The tendency to please is related to Dependent Personality Disorder. While the people-pleaser may not needThe term information need is often understood as an individual or group's desire to locate and obtain information to satisfy a conscious or unconscious need. Rarely mentioned in general literature about needs, it is a common term in information science.https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Information_needs
The term “people pleaser” refers to a person who has a strong urge to please others, even if at their own expense. They may feel that their own wants and needs do not matter, or alter their personality around others. “People pleaser” is not a medical diagnosis or a personality trait that psychologists measure.
You are genuinely compassionate
This is the most common cause behind being a people-pleaser. It is great to be a genuine person who has a lot of empathy for others. It means you care deeply about everyone around you. Usually if you fall into this category, you find that you are not taking care of YOU.
The people pleaser personality type is desperate to feel important and needed. Their lack of self worth, confidence and self-belief, makes it almost impossible for them to set and maintain healthy boundaries with others.
Many people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) become huge people pleasers because they want to be loved and needed by everyone they come into contact with. This kind of behavior ends up taking a terrible toll on a person.
A people pleaser is typically someone everyone considers helpful and kind. When you need help with a project or someone to help you study for an exam, they're more than willing to step up. If you recognize yourself in the above description, you may be a people pleaser.
People-pleasers often have low self esteem because they may ignore their own needs to help others. According to Black and Pearlman (1997), this can result in anxiety, frustration and depression. To build self esteem, people-pleasers need to restore the balance between self care and helping others.
We've all heard of the fight, flight, or freeze response in the face of trauma, but did you know that being a people pleaser can also be a trauma response? Fawning happens when an individual goes out of their way to make others feel comfortable at the expense of their own needs, in hopes of avoiding conflict.
A people pleaser is someone who tries hard to make others happy. They will often go out of their way to please someone, even if it means taking their own valuable time or resources away from them. People pleasers often act out of insecurity and a lack of self-esteem.
But according to Sasha Heinz, PhD, a developmental psychologist and life coach, there's another price to people-pleasing: It's a form of manipulation. This doesn't mean we shouldn't be nice and helpful and friendly.
People-pleasers emit insecurity, a lack of confidence, and come across as weak and needy. And it's often patently obvious that someone is engaging in people-pleasing behavior.
People-pleasing is not the same as genuine kindness; being kind is a form of self-expression. People-pleasing is a fundamentally dependent behavior and can backfire. However, helping others with the expectation of getting something back is a contract.
People Pleasers spend so much time and effort in taking care of others. Unfortunately, they often do not establish good social support for themselves. They also find it hard to give up control and let other people take care of them. While taking care of others in noble and rewarding, it can also be toxic and unhealthy.
Being a people-pleaser is an extremely stressful and frequently painful way to live. Because no matter how much they give to others they don't ever get what they are truly seeking. The real solution comes from within. As a result, people-pleasers frequently suffer from depression, stress and anxiety.
Children of narcissistic families end up as people-pleasers
In this book, Golomb notes that one of the effects of growing up in a narcissistic environment is reaching adulthood as a people-pleaser. Narcissistic parents always put their needs before their children's.
A fourth, less discussed, response to trauma is called fawning, or people-pleasing. The fawn response is a coping mechanism in which individuals develop people-pleasing behaviors to avoid conflict, pacify their abusers, and create a sense of safety.
Being a People Pleaser is a Strength, Not a Weakness.
Studies show that people-pleasers engage in self-destructive behavior if they think it will help others feel more comfortable in social situations. For example, people-pleasers eat more when they think it will make other people happy.
Behind closed doors, people pleasers don't benefit from their choices as much as their companions and privately struggle with feelings of loneliness and depression. Selfless to a fault, they never learned to balance their own needs with the needs of others.
People-pleasers and attachment
Of the three types of attachment (secure, anxious, and avoidant), people-pleasers who try to earn love through self-sacrifice often tend to have an anxious or avoidant (insecure) attachment style.
While people pleasing or “being too nice” could be seen as a sign of someone who is a really good person and cares for others, their ability to bend backwards for other people, not say no and struggle to have boundaries with others can actually be a big red flag and cause issues in a relationship in the long term if ...
That's not to say that all guilt is unnecessary, but guilt that comes from people pleasing often is. This is because people pleasers live according to another's perceived expectations rather than their own values.
The truth is: People pleasing is also a symptom of perfectionism and low self-esteem. Trauma survivors often believe that by doing everything “right” for others, they can be the perfect partner, perfect friend, perfect employee, the perfect child and not experience any negative consequences.