Why people-pleasers feel so lonely & solutions for deeper connections
For most of my life, I was a People-Pleaser.
I struggled to express myself fully without editing or censoring what I really wanted to say in all my relationships- personal and professional. When I sensed that a discussion could turn into a potential conflict, I instinctively switched into people-pleasing mode unconsciously.
Many people who know me would describe me as authentic, vocal and confident. That’s true now, but it wasn’t always the case.
Since I was very little, I cultivated a skill to observe, analyse and pre-empt other peoples’ moods, desires, and needs keenly. Growing up in conflicting and chaotic environments, I learnt to become deeply aware of what was expected of me to do or say. It was a form of protection for myself, but unsurprisingly, many of these expectations of me contradicted with who I was, how I felt, and what I wanted.
People-pleasing was a trauma response developed in childhood, as children would always pick safety over authenticity, if forced to choose.
But as I grew older, the shadow of people-pleasing followed.
Despite being surrounded by many friends and having romantic experiences, I consistently felt a deep loneliness that I could not shake off.
I wondered if there was any one in the world whom I could truly connect with, where I could feel free to be me: to love fiercely, without having to give myself up. Someone who would make me feel truly known, and understood at the core.
Symptoms of people-pleasing
If you’re like me and experienced growing up in conflicting or difficult environments, and/or equated praise of certain behaviours with love, then like me, you probably feel that you’ll only be good enough if you never disappointed others, always attended to their needs, and remained useful to them.
Symptoms of people-pleasing include:
altering one’s speech and actions to match the perceived expectations of others
pre-empting, predicting and monitoring others’ moods and needs
feelings of responsibility to attend to and fix others’ emotions and challenges
difficulty saying No and having boundaries
overexerting oneself to meet others’ needs and desires
frequently apologetic for things, however small
strong inner critic
People-pleasers aim to avoid external conflict, but what grows instead is the conflict between one’s internal state and their external behaviours and actions.
People-pleasing is usually unconscious, but when made conscious, it can be an addictive behaviour because it helps one to upkeep a certain image of oneself in the eyes of others. But in the long-term, people pleasing only feeds the cycle of feeling needed and useful to others to gain external validation.
Consequences of people-pleasing
The attention and energy that people-pleasers devote outwardly often means that they often experience a strong disconnection with themselves. They struggle with noticing, growing aware of, and articulating their needs and desires, and often have deep shame wounds that stand in the way of self-acceptance and love.
The quality of our life depends on the quality of our relationships with ourselves, and with others
Because people-pleasers were taught to believe that love and connection are conditional, people-pleasing is self-defeating and a self-fulfilling prophecy. People-pleasing is a learnt behaviour that may have been helpful in the past, but in adulthood, it stands in the way of the deep, secure and sincere connections we desire with ourselves, and others.
When we let the belief that connection and acceptance is always conditional drive our approach to relationships, it robs us of the rich, healthy, and life-giving relationships we deserve.
Consequences of people-pleasing include:
Low self-esteem and confidence
The process and practice of constantly altering one’s true thoughts and actions out of fear erodes our sense of self and our identities. It creates and reinforces a harmful, anxious cycle of constantly second-guessing our self-worth, and develops unhealthy reliance on external validation to feel temporary relief from the anxiety.
Deep loneliness and unreciprocal relationships
People-pleasers devote a lot of time, effort and energy into their relationships but often feel overwhelmed, taken for granted and lonely.
Many people-pleasers are deeply sensitive and empathetic, and they crave deep emotional connection and understanding. But people-pleasing keeps them stuck in self-defeating patterns of behaviour that robs them of truly deep, authentic and reciprocal relationships.
Increased vulnerability of being taken advantage of in relationships
People-pleasers often struggle with boundary-building and enforcement, and make excuses for people who transgress their values.
People-pleasing dulls our own instincts informed by our gut intelligence, which is responsible for sending important signals to us on relationships that are safe or unsafe, and healthy or unhealthy, for us. When people-pleasers choose to avoid conflict and to maintain a connection at all costs, they increase their vulnerability of being taken advantage of, or even exploited in personal and professional relationships.
Dishonesty and distrust in relationships
Many people-pleasers are not conscious about their people-pleasing behaviours, but the effect of people-pleasing remains disingenuous or even dishonest. Because people-pleasers struggle to accurately represent themselves, it creates uncertainty for those around them to trust if they truly mean what they say or feel.
People-pleasers may also be prone to projecting their own experiences onto others, and engage in unhealthy hyper-vigilance and mind-reading behaviours towards others’ thoughts, actions and intentions. This may threaten efforts to build and achieve openness, honesty, and trust in relationships.
Suffer from low-quality relationships
People-pleasing blocks the development of many crucial adult skills: the ability to establish and enforce healthy boundaries, to create standards for the way we want to be treated, and curate quality relationships and connections.
When people-pleasing behaviours are triggered, our objectivity, clarity and discernment take a backseat. This translates into enduring or tolerating poor quality relationships to avoid the need to make the active choice to have an open but difficult conversation, create distance, or give up on a connection for one’s own wellbeing and safety.
Growing resentment in the long term
People-pleasing involves a constant cycle of sidelining one’s needs, desires, opinions out of fear. People pleasers also often struggle to ask or receive support, for fear feeling like they are burdening others. Accumulating experiences of feeling overextended but under-appreciated consistently also grows resentment, which can be detrimental and unsustainable for the relationship if left unaddressed in the long run.
How to break the cycle and experience true connection
The conditional love I experienced growing up taught me to believe that if I expressed or asserted my personality, my needs, and my opinions too strongly, I would have to face judgement, disconnection or rejection.
But now I know that that’s false, because of my firsthand experience of unlearning the lessons on love and connection that did not align with me, and re-writing my own narrative on relationships.
Now I have a deeply loving relationship with my husband where I can be 100% me and celebrated for it, and I connect with others with a deep authenticity that my younger, fearful self would feel so proud of.
A genuine connection, I believe, is a place where our core self and our values feel safe to show up. Where we are free to be us. Where our productivity, achievements, or usefulness to the other person is only secondary. Where disagreements and conflict are opportunities to understand each other better, and ruptures are always repaired- together.
A healthy relationship is one of safety in self-expression, and prizes mutual understanding over self-righteousness. They are not places where resentment grows from words hidden or unsaid.
If you have struggled with people-pleasing for a long time and are unsure how to break out of it, you’re not alone.
As a former people-pleaser, I help people like me take small but powerful steps to gain evidence that they can break their past patterns, create boundaries and standards, and achieve the freedom and fulfillment of authentic self-expression. I work with people who want to grow their self-awareness and acceptance of who they are, what they value, and align their behaviours to represent themselves with greater congruence.
If you’re at the beginning of your journey and want to transition away from current people-pleasing behaviours, I would love to share a few reflection prompts that helped me in my own journey:
When do you feel like you need to say what you don’t mean, and take actions out of obligation or a lack of choice?
Who made you believe that considering your own interests, preferences and needs was selfish?
What is one situation that has low stakes that you can start practising saying No?
When you’re in your journey of transitioning away from people-pleasing, who has pushed back on your efforts and who has supported your growth?
Serving and putting others before the self on autopilot gives others great power to define who you are, how you behave, and what you express.
Even if you have been stuck in a cycle of people-pleasing for a long time, you can choose to break the cycle. Even if it feels so impossibly hard to behave differently right now, I want you to know that you always have a choice. Even as you start considering yourself more, you’ll be surprised at how much more capacity you will create to be genuinely thoughtful to others.
A richer, more connected and fulfilling life is available to you, and all it requires is for you to take the active step to be more curious about: You.