The People Pleasing Tax

There is a you that says yes when you mean no, apologises for existing in spaces you were invited into, is helpful to everyone around them. They are absolutely exhausted.

Welcome to people pleasing. Population: most of the capable, conscientious professionals.

How It Starts

People pleasing does not begin as a character flaw. It begins as a sensible strategy. At some point, usually earlier in life, you learned that keeping other people comfortable kept things more predictable. You are good at reading people and reading rooms. You are the person who can be relied upon to not make things awkward.

This is genuinely useful. In many environments it is actively rewarded. You get praised for being easy to work with, low maintenance, a team player. Nobody mentions that you drove home is silence because you agreed to lead a project you did not have capacity for and could not work out how you agreed to it.

The Tax

Here is what is actually costs, beyond the obvious inconvenience.

Energy. Not just the energy of doing the thing, but the energy of managing everyone else’s emotional state so they do not become a problem. That is a full-time job.

It costs you clarity. When you are very focused on what other people need, it becomes difficult to know what you need. Not in a dramatic way. In a quiet, creeping way to where someone asks you what you want to eat and you feel briefly panicked.

Paradoxically, it costs you relationships. People who are people pleasers are often well liked, but not well known.

It costs you time, obviously. Because you said yes again.

The Bit Nobody Tells You

People pleasing is not really about other people. It’s about managing your own anxiety. Specifically the anxiety that arises when you imagine disappointing someone, or being seen as difficult, or taking up too much space.

Saying yes feels like a relief. But it is the relief of avoiding something, not the relief of actually being okay. Avoidance, as a strategy, has a compounding interest rate that would make a mortgage look like pennies.

The good news is that this is not a personality trait you are stuck with. It is a learned pattern, which means it can be unlearned. Slowly, with a bit of discomfort, it can be done.

A Starting Point

Next time you are about to say yes to something, try pausing for a second. Not to be difficult. Just to check whether you actually want to say yes, or just want the anxiety to stop.

You don’t have to change your answer. Just notice what is driving it.

That small gap between request and response is where a lot of interesting things live.