Dear Diary: I’m a Recovering People-Pleaser
Several years ago I flew to Kansas City to visit my childhood home. My mom was moving out after living there for over 40 years and I was tasked with cleaning out many, many years of things stashed in my old bedroom and around the house.
Digging through a box in my closet, I found my old diary. It was a bright purple hardcover journal with a padlock that had been busted open. I kept this journal from the ages of eight through nine. As I flipped through the pages, I noticed at the bottom I had written a summary statement for each day based on how I felt (hello burgeoning therapist!). My heart sank when I saw the phrase, “Today I felt humiliated” scribbled at the bottom of several pages. I didn’t know how to spell it at the time, but clearly, I knew what it meant.
The scenes I recounted in my diary that led to this feeling of humiliation were moments of misunderstanding between me and other kids - friends and playmates but also some interactions with girls I had been bullied by. I was struck by how hard I was trying to be liked, and when I swung and missed, a feeling of humiliation would follow.
I was reminded of the diary when I was talking with a friend about why people pleasers can get defensive when they are called out on being, well, people pleasy. As we talked, I searched inside for the root of that defense and I found my old friend, humiliation and then realized we were in the realm of shame.
So what is the connection between shame and people-pleasing?
First, let’s acknowledge that people-pleasing comes from an honest, vulnerable place, of desiring connection.
It’s a really common behavior for Highly Sensitive People—an attempt to keep everything and everyone around us at peace. For those of us who lean echoist, (see my previous post to learn what echoism is) accommodating and people-pleasing feels like a way to survive relationally. “If everyone around me is happy, then I’ll be ok so I’ll do whatever I can to make everyone happy.”
The thing is, shame exists on both sides of people-pleasing. If I work really hard to please everyone and it doesn’t work, I can feel deep embarrassment and shame because I feel like a failure.
But at the other end of things, succeeding in people-pleasing means abandoning a part of myself or my truth. If it can only be about the other person, a denial of self is required and that is inherently not a true expression of ourselves. This carries its own brand of shame—the kind we feel when we are not in our integrity and not being truly honest with ourselves or others.
As a recovering people pleaser, I continue to try to turn toward this part of myself with curiosity.
So, what do I do with this information?
In the moments when I feel the shame that is a by-product of the people pleaser part inside of me, I try to take a breath and turn toward it with some compassion. I try to remember at its center is usually fear, old trauma, and a desire to feel connected to others. Inside it might sound something like, “Oh yeah, there’s that part of me who deeply wants to connect with another human and is trying to do it in an old but familiar way. That way does not honor me. Oh well. I’ll try again.”
Learning more about this part of myself has led to an undeniable need for setting boundaries in my life, which naturally led to having close relationships with healthier people who have their own boundaries and honor mine.
Turns out, the less I people pleased, the more pleasing my relationships felt all around.