The tendency to people-please usually begins in childhood, often very innocently. If you learn that saying yes — even when you don’t mean it — earns you affection or praise, you’re apt to keep up the behavior. It feels good to please others.
In other cases, people-pleasing may start as a coping mechanism; it helps you feel safe when the world around you feels scary. “Many of us learn to people-please in childhood in order to get safety or affection from preoccupied, unavailable, or abusive caregivers,” explains life coach Hailey Magee in her book, Stop People Pleasing and Find Your Power.
When a childhood behavior gains attention and support from caregivers, it makes perfect sense that the child’s psyche would pack it up and take it into adulthood. “We don’t want to shame anybody for people-pleasing,” says McCampbell Stuart. “People come by the behavior really, really honestly.”
Children are dependent on their caregivers for everything — food, care, shelter, and affection. “If we have parents who are overwhelmed or angry or unable to regulate their own emotions, that puts us in danger. We run the risk of not getting those needs met,” she explains. “So, in order to get our needs met and keep ourselves safe, we learn how to tiptoe around our caregivers. We become experts at not tripping their emotions or being a burden.”
Caregivers who struggle with addiction or who are caring for someone with addiction can add fuel to the fire. “Children learn that tending to the addict is their primary responsibility, and they don’t receive the support they need to identify or communicate their own basic feelings and needs,” writes Magee.
Cultural expectations can also lead to people-pleasing. Women are routinely socialized to put the wants and needs of others first, while men are usually conditioned to hide their emotions at the risk of seeming needy.
People from marginalized communities, meanwhile, may adopt people-pleasing behaviors to offset potential danger. “When acts of violence and harassment against members of your identity group are commonplace, becoming as small and unnoticeable as possible is a survival strategy,” Magee notes.
Traumatic experiences themselves can trigger people-pleasing. In fact, some experts have identified exceedingly deferential behavior — dubbed “fawning” — as a fourth trauma response, after fight, flee, and freeze. “When threatened, a person with the fawn response will try to please, gratify, or accommodate the source of threat instead of fighting back, running away, or shutting down,” Magee explains.
Escape From People-Pleasing
Free yourself from overcommitting and reclaim your energy while bringing more authenticity to your relationships by learning more at “How to Stop Being a People-Pleaser,” from which this article was excerpted.
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