You might have had an experience like this:

You tell someone no, knowing that they want a yes. But by mid-sentence, you’ve added in a few caveats, a few extra phrases to soften the blow. You can see their face change and you feel a panic setting in, so before you’ve even finished your sentence, before you have even taken a breath, you’ve gone further. You’ve walked it back, and soon you’ve recanted it entirely.

Or, you might have experienced this a few times and now, the possibility of it happening again is too much so you don’t even let it surface. “Do you want Thai this evening?” “Sure, no worries”. You hate Thai.

Or, perhaps these experiences become so instinctive that over time you can no longer imagine what conflict you were trying to avoid. “Do I like Thai food?” “It’s ok.”

Or, perhaps this happens so often, it’s become part of you. You’re easy going, chill. You can’t remember the last time you had an argument. And in all of that, you’ve lost yourself.

If you google ‘how do I stop people pleasing’, Google’s AI summary will say “Practice saying no.” Oprah.com offers “Resist the urge to over explain. Simple phrases like ‘Sorry I can’t this time’ are effective”.

None of this is bad advice, but if you’re on my website, I suspect you’ve tried this already. People pleasing isn’t a bad habit. It’s a skill you learned to survive.

Where people pleasing comes from

No one, to the best of my knowledge, is a born people-pleaser. Some babies are easier than others, but all babies cry when they are hungry. All babies cry when they are tired. All babies cry.

And how could they not? To be a baby must be a terrifying experience. You only know the rawness of your body. Your only awareness is what your body needs. You know that you are hungry but you cannot see that your parents are preparing food. You don’t know, as an adult would know, that you will ever eat again, or that you will survive for the 5 minutes it takes your food to be ready. In that moment, you only know an all-encompassing hunger. No wonder you’re crying.

When you were a baby, you had to make your needs known. And make sure they were met. Your survival depended on it.

But somewhere along the way, perhaps your needs were not as well met, and so you got less good at asking for them. Perhaps:

You were a kid. You needed your family for everything — emotional support, but also the basic stuff like food and shelter. You can only rock the boat if you know it’s not going to capsize. You probably weren’t so sure, so you stayed quiet. You learned that you could rarely ask for what you wanted. Perhaps you learned you couldn’t even need. You might have become likeable, self-sufficient, perfect. Maybe you still are.

Understanding people pleasing

If it was just as simple as saying no, you wouldn’t be reading this. What shifts things, in my experience, is understanding and experience.

Together, we will explore the role that people pleasing plays in your life. How it shows up in your day-to-day. How it impacts your relationships and your work.

We will also explore how it helped you, back in the day. When you had limited tools to ensure your survival, people-pleasing was one of them. So what was going on for you back then? Who was that version of you that learned to be a people-pleaser? What do they need now?

What actually helps with people pleasing

These questions can help us in the present day too. What happens when you disappoint people? How does it feel?

How awful is it, on a scale of 1 to 10?

If you answered 11, that’s OK too. It’s the perfect place to start.

Now, you can experiment, play. You might even have a little fun.

Dare yourself to disappoint people.

What happens when you say no, even though they are expecting a yes? What happens when you don’t do the usual caveats “give me 5 minutes” or “let’s do that tomorrow”? What happens if you just let your no land?

Explore your yes.

You want to say no but you find yourself saying yes. What is that like? What’s going on in your body?

Apologise (or don’t).

If you’ve said your no, but every fibre in your being screams out that you’ve gone too far, you can apologise. That’s not wrong. But notice how you feel afterwards.

And once, maybe with a good friend or with someone you love, try not apologising, for a day, or two. Or a week. Just notice what is happening.

Talk to someone (ideally, me).

None of this needs to happen by yourself. Therapy for people-pleasing works because it provides a space to explore and feel into these questions. That is the first step. Then we go deeper and as we do, you might notice more about our relationship too.

You might agree with something I said, even though I got it wrong. You might find yourself being irritated by me, but letting it go unsaid. And then one day, perhaps you will say it. You will tell me I’ve got it wrong, or you’re pissed off with me, or you really hate the way I twiddle my hair.

And when you say it, I will hear it. I won’t storm out the door and I will show up the next week and the week after. And so will you. You will get the experience, the actual lived experience, of showing me your teeth, and realising that I am not going to run away. Our relationship will survive, indeed, it will be stronger for it.

I am not a teacher. I am not a magician. I cannot tell you what to do, nor can I change the circumstances of your life. But what I can do is give you a dress rehearsal. Our relationship is a space to play and experiment with a version of you that you might want to take out into the real world and see what happens. If that sounds like something you’d like, call me. It’s 15 minutes, and it’s free.