How Anxiety Therapy Can Help with People Pleasing and Self Esteem
Do you find yourself feeling exhausted from bending over backwards, trying to meet everyone in your life’s needs except your own? Does the idea of not being liked by everyone in your life give you intense anxiety? Do you struggle to say “no”, and then sometimes feel resentful afterwards for agreeing to things you don’t really want for yourself?
If you are a people pleaser, you may struggle with feeling paralyzed at the idea of speaking up for yourself, no matter how much you prepare or hype yourself up ahead of time. You worry so much about upsetting those around you that it feels genuinely unsafe to rock the boat. Or maybe you are so deep into people pleasing that you don’t even know what you want anymore, or like to think of yourself as being the “adaptable” or “easygoing” one. But then when you feel so exhausted, and maybe even a little annoyed at the end of a long social day, you’re confused: I thought I was fine doing “whatever”? Why am I feeling annoyed and on edge?
In this post, we’ll take a look at where people pleasing comes from, how to know if you’re a people pleaser, and how therapy can help you heal from people pleasing to start putting your own needs first.
Where Does People Pleasing Come From?
Caregiver Relationships
Like many things, people pleasing is an adaptive behavior that usually has its origins in childhood. Children crave feelings of emotional safety for their survival - this is something that is hard-wired into us as a species. If you had a caregiver who was intense, explosive, narcissistic or generally made you feel like you had to “earn” their love (a parent who was a substance abuser may also fit this profile), you may have quickly learned that bending over backwards to please them or keep them calm was a way that you could maintain a feeling of safety and connection in the relationship. Another type of relationship that may lead to people pleasing is with a caregiver who was distracted or emotionally unavailable - you may have learned that being helpful, “easy” or agreeable was the best way to get attention or avoid further stressing them out.
Internalized Gender Norms
In our culture’s gender norms, women tend to be socialized from childhood to be caretakers for others in their life - they are praised for being quiet, adaptable, go-with-the-flow and dependable. Throughout your life, this behavior gets reinforced over and over again, and women internalize the message that their ability to care for others and make their lives easier is what makes you worthy of love.
What Does People Pleasing Look Like?
Caregiver relationships and internalized gender norms are usually things that impact us starting at a young age. But what does people pleasing look like in adulthood? From these experiences, certain types of messages get internalized, and often run in our subconscious throughout our lives without us even being aware that they are driving our behavior:
If I’m honest about what I want, everyone will leave me and I’ll end up alone
No one will want to be with me if I have too many “needs”
In order to stay safe, it’s more important to take care of other people’s feelings than to acknowledge my own
These messages lead to a deep-seated fear of ending up alone, and contribute to feelings of unworthiness. Maybe some of this resonates with you, but you’re asking yourself, how do I really know if I’m a people pleaser?
Here’s some examples of what people pleasing looks like in adulthood:
Struggling to say “no” to others, and then feeling annoyed or resentful after you’ve committed to something you don’t really want to do
Feeling compelled to apologize constantly, even when you know something isn’t your fault
Struggling to ask for help when you feel overwhelmed, worrying that you will be a “burden” to others in your life
When making a choices in a social group, deferring to others with statements like “I’m fine with whatever you want to do”
Poring over your responses to texts and emails for hours, worrying about saying the wrong thing or offending the other person
Being unable to set boundaries in your relationships, but then feeling frustrated when others walk all over you
Feeling like you have to say “yes” to every social invitation in order to preserve your relationships
Constantly seeking approval and validation from others, and noticing that your self-esteem plummets and anxiety spikes if you don’t receive it
Struggling to ask for a promotion at work because you don’t want to ruffle any feathers or be seen as asking for “too much”
Going out of your way to avoid conflict at all costs
Feeling intensely fearful of others in your life being upset with you or not “liking” you
Experiencing anxiety, stress and fatigue from constantly tuning into the needs of others to try and please them
The Connection Between People Pleasing and Self Esteem
When we talk about the concepts of self esteem and self worth, we’re referring to how we think about ourselves, what we believe about ourselves and what we feel our value and worthiness of being loved is. A lot of the same factors that shape people-pleasing behavior shape our self-esteem and self-worth - messages that we receive throughout our lives, starting in infancy and childhood are a large part of what shapes our sense of self.
When we receive messages from caregivers that “I have to do _____ (get good grades, be good at sports, be polite, be pretty, be well-behaved, the list goes on) in order to be loved”, that sends us the message that love is conditional, and we are not worthy of being loved simply for being ourselves. The reaction is often to people-please to secure this love, however the internalized message is “I am unworthy as I am”. Children turn to their caregivers to give them a solid sense of identity. When their needs, emotions and challenges are disregarded or dismissed, they end up growing into adults who are unsure of who they are and dependent on others for validation of their identity.
The relationship between self esteem and people pleasing goes both ways - by continuing to engage in people pleasing behaviors throughout our lives, deny our own needs and look to others for validation, we reinforce the idea that we are unworthy, our feelings and needs don’t matter, and we can’t trust ourselves to know what is “right”. The more we live the people pleasing life, the more our self esteem plummets.
How Anxiety Therapy Can Help
At the root of both people pleasing and low self esteem is an anxiety - an anxiety that others will leave us, that we’ll end up alone, and that we are unworthy of love as we are. Working with a skilled anxiety therapist can help you to get to the root cause of your people pleasing, feel less guilty putting your needs first and feel less resentful in your relationships. It may sound like a fantasy right now, but I promise you, it is possible. Here are some ways that anxiety therapy can help you to stop people pleasing and reclaim your life:
Therapy Can Help You Get to the Root Cause of Your People Pleasing
Working with a skilled therapist can help you revisit experiences from your past to better understand where your people pleasing comes from, and recognize that it is not your fault that you struggle with people pleasing and self esteem. Together we can safely revisit your childhood and reframe your narrative around your experiences to create one that feels empowering and focuses on meeting the needs that your caregivers were unable to.
Therapy Can Help You Learn to Set Boundaries (And Feel Less Guilty Doing It!)
Maybe you’ve heard the term “boundaries” before, but you’re not really sure what it means - when we talk about boundaries in therapy, we’re referring to the limits of what behavior we’re comfortable with in our relationships, and how we hold ourselves accountable to enforcing these. A lot of times we know that something isn’t working for us in our relationships when we start to feel anxiety, dread, a knot in our stomachs or tightness in our chest, but we can’t always pinpoint what needs to change. Or maybe we’ve never even allowed ourselves to entertain the idea that setting a boundary or limit in certain relationships is an option. Working with a therapist can help you to get a better sense of what boundaries you are comfortable with in each of your relationships, and feel empowered to set them firmly but respectfully. A therapist can help you create an action plan for starting small but gradually building up to get more comfortable tolerating the feelings of anxiety and guilt that come up when you imagine setting boundaries, and weigh the pros and cons to setting a boundary vs letting things continue on their current path. The more you practice, the less power your guilt and fear will have over you.
Therapy Can Help You Learn Assertiveness Skills
Sometimes we want to speak up for ourselves in relationships, but we feel totally lost at how to do so. Maybe it doesn’t feel safe to communicate directly, so we make passive-aggressive jokes or sarcastic comments that leave the other person feeling confused. Or we want until resentment and anger builds to the point of explosion, where we say things that are hurtful and don’t really help us get what we want in a relationship. Working with a therapist can help you learn communication strategies to assert yourself both firmly and respectfully, so the other person is more likely to understand what you are asking for and not feel attacked. Of course we are not totally in control of how another person interprets our asks, but we can learn certain skills to communicate clearly, specifically and respectfully. This can increase the likelihood of being listened to, but also teach us how to set expectations for others in our lives and gracefully accept hearing “no” from someone we care about.
Therapy Can Help You Build Self Compassion and Self Worth
Working with a trained therapist can help you identify your “inner critic” or self-critical thoughts that put you down and make you feel worse about yourself. Therapy can help you learn how to give these thoughts less power, and be intentional about making space in your life for activities that contribute to a sense of worthiness including hobbies, leisure, and taking care of your body physically. When we feel unworthy, we tend to beat ourselves up and don’t feel that we deserve time to do things that bring us joy and health. Changing your relationship to self-critical thoughts with mindfulness and self compassion tools can help you to nurture yourself and build back up the sense of worthiness that you have been disconnected from for so long.
Start Therapy for Anxiety, People Pleasing and Self Esteem in Denver Today
If you identify as a people pleaser, you know how exhausting and frustrating it can be to spend so much time and energy on taking care of everyone else’s needs. While people pleasing once served a purpose in your life, many people pleasers get to a point in adulthood where the self-neglect is no longer working for them and they just feel burnt out and resentful. Therapy for people pleasing can help you cope with your anxiety, heal childhood wounds and build your self esteem so that you feel confident putting your needs first. Therapy can help you be more present in your life, feel more fulfilled in your relationships and empower you to start speaking up for what YOU want. Reach out for a free consultation with a therapist at Root to Rise Therapy in Denver today.
Other Services at Root to Rise Therapy:
Other mental health services at Root to Rise Therapy include Therapy for Anxiety, Therapy for Perfectionism, Therapy for People-Pleasing, Cultural Identity Counseling, ADHD Therapy, Counseling for Moms and Postpartum Counseling. I see clients located in Colorado, New York and New Jersey. Contact me to learn more about how I can help you overcome anxiety and reclaim your life!
