You Mad, Bro?
Imagine your friend calls you with an extra baseball ticket to watch your favorite team play at Wrigley Field. He wants to know if you want to go. You are super stoked and ready for the big game. You have great seats and are living your best life when a home run is hit and is coming straight at you….and you catch the ball! Best day everrrr! Then you look at your friend’s face….oh no. You think, “You mad, bro?” I mean he did give you the ticket. You would not be there if it weren’t for him. Should you give him the ball? Does he deserve it more? Is he going to be mad if you keep it? Suddenly, your “best day ever” is being taken over by the need to please your friend. (1)
This article isn’t so much about reversing the people-pleasing pattern of practice, but illuminating the insidious underlying dynamics that perpetuate the destructive practice.
What is people-pleasing? Merriam-Webster defines it as follows: a person who has an emotional need to please others, often at the expense of one’s own needs or desires. We often think of people-pleasing as the strong impulse or compulsion to make everyone around them happy, regardless of their own wants. Is the desire really about pleasing others? It’s not, is it? It’s really disapproval avoidance. So people-pleasing is really a mislabel isn’t it? Those who people-please are really more motivated by avoiding others’ disfavor, disapproval, and disappointment. Ultimately people-pleasing isn’t necessarily harmful to any other person, but to the one self-pressured to please, because they marginalize, dismiss, or invalidate their own needs, wants, and desires to avoid any semblance of negative response. So what if there is negative response? What are we afraid of? What fundamental assumptions are we making? Or… reinforcing?
So many questions, so many people to please… Well shoot, let’s get some answers. What are people-pleasers afraid of? They are afraid that if they don’t please someone, there will be disappointment, and worse. And if people-pleasers disappoint someone, that means they ARE a disappointment. Moreover, if they are a disappointment, they will face total disapproval. And as people-pleasers are afraid of disappointing others, being disapproved of, or being invalidated, they fear being found out, discovered as not good enough, a phony, a fraud, or an imposter. Furthermore, if they are found out as a fraud, then they will be rejected, ostracised, alone. Then what happens? Well then, they will end up living in a van, down by the river. Good Lord that’s a whole lot of heavy mental traffic. Are these thoughts true, or are we filling a barn full of assumptions? And those assumptions being? Let’s explore this next.
Don Miguel Ruiz once said, “The problem with assumptions is that we believe they are the truth.” Indeed! Don’t we all make assumptions and absolutely act as if they are the truth? Dangerous, destructive, and damning. A primary initial assumption characteristic of people-pleasers is the belief that if someone is let-down, disappointed, or frustrated, that will result in rejection and abandonment. Additionally, the underlying assumption fueling people-pleasing essentially boils down to the central, deep-seated belief that one is unworthy of love, rejectable, or incompetent. If those assumptions were true, then those underlying beliefs would incentivize really hard work to stay in others’ good graces to avoid ostracization and being all alone. All of that just to reach the goal of, “Whew, I won’t be abandoned today.” The goal is to exert effort, labor, and work to avoid rejection. This is a classic self-reinforcing cycle: “I suck. I don’t want to be found out or exposed. So I must (remember ‘musterbation’ from the previous article?) be perfect or I am going to be rejected and abandoned. Whew, I made it. I wasn’t discovered as the unlovable fraud I am. So I need to keep this up, or risk being exposed.” Congratulations, you’ve found perfection. You’ve discovered the perfect self-reinforcing feedback loop. Only prolem is that this perfection is a prison that feels like dog-shit, interrupted by brief moments of relief that you weren’t spotted as the disaster you are. Well done. This is what we discussed in the first article in this series: living under the constant fear of catastrophe. I mean, come on, what would life be like if you weren’t always waiting for the next pounding to start?
We don’t have to live under constant looming threats and hanging shadows. What then is the alternative? I’m so glad you asked. Here’s how it’s done. First, acknowledge two basic truths: First, you’re not lacking in worth and value. Second, disappointment does not have to result in abandonment. I’m not a fan of speaking in double negatives. So let’s express these truths in the affirmative (I would encourage you to catch yourself speaking in double negatives. We don’t order pizza’s by stating all that we don’t want. We order in the affirmative. Speak like you’re ordering pizza). The affirmative for personal worth would be, [I bring (these talents) to the table. I have (these strengths)] for example, “in any given situation, I bring strength, reslience, intelligence, creativity, and problem-solving skills.” It’s easily argued that anyone who frequently engages in and pulls off people-pleasing must have strength, resilience, intelligence, creativity, and problem-solving skills. The first step is to realize and acknowledge your strengths. The next step is to accept that if you make a mistake, or cannot please everyone, it only means there is something to learn, it doesn’t mean anything negative about you that a mistake was made or that you simply weren’t capable of pleasing everyone. The basic truth is this: we all have learning available to us in life, and despite our best intentions, we cannot be everything to everyone all the time.
Learning from our mistakes is always a benefit, and not an indictment of the person who made the mistake. Go back and review the previous articles in the series to gift yourself hope and encouragement in mistake-making. Certainly, learning to say “No” is worthy of a full article in itself. And let’s fast track an easy strategy for this. First, let’s be clear, your intentions are good. We all like and/or love to do for and please others. It feels good. However, you may not have the time, resources, or bandwidth to be there for everyone, all the time. So the narrative goes something like this: “Gee wiz, I really wish i could do (blank) for you. With everything else on my plate right now, I just don’t have the time to help you right now. If you could wait for me to finish. (X, Y, and Z), I’d be happy to help.” The steps to say no begin with expressing your desire to help, and then sharing what will get in the way of being able to help right then.
Ultimately, people-pleasing is about ongoing image management and self-regulation, in the service of maintaining negative beliefs about self. Once you realize that those beliefs are lies you tell yourself about yourself (even if the lie-telling isn’t particularly conscious, it just means the lies are so well rehearsed that the lies don’t need to be explicitly thought), then there is a freedom waiting for you to make your own decisions for self, and perhaps for others. After reading this article, You still mad, bro?
(1) (Scenario written by Shelly Christian)
Joel T. Meyer, MA. LCPC