you might disappoint people (and that's okay)
a case against people-pleasing
This was the second essay in a 2-part series exploring friendship, connection and finding your people. You can read the first essay: same wavelength and a thread on why I wrote this series.
I’m pretty sure my life began when I became willing to disappoint people. I never categorized myself as a people-pleaser growing up (though the signs were there). I’ve always been stubborn, audacious, willing to stand up for what I believe in. But I only recently realized that these qualities reflect my personality, not my priorities. They do not determine how and why I put myself in the places that I do—they determine how I act once I'm there. The function that decides where and how I show up was optimizing for something that had very little to do with my desires, needs and ambitions, but instead was centered around others. I was (unconsciously) optimizing to please others, avoid disappointment, keep the people around me happy, more than I was for my own happiness and fulfillment. Eventually this became straining enough on an individual level that I recognized it wouldn’t work long-term. Because when your top value is pleasing others, you end up living a life designed to suit them instead of crafting a life in attunement with yourself.
maturity = taking responsibility for yourself as an individual
“Individuation is becoming the thing which is not the ego, and that is very strange.” — Carl Jung
One of the biggest markers for maturity is when you become willing to disappoint the people you love in favour of what feels right to you, when you start to unravel the stories you’ve told yourself (or been told) about who you are and what you should be. These stories are the pillars that hold up the jenga-tower that is our ego. As we start to remove them one by one, the whole thing begins to tumble down. This is the process of individuation: becoming who you truly are instead of who you want to be for others. Disappointing people is practically a rite of passage in creating a life that is yours, rather than one your parents, family, friends or even a younger, more conditioned version of yourself might have imagined for you. Disappointing people is not something you should aim at, but something to accept as a potential side effect of honouring yourself. Accepting this allows you to craft a life that reflects your values, beliefs and desires.
becoming first requires un-becoming
When you start becoming the you that is underneath the ego—the unconditioned self you were before your environment told you who you should be, you may need to first un-become who everyone sees you as (which means inevitable disappointment). Everyone who had a hand in shaping you was probably trying to bring out the best in you. They wanted to protect you, keep you safe, help you “reach your potential.” But despite their good will, no one knows you as well as you know yourself. Meaning: no one can make the “right” decisions for you, because only you know what feels right. Others can give you loads of suggestions about what looks right, what sounds right, what might feel right, but no one is inside you, feeling the pull (or lack thereof) towards certain decisions.
you understand your needs best
You have spent 100% of your life with yourself: observing what works, what doesn’t work, what makes you come alive, what contracts or expands you. Only you can access the deep gut feeling of being at home and comfortable when you’re in the right place—and conversely: the loneliness and unease that accompanies the feeling that you’re in the wrong place. You know when you’ve made a decision to please others instead of choosing what is right for you, because you can feel the visceral self-betrayal that comes with it. Only you can detect the difference between being somewhere you genuinely want to be and being somewhere you “should” be, and only you can choose which feeling to follow.
noticing the pattern
My resistance to disappointing people became undeniably evident around a year ago when I quit my job, directed my attention towards writing and started metamorphosizing into a person that made decisions from a place of intrinsic desire rather than optimizing for what people (me included) thought was cool, desirable or prestigious. I knew I would disappoint people by choosing to do something odd, unprestigious, true to myself. That resistance is probably why it took me so long to admit to myself that I wanted it.
As I began to trust myself more, I realized that what was often holding me back were concerns around judgement, criticism, but most of all: the fear of disappointing those I loved. It was hard for me to decouple the desire to please others from my own desire to do what felt right (probably because I was in the process of swapping where those priorities stood). The opinions of others had been sneakily towering over my desire to self-actualize for so long that I thought it was a permanent, immutable fixture for how I made decisions. I didn’t realize people-pleasing was a choice I was making. I thought it was just the way I was.
shifting the pattern
The first few months of committing to writing were pretty intense. I cut back on social events I was attending out of obligation (“I should be here” instead of “I want to be here”), I deleted all social media except Twitter (which made it harder to keep up with friends) and I gave myself strict boundaries on when I would use my phone (which allowed texts to pile up and occasionally be forgotten). I knew I needed these boundaries as soon as I committed to writing, but it took me months to recognize that they were important enough to actually enforce them on myself (see: the pattern of foregoing self-trust due to concerns around what others might think). I was terrified of the disappointments that would ripple through my life: no I didn’t want to go out this weekend, no I can’t call right now, no I am not drinking these days. I had become so good at doing the opposite: going out the way others liked going out, using social media to keep up with friends even though I knew it was corrosive to my focus, offering my attention up when someone wanted to reach me no matter what I was doing.
But writing was going to be different. Writing is about pushing through sludge for hours until you finally get to the crystal clear waterfall where all is flowing. But if you constantly jump in and out of the sludge, conveniently distracting yourself with easily justifiable distractions such as pleasing the people you love, you’ll never get to that flow state. You’ll never get to the point where it feels easy—where you see the reward for doing the inwardly focused work—until you are willing to prioritize your needs. Because taking care of others feels good: it makes us feel useful, needed, alive. But I was trying to derive that feeling from an entirely different source now: I was trying to write. I was trying to reach you. And I could never have reached you if I didn’t say no to others. I could never have focused if I wasn’t willing to forego what others wanted for what I needed.
your needs ebb and flow
Following an unusual path requires you to make decisions that others might not like or understand. This is simply a part of the journey towards eventually feeling satisfied when you know you’ve prioritized what is important to you. And when you do cultivate the practice of giving yourself what you need, space naturally opens up for others. Once you tend to yourself consistently, you better understand how others’ needs fit into your own. You approach your decisions with a level-headed wholeness that considers all that matters to you (including the needs of those you love). But before you get there, you might need some time under tension where you set boundaries and fulfill your own needs. We ebb and flow, and our capacity to give to others does, too.
why we start people-pleasing
People-pleasing is typically not a conscious choice. We often learn to people-please at a young age by anticipating emotions from others that might come our way as children. If you grew up anticipating frustration, anger or intense emotions from those around you, you probably got really good at noticing precursors to those emotions and doing what you could to keep them from emerging. Specifically: you might have gotten good at making others happy/proud/pleased with you. In short: you learned to prioritize others’ needs over your own in order to make them happy.
The people-pleasing tendency also develops as we try to fit in socially. Put simply: we want people to like us, so we do what will make them like us. We please them, make them feel good, anticipate what will make them feel bad and try to prevent it. Belonging is a fundamental human need and people-pleasing is an evolved mechanism that helps us achieve it. The better you get at people-pleasing, the more you will be appreciated by those who have unmet needs that you can detect that they might not even be aware of in themselves.
If you develop people-pleasing skills young, you are likely to attract and select yourself into groups of people who are especially receptive to people-pleasers. People that make you feel good, needed, useful because of how skilled you are at making them happy (usually people who aren’t the most skilled at meeting their own needs).
This poses quite the challenge when you want to shed your people-pleasing tendencies, because the people you have surrounded yourself with may be especially dependent on your tendency to meet their needs. These people adore us for our ability to sense and meet their needs. They praise us for being great friends, daughters, sons, lovers, sisters, brothers. They become the hardest to stop pleasing, because they are the primary beneficiaries of our tendency to do so.
why we keep people-pleasing
When you are especially good at people-pleasing, rarely does anyone ever say: hey, do you need anything? because to do so would be to place your needs above theirs. Some (conscious, aware) people *might* do this but more often than not, people are more preoccupied with their own needs and desires than yours. This is especially true if you’ve accidentally surrounded yourself with people who expect you to prioritize them over yourself. Plus: people-pleasers are so good at putting others first and never asking for anything that people might assume that their needs are met (because non people-pleasers would just speak up if they needed something, so they expect others to do the same).
We are all blinded by our own nature. We rarely recognize that what comes easy to us might be a struggle for others, and vice versa. When you’re someone who pays acute attention to how others are doing, you might be shocked by how little attention they pay to how you are doing. And if you’re someone who pays more attention to how you’re doing, you’d be shocked by how little attention someone might pay to themselves. We are all stuck in our own minds. It’s hard to put ourselves behind someone else’s eyes, especially if that individual relates to others differently.
how we stop people-pleasing
This leaves people-pleasers in a pretty difficult position: they need to figure out that they are prioritizing others over themselves independently, because no one is going to tell them to stop. The people they please have no reason to think that they are hurting, because they probably haven’t indicated that they are. This is why boundaries are so important. Boundaries say: this is what I need. And if you’re someone who struggles to speak up about what you need, they are a simple, earnest way to communicate (and oftentimes boundaries just look like letting people know that you’re going to do your own thing for awhile and won’t be available). The people around you probably want to take care of you—but they don’t know how to until you tell them.
non-verbal communication doesn’t work: declare your needs
Expecting others to notice and anticipate your needs is unrealistic and ineffective. It’s like asking people to be as sensitive to your needs as a mother is to a baby’s cry: to understand a need with virtually zero communication. This is hard for people-pleasers to see, because they are so attuned to the needs of others. But trust me: other people need (and probably want!) instructions on how to respect and satisfy you. No one has a panoramic view on our lives except us, so everyone could just be thinking: wow, this person is so nice and sensitive towards me. I’m so lucky! I’m sure they can’t be like that to everyone.. who has the time for that? But if people-pleasing is a learned behaviour you use to make people happy, you probably act that way to an unsustainable number of people. Only you can see that, though, and only you can decide to reel that in and take care of yourself.
discovering your needs
To discover your needs, make space for yourself. Be alone, in your own presence. Pay attention to your own internal signals instead of fixating on what others want. This requires an adjustment period where you lean away from stimulus (people, distractions, media) and go inwards. It doesn’t need to be anything extreme: a little time in the morning to check in with yourself goes a long way. It’s about cultivating space for yourself instead of filling your life with noise, including the noise of what others might expect from you.
setting boundaries
The next phase of the journey is distilling what you need into guidelines and “rules” that help you take care of yourself. I used to think boundaries were asks of other people, which is why I avoided them for so long (I didn’t believe in making demands of others to satisfy yourself). But I now realize that boundaries are largely suggestions you make for yourself. Informing others just loops them in on the journey and gives them the chance to respect you. Sure, sometimes those boundaries might affect them (i.e. I wont answer texts until the evening when I’m done my work), but it rarely demands much other than their willingness to listen.
That is the magic of boundaries: they can be whatever you want, and by making them, you give the people around you the opportunity to show you love by simply letting you uphold them. You send a clear signal, freeing yourself from expecting others to interpret your needs non-verbally. You tell them exactly what you need and in doing so: you invite them to support you in the process of you taking care of yourself.
respecting boundaries
Most people will be open to and receptive of your boundaries. It might take some adjustment time, but you can tell when people want to respect them. Their effort might not be perfect, but they’re trying. Others might be offended by or reject the idea that your needs should come before theirs. This usually requires a difficult conversation to help them understand where you are coming from (i.e. give them the benefit of the doubt that they don’t understand why you are setting boundaries). If they still make you feel bad/selfish for having healthy boundaries, you might need to make a decision around whether you want that person in your life and in what capacity.
I do want to note that it is important to actually give people some grace and the chance to level with you before just “cutting them out.” But there is certainly a chance some people might not accept changes you make—and that is okay. Confronting people-pleasing tendencies weans out behaviours that shakes up certain relationships where someone likes what you do for them, but is not interested in reciprocating the effort it might take to help take care of you. Having people who support you is essential and shifting priorities presents a good opportunity to figure out who those people may (or may not) be.
what you (and others) get by meeting your own needs
You show up better for others: When you take care of yourself, your energy is full, embodied, unreserved. You are genuinely there to hold space for someone because you have already taken space for yourself. When you show up after meeting your own needs, you aren’t passively seeking to be taken care of or noticed by others. You are present. Your mind isn’t elsewhere, it is with them.
You reduce the risk of resentment: If you chronically prioritize others over yourself, you may start to resent those that consume a lot of your attention, even though you are making the choice to devote that attention to them. In the end, it is up to you to ask for space when you need it. No one can read minds. If you don’t speak up for your needs, you might resent whomever is taking you away from your priorities, even though they are not coercing you into doing so. Defining and setting boundaries helps you take on the responsibility of your choices and collapses the risk of resentment towards “needs-heavy” friends.
You become more integrated and whole: people-pleasing is a way to avoid yourself. You don’t have to sit with the discomfort of pondering hard, unanswered questions when you preoccupy yourself with satisfying others. Pleasing others makes you feel important and useful—a convenient way to avoid the hard stuff within yourself. But when you confront and integrate what you are avoiding, you show up whole, balanced, and at ease, which positively impacts how you relate to yourself and others. You aren’t trying to escape yourself when you show up for others: you show up as yourself. And if you aren’t in a good place, you’re comfortable not showing up. Developing a strong enough connection with yourself to know when you’re coming from a place of avoidance vs. alignment is pivotal in building a life that is true to yourself.
take care of yourself
The effects of people-pleasing might initially be subtle, but if you let the tendency persist into adulthood it can keep you from leading a balanced, healthy life that honours you. It can be scary to speak up for yourself when you’re not used to it. It can be scary to disappoint people. These are reasonable fears. But when you zoom out, they pale in comparison to the terrifying possibility of living a life that revolves around pleasing others instead of living in alignment with yourself.
When you take care of yourself, you show up as a better person. You create healthy, loving relationships where you support each other instead of asymmetrical, one-way relationships where you give someone what they want to avoid your own needs. It might not be your “fault” that everyone cannot see your needs perfectly, but it is your responsibility to communicate them clearly and curate your life with people who get it. You are the only person who has a high-level view on all your relationships, including the one to yourself. You don’t need to sacrifice yourself to make others happy. It is okay to give yourself what you need before you take care of others (put on your own oxygen mask first and all that).
Give yourself permission to disappoint people. Give yourself permission to live your own life. Don’t get so caught up in what others expect of you that you forget to pay attention to the most important person in your life—the one you’re stuck with forever: yourself. When you tend to yourself, space opens up for what you fear losing: your relationships and your ability to serve others. But first, you need to prioritize what you might be avoiding—your own needs.
If you enjoyed this, you might also like its prequel essay: same wavelength and this thread on why I’m writing this series.
Work with me 1-1: I help people discover their true desires and align their actions with their values to cultivate a life that feels true to them. This unfolds through a guided process of conversation, introspection and conscious action. Learn more about working with me here.
Learn to unblock your ideas and express yourself freely: Creative Liberation is a 6-week virtual course, where I teach you how to conquer your avoidance, unblock yourself, and self-express freely. Get updates here.
I’d love to hear about your own relationship to people-pleasing: Do you prioritize what others want over what you need? Have you tried to identify your needs and set boundaries? Have others done that with you? What was it like?
Related essays: let yourself be loved about the challenges we face when surrendering to love—both platonic and romantic—and why is asking so hard? exploring the frictional experience of asking for what you need and receiving openly.
You can find my daily thoughts (or: the buds of essays like this) on Twitter. If you liked this essay, please share it with any friends that might benefit from reading it:
I don't particularly think of myself as a people-pleaser but this essay still resonated with me from a subtly different angle: I'm fairly introverted but tend to "default" to spending time around friends (perhaps out of FOMO though that concept doesn't quite capture the feeling) even when I know I would show up better for others (a particularly resonant point you made) when I've given myself adequate quality alone time. This was a useful reminder to prioritize that boundary, thank you.
"Writing is about pushing through sludge for hours until you finally get to the crystal clear waterfall where all is flowing. But if you constantly jump in and out of the sludge, conveniently distracting yourself with easily justifiable distractions such as pleasing the people you love, you’ll never get to that flow state." a much-needed reminder. one of the best things about prioritizing quiet space for yourself is that you get to understand yourself better and discover what most enlivens you, which you can then bring back to the world and uplift others with. it's a great feedback loop.