Understanding What’s Really Happening When You People-Please
People-pleasing has been widely misunderstood as a personality trait, when in reality, it is a survival skill that falls under the fawning trauma response.
If you ever catch yourself people-pleasing to smooth over a situation and keep the peace, chances are you are in a situation where you don’t feel safe. The phrase that explains this dynamic best is “connection is protection.” What this means is that when the fight and flee response are not an option, connecting to the person we feel unsafe around becomes the best option for getting through that interaction unharmed (or so we think–we will find down the road that while it protects us momentarily, it comes with long-term effects of self-abandonment and disconnection from ourselves).
When we grow up in families where we had to fawn in order to feel loved or have our needs met, we were faced with so many instances to reinforce this behavior over and over until it became autopilot. People-pleasing became hardwired into your way of interacting with the world, and as a result, you came to believe that if other people don’t feel comfortable with what we say or do, then it must be wrong.
We begin to ignore our intuition and anger that tells us something isn’t right. Instead, we place the measuring stick of what “should” work for us outside of ourselves rather than gauging within ourselves what safety will involve for our unique nervous systems. This is why you probably feel like a bad person for having a boundary. It is hard to have boundaries because if we do, we risk connection and disappointing others.
Healing from relational trauma involves learning to reconnect with ourselves–our intuition, our body’s signals, and our emotions– and boundaries are an important part of that process.
What a boundary is (and is not)
Boundaries are not punishment. They are about what you will do if you are faced with something that feels unsafe or uncomfortable to help yourself feel safe. Boundaries are about not feeling powerless. They are about putting the power back in your hands so you can be responsible for your own sense of safety.
I’ve experienced this, and maybe you have too: You’re desperately hoping someone or something will change so you can feel okay. You try to get your partner to go to therapy, or you try to convince someone to stop doing a certain behavior. Every time, you’re faced with the agonizing reality that you can’t make someone change. The painful part comes in when you feel dependent on them changing for you to be okay.
This is where boundaries come in. Boundaries are the line where you can love or respect both the other person and yourself at the same time. No one has to give up their sense of safety for the sake of someone else’s comfort. And if you’re reading this, my hunch is that you’ve been the person to sacrifice your own sense of safety over and over again for the sake of someone else feeling comfortable.
You are allowed to make someone uncomfortable. You are allowed to disappoint someone. You aren’t punishing them, you’re making choices for yourself that allow you to feel safe.
Here Are 5 Reframes to Hold Onto (because chances are no one gave you this kind of permission)
Saying “no” or having a boundary doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a responsible, aligned, and honest person.
Often people think that not holding their boundary and over-extending themselves for others is a way of loving others. But what happens when you become so over-extended or feel so unsafe that you start building resentment and it comes out sideways? What happens when you get pushed to the point where you feel so unsafe that you become emotionally unavailable?
Every no is a yes to something else. When you say “no” to something you honestly don’t feel like you have the capacity for or feel like you can be safe with, you are saying “yes” to showing up as the best part of you. You are committing to taking care of yourself and taking responsibility for your ability to show up well in this world.
Your ability to be honest with what is within your capacity and sense of safety will allow you to show up as a predictable, reliable, emotionally stable person. Your boundaries help you show up as an emotionally safe person for the people in your life.
So whenever you say “no,” keep in mind that you are saying “yes” to being the best version of yourself both for you and for the people around you.
2. You don’t need someone else to approve or understand your boundary for it to be reasonable.
Your boundary is about what helps you feel safe. It is not about what other people think you need in order to feel safe. Remember, you will know yourself best. As long as you are not punishing someone or using a pseudo-boundary to make someone change, if you believe that your boundary is responding to what you know you need to feel grounded and safe, it is a boundary worth having.
3. A boundary for you may be unnecessary for someone else, but it doesn’t make it unreasonable or wrong.
There are no objectively correct boundaries. Remember, if you grew up people-pleasing, you learned to let other people’s reactions to your choices/behaviors dictate if something is okay or not. This is part of how trauma disconnects us from ourselves. The whole goal of trauma healing is to reconnect to yourself. So we need a different measuring stick for whether or not a boundary makes sense for you.
Rather than judging if you are being reasonable or not based on another person’s reaction to your boundary (they will most likely not like you upsetting the status quo), check in with your body. What does a genuine “no” feel like in your body? A “yes?” What about a “maybe?'“ When you imagine yourself having this boundary in place, do you feel a sense of relief? What happens when you imagine pushing through without the boundary? Does this respond to the anger you have felt? Anger is a motivating emotion that sends up a signal telling us something isn’t right so that we can respond to it and make a change that helps us feel safe. What happens to your anger when you have this boundary in place?
Your intuition and your body will tell you if the boundary is one you need. The moment you start weighing out pros and cons or trying to come up with logical reasons, you are most likely starting down the road to self-abandonment. Focus on your body and emotions and you will be steered in the right direction.
4. You’re allowed to change your mind.
This is something I tell every one of my clients when they are thinking through boundaries. Remember, boundaries are about helping you feel safe. The moment they no longer work for you is the moment to start adjusting them so they still serve you. I see people set boundaries, and then years later find that maintaining that boundary actually makes things worse for them because circumstances, desires, and their own capacity has changed. Don’t maintain a boundary just for the sake of sticking to it.
Let’s just accept right now that your boundaries will most likely change over time. As you grow and heal, your capacity will change. Something that felt unmanageable at one point in time will become manageable later down the road. You won’t feel so powerless. Your boundaries might also change because your circumstances and needs will change. If the boundary were put into place in the changed circumstances and cause you more harm rather than protect you, the boundary isn’t responsive to your needs anymore.
Don’t be afraid to change your mind.
5. You don’t have to earn the boundary. Feeling safe and at peace in your own body is a baseline human right.
Some things I hear from clients is, “well, I’m not the healthiest person I could be, so aren’t I being a hypocrite for having the boundary?” NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.
Boundaries are about being responsible for your own sense of safety. It is about having options and being able to take care of yourself when you don’t feel safe. It is not about punishing the other person. Sure, you do dysfunctional things too. But you still have a right to feel safe.
You don’t need to be more functional than the other person to justify having your boundary. You also don’t have to have a good reason for having your boundary. At the end of the day, the boundary is about responding to yourself and your needs. It’s about being able to say “this doesn’t work for me” because you are in touch with yourself enough to know what helps you feel safe and what doesn’t. You know what kind of environments help you show up well in life and which don’t.
People-pleasing is not the only route to kindness, generosity, and being a loving person.
If you are here, my guess is that you pride yoruself on being compassionate, kind, generous, and someone who is dependable for others. Saying “no” feels like a betrayal of who you are.
The truth is that having boundaries will help these parts of you flourish because you aren’t risking burn-out, having your resentment come out side-ways, or being inconsistent because you keep over-extending. People who feel generally safe in the world are people who are able to show up and give from an overflowing cup. They can offer their heart freely because they aren’t falling apart simultaneously.
Boundaries are part of loving people well.
As we go into the holidays, my hope for you is that you can find the boundaries that build you up as the kind, generous, loving person that you are.
