“Releasing The Heavy Burden of People Pleasing”

Many of us want those around us to like and accept us. But for some, the drive to gain validation and affection from others can become extreme, manifesting in habitual people-pleasing patterns — with tragic consequences extracting lasting emotional and physical costs over decades. The deep human longing for connection can morph into a compulsive habit of people-pleasing that erodes our very sense of self.

People-pleasers can bring immense value to relationships by lifting and encouraging those around them. Yet, continually silencing personal needs at the cost of looking after others contributes to concerning health issues which emerge later in life.

For lifelong people-pleasers, habitually stifling authentic reactions starts early on in life. They learn to let minor slights go unaddressed to keep the waters calm. Personal emotions like anger, frustration and sadness remain unexpressed to boost the group morale or address the emotions of someone else who demands or is perceived to need more attention and care.

“If you avoid conflict to keep the peace, you start a war inside yourself.” — Cheryl Richardson

The Perfectionist’s Plight

The drive to meet perceived expectations can pressure people-pleasers into an emotional pretence that grows exhausting over time.

They strive to be all things to all people — the perfect friend, partner, employee, volunteer — projecting a smoothed-over image they imagine others want to see and keeping up the masks of perfection. This eventually causes a disconnect with the self and profound inner turmoil and hiding this to play beloved roles can become compulsive. The temporary validation of being wanted and needed feels soothing. However, the truth is that deep down, most people prioritise authentic connection. Only genuinely and fully expressing oneself will lead to one’s own happiness and fulfilment and cultivate healthy and nourishing relationships in the long run.

Walking on Eggshells

People-pleasers effectively walk on relational eggshells daily to keep anyone from getting offended, upset or inconvenienced. They are the always ‘nice’ people that we know. Over decades, suppressing feelings that could rock the boat becomes an unconscious way of being.

Unfortunately, the chronic stress of treading lightly amid people’s sensitivities while carrying the burden of one’s own unvoiced disappointments, hurts and frustrations exacts a slow toll, one that recent studies are bringing into stark relief.

Emotional Costs

Swallowing small hurts or muting authentic reactions to keep relationships smooth might seem inconsequential day to day, but minor feelings buried routinely are laying emotional landmines over decades.

Like tectonic plates shifting underground, pressure from piled-up suppressed pains, disappointments, and anger can eventually rupture relationships with little warning when too extreme to contain and the consequences can be tragic and detrimental to the wellbeing of all concerned.

One often realizes only in hindsight how profoundly expectations around keeping everyone happy keep us from developing key skills for managing hurt, resolving conflict or even recognizing needs where they matter most. By middle age, emotional skill deficits create a sense of emptiness and make preserving close relationships extremely difficult. Counsellors call this common fallout ‘Relational Trauma Syndrome’.

Symptoms like acute anxiety while managing even minor conflicts, overwhelming fears of abandonment and insecurity or inexplicable and sudden outbursts point to decades of unaddressed emotional wounds. Healing requires learning communication skills and interpersonal tools, like setting boundaries, directly and assertively communicating needs, and respectfully expressing negative emotions.

Physical Costs

Distress leaks through in physical form as well. Long-term people pleasers suffer higher rates of insomnia, headaches, high blood pressure, and even autoimmune disorders. Always keeping reactions ‘positive’ or non-offensive for others means rarely ever discharging stress hormones in a healthy manner. This may be via giving vent to frustrated tears, using a punching bag or shouting. That exacts wear and tear on organs and impacts inflammatory processes over time. Since there are no safety valves, there is also a danger of stress release through the eruption of an outburst or even serious bodily dysfunction under duress.

A UCLA research reveals that suppressed emotions significantly increase the incidence of conditions like fatigue, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart attack in older adults — even when following otherwise healthy lifestyles.

Studies strongly suggest long-term cumulative costs to always keeping reactions upbeat and happy to please others. Physically discharging the full range of emotions contemporaneously appears important for health.

Weakened Self-Identity

After decades of muting authentic reactions to boost group cohesion, even basic self-awareness takes a back seat and one’s definition of personal identity suffers. Habitually overriding anger, sadness, uncertainty or fear around others means that people-pleasers often lack the skills to recognise those feelings within. They smile through their pain daily without realizing it. Losing touch with one’s interior landscape makes accessing gut instincts for self-protection extraordinarily difficult. Instead, chronic people pleasers reflexively default to the needs and preferences of others surrounding them. Their sense of self-worth relies heavily on external validation.

Over the years, such adaptations become automatic and essentially the deeply ingrained mandate around keeping everyone happy all the time overrides their own emotional guidance system. Healing requires rewiring through consciously checking in with feelings and needs before responding and learning to make small decisions in alignment with them.

Disregarding the Needs of the Self

People-pleasers easily attract people who see kindness as an invitation to offload their problems or leverage guilt to press for more support.

Helping others may initially feel good and provide a sense of purpose, but without any boundaries around giving, one ends up being a martyr. When stretching oneself too thin, vital energy gets sapped and resentment follows when there is no reciprocal help provided where expected. Anger, frustration, anguish and despair come into play when seeming ‘neediness’ gets rejected by the very people claiming to need them.

“Givers need to set limits because takers never do!”

In truth, drawing lines around how much energy gets expended for others is essential for sustainability.

Startling Statistics

Current studies indicate that 75% of people pleasers over 55 display health and mood challenges tied to long-term suppression of authentic feelings and reactions. Comparatively, more assertive peers reflect lower cardiovascular and cancer risks.

Nice people quite literally get sicker. Piling decades of suppressed emotions, swallowed pains, disappointments, slights and longing without relief powerfully badly backfires in the long term.

Today there are a lot of professional high achievers hospitalized suddenly in their 50’s. They seem totally disconnected from themselves and unconsciously harbour long-simmering inner desperations tied to lifelong people-pleasing patterns that they are not even aware of. Healing happens only when they move into introspection with awareness and courageously begin to reclaim the full spectrum of human emotion as rightfully theirs.

Reclaiming the Self

Fortunately, we humans have been constructed very well and with the inherent ability to bounce back. There are means of preventing serious issues and lasting threats by making conscious unhealthy people-pleasing habits and learning to regulate and express the full gamut of emotions. Even lifelong ‘nice’ folks can reclaim health and peace of mind.

The first step involves compassionately confronting the reality one has accepted and created. Then one can work on addressing their deficits in emotional skills. Counsellors utilize mindfulness, schema therapy and somatic healing modalities to deepen self-awareness and reconnect clients with long-buried feelings.

Next, relational wounds that strained important relationships are gently unpacked. The most important relationship is the one we have with ourself which sets the tone for all our other relationships. Clients are guided towards grieving painful patterns around conflict avoidance and anger suppression. Well-meaning and distracted friends and family members often enable lifelong pleasing habits unaware of the harm. Forgiveness of others and the self plays a key role in this.

As self-awareness becomes sharper, one learns the skill of setting healthy and loving boundaries and directly communicating needs. Stress reduction techniques like mindfulness and meditation prevent emotional overwhelm. Strengthening skills for tuning into the self, listening to one’s needs and self-expression has a profoundly positive impact.

Two simple phrases repeated daily with feeling can work wonders: ‘My needs matter’ and ‘I am enough’. As one progresses, it becomes easier to embody this truth and once they unhook external approval from self-worth, ‘givers’ morph beautifully into powerful and compassionate leaders.

Authentic confidence emerges when there is complete self-acceptance. This gives one the courage to risk disappointing the demands of others in favour of self-care. This self-assurance comes by accepting one’s wholeness exactly as is with all its imperfections and recognizing that every imperfect individual has the right to get their needs met.

The Bible says, ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself.’ This means that first and foremost, one has to dive into self-love and then extend it outwards.

Tina Saxena