Hi,
Psychologist Harriet Braike refers to the compulsion to please others at any cost ~ the disease to please.
It's wonderful to want to make others happy and to offer our help; sacrificial giving is one true evidence of genuine love. But I am really seeing clearly that the need to please others at all cost & at all times, to be everything to everyone, is an attitude of desperation. I have been a desperate people-pleaser. My own compulsion to make others happy was not based on some altruistic desire, but rather, I think, on a need to be needed. I can also see that in trying to be all things to all people, I may stand in the way of others learning to meet their own needs and unwittingly contribute to a very unhealthy codependency within my intimate relationships.
Here's a short list of the symptoms of the Disease to Please:
Are you deeply affected by what others do or say or don’t do or say?
Do you change your behavior to make other people happy at your own expense?
Do you go out of your way to avoid conflict?
Are you afraid to be yourself and feel what you feel?
Do you have trouble saying no or feel guilty when you do?
Do you need to be in a relationship to feel complete, but often have painful love relationships?
This is how the People Pleaser often appears to others:
Very organized
Easily liked
Placators or appeasers
Friendly, outgoing, gregarious
Helpful, supportive
Courteous and considerate of others
Always smiling
Interested in others' welfare
Cooperative; real "team players''
Generous with own time and energy
Ready to volunteer
Accept delegation easily
"Company men''; very loyal
Ready to take on any new challenge that comes along
Work hard at pleasing others
Talented, skillful, and creative
A pleasure to spend time with
Happy, joyful, full of fun
Encouraging and reassuring
Go along with requests made by others
People mixers
Assets in any conversation
"Together,'' warm, and caring persons
People sought out for friendship; popular socially
Sounds great. The problem is, it's all a facade, held together by fear, which is not a very reliable adhesive.
Here's what lies beneath the mask:
Fear of loss of approval
Fear of rejection
Fear of loss of personal identity
Fear of loss of personal worth
Denial of problems
Self-denial or ignoring of personal rights
Feeling lonely and isolated from others
Avoid conflicts or fights at any cost
Feeling not "good'' enough
Feeling undeserving
Feeling inferior to others
Concern about satisfying others' demands
Insecurity about personal abilities, skills, or knowledge
Compulsive need to please others
Unhappy over not pleasing others
Embarrassed by personal looks or behavior that displeases others
Confusion about why it takes so much energy to please others
Fear of not "doing best'' for others' sake
Fear of letting their friends and family down
Fear of failure
Fear of it being "found out'' they are not as good as they appear to others
Fear that others will recognize their failings
Desire to run away to avoid the stress of "always'' needing to be "good''
Exhaustion from always trying to be "perfect''
Disappointment in not being able to make everyone happy
Critical of how well they are doing in their personal lives
Feel unappreciated or taken advantage of
Feel taken for granted
Feel like they are being treated like victims
Feel like the martyr for others
Fear of making a decision lest it be the wrong one
Come unglued easily under pressure; unorganized
The negative consequences of this sort of people-pleasing behavior are pretty obvious, so I won't list them, but I found this list of some of the irrational beliefs behind my own behavior to be especially revealing. It's in correcting and rethinking this belief system, that I believe freedom from the compulsion to please is found.
Irrational beliefs of people with the people-pleasing personality traits:
I must be liked by everyone.
I must do nothing to upset others.
I must work harder to make things better for others.
They would never like me if they knew the truth about me.
I must be careful in my decision making so as not to upset anyone.
I can never do enough to please them.
I am responsible for other peoples' happiness.
How they respond to me is important.
The harder I work for them, the more they will appreciate me.
If they don't like me, I'm no good!
Always put others first! Put yourself last.
There is no task I won't do for you, large or small.
People can only like you if you appear nice, pleasant, friendly, and cheerful to them.
Your only role in life is giving to or helping others.
If you are not successful, you are a loser and losers are ignored, unloved, and unwanted.
It's not who you are but what you do that counts.
You must always be understanding and have an open mind with people who are hurting you or putting you down.
If someone doesn't accept me, it must be that I'm not "good enough'' to be accepted.
No matter what I do, it never seems to be "good enough.''
I can do nothing right. I am worthless, useless, but I can't let others see this about me or they will reject me.
I think that many of these irrational beliefs are peculiar to females. The following excerpt makes alot of sense to me:
You might be suffering from a high-school hangover. Adolescent girls' taunting notes, dirty looks and exclusive cliques are all forms of "social aggression," the subject of several recent books, including Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, by Rachel Simmons (Harcourt Brace, 2002), and Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence, by Rosalind Wiseman (Crown, 2002). Unfortunately, some of these teen behaviors survive into adulthood, Wiseman says: "Girls in cliques worry constantly about pleasing each other and often refrain from speaking their minds. As adults, they end up aiming to please friends or partners to the point of resentment." To break the pattern, if someone asks, "Are you mad at me?" and you are, acknowledge it. Similarly, if you are mad at someone, be prepared to have a constructive conversation about it:
* Describe what you are upset about. Example: "I heard you are telling other people that you are mad at me, and this troubles me."
Besides the influence of typical adolescent behaviors which might linger long into adulthood, I can also see that highly sensitive people with a strong empathic sense of the emotional sense of others can be affected within their family systems from a very young age. Feeling responsible for every nuance of emotion within their FOO...
People Pleasers are often the unwitting contributors to family dysfunction, although they are far from being the only culprit in a dysfunctional family. People Pleasers tend to have Injustice Collector counterparts: the Injustice Collector in the family remembers every slight, real or imagined, and throws it back in the People Pleaser's face, while the People Pleaser scurries to set things right with the angry Injustice Collector. The cycle will repeat indefinitely, because the particular dysfunctions of the People Pleaser and the Injustice Collector are a perfect fit with one another: Injustice Collectors feel entitled and People Pleasers feel that everyone ELSE is entitled.
I think that when a people pleaser is teamed up with an injustice collector, it can be nearly impossible to break free from the old ruts, so one of the very first steps I'm taking toward full recovery from this dysfunctional personality pattern is to maintain a very firm boundary between myself and those who would toss their injustice collection my way, expecting me to clear it up. Part of the line of thought necessary to accomplish this might be ... instead of thinking, "what can I do to fix this for her?", shifting gears to "what can she change in her life that would ease her problem?" Not that I'd even necessarily offer that advice, but just inwardly acknowledge that the issue is not mine to repair.
Does anyone have any other suggestions for treating the Disease to Please? Especially, I'm wondering... what if we have within ourselves a bit of each of the above mentioned types... people pleaser and injustice collector... talk about conflict !
Thanks for reading.
Hope
