So many people say they hate liars. You cant trust them. Yet many of those people are the worst liars around. Now there are two types of people who are inherently liars. No, I am not talking about Navy recruiters or politicians. I am talking about Addicts are liars and the other natural liar is a people pleaser.
I want to talk this week about the second. I will address the first at some time down the road, but today we are looking at people pleasers.
Why People Pleasers?
People pleasers are people who go out of their way to lie to others so that they can control how other people feel and what they think. In other words, they are manipulators.
We all know someone like this. They are trying to do 30 things at once. Often these are other people's tasks so that the person they are trying to please will like them.
I am a recovering people pleaser.
Aren't people pleasers good?
Not really. These people give up on being their own person for the sake of someone who may or may not like them in return. Often, people pleasers, will say whatever they believe the other person wants to hear instead of speaking their own mind and being their own person.
Helping a person out is good and we should help, but not at the detriment to our own life and mental health.
Maybe you have known a "Yes Man" at the office. Sometimes these people are also called brown nosers. These guys often don't have the self-worth because they are putting all their worth into another person.
People pleasing is called Sociotropy this is a person’s tendency to place an inordinate value on relationships over personal independence that will leave them vulnerable to depression in the response to a loss of relationships.
These are people who act like your neighbor down the street who comes by and bakes cookies for you and keeps bringing them over. Or maybe you see your son always trying to please everybody and then really comes down on himself when someone becomes upset with him.
People pleasers are people who...
- struggle with saying no.
- feel personally responsible for how other people feel.
- avoid sharing honestly, like not admitting when your feelings have been hurt.
- feel uncomfortable dealing with conflict and will do whatever you can to avoid it.
- sometimes find yourself “becoming” like whoever you hang around.
The depression comes from the fact that you cant control a person. You can't make a person feel anything at any time. This will lead to the people
People pleasers often will do something small at first and keep piling more and more if they don't get the response they desire they often become upset and can fall into depression or burnout.
The drawback of people pleasing
You cant be yourself
You will burn out
The huge strain on your mental health
How to break free from being a people pleaser.
Face the discomfort of expressing your ideas.
Be OK when people don't like your ideas or change them.
Understand that the person you are lying to the most when trying to please other people is yourself.
You can't control everybody and it is impossible to even control some people all the time. They eventually get tired of being manipulated.
Your lies do catch up with you
Learn and use the most powerful word in the English language and that is NO. Then you have to accept that many people will not like that response and they will try to find different ways to make you feel bad because you have denied them.
Set boundaries and then hold them
Accept that you can't control people's emotions. Yeah, your actions may create a pleasant thought in the other person but hat doesn't mean they like you. A person likes you for who you are not how you make them feel because you can't make them feel anything.