A Simple Protocol to Stop People-Pleasing Behaviour

Behaviour of any sort needs a motivator. Freud established the pain-pleasure principle as the subconscious motivation to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Motivations could be a thought or a feeling. Cognitive behavioral principles make clear that thoughts, feelings and behaviour and interconnected. Whatever is going on in one area will affect the other two. So, when you want to create change, there is a choice to start making amends in either behaviour, thoughts or feelings.

Who payse the price?

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How do these ideas impact the people pleaser?

According to a 2022 YouGov poll of a thousand U.S. adult citizens, 49% self-identified as people pleasers, with 56% of women and 42% of men describing themselves this way.

People pleasers will always put someone else first, at their own detriment. A typical people pleaser would state: ‘I can’t say no’. They react and behave to accommodate others, so that they will be liked. They also will do anything to avoid confrontation and conflict. ‘Going with the flow’ is their way of avoiding pain.

The kindness they are hoping to receive is the pleasure they are looking for.

And the motivator for their subconscious behaviour is fear.

Fear for rejection, being visible, challenged, dismissed, not fitting in, upsetting others, and the like.

The people pleaser will experience regular disappointment as others are less considerate to their situation than the people pleaser is to others. A typical remark is ‘I would never do what they are doing to me’.

The way for a people pleaser to make changes is to start tackling that emotion of fear.

And the best way to do that is to apply a protocol that engages your thinking.

Once the fear reduces, thanks to validation via a thought process, the people pleaser can start to make successful changes in their behaviour.

People pleasers responses are made on automatic pilot. Before you realise it, you have said yes and committed to whatever you didn’t want to do. It is important to step away from an automatic reaction and make a conscious decision instead. The fear informs the automatic reaction, the mental process of answering the following questions will take you out of the fear, and bring you into the field of reason.

Once you have applied this protocol a few times it can become second nature and it is an absolute godsend for those who believe they can’t say no.

Whenever, there is a situation that requires a yes or no answer, don’t be tempted to jump in with your usual yes. Step back, tell someone you will get back to them soon. And take a few minutes to go through the questions in the example below.

6 Questions to Ask Yourself

Your neighbour asks you to give them a lift to the station at a specific time of day on a very busy day. It is very inconvenient for you, as this is the only time that day you can walk your dog.

Before you answer to the request, take yourself through the magic questions:

1. What does it give you – positives? Your neighbour will love you (external validation), you will feel good about yourself (after an act of kindness).
2. What does it take from you – negatives? You will be stressed as you were already tied for time, feeling bad about not being able to do the things you had to do and maybe even take away your early evening as you need the time to catch up.
3. Who benefits? Clearly your neighbour.
4. Who pays the price? Clearly you, but also your dog, who doesn’t get a proper walk, your colleagues who were waiting for that report and your children/partner who won’t see you until later that evening. This is always an interesting question, because at first instance we look at just ourselves, but often there are more people who pay the price.
5. Is it your responsibility? Clearly not. Your neighbour could take responsibility and arrange an uber to get to the station
6. Is it important? For you, it is not important whether your neighbour catches a train or not.

Having gone through these questions has given you a solid foundation to base. You can still say yes, but you are fully aware of the consequences and able to take responsibility. When you are not aware of the consequences, it is easy to get resentful, but it was still you who brought it on yourself.