Let’s face it, as a people pleaser you are always apologizing for existing, saying ‘yes’ when you really want to say ‘no,’ terrified of hurting people’s feelings so you sacrifice your own because you’ve convinced yourself that that’s easier, and tremble at the thought of anyone ever being mad at you. People pleasing cuts deep and creates a passive way of living, neglecting that you’re a whole individual with whole needs.

Maybe you’ve been like this forever or maybe it started after something painful happened to you as a way to cope with your difficult emotions, but either way, you’re realizing just how much you no longer want to live this way and you’re ready to reclaim your voice and your free will.

However you got here, I want to be the first to tell you that you’re not alone and this isn’t permanent, in fact, I’m here to share how you can identify these patterns and rewrite a new story, one where you get to be who you are, say how you feel, and stop caring so much if other people are going to be bothered by it while also not being selfish. Sounds nice right? Let’s get into it then.

What is a People Pleaser?

If you’re here, you likely know very intimately what a people pleaser is, and quite frankly, it’s implied in the name. People pleasers put everyone else’s needs, wants and feelings above their own as a way to “please” others, gain likeness, and overall avoid conflict. People pleasers typically have a hard time saying ‘no’ especially with people who they have deemed important. They also struggle to say their opinions or set boundaries in fear of being judged, disliked, or criticized. They’re the go-with-the-flow type, seemingly having no real preferences one way or another, or at least that’s true on the surface of their personality, but likely not true underneath.

In intimate relationships, people pleasers are very often the codependent type, prioritizing their partner’s feelings over their own, sacrificing how they feel to keep their partner’s emotions in check and under control and generally avoiding any opportunity to share how they feel or what they want. They tend to give beyond what they’re capable of giving, causing them to cycle through experiences of burnout, anxiety, and depression. And in most cases, giving at such a high rate almost always leads to resent and failed relationships, thus causing a flaw in the system for the people pleaser to continue to loop themselves in as they try to resolve it.

The tricky thing about people pleasers is they they’re often the “nice guys” and they have taken that on as their entire personality to a detriment that no longer allows them space to have a voice, an opinion, or a need. And this doesn’t mean that being nice means your a people pleaser, there’s a drastic difference between being in support of others and being a people pleaser. One is drastically impacting your quality of life and altering how you make decisions thus standing in the way of being truly sovereign and independent.

The Psychology of People Pleasing

Surely this is not a medical or mental health diagnosis, but as I mentioned when it gets to the point that it’s severely impacting your quality of life, then it becomes more of a serious problem, leading to failed relationships of all kinds, and overall a lack of relational wealth. Most people pleasers aren’t this way by accident, they found their way here through learning how to cope with and suppress difficult emotions often from a very young age.

It’s extremely common for a people pleaser to come from a family where emotions were scary to witness and have. For example, if you grew up with a father who exploded anytime you did something wrong, you’d begin to learn very quickly how to please your father and never make him upset as a way to keep yourself safe and loved. This would come in the form of over-extending to predict and meet his needs, tip toeing through your childhood afraid to take risks or speak up, and generally neglecting to share how you feel or what you need because this would directly impact your safety, well-being, and if you’ll receive love from your parent figure.

It doesn’t always come from abuse, even having an overly emotional parent can cause a child to take on people pleasing. If your mom is unable to handle her emotions and uses her child to soothe her, then her child is going to become accustomed to predicting her mother’s emotions and needs. She may become overly sensitive to her mother’s patterns and be able to stop her feelings before they happen. This not only becomes rewarding for the child but also increases her likelihood of being loved by this parent. If her mother is upset then she’s not giving her child attention, the only way for the child to then get attention is to learn how to predict, prevent, and manage these emotions for her mother.

These habits formed become integral to how the brain operates at a subconscious level. If you believe being nice, agreeable, and being liked is an important quality of moving through the world with ease, then your habits and actions are going to mirror that belief. This is incredibly common for women who are often told to be nice, quiet, likable, and not speak up for what they need because it can be considered forceful and rude. In fact, it is far more common to be a people pleaser as a woman than as a man for this very reason. The conditioning we receive as girls and boys is drastically different. Where girls are told to be agreeable and quiet, boys are told to be loud and go after what they want, the more forceful often the more praise.

The Consequences of People Pleasing

Once people pleasing becomes a trained brain pattern, it can create a series of ripple effects in a person’s life that can cause mental and emotional exhaustion, mental health challenges like anxiety and depression or worse, resentment in relationships of all calibers, loss of self-identity, lack of self trust and desire to live a life of independence and authenticity.

If you think about it, putting everyone else before yourself isn’t just exhausting, it’s unsustainable. At some point you’re going to have a need that rises above this people pleasing tendency, which almost always leads to some form of spiral where the people pleaser needs to speak this need but is actually terrified of doing so. Not only have I experienced this in my own life in my romantic partnerships, losing full touch with reality when I start to feel like I’m being fully taken advantage of and I need to speak up, but I’ve seen this in my clients who experience the same conflicting moments. Eventually it either leads to a full breakdown of the people pleaser or a full repression of the emotions that will eventually come back up ten-fold.

When the people pleaser gets deep enough into this experience they often find themselves lost in understanding who they are and what they want. If you’ve ever had a hard time asking yourself what you want and you’re a people pleaser, then let this be a reminder that when you put everyone else’s needs and wants ahead of your own, you’re decreasing your ability to listen to your own needs and distancing yourself further and further from connecting with yourself.

Most people come to me with this exact experience, “I have no idea who I am or what I want because I’ve been so focused on everyone else for most of my life.”

If you’re a serious people pleaser, eventually you’re going to reach a threshold in which you cannot handle this experience anymore. Perhaps it shows up in a full shutdown of your body via burnout, depression, or a midlife crisis. Eventually you’ll be no longer able to put up with this way of being because it directly goes against your true desires which will begin to reveal themselves to you as you get older. It happens for a lot of people around their Saturn returns, around age ~29 and age 56.

I want you to get ahead of this experience so it can be manageable instead of a catastrophe. I’m not saying it will be for every people pleaser, but the amount of emotions that get shoved down and repressed for the people pleaser is hard to quantify and at some point those feelings have to be felt or they’ll manifest into more serious challenges and illnesses.

5 Ways to Identify Your People Pleasing Patterns

If you want to move past your people pleasing tendencies, you first need to become aware of how they play into your daily life, habits, patterns, and relationships. Awareness creates an ability to see when, what, and why you’re doing something so you can then take action in a new way. Here are 5 common places to identify your people pleasing patterns and reflect on why you’re doing these things to begin with.

You Over-Apologize and Over-Deliver

Coming in hot at number one is over-apologizing and over-delivering. You’ve likely watched yourself do this over the course of your life and wondered why you can’t stop. It feels like if you don’t apologize at least 3 times that you may not have conveyed that you were truly sorry and the other person will not forgive you. You most likely apologize for things that don’t require an apology at all, like having an emotion of any kind, crying is a common one. Not only do you over-apologize, but you also over-deliver on most things you do. You want to make sure you go above and beyond for people so they feel cared for and so you can feel safe in that relationship. This probably happens at work with your boss to prove you’re worthy of your position or in your romantic relationship so that you can feel wanted and needed.

If you’re someone who over-apologizes and over-delivers, reflect on these moments as they happen by asking yourself:

• Am I apologizing because I’m really sorry, or because I’m afraid of someone being mad at me?
• Am I overdelivering because it feels good or because I’m afraid of not being wanted or needed?
• What would happen if I didn’t apologize or over-deliver? Name the consequences you may experience.

You’re Justifying Someone Else’s Behavior and Feelings

Maybe it’s your parent, your partner, your friend, or your boss, in any circumstance, you may find yourself justifying someone else’s poor behavior and feelings to avoid conflict, keep the peace, or not step on any toes. This might come up more heavily if the person’s behavior is creating challenge in your life that you don’t want to admit. You may have a boss who continues to call you out in front of your peers even though you’ve asked that they don’t. However, you continue to justify their behavior because you’re afraid that they’ll cause even more challenges in your life, be upset or disappointed that you’re criticizing them, or worse that you’ll get fired for speaking up.

Justifying behavior and feelings for others is a sure sign you’ve let your people pleasing tendencies go a bit far. In this situation you should feel confident to stand up for yourself despite what the circumstances are, rather than spare other’s feelings and neglect your own. If you’re in a position in which you’re prioritizing other people’s feelings over your own it may be time to address it.

If you’re someone who justifies other’s behaviors and feelings, reflect on these moments and ask yourself:

• Why am I more worried about other people’s feelings than my own?
• Why am I willing to take responsibility for someone else’s experience but not mine?
• What would happen if I put my feelings first and prioritized myself? List out how this may feel, what might happen, and anything else relevant to the situation.

Saying ‘Yes’ When You Really Mean ‘No’

Maybe you feel like you need to prove your worth, show your commitment, or prove that you’re reliable. In either thought process, you’re making it more important to prove a point than take care of your actual needs. People pleasers say ‘yes’ because they’re afraid of what may happen when they say ‘No.’ What if that person no longer wants to be my friend? What if I don’t get asked to work on big projects anymore? What if they break up with me because I’m not doing what they want me to do? If you’re deep in this cycle then you can probably list a several of these thoughts that come up anytime you want to say ‘no’ but actually say ‘yes.’

Unfortunately, saying ‘yes’ all the time creates an imbalance in your needs versus someone else’s. You may begin to resent people who say ‘no’ to you because you always say ‘yes’ and subconsciously expect the same in return. You may also burnout from doing things you really don’t want to do but feel an inner obligation to do.

If you say ‘yes’ too much but don’t know how to stop, you may want to consider exploring why you feel you can’t say ‘no,’ reflect on the following:

• Why do I feel like I can’t say ‘no’ even when I don’t want to do something?
• What am I afraid might happen if I say ‘no’ to something?
• Does saying ‘no’ automatically mean I’m not worthy/good enough/etc?
• What would happen if I said ‘no’ to something that I don’t want to do instead of ‘yes?’ List the outcomes/consequences of the experience.

You Seek Validation From Others

Seeking validation from others is a common behavior of people pleasers, because being liked and agreeable is an important value, as well as avoiding conflict of doing something potentially thought-provoking or worthy of criticism. This can happen in big and small ways: dressing like your friends because it’s considered normal versus dressing the way you want because it may draw unwanted attention or other’s opinions to be warranted, or getting married to the person your family likes just so you can feel welcomed and loved by them for choosing someone who fits their needs versus someone who fits your own desires.

Being in constant need of validation means there’s no space for you to have your own desires and wants and actually meet them. This can set you up for a very dulled human experience and eventually probably some form of crisis or breakdown.

If you’re someone who seeks a lot of validation from others, explore and reflect on the following:

• Why do I need others to approve of what I’m doing?
• Who’s opinions do I care about the most and why?
• What would happen if I did something that I want to do that others may not approve of?

Avoiding Conflict At All Costs

When someone crosses a boundary you don’t say anything. When you’re in a fight you apologize before you even made your point (and probably excessively). You have a deep rooted fear of conflict and it causes you to be not just agreeable but fully conflict avoidant at all costs. This likely is making having relationships hard, leading likely to a lot of feelings of resent or feeling like no one really sees who you are or understands you.

If you’re someone who avoids conflict at all costs, explore and reflect on the following?

• What part of conflict am I the most afraid of?
• Who am I most afraid of conflict with and why?
• What are my beliefs about conflict? Are these beliefs true?
• What would happen if I engaged in conflict without running from it?

How to Break Free From Being a People Pleaser

So you know you’re a people pleaser, but you have no idea how to move past it and rewrite a story in which you get to have an opinion that doesn’t revolve around everyone else’s feelings. I don’t want to sugarcoat it; undoing your people pleasing tendencies will be a process that you’ll have to work through slowly to make sure you don’t overwhelm your nervous system and stress yourself out too much. The good news is that if you take this slow and deliberately you can absolutely create a new way of being that does not involve catering to everyone else’s needs ahead of your own.

Let’s break down how you might go about this in a way that feels sustainable and achievable.

Step 1: Get Familiar With Your Triggers

People pleasing perpetuates when you avoid what triggers you to keep the peace and not create more trouble by expressing these triggers. Your triggers are going to be the most important step of the process of undoing your people pleasing tendencies. If you’re not sure what these are, review some of the questions from above to begin to see what most activates you and causes you to run from your own feelings. Knowing your triggers is a huge step forward in creating a new story.

Triggers are nothing more that emotional activations that are presenting themselves to you so you can explore more of yourself. The ideas is that when you have a trigger you investigate it in a way that you understand where it comes from and why it’s continuing to cause you distress, discomfort, and pain. If you can be fully aware of what triggers you and why, then you can create a plan of how you’re going to do something about it.

Sometimes awareness alone is enough to create peace in the process, but that’s not always the case. If you come up against a trigger that needs to be expressed and worked through, you may find that you want to do this work with an unbiased third party like a therapist or a coach. Someone who can be there to witness you in the trigger and help walk you through how to start unravelling it to see what it’s really protecting.

A great way to become aware of you triggers in an approachable way is through a microdosing protocol. Microdosing gives you deeper access and openness to your emotions, new perspective into how to move through them, and increased neuroplasticity to take advantage of rewiring your neural pathways to support new habits and behaviors that allow you to overcome putting everyone before yourself.

Step 2: Practice with Low-Hanging Fruit and Small Behavior Changes

Trying to go full-180 after you’ve discovered you’re a people pleaser is not a good idea. You’ve been operating this way for likely a long time and even though you may now be aware of your tendencies, it’s going to require you to slowly create confidence in yourself and your nervous system so you don’t freeze up and freak out. Trust me, I’ve been there.

Practice with small things like saying ‘no’ to something that’s not going to ruffle any feathers. Better yet, find someone who you can share that you’re working on this with and then practice saying ‘no’ to them with the knowledge that they know the path you’re on. Safe people and places are great for helping you heal.

You might also want to practice thinking about your wants more often. This can be as simple as waking up each day and writing 3 things that you want for yourself, then make it your mission to accomplish these things across the day. As you build a bit of confidence you can make these bigger and perhaps make sure they involve communicating these wants to another person in your life for even more practice.

Step 3: Reframe Your Mindset Around Having Wants

It’s impossible for you to go through this world without having wants that may conflict with other’s wants. If anything, learn that you get to reframe your mindset around this concept because it’s going to create a more easeful and desirable life for you.

I suggest reflecting on these questions:

• If I don’t speak up for my wants, then how am I dulling other people’s experiences of me?
• Is saying ‘yes’ all the time really what makes me a good friend? Or am I reducing my ability to connect with others because I’m doing things I don’t want to do?
• Who’s missing out on me being myself when I don’t say or do the things I really want to do?
• How does prioritizing someone else’s feelings actually hurt them more?

As you begin to see the other side of how people pleasing actually isn’t as effective of a strategy as you may think, it can help you begin to see that having your own wants and needs and feelings is a good thing. It’s not going to be an immediate shift, but practice reminding yourself daily that not people pleasing is important to having deep relationships, caring for others, and being kind and good to yourself so you can be kind and good to others (which I know is what you want).

Step 4: Build Your Emotional Resilience

Emotional resilience is the combination of having the awareness of a negative experience and emotion as well as the resources to cope with that feeling in a timely and reasonable manner. It’s a fancy way of saying you can experience difficult emotions and not freak out, explode, or shove it back down. Some people are born with this skill but as any skill goes, it’s something you can strengthen and work on over time!

In the context of people pleasing, emotional resilience is incredibly valuable as you start to learn to speak up for yourself and your needs which is going to be scary at first, but as you build up your resilience, you’ll find it gets easier just like strengthening any other muscle would get stronger. Often times the fear of the emotion is more scary than the actual emotion itself. Creating time to dedicate to your own self is key to this process. Build awareness as you build resources and you’ll slowly start to stack your toolkit so that when an emotion comes up, you’ll know how to be with it. Some of my favorite tools are taking deep breaths, going for a walk, dancing, working out, and my favorite, screaming into a pillow. As you build emotional resilience you’ll notice that not being so afraid of your emotions creates an ability to live a more joyful and authentic life.

Step 5: Strengthen Your Boundaries

There’s a reason this is number 5, when most times it seems like it’s number 1. It takes a lot of time to be able to set boundaries that feel good. Melissa Urban has a great breakdown of this in her book, The Book of Boundaries, where she explores how to set boundaries in three tiers from green to red, from least direct to most direct.

However you choose to approach setting boundaries, be mindful that it might not feel good right away, but the idea with setting boundaries is that you’re teaching others how they can utilize and engage with you. This is about protecting your own peace of mind so that you can have more authentic and rich relationships, rather than giving everyone full access to you at all times.

As a recovering people pleaser, you’re not going to like setting boundaries at first because it’s going to feel harsh, hurtful, and maybe even disconnecting, but trust the process and begin in ways that feel accessible to you. There’s a misconception that setting boundaries needs to be this harsh and direct process but in reality it can be really soft and simple. For example, if a friend keeps asking you to go out you can say “I appreciate the invite, but I need some rest tonight. Maybe next time!”.

Each boundary you set strengthens this muscle and at some point you may find that your energy feels so clear that you no longer need to set firm boundaries, they’re communicated naturally.

Step 6: Seek Therapy or Coaching

This may be step 6 for some and step 1 for others, depending on how much support, guidance, and external belief you need to really undo your people pleasing tendencies. Getting a coach or therapist to help you with this not only gives you a safe space to be vulnerable, but it also gives you frameworks and tools that you can then use on your journey to unbecoming a people pleaser once and for all.

One of my clients was able to finally see where she was letting her friends have the upper hand over her and learned how to communicate her needs in her friendships which actually ended up deepening her friendships and releasing all the pressure she was carrying off of her shoulders. Through this process she became so clear that letting others tell her how to live actually made her feel more lonely than if she just spoke what she wanted out loud.

It’s okay to ask for help, especially from people who know what you’re experiencing and have found their own success on the path to undoing their people pleasing behaviors. This was by far one of the biggest things I overcame on the path to writing my own story. If you’re interested in booking a complimentary sample session with me, we can dive into this and explore how you too can overcome your people pleasing.

You Too Can Break Free of People Pleasing

Unbecoming a people pleaser is possible for you and it doesn’t make you selfish in the process! In fact, if you’ve learned anything, you now know that speaking your needs and having feelings not only gives other people permission to do the same, but also makes you more relatable and more connected because of your authenticity and honesty.

People pleasing often comes from learned behavior in childhood and can create a lot of feelings when trying to undo it. Take your time with this process and give your nervous system space and time to recalibrate to this new way of being. If you really want to speed this process up, consider working with a therapist or coach. You may also want to consider exploring microdosing low doses of psychedelics to build new habits and find new perspectives that will guide you through the process with more ease and curiosity.

And last but not least, being a people pleaser likely means you have a lot of love and care to give, don’t beat yourself up over wanting people to like you and to make others happy. The best thing you can do is learn how to redirect this energy to have more impact so you can live a more full and abundant life versus being burnt out and exhausted from trying to please everyone around you. It’s more possible than you think!

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If we haven’t met yet, hi! I’m Lex Joyal — Microdosing coach who is passionate about helping highly sensitive humans connect with their emotions, stop people pleasing and live a life they love with the help of psychedelics If you like my content and want more of it in your life, here are a few ways you can connect with me:

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