The Dark Side of People Pleasing

"Any Virtue, without Moderation and bestowed in Excess, can become Vice." - Me, trying to sound professional while staging an intervention.

Despite the above quote being invented off the top of my head while trying to convince someone in a self-deprecating spiral that they weren't a bad person (but change was definitely necessary), it holds true. Similar to the old quote about Good Intentions and the Road to Hell, being kind, helpful, compassionate and generous is great, but if you don't set boundaries on yourself and limits on others, it ends up doing real damage. Not just to the person setting themselves on fire to keep other people warm, either,

It doesn't help that Society at large praises self-sacrifice for the community. Everyone cheers the person who is a Team Player, while making snarky comments about the person who never socialises because they are too busy working.

To an extent, they're right. Humanity poured our collective skill points into Community and Working together, giving ourselves the advantage of numbers and helping hands while we were still living in caves. If every early human had tried to go it alone, we wouldn't have lasted long as a species. However, even then, everyone who could, helped out. We might have traded chores among ourselves, but trying to let everyone else do your share was a quick trip to exile.

It's the same in the modern day, everyone loves the people who pull their weight, but People-Pleasers and Gatekeepers are a problem.

I've been there. I'm Autistic and I've spent most of my working life in the care industry, a field chronically understaffed and perpetually in need of people willing to go the extra mile. It's genuinely difficult to say "no" when you know that doing so means someone will be going unsupported that day. During COVID-19, it was especially bad, because everyone was off sick at the first hint of flu-like symptoms, and someone had to step up.

It took me far too long to start saying that the person who stepped up didn't have to be me. I'd find myself working twelve hour days across three seperate locations, because someone had called in and I was only a few streets away. I was burnt out, constantly stressed and exhausted, and other things were slipping by the wayside because I was pouring all my energy into Work.

It got to the point where my partner had to ask me to stop talking about work over dinner, because I was unloading all my stress and negativity onto her, and it was affecting her wellbeing as well as mine.

That was the wake-up call for me. I was so focussed on pleasing and appeasing people whose only response was to demand even more, that I was hurting the people who loved me.

That's the dark side of being a People-Pleaser. For every loan that you know won't be paid back, for every time you rearrange your personal schedule to cover someone else's missed shift so they can relax, for every time you come home late from helping someone else out, for every time you tie yourself in knots to fix someone else's life... eventually something has to give.

Even when that something isn't you, you still wind up hurt.

I see it a lot in advice groups. There are people who know they have a problem saying no, or that their social dynamics aren't healthy. They know that they're being hurt by refusing to stand up for their own boundaries. They know that they can't continue as they are. But greater than that knowledge is the fear of what will happen if they try to change.

They genuinely believe that toxic and one-sided relationships are better than no social bonds at all, or that the consequence for refusing to help will be worse than agreeing. Not everyone has a safety net to fall into when they try to enforce boundaries, so change can be not just scary, but dangerous.

If someone I generally trust asks me to cover the cost of going out and promises to pay me back on their next paycheque, I can agree or offer to reschedule until they've been paid. If someone demands that I clear out my savings account to help them with a major expence, I'm going to want some kind of signed agreement in place for repayment before I transfer a cent.

When saying yes is harmful to you, but you would still feel bad for saying no, you've crossed the line from helpful to People-Pleasing.

An excellent illustration of this difference is in the film "27 Dresses". The night before, our main character Jane was careening between two different weddings, covering bridesmaid duties at both. We aren't given the backstory; there's a chance that a schedule change happened, or there's some other reason that Jane was double-booked, but it does put the audience on alert that Jane may have issues saying no to the people she cares about.

The moment I'm thinking of occurs the following day, at Jane's job as a PA at a large firm. She is handing out assignments and reminds one of the receptionists that it's her turn to organise the monthly get together. The receptionist gives an extremely vague and fake-sounding excuse and asks Jane to do it, to which Jane reluctantly agrees.

There are several things wrong with this. First, if it's a rotating duty that everyone takes a turn with, the receptionist is in fact refusing to do her job by asking Jane to do it for her. Second, as a PA, Jane is already orders of magnitude busier with more important things. Third, organising a get together is not a small task, and this is no small undertaking. Fourth, the moment Jane clearly didn't want to take it on, someone should have noticed.

That's the overarching plot of the story, by the way. Everyone takes Jane for granted because she internalised at a young age that she had to be helpful, and no one cared enough to tell her that it wasn't a child's job to fix things for the adults around them.

Being a People Pleaser isn't a virtue, no matter how much the people taking advantage of you try to claim it is.

Because when you cancel plans to help someone last-minute, it isn't just you who suffers from not getting to enjoy yourself, it's the people closest to you, who you trust you can let down without negative consequences.

And while that's true in a genuine emergency, like when my family postponed a holiday so that my Godmother could use the frequent flier miles to attend a funeral, when it becomes a pattern, your relationships with the people you feel safe letting down is damaged.

Sometimes that's a spouse or partner, who are tired of watching you be hurt and listening to you vent to them afterwards, while refusing every option to protect yourself from being hurt. It's not that they don't love you, it's that they can't keep supporting you when it hurts both of you.

Sometimes it's a child or dependant, who sees how often the needs of complete strangers are prioritised over them. Sometimes it's the boss who doesn't want to let you go, but doesn't have a choice because giving friends a lift every day means you're chronically late and falling behind on your responsibilities.

People-Pleasing is rooted in a lack of self-worth, and the sense if you're just helpful enough, useful enough, you'll be worthy of being loved. Unfortunately, no amout of external validation will make you love and value yourself enough to believe that you are worthy, just by being yourself.

People-Pleasers put themselves last because they don't think they're worthy of being put first, by themselves or by anyone else, so they let other people keep using them without receiving anything back.

Advice groups have story after story about people who were so scared of not being helpful to everyone around them that they crossed boundaries and permitted damage, then came sobbing to the Internet when consequences hit in the form of relationship breakdowns. Whether it's the husband who won't stand up to his parents trying to control his life, or a woman who lets her family take over her home because family helps family and doesn't understand why her kids moved out and won't speak to her, or a sibling who has never stood up to unreasonable demands and complains that their life sucks... yes, things are now bad, because you let them become that way until the people who love you accepted that you don't want to change.

In the end, being a People-Pleaser isn't a Virtue. It's just advanced self-sabotage wearing a mask and a fancy costume.