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Pleasing People

One of the earliest things that I had to overcome on my personal growth path was the ability to say no.

It wasn’t just simply like a young tyke refusing to do something.

It wasn’t falling to floor in the mall screaming and throwing my arms and legs all over the place.

It was the courage and strength to say no to my family and friends. Yeah you say whats so difficult about that well here’s the thing I discovered that I was a people pleaser.

OK so what you say.

People pleasers think of other people’s needs before their own. They worry about what other people want, think, or need, and spend a lot of time doing things for others. They rarely do things for themselves, and feel guilty when they do.
It’s hard being a people pleaser.

People pleasers hold back from saying what they really think or from asking for what they want if they think someone will be upset with them for it. Yet they often spend time with people who don’t consider their needs at all.

In fact, people pleasers often feel driven to make insensitive or unhappy people feel better – even at the hurt to themselves.

Constantly trying to please other people is exhausting and many people pleasers feel anxious, worried, unhappy, and tired a lot of the time.

They tend not to understand why no one does anything for them, when they do so much for others – but they often won’t ask for what they need.

This is the trap I fell into.

I found myself always agreeing to do for other people but when I needed those same people to help ME out, they were suddenly occupied.

A people pleaser may believe that if they ask someone for help and that person agrees, that person would be doing it out of obligation, not because they really wanted to.

The thinking goes – if they really wanted to help, they would have offered without my asking – they would have known that I needed help.

This line of thinking happens because people pleasers themselves feel obliged to help and do not always do things because they want to.

Sadly, people pleasers have been taught that their worth depends on doing things for other people.

More on this later …..

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Inspiration, personal growth solutions, Self Help. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.