Partially Evolved People Pleasing

Subtle tactics of controlling others is out, definitely out.

It’s 2024 and I’m doing well while feeling crazier than ever. I think the two can go hand in hand. I guess I’ve developed enough mental and emotional stability to be able to look at the next layer of neuroses my mind generates. And the mind is a crazy entity indeed. To my particular frustration, I’ve noticed myself lately doing things I thought I left behind long ago: being overly apologetic, feeling guilty for doing nothing wrong, and aggrandizing my level of responsibility for how someone else is feeling.

How irritating, I thought I had gotten rid of that.

One could say these behaviors I’ve named are characteristically people pleasing; in the words of Kayla from Honestly Unorthodox, “a people pleaser’s primary motivation is the contentment of others, often times at the detriment of their own.”

Years ago, when that term entered my lexicon, I related to it. In a way consistent with perfectionism, I decided to completely stop this people pleasing bullshit and become self-empowered. I would hereby cease caring *too much* about others’ responses to what I was doing or saying or deciding. In short, I wanted to be free from the unavoidable friction that comes from being in relationship with other people.

(How alluring is the idea that perfect exists? How many times must I learn that answers are found in a perpetually gray area?)

Since I can remember, really, I’ve had difficulty accepting how other people felt or thought about what I was doing. I remember, especially in middle and high school, fixating on whether people were “mad” at me or not; creating elaborate schemes to figure out if they were mad without asking them directly. Because, well, no one likes to answer “are you mad at me?” 12 times a day. I was obsessed with making sure that I wasn’t the reason for anyone’s feelings, because I was unable to sit in any form of discomfort that I may or may not have contributed to.

The aforementioned article I read recently from Kayla is titled “People Pleasing is Just Controlling Other People.” She makes the astute observation that people pleasing often “has nothing to do with actually pleasing them than it does micromanaging their responses. It’s our own sense of satisfaction, and successful evasion of discomfort, that we aim to appease.”

This struck me as clearly true: my attempts to “please” were never really about making other people feel good all the time, but more about making sure that I wasn’t the reason they weren’t feeling good all the time, and more so that I didn’t have to endure something uncomfortable. But sometimes, in fact, we are a contributor to why someone feels a certain way; humans are interdependent social creatures, and what we do and say does indeed affect how other people feel. As much as we’d like to believe we can skirt around that reality, it’s not possible.

Luckily, people pleasing/subtle controlling tactics, whether intentional or not, can be worked with and changed. The key, as it often is, is to not identify with being a people pleaser, or whatever terms you relate to. What you are doing and saying is not you; what other people think is not you; you are the one who has agency to change. Here’s Kayla one more time on this point:

“Essentializing people pleasing, or claiming that it’s “just who we are”, or it’s “just who we’ve always been”, lets an individual off the hook. Reframing very treatable behavior as threaded into our genetics nearly guarantees that we’ll see minimal reason to put the work in to change it; after all, it’s “a part of us”. It may benefit us to first begin with renaming people-pleasing as something we’re entirely responsible for and capable of changing.”

As when seeking to change any behavior, becoming aware is the first step. When strengthening your capacity for withstanding uncomfortable moments, and resisting trying to manage someone’s feelings or opinions, watch yourself first. Inquire within about what you are trying to control, and why.

Why are you acting like this? What do you want from the other person right now, and what would happen if you don’t get what you want? What are you afraid of?

When I ask myself these questions, the answers usually stem from feeling insecure and wanting someone to tell me that I haven’t done anything wrong; that they aren’t upset; that they still like me. Apologizing over and over, or conjuring nice-sounding sentences to try and control how someone feels, or their opinion of me, only seeks to appeal to my own sense of being a good person who does things right.

But of course, relying on other people to placate our insecurities is unsustainable. Developing our own inner sense of self-love and confidence, on the other hand, is what we have more agency over, and what can last.

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We all are subject to behaving in people-pleasing ways, or using similar subtle tactics to control or manipulate others so that we might feel better or good. Or, we are the annoyed recipients of such behavior. It’s not necessarily a “bad” thing (although it certainly can be), but it’s definitely something to work on. Strengthening our capacity to sit with discomfort, and getting curious about why and when we’re employing such people-pleasing techniques will help us shift the pattern, and will likely strengthen our relationships as well.

As this next year begins, or whenever you read this: here’s an invitation to look at how you are still too invested in what other people are feeling and thinking about you. Shed some light there. See what happens when you stop trying to control other people; focus on sitting in the raw honest truth of whatever the moment holds. Even if it’s reallllllly uncomfortable.

May you find moments of peace and gratitude in the beginning of your new year.

Maggie