Please, Please You, Oh Yeah
I’m firmly of the opinion that pleasers are made, not born. Pleasers are people who discovered, at some point in their lives, the fearful consequences of not pleasing. Of saying or doing the wrong thing, or failing to say or do the right thing.
When you’re a pleaser, landmines are everywhere.
I became a pleaser early in life—at around the age of 3—and I’ve been laboring prodigiously to please as many people as I can as often as possible ever since. I keep my antennae up, constantly testing the air for vibrations of displeasure. It’s exhausting, but so far, I haven’t managed to relax my guard, despite knowing there’s actually no pleasing people who expect you to try, and people who don’t expect you to try grow tired under the constant pressure of your unrelenting efforts to please them anyway.
The impulse to please that I’m talking about isn’t so much that healthy desire to do nice things for people just because, as it is a desperate fear of arousing the pleasee’s anger, and/or a backwards-facing plea to be, if not loved, at least liked, all the while convinced you’re unworthy. Oh, the irony! To understand, clearly, that as the Good Book says—and I’m paraphrasing here—you can’t buy love, and yet find yourself constantly shopping anyway.
As a pleaser, you understand, at least on a rational level, that in this context, your imagination is your worst enemy. A single inkling that you may have stepped wrong, and off your imagination gallops with a herd of catastrophic consequences, each worse than the one before it.
To be found wanting, or worse to displease, or worst of all, to arouse anger, these are portents of the pleaser’s apocalypse. Imagine spending all night—or all week—agonizing over something you said or did. You’re jittery and breathless, your stomach ties itself in greasy knots. You ghost restlessly from room to room, moaning, “Why didn’t I say that?” or “Why in the hell did I do that?” Maybe you try to fix it. Whether you take remedial action or not, you’re strung high and tight until, a) you realize the sky hasn’t actually fallen and is unlikely to do so, given the time that has passed; or b) your pleasee either forgives you or fails to notice your gaff entirely (by far the most common occurrence).
A word to those of you fortunate enough to understand and believe that you are sufficient, in and of yourself: Pleasers get that in theory, but we never really get that, having been taught otherwise somewhere along the line. Let me repeat that: at some time—probably many times—someone—usually several someones—let us know we weren’t enough, and they let us know in no uncertain, often traumatic terms.
So, for us, the need to please isn’t a decision, it’s knee jerk, hard-learned, deeply entrenched, almost involuntary. Wrongheaded or not, it’s a survival instinct. Resisting the urge is fraught. Fearsome and deeply uncomfortable. Personally speaking, I manage to resist, occasionally, and I’m slowly getting better at it. But resistance is never achieved without considerable psychic cost.
Hello, my name is Kathy, and I’m a pleaser. All I ask is that you afford the pleasers among you the same encouragement and support you’d offer anyone struggling to overcome an addiction or a victim of post-traumatic stress. (Which is often what we are, and I say that without exaggeration.) Oh, and thank you for your patience thus far, frayed though it may be.
