The People Pleaser’s Guide to Relational Freedom: Part One… What Is People Pleasing, Really?
“I’m a people pleaser.” I hear this phrase often when I sit across from my clients. Sometimes it’s a shorthand expression of identity. Other times it arrives almost as an apology. On some occasions it comes with a contrite laugh, as though the person already knows they are doing something that betrays themselves. Much of the time there’s exhaustion woven within the phrase, and it’s clear to me the client does NOT like this pattern.
The utterance is often followed by statements along the lines of:
“I just have a hard time saying no.”
“I don’t want anyone to be upset with me.”
“I know what everyone else wants, but I honestly don’t know what I want.”
“I’m always taking care of everyone else, and then I end up resentful.”
People-pleasing has become one of those popular psychological phrases that does a lot of heavy lifting for people’s lived experiences. It implies and tries to explain an enormous amount of human behavior. It appears in social media posts, therapy conversations, self-help books, and countless discussions about boundaries and self-worth. Given the phrase's ubiquity and how many people gravitated towards its use, I wanted to dig in and understand what’s happening at the personal level, in order to support clients, but also at the collective level, because something is brewing within the popularity of these words.
Admittedly, I have found the phrase rather confusing, which is one reason I wanted to write this series, starting with what people-pleasing really is. Caring about other people is not a problem. Being a thoughtful and considerate person is not a problem. In fact, these qualities are deeply human and relational. They are part of what allows us to cooperate, empathize, love, compromise, and belong. The last time I checked, these are qualities many cultures try to instill for personal and collective well-being, not to mention civic engagement. So what IS the problem that people are clearly struggling with? I believe it is their relational frustration and despair. The issue of people-pleasing seems to begin when a person’s connection with others requires them to disconnect and disown themselves in service of unbalanced relational dynamics. In the wild, this can look like:
Keeping the peace versus telling the truth.
Choosing discomfort because someone’s disappointment feels more dangerous.
Sensing, correctly or incorrectly, that the relationship will end if needs are communicated.
Ignoring emotions that signal something is “off” within the relationship.
Maintaining familiar roles even if they have become a great burden.
While not an exhaustive list, I notice myself feeling exhausted after writing it! These are the problems of people-pleasing, and they are major relational struggles rooted in care, but the way out is not caring less. Perhaps the answer to these dynamics can be found in a reconstitution of care and love. There’s an opportunity to remain deeply caring while also remaining present inside yourself. That is what I mean by relational freedom. This series of posts starts by defining people-pleasing and puts words to these challenging and often invisible dynamics. Part two will explore strategies for how to remain relationally kind and warm, while not losing yourself in the other. Finally, follow-up pieces will expand on relationship skills and dynamics that seem to be central struggles for so many of us who look to honor others while honoring ourselves.
What Does “People Pleasing” Actually Mean?
People pleasing is a popular psychological term, but it is not a mental health diagnosis. Until recently, the field of psychology did not have a well-established research construct specifically called “people pleasing.” Only in the last year has this begun to change.
A 2026 study by psychologist Christian Blötner developed and validated a 10-item People Pleasing Scale across two preregistered studies involving 1,894 participants (it should be noted that the data samples came from Germany; cultural factors should be considered). The researchers identified three related dimensions of people pleasing: feeling responsible for other people’s well-being, neglecting one’s own needs, and feeling compelled to meet other people’s expectations.
Interestingly, the researchers also found that people pleasing was related to, but distinguishable from, traits such as agreeableness and empathy. In other words, people pleasing is not simply another way to describe being a kind or agreeable person. It seems to involve something more complicated, particularly when caring for other people begins to come at the expense of caring for yourself. (Blötner, 2026)
Upon further investigation, the phrase itself has a surprisingly long history. The Oxford English Dictionary traces “people-pleaser” back to 1579, when it referred to an obsequious or servile person, particularly in a workplace context. The contemporary psychological meaning is much newer, but the basic human dilemma is certainly not new. People have been negotiating the tension between belonging and individuality for a very long time, maybe since the very beginning, as this feels like a fundamental paradox that all social creatures have to navigate.
Perhaps that is why the phrase resonates so strongly. Most of us know something about wanting to be liked and to belong. So many of us understand the dilemma of noticing someone’s disappointment, or even anger towards us, and immediately wonder what we have done wrong because it feels deeply uncomfortable to be in the crosshairs of someone’s negative perception of us. Finally, many of us have chosen the easier conversation rather than the honest one. After all, it takes a great deal of energy to work through the truth. Given this conceptualization, people-pleasing starts to look like a mirror many of us have gazed into.
Not All “People Pleasing” Is a Problem
Before we go further, I want to defend and honor something relationally sacred. I don’t want to live in a world where kindness and consideration of others are treated as pathology. Some people are naturally generous and attentive to others. There are many people who genuinely enjoy helping their fellow humans. Likewise, some people are highly sensitive to the emotional atmosphere around them. Many people derive meaning from contributing to the well-being of the people they love or resonate with. If these ways of being are considered defects, what are we even doing? Human beings are social creatures, and our capacity to notice and respond to one another makes relationships possible. It might be part of why we have survived as a species.
Personality research gives us some useful language for understanding the distinction between people-pleasing and being a conscientious person. Agreeableness, one of the major dimensions of personality, is associated with qualities such as cooperation, relational investment, social integration, and orientation toward social norms. A large quantitative review of 142 meta-analyses, representing more than 1.9 million participants across more than 3,900 studies, found that agreeableness was associated with a wide range of social and interpersonal outcomes (Wilmot & Ones, 2022). Research on personality and prosocial behavior similarly suggests that individual differences in personality help explain why some people are more inclined toward helping, cooperation, and other prosocial behaviors (Thielmann, Spadaro, & Balliet, 2020).
So if you are someone who senses that a friend is uncomfortable and wants to provide support, that does not mean you are a people pleaser. If you enjoy helping other people feel welcome, that does not mean you have poor boundaries. Likewise, if you sometimes change your plans because someone you love needs you, that does not mean you are abandoning yourself. Relationships require flexibility and attunement. There’s room for generosity and compromise. Sometimes circumstances ask us to put another person’s needs ahead of our own. The problem is not that you, or any of us, consider other people. The problem is when other people’s needs become more important than your own internal reality.
Let's expand the distinction between a helpful personality and people-pleasing. There is a difference between saying, “I care about how this affects you,” and saying, “How you feel determines what I am allowed to do.” There is a difference between “I’m willing to compromise” and “I will disappear inside the compromise that isn’t really a compromise.” There is a difference between “I don’t want to hurt you” and “I cannot tolerate you being disappointed or angry with me.” These distinctions matter and show the subtlety of relational dynamics. While I’ve often resisted defining what is “healthy” and what is not, I feel more and more comfortable saying that healthy relationality makes room for two people's viewpoints and needs. Win/win is a must.
People pleasing often solely makes room for one person at a time, and the person whose needs get the most room is usually the person who is the most distressed, most disappointed, or most likely to become angry. Paying attention to the equal relational exchange and balance between people becomes part of assessing people-pleasing patterns.
When Caring Becomes Self-Abandonment
At its most entrenched and thorny, people-pleasing can become a form of self-abandonment. When people come into my office and say with frustration they are “people pleasers,” I think they understand this on some level and want to reclaim themselves within relationships.
There’s something deeply painful about repeatedly saying “yes” while something inside you is screaming “no.” Likewise, it really grates to notice feeling resentful after making plans or committing to something that doesn't align with your inner compass. Then there’s the pain of suppressed anger when you believe that being angry makes you difficult, selfish, or unlovable. Now you have to apologize for having needs. Now you have to expend enormous amounts of energy trying to anticipate how someone else will react before you have even asked yourself what you want. Now you have a comprehensive grasp of everyone else’s perspective, but you cannot quite locate your own. Self-abandonment has become the invisible water around you, and while this might appear simply about having better boundaries, there’s a larger reckoning brewing. It’s the reckoning of self-trust and congruence. Both are critical to psychological well-being (and beyond).
Many people, understandably, get tired of swimming in these kinds of dynamics and begin to drown, but changing them requires a great deal of work. People-pleasing is often less about kindness and more about what happens when kindness and selfhood come into conflict. While the focus of Part Two of this series addresses how to overcome these patterns, I want to provide hope and say that it is possible to be kind while also being aligned with your identity, needs, and values; however, that means going against the old and powerful currents of your life.
Why Is Saying “No” So Hard?
Sometimes people-pleasing is a skills problem; other times it has relational trauma roots that are soaking up those old and powerful currents of self-abandonment. On the level of skills, it’s possible you were never taught how to disagree in a relationally attuned way. Perhaps caregivers and other important people in your early life didn’t model how to make requests or share discomfort in interpersonally effective ways. Likewise, you may have learned conflict means yelling, withdrawal, criticism, or someone storming out of the room. Maybe you never learned how to tolerate another person’s disappointment. These are skills that can be learned with practice within safe relational containers. But to use our skills, something else may require attention first.
Within the above skill examples, which are not exhaustive, you may have noticed relational pain. Each example contained a kind of abandonment. Here’s where people-pleasing can start to feel like a hall of mirrors linked to relational trauma. Others weren’t able to be with us in conflict and relational truth, which means the problem isn’t simply that you don’t know how to have a difficult conversation. Developmental psychology and psychodynamic theory have demonstrated that our sense of self begins within relationships. If others abandon the relationship when difficulties arise, how could we learn the necessary skills, not to mention form a robust sense of self that can endure different perspectives and emotional needs? A stable sense of self allows us to remain ourselves while another person has a different experience. Relational trauma disrupts that sense of self, making it that much harder to trust yourself because you weren’t able to trust others.
Coming back to the research on what psychologists call autonomy-connectedness is particularly interesting here. Autonomy-connectedness describes the capacity to function as an autonomous person while also engaging satisfactorily in relationships. In one study, assertiveness was a strong predictor of autonomy-connectedness, suggesting that being able to express oneself and one’s needs is not the opposite of connection. It is part of the capacity to participate in relationships as a whole person (Bekker et al., 2008).
Understanding people-pleasing through the concepts of self-trust and wholeness takes the patterns beyond just interpersonal skills and boundary work. What we’re really talking about is psychological integrity and remaining connected to yourself as much as others inside a relationship. It is much easier to learn and use the necessary skills when you feel whole within yourself. Having a robust sense of self that can tolerate others having different experiences is key to more balanced relationships that don’t involve self-abandonment.
People Pleasing Is Not Just a Thinking Problem
If we understand people-pleasing through a trauma-informed lens and how you experience your sense of self, these patterns start to go beyond cognition, moving into our embodied way of being. In my experience, clients who express “I am a people pleaser” already have significant insight. They have reflected on relational patterns, read the books, taken attachment style quizzes, and made an effort to develop interpersonal skills. While this work is foundational and supports a more balanced approach to relationships, it still doesn’t address the underlying wholeness-of-self dilemma that seems to be central to people-pleasing patterns.
Our sense of self, and hopefully its wholeness, comes from many sources. The contents and qualities of our thoughts and self-talk form part of the picture, while the sensations within our bodies form another. With so much emphasis put on the cognitive aspects of people-pleasing, I’d like to focus on the body’s role in these patterns for a moment.
Before the conscious mind has formulated an argument, the body may already be responding with subtle and not so subtle sensations. Perhaps someone expresses their displeasure, and your stomach drops as if riding a roller coaster. In other relational exchanges, your chest tightens until it feels like a vice or your shoulders rise like hot air balloons. Or maybe someone asks for your input, and you feel nothing at all. There’s a void from head to heart. This is where interoception becomes relevant to our understanding of people-pleasing. Interoception refers broadly to our capacity to perceive and interpret signals arising from within the body. Research has found associations between interoceptive awareness and emotional regulation. A systematic review by Pinna and Edwards found that greater interoception was associated with aspects of more effective emotional regulation and with handling social uncertainty, while also emphasizing that relatively few studies met their inclusion criteria (Pinna & Edwards, 2020).
Beyond even emotional regulation, our sensations tell us about our experience in a given moment. If the body is habitually tense, braced, numb, or vigilant, that impacts how we experience ourselves and who we know ourselves to be across life. Take this into a relational context, and you might notice all the ways your body reacts to others, which is eroding your sense of confidence and self-trust.
Becoming aware of internal sensations and learning to participate with them can not only build self-trust, but it can develop your capacity to be uncomfortable within relationships. Given the body’s role in these patterns, it is not enough to identify patterns and learn about relational dynamics. People pleasing asks us to notice the sensations around saying “no” or expressing our needs and working with them to manage the subtle and not so subtle sensations that are saying “this isn’t safe” and “we’re not okay.”
The Conflict Paradox
To conclude part one of this series, which focused on defining what people-pleasing is and where these patterns come from, I want to come back to a very real tension humans have to navigate. Are we choosing ourselves or are we choosing others? Where does love express itself: with ourselves or the other? We often avoid conflict because we are trying to protect our connections. We can think: “If I don’t bring this up, we won’t fight,” or “If I don’t tell them I’m angry, everything will be okay,” or “If I make myself easy enough to love, perhaps I can keep the relationship safe.” There’s tenderness and vast consideration in this strategy. It makes a lot of sense and was developed for a reason: relational preservation is very important to human survival. And yet, there is a paradox.
Sometimes avoiding conflict protects a relationship from discomfort while simultaneously preventing the relationship from becoming more intimate and stable. If you never tell someone that you’re hurt, they do not actually get the opportunity to understand what hurt you. If you never disagree with them, they never get to know where you stand. If you continually accommodate them, they may have no idea what you’re giving up. The relationship may feel peaceful. But peace and intimacy are not the same thing. Real intimacy requires that both people are present and more authentic than not. Both people need to bring their full selves to the relational encounter.
In writing that last sentence, I can feel its truth, but I can also feel its tension. Not everyone has the capability or capacity to be in conflict and bring themselves to the relational exchange. The quality of what happens during conflicts matters a lot. Some people become defensive, critical, contemptuous, and/or withdrawing (see the work of John and Julie Gottman and their concept of the Four Horsemen of the Relational Apocalypse). As any good couple’s therapist will tell you, learning how to navigate differences is no small task and requires significant self and relational development. This is why I am reluctant to tell people that healthy relationships simply require “better communication.” Communication matters, but so does the capacity to remain relationally present when the conversation becomes uncomfortable. Addressing conflict requires significant psychological development.
Sometimes the most intimate thing you can say is, “I love you, and I don’t agree with you. Can we find a path forward that works for BOTH of us?”
Part One Conclusion: This Is Complex
As it turns out, just two words can signify a complex relational strategy rooted in deep human need. People-pleasing is more than personality and being agreeable. There is something deeply distressing about approaching relationships with self-abandonment at the ready. Even beyond the costs to the individual, there are costs to the relationship. Real intimacy is obscured. When people utter these two words in sessions, I have a greater appreciation for what they may be sacrificing. Humans are relational creatures, so this is no small offering and points to a deep longing for balanced relationships, grown from mutual connection. The next installment in this series will begin exploring how to address these patterns now that they are more defined.
Until then, if you have said those two words too often, there is hope for relational freedom without abandoning your care and warmth as a person. I offer relationally-focused, somatic therapy for adults and teens in San Rafael and throughout Marin County, along with telehealth across California. Schedule a free consultation to see if we're a good fit.
References
Bekker, M. H. J., Croon, M. A., van Balkom, E. G. A., & Vermee, J. B. G. (2008). Predicting individual differences in autonomy-connectedness: The role of body awareness, alexithymia, and assertiveness. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 64(6), 747–765. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20486
Blötner, C. (2026). Valuing others over oneself: Development and validation of a people pleasing scale in two German samples. Current Psychology, 45, Article 952. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-09519-2
Gottman Institute. (n.d.). The four horsemen: Recognizing criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/
Oxford English Dictionary. (n.d.). People-pleaser. In Oxford English Dictionary. https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1644676844
Pinna, T., & Edwards, D. J. (2020). A systematic review of associations between interoception, vagal tone, and emotional regulation: Potential applications for mental health, wellbeing, psychological flexibility, and chronic conditions. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, Article 1792. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01792
Thielmann, I., Spadaro, G., & Balliet, D. (2020). Personality and prosocial behavior: A theoretical framework and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146(1), 30–90. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000217
Wilmot, M. P., & Ones, D. S. (2022). Agreeableness and its consequences: A quantitative review of meta-analytic findings. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 26(3), 242–280. https://doi.org/10.1177/10888683211073007