How to Stop People Pleasing

People Pleaser vs Being Nice/Loving/Helpful

The biggest difference is how you feel about the situation. If you are helping and feel happy, energized and taken care of then you are good. If you are helping and it drains you, you don’t want to, and it messes with your well-being – it is people pleasing.

If you find yourself say – “I should” or “I have to” or “I don’t want to but…” then you probably need to explore if you are people pleasing.

You can be helpful and not sacrifice yourself to do so. I often hear – “but if I don’t I am selfish”, but this is another warning sign. Taking care of your needs isn’t selfish.

Why You Are a People Pleaser

While there are many reasons why you may be a people pleaser these three are the most common that I have seen.

• Self Esteem – we don’t think we are worthy enough to say no. Or that the only way to get love is to over give.
• Socialization – our society, especially for women, tells us we must take care of everyone else. If we don’t then we are selfish.
• Trauma – more research is showing that we can become a people pleaser as a result of abuse. To survive childhood, to not be yelled at or get in trouble, we put ourselves in the space of trying to keep everything perfect. The only control we have is to over give and attempt to make everyone happy.

Why People Pleasing is Bad for You

The problem with this is that we end up depleted, resentful, and inauthentic to ourselves. By ignoring our own needs, we cause problems with every area – mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically.

The biggest side effect of people pleasing is increased stress. And stress is one of the most harmful things to our well-being. Stress can lead to depression, anxiety, heart disease and more.

We put ourselves in a space where we can’t function anymore or realize our own dreams.

So, let’s put an end to that. Here is an action plan to stop people pleasing.

How to Stop People Pleasing

This is a process that requires time. You don’t wake up one day and say you’re going to stop completely. People pleasing is ingrained in who we are, it is how we function. We have to change our habits overtime. Think about it like training for a marathon. You don’t wake up and decide to run a marathon that same day with zero running experience. You practice and build yourself up to do so.

The following steps will help you prepare to say no!

Identify Your Root Cause of People Pleasing

To tackle the habit of over pleasing others, it’s important to understand why you do it. Simply following advice on what to say or do won’t work if you don’t address the root cause.

To start identifying your root cause, bring more awareness to the times you are acting as a people pleaser.  When you notice it, take note of what is going on. Including who is involved, how you are feeling, possible re-occurring themes.

Then later you can use this as your starting point to uncover the cause. There are some journal prompts at the end to help you dissect these events.

When you have identified the cause, you can then work on the emotional healing necessary to overcome it. You can learn more about emotional healing tools in this article.

Identify When You Are People Pleasing

Because this is usually your default mode, you won’t always realize that you are acting like a people pleaser. If you automatically say you will pick up extra hours at work when asked and you have always done this. You may not know this is a form of people pleasing, instead you look at it as part of your personality. You are helpful!

How should you approach identifying situations? The best way is to start the practice of pausing before you answer. Ask for time to review your schedule or think about it. This gives you time to make sure you are doing it because you want to.

Another trick is to monitor your energy and feelings. If you are having a great day, and someone asks you to do something, but you can’t say ‘no.’ Do you start to feel anxious? Do you get tired? Does your heart start racing? Identifying shifts in yourself will help you start to see when you are people pleasing.

These two together can help you see what your patterns of people pleasing are. Helping you to put a stop to them faster.

Understand What Your Needs Are

This can be hard for a recovering people pleaser. We are so tuned into what others want and need that we can’t get clear on what is our need and what is theirs. This is even harder if you are also an empath.

By starting to name your needs, even if it is only to yourself, you can better ask for what you need. And learn to say ‘no’ to things you know are bad for you.

I frequently do this by journaling: What do I need today? If I am still struggling, I will dig deeper and ask: what do I need emotionally? Spiritually? Mentally? Physically?

Then start practicing asking for what you need.

Practice with a Safe Person

When you start to say ‘no’ there will be some internal resistance and discomfort. You have to train your nervous system to be okay with it. Because of this, start only with people you know you can say no to.

Tell them you are trying to get better at saying no and ask if they will practice with you.

You can also use this person to practice asking for your own needs to be met.

If you don’t have a person, you feel safe with you can hire a therapist or coach to be your safe space. To practice what you can say to others, and at the same time ask for what you need.

Build Your Self-Care Routine

Why is self-care part of stopping people pleasing? Because most of the time, when you get to the point you are ready to fix people pleasing you are burnt out. In order to make the changes you need to, you need to refill your tank.

This will also give you another space to practice asking for your needs to be met. For example, if you need extra time at night for self-care, it may require you to ask your partner for more help.

Set Boundaries

This is where the magic happens. You create your own set of rules and then apply them. People who love and honor you will be willing to work within them. Even if it takes a bit of practice. People who are using you because you are a people pleaser won’t honor your boundaries.

Not sure where to start with boundaries? This is the book that I recommend. Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and John Townsend.

Remove People Using You

Once you know who those people are that are just using you – because they aren’t respecting your boundaries – you can start to remove them from your life.

People using you will also show themselves by refusing to provide what you ask for.

It is normal to have people stop talking to you and move on when you start standing up for yourself. This is because we tend to build up a base of people around us that expect us to say yes. They are in our lives because they get their needs met through us. So, when you start saying no – they move on.

This can be scary but remind yourself that your emotions and health matter too. Self-compassion can help you manage the emotions that can come with this.

Tools to Help You Overcome People Pleasing

These tools will help you with the above steps.

• Journaling – this is where you can explore why you struggle to say no and learn more about your responses.
• Meditation – this is a great tool to train your mind to be more detached and calm. This will allow you to start seeing when you are people pleasing, even without the intentional pause. Your brain knows it’s  normal state and can then observe when things are off.
• The Four Agreements – this is a great book to help with understanding the socialization aspect of people pleasing. Plus, how you can start to retrain your brain. If you haven’t read it yet, you can check out my book summary of it to get a general idea.

Spiritual Causes of People Pleasing

Have you tried everything and still struggle to say no? Even to the point where you can subjectively analyze an event while it is happening and want to say no but can’t. It could be past life issues or curses.

For example, no matter how much emotional healing work I did I struggled to say no. I had a situation with a massage therapist. I knew during the massage I never wanted to come back to her. It was not up to my expectations.

Yet, when she asked me afterwards when I wanted to come back – I could not say no. Even though my mind was panicking that I was scheduling! My vocal cords were saying yes, and discussing dates. My mind was screaming NO!

So, I finally scheduled a soul healing. And sure enough, there was a past life where someone I said no to put a curse on me that I couldn’t say no. Once that was removed, the disconnect in that situation hasn’t happened again.

Does this immediately fix everything? No, because you still have the habit of saying yes. But with repetition this gets handled faster with spiritual blocks gone.

Tips to Help You On Your People Pleasing Recovery

• Don’t apologize when you can’t do something. If your default is “I’m sorry”, practice not leading with that. I know this is difficult. I continually have to pause and re-write things before I send an email or text. It may help you to look up the definition of ‘sorry’ so you know when it is appropriate to use it.
• You don’t have to give a reason. You are allowed to say ‘no’ without saying why. If a friend asks you to go to a movie and you would rather stay in – it is okay to say – I can’t go tonight. With nothing else!
• Self-compassion will help you be okay with this change. Being gentle and loving to yourself is critical to removing the anxiety and stress around the change you are trying to make. I have a guided meditation to help you with self-compassion. You can find it here:
  • YouTube
  • Insight Timer
  • My Meditation Podcast Episode 18

Journal Prompts for People Pleasing

These journal prompts can help you work through the situations you have identified as a problem.

• Pick a situation that you have recently had where you were in people pleasing mode. Then:
  • Write a short story about what happened.
  • How did this make me feel?
  • Why was I more concerned about them than myself?
  • Why did I feel like I couldn’t speak up for myself?
• How is people pleasing serving me?
  • How can I get this in a healthier way?

Stay with it and overtime people pleasing will be a thing of the past.

Need help working through this? Learn more about my coaching services.