People pleasing is not your fault but here’s how to stop it

How one realization helped me overcome people pleasing - instantly and forever

Photo by Catherine Kay Greenup on Unsplash.

In 2014, after trying but totally failing to navigate the toxic dating culture of that time, I vowed to have better standards for my life. When I dug into all self-help information I could find online, I learned about the terms people pleasing and co-dependency for the first time. I also painfully realized that they probably all applied to me. My self-worth was totally dependent on how others saw me and I was fearful of being myself 100% of the time. I was trying to come as close to the definition of perfection as possible in other people’s eyes because for me their validation meant survival. I also felt very stigmatized because while learning about people pleasing and co-dependency, I felt like being a people pleaser was something inherently wrong about me that needed to be fixed. Don’t get me wrong, overcoming people pleasing tendencies is the end goal. But add the thought that you have these need-to-be-fixed tendencies to an already insecure inner self and your self-worth and sense of self-assuredness will take another nosedive.

As humans, at our core, we need to be at peace with ourselves and believe that we are good as we are, that we are enough.

Consequently, here’s what did not work when I tried to go with my head through the wall and “fix” me and my poor self-esteem:

• Doing sports that I did not like but that I felt all the “it” people did that had their lives together;

• Doing meditation only for the purposes of mastering my emotions so that I could “switch off” unpleasing feelings that others might not like about me;

• Spending money to buy clothes solely for the purposes of fitting in and to be seen and recognized;

• Editing myself in conversations to be an always happy version of myself even if the situation warranted a different reaction.

So what was so wrong about these things? As such, none of these activities are inherently wrong except that they were done out of the limiting belief that I was not good enough if I did not engage in them. These activities were all manifestations of not knowing myself, of low self-confidence, of people pleasing and of codependent tendencies.

It was a spiral that I could not get out of: The more I tried to “fight” against my flaws and fix them, the less it worked.

Here is what finally gave me my breakthrough and in case you are currently also struggling with these tendencies, hopefully for you as well: By total chance in the summer of 2016, I stumbled across Lisa A. Romano’s Youtube channel on which she educates her viewers about codependency topics. One of her key messages being in many of her videos: People pleasing and codependency are not your fault.

Wait, what? My low self-esteem, inability to set boundaries and people pleaser identity are not my fault? She explains: These habits are a learned coping mechanism to survive when for one reason or another a child did not receive adequate mirroring or had to deal with high unpredictability growing up. The child learns to behave in this way because of the information that is “downloaded” to its malleable subconscious during the most critical developmental years: “You are not enough”, “you are bad”, “you should be ashamed of yourself”… The list goes on.

We are not responsible for the messages our young brains were being exposed to. We just ran on the “software” that our caregivers or other persons of authority and influence installed in us. We kept using this software because we learned in childhood that people pleasing keeps us safe, even at the cost of denying ourselves. We did this to survive out of love for ourselves, not out of self-hate.

But, Lisa also highlights: The software was corrupted from the beginning - and once we realize this, we can uninstall it.

Why did this approach and way of thinking work for me to overcome people pleasing and co-dependency almost instantly and forever when everything else did not?

Because it removes the lie that we erroneously believe about ourselves: That something is inherently wrong with us and that we are somehow not enough. The truth: As humans, we are all enough. Just by being born and by living we are enough. Each and everyone of us. There are no exceptions. We do not need to be fixed or fix ourselves to be worthy. This is the lie. We were all along operating on incorrect assumptions about ourselves. In reality - all is well, we are good and we always were. We no longer need to turn against ourselves.

It was unfortunate that we might have had people or situations in our lives that suggested otherwise and that our younger core self was not sufficiently solid yet to reject this at the time. People have their own mental struggles and may act nastily toward us as a reflection of their inner pain, emotional turmoil and unhealed wounds. But now we can see this for what it is and protect our subconscious from harmful and manipulative messages meant to destroy a person’s most essential skill in life: To love the self.

Here’s a helpful example that I believe I have also heard first from Lisa (she has such a wealth of videos, I simply cannot remember which one):

When you have brown (or blonde/black/red…) hair and a person comes by and mocks you about having let’s say purple hair, you might be irritated at first but will very likely quickly move on from it. Why? Because you know with absolute certainty that you do not have purple hair. You would rather think that this person may have a mental episode but in no way would you doubt the fact that you have no purple hair. Your mind simply rejects the lie and moves on.

The same applies to our self-worth: To overcome people pleasing forever, our mind must simply reject the lie of us being inadequate, unworthy and not enough. Because we are adequate, worthy and enough just by being and by living on this earth. We are enough with all our imperfections.

Once you realize this, you have already begun to uninstall the corrupt software. For me, this happened almost immediately after hearing Lisa explain it. It was like an enormous relief, the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders. It was so simple: I was enough, I was enough, I was enough… and I always had been. I was just living and acting on a lie for many years.

In a time where we live with the zeitgeist of constant self-improvement, the above might seem paradoxical. But it isn’t. We can still self-improve and strive to become the best version of ourselves, but it’s so much better to do it out of love for ourselves knowing that nothing can take away our inherent worth and worthiness. And this is a very different inner place to start from.

With a lot of love and for those of you who also struggle with people pleasing tendencies just like I have for many years, may you always be reminded that you are enough and that once you uninstall the corrupted program, you can reboot the system.

It works, I promise.

P.S.: If you are interested in Lisa A. Romano’s resources, you can find her Youtube channel simply via her name. If you are particularly interested in people pleasing/codependency topics, just add these keywords to your search.