How to stop pleasing others? Try to be nice to everyone? Do you often ask yourself these questions and feel like you are failing in many ways, despite all the efforts you put into making everyone happy? In addition, to be liked you often answer "yes" to requests, even though you think "no"? If so, you should think about changing and stop pleasing everyone around you at the expense of yourself. Read on to stop thinking about pleasing others and meeting their expectations at the expense of your own mental comfort.
Contents:
- How to stop pleasing others?
- Train refusal
- Wait for the answer
- Take responsibility for what you do and how it affects you
- Distinguish opinions from facts
- Remember that you are choosing
- Learn to ask for support, help
- Values help to define the boundary
- Reduce emotional tension
- Make a cost-benefit balance
How to stop pleasing others?
How to stop pleasing others?And why do some of us do this often? People are social creatures, therefore the striving for acceptance, sympathy and admiration is almost inscribed in the natural mechanisms of human activities. The discomfort that causes the awareness that there are people who do not accept, like or underestimate, forces them to strive to please or please them, regardless of their own costs.
This uncertainty and need for acceptance, combined with strong empathy and sensitivity to other people's needs, drives you into a pattern of action designed to please everyone. It is worth remembering that between the natural striving for acceptance and caring for a good atmosphere in relationships and living in spite of yourself just so as not to offend anyone and not to attack anyone, there is a space where you can function in harmony with yourself.
The pursuit of someone else's needs, emotions and wishes negatively affects many areas of everyday life:
- By making your well-being dependent on the satisfaction of others, you weaken your sense of independence and agency. You let other people's emotions decide how you feel and what you do.
- You stop knowing yourself - by constantly focusing on someone else's needs and emotions, you stop paying attention to how you feelyou feel and what you need, and this is one of the shortest ways to worsen your psychophysical state.
- You waste time, energy, you often give up on your plans.
- By drowning out what is really important to you in the name of pleasing others, you lose touch with your values. For example, you know that family is important to you, taking care of this relationship and having time together, but by choosing to please your colleagues or the boss, you undertake tasks that take time for your family.
- The constant satisfaction of others generates so many costs in so many areas of life that it is not worth underestimating it. Working on accepting the fact that not everyone will like you doesn't have to mean mindlessly hurting everyone else or losing sensitivity to someone else's needs. Trying out a few simple methods can help you maintain balance in interpersonal relationships, protect your boundaries, and suppress your compulsion to please others.
Self-esteem: what is it and how to build it? Psychologist's advice
How not to worry about what others say? Psychologist's advice
Black thoughts, or how to stop torturing yourself
Train refusal
Many people in childhood and adolescence undergo intense training in agreeing to everything and not making up their minds about themselves. As a result, the ability to say no seems more difficult than it really is. Developing the ability to say no is a necessary step to break from pleasing everyone.
Assertiveness workshops are extremely helpful here, during which in a group of people with similar difficulties, you can learn effective techniques and train them in comfortable conditions. Make minor changes to favorable conditions. Select people around you who you feel safe with, it can also be helpful to tell them that you are working on a behavior change and their support will be valuable in doing so.
Start doing things with them that were usually difficult, e.g. refuse to go to the cinema for an uninteresting movie, put on something that you like, but not necessarily to your friend's taste, start saying what you think, etc. Gradually getting used to other people's dissatisfaction will help reduce your fear of rejection and will also help you get to know yourself better over time as you stop talking and doing what others expect.
Wait for the answer
If the element of pleasing others is largely agreeing to requests in spite of yourself, it may be helpful to postpone the decision. When you say yes to a request you hear, try to usethe phrase "I have to think". It is an effective half-measure on the way to assertively protect your limits. Time to think will allow you to calmly consider whether you really want to agree. You don't need to explain yourself.
When working on the compulsion to please others, it is worth remembering that you do not have to explain yourself to yourself or to others about your decision. When you refuse or choose not to take responsibility for the welfare of others, you don't need to apologize or give reasons. Limit yourself to formulating your decision, trying to be direct.
Take responsibility for what you do and how it affects you
You are the source of information on how you feel and what your needs are. Make sure you are aware of this and don't have to build a relationship based on pleasing everyone around you. Give yourself the right to give up on relationships that don't serve you and to decline when requests cross your boundaries.
Often people trying to please everyone experience a sense of responsibility for the well-being of others.
Why don't you do this often? It usually results from excessive and inadequate childhood responsibility for the psychophysical state of a loved one. As a result, there is a belief that the role of such a person is to care for others. In such a situation, it is necessary to work on redirecting the responsibility for the well-being of everyone around you into responsibility for your behavior and your psychophysical state.
Often, however, when working on getting to know yourself or changing your beliefs, it is difficult to achieve the desired results on your own, then it is worth using the support of specialists, including workshops, development groups, coaching or psychotherapy.
Distinguish opinions from facts
Often pleasing everyone around you is afraid of what others will say. Training in the ability to distinguish between opinions and facts in this situation is extremely helpful. It is worth remembering that an opinion is only an opinion, not facts.
Remember that you are choosing
Even if it seems that there is no choice and taking on further tasks and watching over the happiness of others is necessary, the facts are different.
Every time you don't want to hurt your friend by refusing to go to an uninteresting party you choose, every time your colleague laughs at your views, and you nod - you choose.
It's worth to use a word before you agree to something again, for example: "I choose to stay longer at work, helping Ania,instead of going home and going for a walk "or" I choose not to react, be quiet, nod when Stefan criticizes vegetarianism, etc. Using the word "I choose" can quickly become a habit, a habit that helps not to please everyone spontaneously, also strengthening the sense of agency. Try for the next 10 days to replace all "must" with "I choose" and see what results this small change will bring.
Learn to ask for support, help
Sometimes you try to ask someone you please for something - it can even be a small thing. It is important to strengthen the bite area. It is not about cultivating selfishness or self-interest, but about training in setting boundaries on the "give - take" line.
Make a list of situations, relationships in which you devote yourself too much.
The list of such areas will allow you to plan alternative behaviors. For example, if he usually stays longer at work because a friend's child has fallen ill again. Try to plan and practice how you refuse it. Just planning and imagining this situation will make it easier to apply the new behavior in a real situation. Before refusing becomes a natural, consciously used skill, it is worth planning and practicing it, even if at first it seems to be artificial.
ImportantWhat are you doing this for?
Working on habits, the ability to say no and learning specific techniques are only part of the work on yourself. At the heart of the change is the answer to the question, "Why do I keep everyone happy?", "What does it give me?" I encourage you to take a moment to think about it.
There can be many reasons, e.g. :
- in order to feel worthwhile, pleasing others is often appreciated by those around you;
- in order to satisfy your sense of control, satisfying others gives the impression of influencing reality;
- in order to avoid confrontation, pleasing others gives you peace of mind because I can't cope with it;
- in order not to be rejected, pleasing others gives a sense of belonging to a group;
- in order to drown out the drug (then it is worth checking what the drug is caused by) etc.
Helpful in finding the answer to the question: "What for?" it may be to look at what behaviors, thoughts, and emotions are involved in pleasing others and which help to protect your own needs. The next step is to try to find another way to provide yourself with what has been satisfying others so far.
I encourage you to try to find the answer, but if it turns out that working on it yourself does not bring the expected results, it is worthseek specialist support. In the privacy of a psychologist's office, it will be easier to get to the genesis of the problem and work out an effective solution.
The values will help to define the boundary
Know your values - check what is really important to you: peace, he alth, family, passion? Then try to remember a few recent situations, behaviors that were motivated by the desire to please others. It is worth comparing how what is important (values) relates to specific behaviors related to the satisfaction of others. To what extent is the satisfaction of others conducive to the realization of personal values.
Realizing what is really important makes it easier to start the path towards change.
Reduce emotional tension
Often times, the compulsion to please everyone is associated with experiencing anxiety, and the constant analysis of the satisfaction level of the environment causes a lot of emotional tension. One step in changing this approach is to work on your own peace of mind on a regular basis. Try mindfulness training, breathing exercises, or find a physical activity that favors your peace. Daily practice of reducing tension will give you strength on the way to change.Make a cost-benefit balance
Remembering that a he althy relationship is about balancing give and taking, making that balance can tell a lot about the relationship. As part of the training, choose a relationship that has an obligation to please. Then divide the sheet into two columns and list in them everything that you give and receive, e.g.
- gives you care, time, commitment, money, attention etc.
- gets attention, appreciation, peace, etc.
Being aware of your profit and loss balance can be the first step in working towards balancing your relationship, which makes it easier to overcome the need to please someone in spite of yourself.
This may sound like a soulless economy, but often referring to the facts while minimizing the impact of emotions can be very helpful.
The compulsion to please everyone has many costs, and getting rid of it is often not easy, so it is worth seeking advice. Living in harmony with yourself, based on respect for others, but also for yourself, regaining control over your life, learning about your own needs and constructive ways to satisfy them is worth investing time and energy.
Regardless of how you deal with the difficulty of having to please everyone, it is worth trying to change so that one day you can say:
- I can allowothers to take care of their happiness.
- I can give up taking extra weight on my shoulders.
- I can leave a "yes" answer for selected people.
- I want to help, but I decide when and how I do it.