Where Does People-Pleasing Come From?
Our early relationships and experiences impact and shape our worldview and core beliefs: how we perceive ourselves, others, and the world around us. Most people-pleasers start out as parent pleasers, learning this behavior at a young age.
Here’s How The Cycle Starts
As kids, we have two core needs: authenticity and attachment. Attachment is the need to be close to others, to be taken care of, to have physical and emotional closeness. Authenticity is the need to be true to oneself, having your actions align with your sense of self.
Unfortunately, a lot of times these two core needs come into conflict with one another. When they come into conflict, attachment always wins because it’s at the core of our survival.
Imagine you’re four years old and you’re having a tantrum because you can’t eat your popsicle before dinner. You’re upset because you’re not getting what you want and you’re expressing that hurt, frustration, and disappointment. But, your parents have had enough. Maybe they send you to a timeout alone. Maybe they yell at you, threaten, or punish. Maybe they yell, but then distance and withdraw.
You make sense of their actions by realizing that when you express those emotions in that way, you threaten or lose your connection with your parents. So you stop expressing those emotions. You sacrifice your authenticity to sustain your attachment.
Over time, we learn and internalize one of two things or both…
It’s important to please other people. The better you’re able to please others, the more connected you’ll feel and the more praise and positive reinforcement you’ll receive. This typically looks like being called emotionally mature for your age, an old soul, never having to worry about you. You’re known for being helpful, mature, and responsible because you anticipate others' needs, primarily adults. You shrink your feelings & needs to be easy and prioritize others around you.
It’s important not to DISPLEASE other people. To keep our safety (our sense of connection and attachment), we have to avoid conflict, tension, and arguments at all costs. This typically looks like walking on eggshells, over-apologizing for things that aren’t your fault, playing the role of straight A student, jokester, or peacekeeper to lighten the mood.
So why do some people become people-pleasers and others don’t?
It’s all about emotional maturity. When we have an emotionally mature caregiver, we’ll experience consistent and nurturing emotional attunement. AKA we have someone that we can tell anything to, that we can go to with our feelings and know they’ll be approached with curiosity, tenderness, and compassion. When we have this experience, we build a worldview that people are dependable, safe, and compassionate.
But, a lot of us don’t have that experience. We grow up struggling to feel seen, heard, and understood by our parents and assume this is a “normal” relationship because we don’t know any differently.
We grow up with emotionally immature caregivers AKA they don’t know how to sit with or manage their own feelings, so therefore they don’t know what to do with ours.
Emotionally immature caregivers often say things like
It’s okay, you’re fine
Don’t cry
You’re making me stressed
You’re being overdramatic
Calm down
The main commonality between emotionally immature parents is that they don’t know how to healthily manage and regulate their own emotions, but how it manifests can differ. There are four kinds of emotionally immature parents: emotional, driven, passive, and rejecting. To learn more, I highly recommend the book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson and this article.
We adapted this behavior to survive! There’s no shame in our use of coping skills to get us to where we are now, but there is immense suffering in continuing to behave in a way that no longer serves us.
Healing requires us to acknowledge, accept, and grieve our past so we can reshape our relationship with ourselves and others moving forward. When you learn a new way to regulate your emotions, you’re free to choose how you respond to them vs. feeling beholden to your ingrained patterns and reactions.
What can be learned can also be unlearned with the right skills, support, and practice.
If you want help healing from your past so you can authentically live in your present, join my online coaching program! Learn more here.
