# What makes someone a people pleaser?



## .17485 (Jan 12, 2011)

What makes a person a people pleaser and how can they stop being one? For me sometimes I seen passive and always needing positive feedback to know that I am doing well. When it comes to negative sometimes I can't handle it. It might be people just advising me on something but I see it as a negative. What is the deep root of passivity and people pleasing? I feel in me it is to hide my low self esteem. Can people pleasing come from having parents who were religious and strict for example in the areas of drinking, etc.


----------



## Jamie.Ether (Jul 1, 2011)

Tega1 said:


> What makes a person a people pleaser and how can they stop being one? For me sometimes I seen passive and always needing positive feedback to know that I am doing well. When it comes to negative sometimes I can't handle it. It might be people just advising me on something but I see it as a negative. What is the deep root of passivity and people pleasing? I feel in me it is to hide my low self esteem. Can people pleasing come from having parents who were religious and strict for example in the areas of drinking, etc.


 Yes, people pleasing can stem from having people [especially parents] around you that have high expectations of you and a judgemental or critical attitude.
I think people pleasing comes from believing you are inferior in some way. You search for approval outside of yourself because you consider other people's judgements to be more important than yours. 
It's important to realize that you can't please everyone. And some people are never pleased! 
Some times people have good intentions but they have unrealistic expectations for others. If you lie or pretend, or act not like yourself to please someone else, you aren't really doing them a favour [or yourself]. They may have a hard time accepting that life is not perfect and people make mistakes. If you pretend to be perfect, you are only keeping their unrealistic expectations up. It's best to just be yourself. People will have to get used it.


----------



## Thorndrop (Jan 6, 2010)

I grew up with a mother who I feel was overly critical of me. Not in terms of my success at school, but in terms of how I am socially. I got so upset when she'd criticise me for my lack of social skills that whenever I had the chance, I'd try to do something that she would like. It didn't work, to be fair. I actually remember her accusing me of being a 'people pleaser' and then I looked at myself with disgust. She criticised me when I showed any sort of emotion, and that made me feel that having emotions was 'wrong' and something to be ashamed of. Now, I feel extremely uncomforably expressing them, and I keep people at a distance. I've had a lot of experiences where people (such as those who I thought were friends) have completely abandoned me, causing me to distrust people in general and put myself first. I still don't take personal criticisms well, like if somebody comments negatively on an aspect of my personality, but I've also rationalised a lot of it. If someone criticises a belief that you hold or something you enjoy doing, I wouldn't see it as a personal insult. I don't find it easy to accept criticism to my work, but I keep in mind that it's not me personally they're criticising, and it's to help me improve in the long-term. Don't know how much use that was, but I just thought I'd share my experience of this...


----------



## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

Jamie.Ether said:


> Yes, people pleasing can stem from having people [especially parents] around you that have high expectations of you and a judgemental or critical attitude.
> I think people pleasing comes from believing you are inferior in some way. You search for approval outside of yourself because you consider other people's judgements to be more important than yours.
> It's important to realize that you can't please everyone. And some people are never pleased!
> Some times people have good intentions but they have unrealistic expectations for others. If you lie or pretend, or act not like yourself to please someone else, you aren't really doing them a favour [or yourself]. They may have a hard time accepting that life is not perfect and people make mistakes. If you pretend to be perfect, you are only keeping their unrealistic expectations up. It's best to just be yourself. People will have to get used it.


It is important to differentiate what you mean by people-pleasing. There are people who just generally like to be helpful and in service to others, which I think is generally healthy. I think the implication here though is one of self-defeating or putting others at the expense of yourself, which can be thought of as a form of pathology.

Theodore Millon, a prominent psychologist on the subject has this to say (mind you these symptoms seem to describe just about everyone claiming to be INFP around these parts).



> *The Possessive Masochist*
> Like other masochists, possessive masochists give constantly of themselves. However, they are unable to let go of their attachments. Instead, they become so indispensable and self-sacrificing that others are unable to withdraw from them without feeling in- credibly cruel. Others become entrapped and dominated by a dependency driven by the fulfillment of their every need. Through ostentatious sacrifices, possessive masochists intrude into the daily affairs of their children, spouses, friends, and peers, meddling in activities, romance, occupation, and anywhere else they can obtain a foothold. Ostensibly altruistic acts create grounds for inducing guilt in others, which may be used to pre- vent them from distancing or ending the relationship. Mates are overprotected and jealously guarded, bribed for love, and controlled through guilt. In effect, they become self-sacrificing vampires whose kindness bleeds their victims dry.
> 
> *The Oppressed Masochist*
> ...


The onset of this is explained here


> The literature on childhood victimization suggests that children chronically victimized by their peers suffer from deficits in self-esteem. Perhaps children with low self- esteem are unable to fight back for some reason or more readily become the focus of teasing or scapegoating. In fact, chronic victimization by peers during the school years is associated with a variety of adjustment problems (Egan & Perry, 1998). Studies have found that submissiveness and physical weakness, for example, may lead to increased victimization over time (Hodges, Malone, & Perry, 1997; Schwartz, Dodge, & Coie, 1993).
> 
> Egan and Perry (1998) tested two hypotheses: First, low self-regard promotes victimization by peers over time, and second, a child’s level of self-regard modulates the impact of victimization. Results suggest that low self-regard, particularly when assessed as a child’s self-perceived social competence within the peer group, contributes to victimization. Moreover, a sense of social failure and inadequacy among an individual’s peers leads to increases in victimization over time. However, a sense of self-efficacy, measured as confidence in an individual’s standing in the peer group, serves to protect at-risk children from being victimized.
> 
> From this perspective, masochistic behavior in adults could be seen as being on a continuum with low self-regard within the peer group. As perceived competence within the peer group decreases and self-regard declines, the individual at first becomes the object of minor levels of victimization. With further declines, however, victimization grows, until finally a sort of identification with the aggressor takes place. Instead of trying to escape punishment, victims see themselves as being so contemptible that such treatment is their due. Masochism, then, could be seen as a maladaptive adjustment to extreme social inadequacy.


He concludes


> The danger of being totally abandoned in a punitive world generates greater anxiety than to be attached to another when such negative consequences are being experienced. Unable to understand the source of the noxious experience, the infant has learned to feel more secure when it is close to or clings onto an attachment object, albeit a frequently rejecting and hostile one. Such patterns are likely to be intensified when the punitive parent is inconsistent in its ministrations. At times, parents such as these are likely to be frustrating, depriving, or rejecting and, at other times, guiltily oversolicitous and possessively nurturing. The grounds for developing these masochistic inclinations are only further strengthened by this form of vacillatory behavior.
> 
> Parental support and encouragement may not be forthcoming for achievements and autonomy. For example, children who receive non-ambivalent parental affection and support only when they are ill, injured, or deficient are likely to conclude that they not only are defective and incompetent but also are loved and encouraged only when things are problematic or go wrong. Further, they learn that they can deflect otherwise hostile and critical parents by enacting deficiencies or illnesses on their own. Hence, if parents exhibit affection and attention only when the child is suffering or handicapped, that child will learn willingly to appear disadvantaged or ill as an instrumentally effective style of behavior, an attitudinal orientation that sets the seeds for what ultimately takes the shape of masochistic behaviors.
> 
> Like the dependent and depressive, the masochist is highly vulnerable to fears of loss and abandonment. Particularly where they have made themselves exclusively depend- ent on a mate or caretaker for basic survival, they are likely to fear that desperate self- sacrificial efforts are not sufficient to protect them against personal loss. States of panic may also emerge under these conditions, especially when the attachments needed to maintain their stability are in serious jeopardy.


----------

