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PART ONE 

FIND YOURSELF

CHAPTER ONE 

PEOPLE-PLEASING: WHAT IT IS, WHERE IT COMES FROM, AND WHY WE'RE LEAVING IT BEHIND

People-pleasing is the act of chronically prioritizing others' needs, wants, and feelings at the expense of our own needs, wants, and feelings. As people-pleasers, we struggle to speak up for ourselves in our relationships. We give past our limits to be liked by others; have immense difficulty setting boundaries; struggle to identify and leave toxic environments; and become involved in many one-sided relationships that are all give and no take. Often, we feel defined by how helpful, useful, and supportive we can be to other people.

Though people-pleasing manifests in our relationships with others, it stems from a disconnected relationship with ourselves. You might think of it as a form of self-abandonment. Even in the absence of others, many of us avoid tending to our basic needs; discount our own emotions; feel uncomfortable in our own company; and become disconnected from play, creativity, wonder, joy, and delight. Cut off from a sense of self-worth, we may engage in perfectionism, self-shaming, and self-judgment; struggle with distress tolerance, self-soothing, and emotional regulation; or even engage in compulsions or addictions to avoid feeling our emotions.

People-pleasing is a pattern of behavior, not a mental illness or diagnosis. For most, it isn't a conscious choice moment to moment, but an ingrained way of interacting with others that was instilled in childhood. In this chapter, we'll explore where the people-pleasing pattern comes from; how it affects our relationships; what differentiates it from kindness; and how we can use this knowledge to begin to break the pattern.

FOUR PORTRAITS OF PEOPLE-PLEASING

The people-pleasing pattern affects people of all genders, ages, ethnicities, and income brackets, but it doesn't manifest the same way for everyone. Some feel completely confident and authentic at work, but become passive in their romantic relationships. Others have no trouble speaking up for themselves with friends, but struggle to set boundaries with family members. Still others feel that people-pleasing colors every area of their lives: work, romance, friends, family, and community.

People-pleasing can look like: 

Tanya

Tanya, forty-five, is a corporate lawyer in New York City. She is fierce and uncompromising in the courtroom, but in her personal relationships, she feels inconsequential and powerless. She resentfully subsidizes her unemployed partner's expenses while he seeks work at a snail's pace. Each weekend she travels upstate for a long visit with her recently widowed mother, whom she describes as "narcissistic and overbearing." She has a couple of casual friends in the city, but their coffee dates quickly turn into therapy sessions when her friends dump their personal problems into her lap—and show no curiosity in return.

A sense of obligation and resentment pervades all of Tanya's relationships. She over-gives and under-receives in every single one of them, but she doesn't know how to shift this dynamic.

Aaron

Aaron, thirty-five, is engaged to be married, but family complications are threatening his engagement. His father died when he was a child, and ever since, Aaron has been very close to his mother, Jada. Whenever Jada needs anything, he's there in a flash to provide it. She calls him multiple times a day to chitchat about everything from the weather to the recent football game. Even when Aaron and his fiancée, Issa, are on dates, he steps away to take phone calls from his mother.

He feels smothered by his mother's insistent presence, and even Issa has expressed hesitation about becoming the third wheel to Aaron and Jada's enmeshed relationship. But ever since his father died, he has felt responsible for his mother's emotional well-being. He wants to create space, but he doesn't know how—and he's terrified of hurting her feelings.

Lena

Lena, twenty-nine, was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. As she's gotten older, she's become uncomfortable with certain aspects of her faith—particularly its rigid gender roles—and after many months of reckoning, she decides that she can no longer participate in the religion and disaffiliates.

Newly uninvolved in the Orthodox community, she notices how much her upbringing has prevented her from finding and using her own voice. In social situations, she always defers to the men in the group; in conflicts with friends, she immediately becomes passive and accommodating. Without a religious community to guide her, she has no idea what she wants, what her dreams are, or who she is. Lena wants to follow her inner compass, but she doesn't know where to find it.