Understanding and Overcoming People Pleasing as a Coping Mechanism

How to Reconnect with Your Feelings, Identify Your Needs, Set Healthy Boundaries and Start Taking Care of Yourself

In this article, I will cover how we develop people-pleasing in childhood and how to break free from it as an adult who has people-pleased their whole life. If you read on, I will show you how to reconnect with your feelings, identify your needs, begin to set boundaries, and take care of yourself. Plus, you will get some journal prompts to explore your need to people-please.

As people-pleasers, we often feel ashamed that we struggle to say no and be ourselves. I know I felt ashamed about it for a long time. It wasn't until I understood that people-pleasing is a coping mechanism and why I had to start people-pleasing in my childhood that I no longer felt ashamed about it.

It helped me understand that people-pleasing was a way for me to survive in my emotionally turbulent family as a highly sensitive person.

Here is what you need to understand about people-pleasing as a coping mechanism developed in childhood and how you can overcome people-pleasing as a coping mechanism:

People-pleasing is a coping mechanism many use to avoid painful situations such as conflict, rejection, or any situation that causes them physical, mental, or emotional stress. It's often developed in response to unpredictable or unreliable parenting.

Suppose a child grows up in an environment where their basic needs for love, support, nurturing, emotional connection, attention, stability, and security aren't consistently met. In that case, they may resort to people-pleasing their parents to meet those needs.