People Pleasing Gets Old… What’s Really Going On?

The other week I had a session on a topic that I have had dozens and dozens of times: people pleasing, as many like to call it. I believe a more apt term for this might be self-abandonment, or perhaps a less catchy—but more descriptive—phrase: unknowingly manipulating others to gain favor and avoid conflict.

I don’t typically use that last phrase with clients, but here, in this format, I think it’s worth naming.

Maybe you already know the ins and outs of your people-pleasing behaviors. You understand where they come from, what triggers them, and that they ultimately aren’t helping your relationships. You may know even more than that.

Often, though, I have the privilege of seeing things from the outside in. And over time, I’ve noticed that many of the behaviors that fall under the umbrella of people pleasing seem to boil down to one central belief:

“I am responsible for how other people feel.”

This client told me he doesn’t really want friends because, to him, friendships come with a long list of unspoken expectations: keeping in touch, responding to texts, making plans, showing up. In his mind, those expectations inevitably end in disappointment—and in him letting someone down.

The people pleaser in him has very little tolerance for disappointing others or even perceiving that he has let someone down. As a result, he has gradually shrunk his social circle rather than risk failing to meet expectations that, in many cases, were never actually communicated and may not even exist at all.

Later in the session, he offered two examples while trying to understand where the line between causing harm and not causing harm actually exists.

The first was verbally insulting someone, physically hurting them, or intentionally putting them down. We both agreed these are clear examples of causing harm.

The second was choosing to spend time doing something he genuinely wanted to do, even if his partner wished he had chosen differently.

To him, these two situations felt similar.

Why?

Because in both situations, someone else might end up feeling hurt.

That became the focus of our session.

To his nervous system, the possibility of disappointing someone activated almost the same level of threat as intentionally harming them.

Not because those situations are morally equivalent.

But because his nervous system had learned that another person’s disappointment—or even the possibility of their disappointment—felt like evidence that he had done something wrong.

This is so incredibly common in people who become trapped in the people-pleasing cycle.

It becomes almost impossible to experience secure, regulated connection when so much of your energy is spent monitoring how someone else may or may not feel about nearly everything you do or say (or don’t do or don’t say).

One of the reasons I think this cycle becomes so entrenched is because healthy boundaries were never fully developed—and there are often very understandable reasons for that.

People with healthy boundaries don’t enjoy disappointing others. They simply understand that disappointment is an unavoidable part of authentic relationships.

They trust that other adults are capable of voicing their needs, setting their own boundaries, expressing preferences, tolerating disappointment, and hearing “no.”

People pleasers often don’t trust that.

Instead, they unconsciously take responsibility for managing everyone else’s emotional experience.

If someone feels disappointed, they feel responsible.

If someone feels frustrated, they feel responsible.

If someone feels hurt, they assume they must have done something wrong.

And that “responsibility” doesn’t just exist as a thought. It exists as an emotional experience.

It can feel like fear.

Like guilt.

Like shame.

Like panic.

Sometimes even terror.

Another piece of this that I think often goes unnoticed is that our ability to tolerate difficult emotions in other people is limited by our ability to tolerate those same emotions within ourselves.

If I can’t tolerate disappointment, guilt, frustration, anxiety, shame, or uncertainty in myself, I will work incredibly hard to prevent those same emotions from arising in you.

Not because I’m trying to control you.

But because your disappointment quickly becomes my disappointment.

Your frustration becomes my guilt.

Your hurt becomes evidence that I have failed and then panic sets in.

When our internal distress tolerance is low, other people’s emotions don’t stay theirs for very long. We absorb them, personalize them, and begin organizing our lives around preventing them.

My client’s nervous system was not distinguishing between causing harm and allowing someone to have feelings about his choices.

Without clear internal and external boundaries, every uncomfortable emotion in someone else became his responsibility to prevent.

The more I’ve thought about this over the years, the more I’ve come to see people pleasing as a self-reinforcing loop.

I have a low tolerance for difficult emotions.

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Because I can’t tolerate disappointment, guilt, frustration, shame, or anxiety within myself, I become highly motivated to prevent those emotions from arising in other people.

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That makes boundary setting, saying “no,” expressing a preference, asking for what I need, forgetting to text someone back, making a request, or making a decision someone dislikes feel emotionally dangerous.

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So I avoid those behaviors.

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I abandon myself.

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Eventually, someone is disappointed anyway.

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Now I feel guilty, ashamed, anxious, or like I’ve failed.

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Which reinforces my belief that I need to work even harder to prevent those feelings next time.

And the cycle repeats.

Over and over.

For me, this is the heart of people pleasing.

It isn’t simply about being nice.

It isn’t simply about conflict avoidance.

It’s about believing that other people’s emotional states are yours to manage.

The paradox, of course, is that this belief often leads us to abandon ourselves in an effort to protect others from experiences that were never ours to control in the first place.

The work, then, isn’t to eliminate disappointment—from yourself or from other people.

It’s to become someone who can tolerate it.

Because the more capable we become of holding difficult emotions within ourselves, the less compelled we are to organize our lives around preventing them in everyone else.

What began to change things for me, both personally and professionally, was realizing that responsibility isn’t the problem.

Misplaced responsibility is.

People pleasers are often incredibly responsible people.

They’re simply carrying responsibility that doesn’t belong to them.

Your responsibility is to be honest.

To be kind.

To repair when you’ve genuinely caused harm.

To communicate.

To apologize when appropriate.

To set boundaries.

To live in alignment with your values.

My disappointment about your choices?

That belongs to me.

Your responsibility ends where my emotional work begins.

The freedom isn’t found in becoming less responsible.

It’s found in becoming responsible for the right things.

If you want support on your path to more freedom, more ease in connections, more nervous system regulation as you move through the world. Feel free to reach out to me today, I'd love to work with you!