsetting just about everyone, so we get anxious and on and on the cycle goes. I wrote a blog about it here if you want a more thorough explanation.
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Absolutely. If you were bullied by peers, family members or others, you probably learned that the only way to avoid it was to be whoever they wanted you to be, which is people-pleasing.