🔥How to (finally) stop people pleasing

And also not become a jerk.

If you’ve made it this far into my series of newsletters on people pleasing - then well done. You have pleased at least one person (me). I’ve recently covered what people pleasing is and how it works. I also doled out some tough love in the hope that seeing things from a fresh angle might help others overcome harmful habits, but today, I want to talk about how to finally stop being a people pleaser without going too far the other way…

My brain to me when I set healthy reasonable boundaries

Focusing on the core people pleaser behaviours will explain why we do them, and what we can do to kick your people pleasing to the curb, once and for all, so that your therapist and all your friends sing the ‘Princess song’ to you.

Confessions of a Former People Pleaser Pt. III

A few weeks ago, I declined a request to do an unreasonable task that I really didn’t want to do. It wasn’t a life threatening task by any means but saying ‘no’ still felt awkward to me. More often than not I end up falling into the trap of giving in and doing it anyway when I sense any hint of expectation - and most of the time I do genuinely enjoy being helpful. But there was still a little niggling voice telling me that everyone would think I was selfish, lazy, and difficult because I said no. 

I was pleasantly surprised when the other person accepted my response without question. Nonetheless, hours later the guilt crept in and I wondered if I should have said yes JUST IN CASE everyone was cursing my name. 

Of course, I shouldn’t have. But even with all my realisations about my former people pleasing ways, it still felt like the hardest thing in the world to set that boundary. 

No doubt the lack of popularity of my last post is indicative of just how uncomfortable it can be to realise that some of the things you’re used to doing are in some way wrong - and that that the alternative solution can be equally, if not MORE unnerving. 

Yet with all that said, I think it’s also very important to go easy on yourself and forgive yourself too. Change is not easy. Every time you say no, you feel like a villain and sitting with that feeling can suck. 

Daisy Buchanan

recently wrote about boundaries in her Creative Confidence Clinic newsletter:

“If you’re generous, empathetic, and perhaps a little co-dependent, a ‘no’ can come with an enormous energetic cost.” 

“After about a thousand years of therapy, I can survive rejection - but my short term response is physical and heavy”.

So what’s left to do? How do you stop the cycle? How can you possibly recognise when it’s fair to set a boundary and when it isn’t - or deal with those feelings of discomfort when you go through with it? 

‘The Healthy Flex’ zone 

I’m going to let you in on a secret - it’s actually still okay to want to please other people sometimes. You absolutely do not need to give up being a good, helpful, kind, and caring person to break an unhealthy cycle of people pleasing. 

One concern from most people pleasers who are trying to go cold turkey is that a complete 180° is required for recovery; please nobody, and only prioritise your own needs.

This is a common mistake - particularly with people who are in the early stages of their therapy journey. It’s something of a rebellious phase, where after a long-period of bending to the whims of others, the antidote seems to be aggressively protecting your own boundaries with no exceptions. This is a complete misunderstanding of what we’re trying to achieve and something I see often within online culture.

Of course, it also isn’t sustainable or possible unless you want to end up with no friends. Instead you should be aiming for better boundaries alongside what we - not so lovingly - call ‘the healthy flex’ zone.

This is the liminal space between saying yes and no, where you can assess whether your discomfort is something you can work through, or something that you feel is absolutely not worth the worry. 

It is compromise and occasionally relenting when the pros outweigh the cons. It is coaching and pushing ourselves through natural feelings of fear, rather than giving in to them completely. 

For example, we might be anxious about presenting at a big work conference - but that doesn’t mean you should flatly refuse to do it. We might not feel like meeting a friend after a busy day, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely acceptable to let that person down. 

You can’t say no EVERY time you feel discomfort.

Next time you’re asked to do something you feel uncomfortable or unsure about, determine whether something sits within your healthy flex zone. You should make time to think over your response and consider the following: 

1. Do I actually want to do this?

2. Have I been asked to do this before by this person, and how did it make me feel?

3. What does the person asking mean to me?

4. What will my support mean to them?

5. Are they a person who regularly matches my generosity and kindness?

6. Is this request uncomfortable in a way I can tolerate?

7. What are the potential benefits of doing this; could I end up enjoying it, can I overcome a fear, or will I learn something new? 

8. Will I be able to manage my anxiety before, during, or after I complete this task?

9. Would I only be agreeing so nobody thinks badly of me? 

How to overcome tricky people pleasing scenarios   

Equipped with this gift of knowledge, it still might feel scary to put it into practise. All I can tell you - from experience - is that it gets much easier with time. It’s often also trial and error, building a tolerance for sitting with weird feelings afterwards, and telling yourself what you need to hear to remedy that. Let’s look at a few examples and some tips on how to manage classic scenarios sensitively; in a way that protects your boundaries and also doesn’t make you a jerk…

🙅‍♀️You feel obligated to do things constantly and feel guilty for saying ‘no’.

The big one - the fundamental people pleaser habit that we just can’t stop doing. 

How to overcome it: 

There are gentle and thoughtful ways to say no without damaging your relationship - you just need to first remember that ‘no’ is always an option. 

• Give yourself space to decide by telling the person that you’ll think about it, or that you’ll get back to them after checking your availability so you avoid a knee jerk response.

• You can also go down the honest, straight-forward route and explain your predicament, or you can simply say no without defending your position.

• Present rationale if you are worried the other person might not understand; for example is the refusal non-personal? Have you thought about it carefully and weighed up the pros and cons? Is there anybody else who could help instead? 

• Be polite, gracious, and empathetic in your initial response. Suggested sentiments might include: ‘Thank you for asking, I know how important this is for you, but unfortunately I can’t accept this time.’ 

• Don’t give into temptation to make up excuses.

• Remember that no one is (likely) going to die if you say no - maintain your position if challenged and re-iterate that your decisions is final. Don’t get sucked into an argument and don’t engage with guilt-tripping behaviour.

• Also remember that everyone has their own stuff going on. A person might have too many other things to worry about than being overly concerned with your refusal - they may just want an answer.

• If someone appears upset with you and is behaving passive aggressively, approach them calmly and directly. For example, you can say: ‘You seem upset that I couldn’t make it the other day - do you want to talk about it?’

🛀You feel guilty for doing something for yourself 

As I discussed in my recent post on self care, selfishness is very much perceived as a negative quality - even though it can be useful to us in small doses. We may have learned from example that putting our needs before others makes us appear selfish so it must be ‘avoided’ at all costs.

How to overcome it:

Understand that everybody has needs that are real and valid - including you. Don’t be afraid to allow yourself to give in to those needs once in a while.

• If you’re sick, don’t force yourself into work - take some time off to rest and recover. If you’re feeling burnt out, take a rain check on a night out and instead spend time doing something you enjoy at home. 

• Don’t apologise for bringing enjoyment to your own life. 

• Remember that there are no rewards or medals handed out for not looking after yourself - this is a particularly effective thought process for setting boundaries at work if your personal time is being infringed upon.

• If it helps, make efforts to ‘talk yourself round’ when the feelings of guilt creep in. For example: by not going into work you’re not making your colleagues sick.

🎁You feel compelled to ‘repay’ favours

Kindness and gestures of such should not be transactional but many of us are exposed to environments in which they are. This means that if somebody does something nice for you, you may feel compelled to ‘return’ the favour or simply feel unquestioningly grateful about it. Feeling indebted to another person can convince you to accept ill treatment and unsolicited ‘advice’, give into demands, or ‘pay it back’ with compliance, silence, or agreeability. 

How to overcome it: 

• If a person does you a kindness, all you need to do is thank them, and show your appreciation when it is genuine. You do not owe them more than that unless you choose to.

• If you feel you are being sucked into a ‘transaction’, remember that you can also politely refuse. ‘Thank you for the offer, I appreciate it, but I can’t accept’ will suffice. 

• Remember that you do not have to be grateful for scraps of kindness in relationships where all other behaviour is fundamentally unkind. As my favourite saying goes: a broken clock can still be nice twice a day. 

🆘You are deeply uncomfortable with needing help or attention

Something that definitely sits in the realm of people pleasing is the constant subconscious refusal to take up space in the world. One of the most extreme anxieties linked to people-pleasing is the chronic fear of undeservingly demanding care and attention when we feel others need it more.

How to overcome it: 

It’s natural for humans to have needs. Requiring love, empathy and support for yourself is normal. Asking for favours or help when you need it does not make you a burden or detract from the needs of others. Often we offer kindness to other people with complete ease, but have trouble offering or acquiring it for ourselves.

• Get comfortable with realising that you might want to feel noticed and cared for sometimes - and then get comfortable with receiving those things. 

• Check yourself if you clock that you’re apologising all the time, or pre-empting requests with explanations and second-guessing. You know what I mean! The ‘sorry to bother’ you emails are not a good look. 

• While we’re at it, stop using passive language to make requests - especially at work. No more ‘can you just?’, ‘would you mind?, ‘if it’s not too much trouble?’ Or ‘no worries if not!’

• If someone pays you a compliment or says something nice about you - thank them!  It’s as simple as that.

😰You worry that you have to behave in certain ways for people to like you 

When we start or maintain relationships with other people, there should be an understanding that they either accept us as we are - or they don’t. People pleasers can often be tempted to code switch to ‘fit in’ with others due to a fear of rejection. This might be a trauma response i.e. a time where it was pointed out they were ‘different’ and it resulted in criticism, or it may be due to an unexplored abandonment wound. 

How to overcome it: 

This is a lot harder - it involves a lot of work around self acceptance, being comfortable in your own skin, and having confidence in your own mind. All of which takes time and practise. 

• Check-in with yourself on what you actually think and feel when interacting with other people. Identify which behaviors feel comfortable to you, and which don’t. 

• Practice flexing your negotiation and debating skills in a ‘safe space’ i.e. a group of people who accept you, but are also willing to listen, discuss, and challenge you without becoming dismissive, confrontational, or emotional. 

• Put distance between yourself and people who don’t make you feel good.

• Learn to accept that not all conflict is negative, and that not all confrontation has to be aggressive. This will make having tricky conversations a lot less scary.

• You can have a disagreement without shouting, name-calling, denigrating and mocking others, getting upset or getting physical. If other people behave this way - stop the conversation and walk away.

🫨You constantly gaslight yourself 

Much of people pleasing is borne from dynamics where negative emotions are not tolerated, boundaries are frequently violated, and unreasonable behaviour is still rewarded. When you’re perpetually caught in a cycle of meeting someone else’s demands and are emotionally manipulated into saying yes, you can start to question your own judgements and mistrust your own perception. 

How to overcome it:

Much of this is a combination of observation, intuition, identifying patterns - but also just taking things at face value. It takes practise to read a person or a situation, and is often even more difficult for people who are neurodivergent. So rather than wasting valuable time reading into subtext, it can actually be more helpful to try and accept things as you see them to aid your decisions. Both methods are valid.

• Trust your gut. It won’t always be right but it’s a good indicator of how you really feel.

• If you and your gut still have trust issues, make space to assess situations in your own time - ask yourself if an incident is a one off, or a pattern of behaviour.

• Sense check with a trusted person who might be able to give you a neutral, third-party perspective.

• Spot situations where you can feel yourself second-guessing or caveating everything you say.

• Ask questions to clarify - so you have a full picture

• Only clarify what you mean if questioned or misunderstood. 

• Be clear and direct in your own communications to set an example. If you act with good and honest intentions, people with a similar mentality will take it that way. If they don’t, realise that you’re unlikely to change their mind.

• Don’t overthink it. Easier said than done - but let’s assume that the situation you’re interacting with is as it seems. Unless anything underlying is explicitly communicated to you, it’s not actually your problem. 

Setting boundaries vs. being a jerk

Watch out - assholes do like to justify their behaviour as a reaction to their so-called ‘people pleasing’ ways but this is NOT the look we’re going for. Kindness is still a fundamental part of recovery.

In a world where everything is polarised, the best advice I can give is to start living in the messy, grey area in the middle. Yes, it’s more complicated. Yes there is nuance. And yes, it’s harder to navigate - but it’s going to be way more useful than changing your whole personality overnight or sticking with your old people pleasing ways. 

Unlearning associations with certain ‘displeasing’ behaviours is going to be your biggest mountain to climb when following the above tips - either because they don’t feel natural to you or because they’re entrenched in other issues like gender stereotypes, ableism, and racism. But not being a people pleaser and still being a good person IS possible.

A few things I try to remember; 

• Honesty does not have to be brutal.

• Assertiveness is not equal to aggression.

• Being direct is clear communication in action and eliminates room for misinterpretation. It is not a tool to be rude, abrupt, bitchy, or dismissive. Learn to spot the difference and if directness looks mean in others, then they’re doing it wrong. 

• Most people don’t do or say things to be jerks or inconvenience others on purpose.

• Don’t let gendered words like ‘bossy’ and ‘opinionated’ deter you from demonstrating strong leadership or speaking your mind when it’s needed. 

• Passive aggression never solved anything - if you have something to say, say it, own it, and be open to the feedback.

• Recognise the difference between what you can control and what you can’t - and if you’re trying to control other people’s behaviour or perceptions, take a step back. 

• It’s fine to make mistakes - especially because everyone makes them. Just recognise when you are making too many.

• Still hold yourself accountable but not for everyone else’s problems. 

• Accept that guilt is part of the process, but won’t last forever.

Please, please, please, let me get what I want

Hopefully this series has been helpful for all those of you out there who want to put your people pleasing ways in the bin - or at least some of them. It’s a marathon, not a sprint and it’s something that I’m also working on improving daily.

Tell me your thoughts in the comments - or why not ask me for some specific people-pleasing advice? I am in no way a professional but I have 30+ year experience of people-pleasing related anxiety to draw on so I guess that makes me scholar…