If you’re a pleaser you help because you feel guilty or obliged. Your own plans are dropped to help someone else (this isn’t to be confused with an emergency). You’re following someone else’s agenda. You feel pressured to say yes. You feel drained or resentful.
When you’re helping you do so from concern for someones wellbeing. You decide you have the time and resources to offer to help. You feel able to say no. You organise helping around your own plans. Helping feels good.
Some people are born with personality traits that make them more susceptible to being a pleaser. They are extremely sensitive to other people’s feelings. From a very young age they modify their behaviour in response to someone’s feelings.
Problems occur because these children have not had their own feelings and needs met so they learn that their feelings don’t matter. So being a pleaser becomes an attempt to be seen and valued.
These children are often loyal and conscientious with a desire to be helpful. As adults these traits set them up to being a pleaser in the workplace. They start by being conscientious in their work, following instructions, being helpful, doing more and more thinking they’re being accepted into the team. They sacrifice they own needs and preferences until they feel resentful and unappreciated. Burnout is a classic result of being a pleaser. If you have children who are sensitive take the time to really listen to their troubles. Help them balance their giving nature with receiving.
Other people have always been good at making sure their needs are met even though they care and share with others.
Are you a pleaser
You may be able to identify a time in your childhood where because of this sensitivity you found it easier to pretend to be good or happy or do something to protect someone else. You got so good at it you continued to change yourself to fit in even as an adult.
But there comes a time where you feel so lost or drained by pleasing others that you need to come back to you.
If you’ve identified yourself as a pleaser then you’re most likely a highly sensitive person. Being sensitive to other peoples feelings is your superpower. You just need to refocus your energy and help from a distance.
Make a start by separating your energy from what’s around you. Get used to your own feelings and what matters to you. Set boundaries that keep you connected to your own needs.
Then you can utilise that sensitive superpower in other ways because you understand what other people need.
Being sensitive to other peoples feelings makes you extremely good in roles such as
- customer service
- health practitioner
- trainers
Take the steps to embrace your true sensitive nature and work with it so that your work, your relationships, your life is in alignment with You.
You will then make the shift away from being a pleaser to being a true helper successful in Life & Biz