People-Pleasing: How people-pleasing sometimes gets in the way of you getting your needs met

Do you find yourself always pleasing others yet feeling resentful that the same care is not being returned to you? Many people feel that their needs are not being met not realizing they have been giving too much, never setting boundaries, setting the tone of the relationship, and setting themselves up for failure in this situation.

I am writing this because there are some in this community who are suffering from people-pleasing tendencies without understanding this problem. I am going to be breaking down why people develop people-pleasing tendencies and how it affects their relationships and life.

It is a perplexing situation, you working so hard to be kind and considerate of others. Yet, you can’t understand why you are never receiving the same sweet gestures in return. Whether you know it or you don’t if this resonates resentment builds inside your being. People who go through this situation may deal with it in different ways sometimes feeling upset or ashamed for the way they are feeling. Sometimes they feel like they're being walked all over as if they were doormats, never feeling respected. Some people are constantly questioning if they are wrong or right to even want gestures of love and feeling cared for. The question “Should I be happy with what I have? Am I asking for too much? Am I wrong… Am I right?” So many questions with so much confusion. Maybe at this point, you don’t believe that someone can just be present for you, having given up your needs. You are always asking yourself why is so difficult to have mutually caring relationships in your life?

I had a really close friend who would do just about anything to help all the people in his life through their most serious of problems. He would go to the hospital and visit even if it was over an hour’s drive. He would cook all sorts of food for the family while the family member was in the hospital, and buy all sorts of really thoughtful gifts for his friends, doing whatever he could to help his friends and their families. As time went by, and the beautiful gestures he made were never returned, he became angry and resentful, sometimes cutting himself off from those who were once his closest friends. He would isolate himself bringing himself into periods of depression. He started not caring for his body or his health ending up developing type 2 diabetes and dying early from heart disease he never knew he had.

Why do people develop ‘people pleasing’ tendencies?

I have had many friends over the years who have felt totally taken for granted, with the relationships being one-sided. Over time the resentment got to such a point that they stopped being there for their friends and family. Loneliness developing into self-medicating behaviors was the end result of too many of them. When people are brought up in a situation where their parents are dealing with their own mental health issues or substance abuse their child is hyper-vigilant walking on eggshells never knowing if their parent may act out in some harmful manner be it in an abusive language, or actually physically abusing them in some way for the trespass the child was seen to have made in the mind of the parent. Children who are raised in this manner are constantly looking for love and validation by constantly people pleasing never learning how to set up appropriate emotional boundaries with those in their lives. People in these situations will never feel that they are good enough to be loved for who they are until they deal with the root cause of the issue.

The real problem for the person who has learned how to people-please is that they do not feel that they are good enough to be loved and accepted for exactly who they are, creating a persona instead. Often they will end up in relationships never feeling that they are receiving the amount of love and care that they are putting out there to others, making them feel resentful of others. The problem is that the people with whom the ‘people pleaser’ is pleasing have no idea that the people pleaser is doing anything above and beyond what they would normally do, so of course, they have no reason to thank them for the excessive amount of kindness shown.

The best way to overcome this type of traumatizing upbringing is to learn how to love and respect one’s self realizing that no one is perfect, including one’s self, so expecting others to fulfill that ideal is going to always bring about disappointment in others. One needs to learn how to create emotional boundaries including saying ‘no’ when one is asked to do something that they would prefer not to do.

Once people learn how to love and respect themselves these people-pleasing behaviors melt away quickly. Learning who you really are is key. When you do that you will never feel like a doormat again.