Here's What To Do If You Feel Frustrated By Your People Pleasing Tendencies

Aggression 😠

I used to think aggression was bad, it made me scared and I didn’t like it. I still don't particularly like it.

But over the years, from wise teachers, I have learnt HEALTHY aggression = healthy power.

So many of us are/have been people pleasers. We put others' needs first. We find it hard to ask for what we need and really want. We’re fearful of being rejected by others.

And this is all related to the trauma responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn.

Our brain perceives social rejection as a danger. We feel the pain of potential rejection and fear in our bodies through our nervous system and when we do, cortisol hormone floods our body and leads to all that stress and anxiety.

When we are fearful we doubt, question, and criticise ourselves.

“What ifs?” abound.

Our self-talk could sound like:

“I am stupid.”

“I must be wrong.”

“I don’t know.”

“They’re going to think I’m annoying/selfish/petty/some other thing we don’t want to be labelled.”

“I’m not sure.”

So we say or do what the other person wants.

This response is unfortunately common. Sometimes it is completely debilitating to the point of dissociation and feeling nothing in the body. This disconnection makes it hard to understand our own feelings and emotions. When we don't know how we feel we can’t access parts of ourselves and can't make sense of ourselves or what is happening. Our feelings are actually messages our wise body is trying to communicate with us. We may end up freezing (saying nothing), taking flight (finding a way to excuse ourselves quickly) or fighting (shouting, blaming, pointing the finger at the other person).

Repeating people-pleasing behaviour and avoiding confrontation can often work to keep things at a certain level of friction. However, the built-up, unacknowledged truths within can be a heavy burden to bear for our mental, emotional, and physical bodies.

Until we are reconnected back to our HEALTHY aggression we are not accessing the full normal healthy responses we have available to us.

Practising accessing this healthy part of ourselves that got shut down as a child is vital. It’s the part of us that never got to be expressed and experienced fully. It’s in there, but latent and has rarely been activated — like a weak muscle.

If you can't figure out why you keep appeasing, people-pleasing, avoiding conflict, or avoiding making a decision — it's understandable — especially for us highly sensitive adults who fear rejection from others.

That's why the reaction of fawning works: it keeps us “safe” BUT it also ultimately stops us from living an authentic, full and joyful life.

Does this resonate with you?

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