Why Am I Such a People Pleaser?

When I read this question, the people pleasing part of me immediately feels the pain of being condemned for her way of relating.

So, I would like to begin this article by assuring you that I too have struggled in life to put my needs first in relationships.

One of the most important parts of my healing has been finding compassion and love for this part of myself, who is so often judged and criticised by our culture, as well as by our own internal thoughts and feelings.

So, if you are asking yourself this question, please know that your people-pleasing can be an invitation to deepen the loving connection you have with yourself and to create relationships that truly love and honour you.

What does being a people pleaser look like?

People pleasing can show up in many different ways, including automatic responses, avoiding conflict and putting other people's needs before our own.

For example, I was someone who always said "yes" to requests before I'd even considered whether I wanted to. Sometimes I also changed my opinions on things if I sensed that another person disagreed with me.

Being a people pleaser can also look like playing down our accomplishments so that others don't feel uncomfortable, rehearsing conversations in our heads to make sure we say the right thing, letting others make decisions to avoid potential disagreements, or struggling to ask for what we need in relationships.

These are just a few examples. I remember once taking a questionnaire where I had to tick boxes describing different behaviours, and my people-pleaser score came out very high!

What these behaviours often have in common is that we can become so focused on other people's feelings and needs that we lose touch with our own.

Why do I feel the need to people please?

In more recent times, a particular kind of people pleasing has been described as “fawning.” This term was popularised by psychotherapist Pete Walker, who identified the fawn response as another way we may respond to perceived danger, alongside the more familiar fight, flight and freeze responses.

Fawning describes how we can learn to keep ourselves safe by pleasing others, avoiding conflict and putting their needs before our own.

When I learned that people pleasing (or fawning) can be an automatic response to feeling unsafe, this changed everything for me. I wasn't habitually pleasing others at my own expense because I wanted to. I had learned that pleasing others was the safest way to relate, which helped me understand why it had always felt so difficult to respond differently.

Why does my nervous system fawn?

As children, we naturally need connection, acceptance and safety. This is essential to our survival because we depend on adults to care for us.

If we grow up in circumstances where we feel unsafe with the adults caring for us, our nervous systems may respond to that danger in different ways.

• Flight: We may have the urge to escape, but as children, we often can't run away from our caregivers because we depend on them for our survival.

  
  

• Fight: We may instinctively want to defend ourselves, but fighting back could make us feel, or become, even more unsafe.

  
  

• Freeze: We may become still, quiet or unable to respond, as our nervous system reacts to the danger around us.

  
  

And then we have the fawn response.

Fawning can become an automatic protective response when we feel unsafe. It involves becoming highly attuned to another person's feelings and behaviour, trying to identify exactly what is needed to reduce the danger.

We may do whatever we can to please or appease a caregiver, perhaps offering practical or emotional support to keep them calm, or saying and doing whatever we sense might prevent them from becoming angry, threatening or abusive.

Fawning can be an incredibly skilful protective response. For some of us, it may have been one of the safest ways to navigate our childhood relationships.

The downside of fawning in adult life

When we reach adulthood, we have the right to choose who we maintain relationships with, even if it doesn't always feel that way. However, exercising that right isn't always easy, particularly when our circumstances make leaving a relationship difficult or unsafe.

If we've become skilful at fawning in childhood, we may continue to fawn in our adult relationships because this is how we learned to feel safe.

One of the challenges is that we may also find ourselves in relationships where we feel we need to fawn to be accepted, loved or given attention.

This is where things can get tricky, because we can sometimes be drawn towards the same relationship dynamics that we experienced as children. These dynamics can feel so familiar that they feel safe, even when they aren't necessarily healthy for us.

At their worst, these relationships may be emotionally or physically unsafe.

At other times, fawning might simply mean that we're giving much more of ourselves in relationships than we need to, which can be exhausting.

Or perhaps we're not living as the fullest expression of who we are, because we're limiting ourselves to what we think others will approve of.

Our relationships may also become stale over time because we avoid the disagreements or conflicts that can help relationships grow.

When both people feel able to speak up, express their feelings and negotiate for their needs to be met, relationships have the opportunity to become more honest, fulfilling and mutually supportive.

How can counselling help?

One of the challenges of fawning is that it can happen so quickly and automatically that we don't even realise we're doing it. When we've spent much of our lives relating to others in this way, it can feel as though this is simply who we are, rather than a protective response we've learned along the way.

Sometimes we need an extra pair of eyes to help us see what's going on.

This is one of the ways in which counselling can help. Alongside my professional training as an integrative counsellor, my own experience of fawning has deepened my understanding of these patterns. Most importantly, I've taken the support of therapy myself to shine a light on my relationships and what has felt difficult within them.

I'm not saying that I'll never fawn again, but I can now lovingly embrace my people-pleasing tendencies. When I notice myself fawning, I can respond with kindness towards myself.

As I've developed this more compassionate relationship with myself, I've become much more aware of when I need to say no, ask for my needs to be met and choose what feels right for me, even when others may have difficult feelings in response.

Therapy is a place where our experiences, relationships, deepest suffering, difficulties and limitations can be met with kindness and compassion.

The therapist can be our companion and guide, meeting what we bring with gentle curiosity and supporting us in discovering and bringing into being what we really want and need for ourselves and our lives.

Would you like to explore counselling with me?

I offer integrative counselling in Exeter and online, providing a warm, compassionate space where we can explore your experiences, support your healing and help you discover a deeper connection with yourself and what you want for your life.

If you feel that counselling might be helpful for you, you're very welcome to get in touch through my [contact page] to ask any questions or explore the possibility of working together.

If you are interested to read more about people pleasing and the fawn response, I recommend Fawning by Dr. Ingrid Clayton.