Pleasing others is natural and normal human behavior. It’s how people add value to others they’re in a relationship with. Being aware of other people’s wants and needs and pleasing them by meeting those is conducive to healthy relationships. This is altruism, which is highly praised by society because it benefits society as a whole. People who behave altruistically gain admiration and social status.
However, there comes a point where altruism or people-pleasing can become pathological. Pathological people-pleasing is when your people-pleasing is compulsive and extreme, invoking costs on yourself and/or others.
What causes pathological people pleasing?
It’s usually the fawn response to childhood trauma. Often, adults who become people-pleasers have been through adverse childhood experiences where they learned that the only way to survive was to please their abuser. Or they had primary caregivers who, for whatever reason, were inconsistent in their caregiving. This resulted in the child developing an anxious attachment style, becoming overly dependent on others to meet their needs, and having an intense fear of abandonment.
People-pleasing behaviors are also the result of societal and/or parental conditioning. In many cultures, children are taught from a young age that who they are as individuals doesn’t matter. They’re taught to conform to societal norms rather than being authentic. Authenticity is punished because it threatens group identity, and people who are too different from the group are seen as a threat to the group.
Another reason people become people-pleasers is when they have parents who are pathological people-pleasers. They model their parents’ behaviors and believe that’s how one should behave. They may also pathologically identify with their parents. Pathological identification is when you mimic the behaviors of your parents because if you don’t, you may be forced to question them. Questioning your parents’ behaviors may induce guilt and anxiety. You think that by questioning their behaviors, you’re rejecting or abandoning them.1Foreman, S. A. (2018). Pathological identification. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 35(1), 15.
Since we’re wired to maintain our attachment to our caregivers, we re-enact the people-pleasing behaviors instead of questioning them and choosing a different, more authentic identity and behaviors for ourselves. This may be a non-genetic reason why people-pleasing often runs in the family. A people-pleaser is likely to come from a family of people-pleasers.2Bouchard Jr, T. J., & McGue, M. (2003). Genetic and environmental influences on human psychological differences. Journal of neurobiology, 54(1), 4-45.
Authenticity vs pathological people-pleasing
Since pathological people-pleasing tends to be extreme, those on the receiving end can often detect that the people-pleaser is inauthentic and too good to be true. This is simply because people-pleasers violate the fundamental principle of relationships—reciprocity. Normal and healthy relationships involve a healthy balance of give and take. In contrast, people-pleasers give, give, and give without taking anything. This imbalance in reciprocity makes people question their motives.
“How can they be so good? Surely, they have ulterior motives.”
You’re likely to be seen as genuinely good when you genuinely please others without crossing any limits. People care more about whether or not they can trust you versus how nice you’re being to them in the present moment. Because if your niceness in the present moment is manipulative, you’ll cause them harm later. If you’re trustworthy, your niceness will be stable over time.
Signs you’re a people-pleaser
- Seeking excessive attention and external validation
- Non-existent or weak boundaries
- Low self-esteem or lacking a strong sense of self
- Hyper-focused on other people and relationships
- Enmeshment and codependence
- Acquiring the traits of people you want to please
- Difficulty saying ‘No’
- Putting on a ‘mask’ to gain social approval
- Lack of conviction in your own decisions
- Perfectionism and inability to handle criticism
- Unclear about own needs and wants
- Over-apologizing and over-explaining
- Susceptible to guilt3Barbanell, L. (2009). Breaking the Addiction to Please: Goodbye Guilt. Rowman & Littlefield.
- Caring too much about what others think
- Not admitting hurt feelings4Ooms, V. (2023). Do It For You: How to Stop People-Pleasing and Find Peace. VANOOMS MEDIA INC..
Doing evil in the name of good
You might have come across people who genuinely believe they’re doing good but are causing harm to themselves and/or others. What’s going on here?
Psychoanalysis offers an interesting perspective. Many times, what looks like altruism has an unconscious self-serving motive behind it.5Sun, S. (2018). From defensive altruism to pathological altruism. SAGE Open, 8(2), 2158244018782585. For instance, a politician who visits the families of poor people and shows his concern may be less concerned about their condition and more about his image as a leader. The real motive behind his seemingly altruistic act is that he wants to be seen as a caring leader.
But he has deceived himself into thinking that he’s genuinely altruistic. If he could see the real motive behind his actions, that could be anxiety-inducing and identity-threatening. So, his mind represses the real motive and engages in this defensive altruism.6Turnbull, O. H., & Solms, M. (2007). Awareness, desire, and false beliefs: Freud in the light of modern neuropsychology. Cortex, 43(8), 1083-1090.
So far, so good. He’s deceiving himself and helping people experiencing poverty. So what?
Because defensive altruism is driven by a powerful and unconscious self-serving motive and the person is blind to the real motive, this behavior can become extreme and compulsive, turning into pathological altruism.7Turvey, B. E. (2011). Pathological altruism: Victims and motivational types. Pathological altruism, 177-192. In other words, the behavior continues unchecked because the person has deceived themselves into thinking they’re doing something good.
So, he may spend a lot of time and resources on economically disadvantaged communities, ignoring other issues. He may push policies, reservations, and subsidies for them that are unfair to other communities. He might become a Robin Hood.
Because the politician is blind to his real motive, he can’t see that his policies are bad. Often, things have gone too far before the pathological altruist considers the problems in his behavior. Because he can use the same behavior to satisfy his unconscious, self-serving motive and create the image he wants, he only sees his behavior achieving the latter whilst ignoring the costs.
