People Pleasing

I have a bone to pick with the term "people-pleasing."

The Common Understanding of People-Pleasing

These days, many of us recognise behaviours in ourselves that we categorise as people-pleasing. Entire books have been written on the subject. While the concept brings awareness to the ways we sacrifice our own needs for others, I take issue with the way it is often framed.

The Benefit of Awareness

What I appreciate is that it helps us identify the parts of ourselves that will prioritise someone else’s comfort over our own. It highlights how our nervous system is wired for external vigilance—constantly scanning the emotions and needs of others rather than tuning into ourselves. This outward focus can really cost us, disconnecting us from our bodies and our basic physical and emotional needs, often burning us out and leaving us exhausted and maybe resentful.

Learning to differentiate between our own needs and someone else’s is an important skill, as is making a conscious choice about which needs we wish to meet and having the ability to feel, set, and enact clear boundaries.

The Problem with the Term "People-Pleasing"

But here’s what I don’t like about the term "people-pleasing": it is inherently shaming.

The label implies that this pattern of behaviour is wrong, broken, or something to fix and feel bad about—just another flaw to add to the list. It often feels like a moral failing, a character problem, a defective trait. But the truth is, this pattern developed for a reason. That reason is often not just personal but reflective of our family dynamics; it’s also profoundly cultural, generational, and deeply ingrained in the way we’ve learned to survive, be loved, and belong.

Of course, like anything, there is a shadow side to this external orientation. If we are always tending to others at the expense of ourselves, if we have lost the ability to honour our own needs, then we need to rebalance. But let’s not shame the root of this behaviour. Let’s understand it.

Where Does This Pattern Come From?

For many of us, this pattern was learned early on. As children, we discovered that keeping others happy kept us safe and/or loved. Perhaps our caregivers modeled this behaviour, or perhaps we were taught, explicitly or implicitly, that our needs didn’t matter as much as keeping the peace. We may have never been asked what we needed, never given the space to explore or articulate our own desires. Over time, we internalised the belief that prioritising ourselves was wrong or selfish.

And it doesn’t stop with us as children in our family system. We exist within a broader culture that has, for generations, taught people—especially women—to be "good." To be agreeable, accommodating, and self-sacrificing. The legacy of people-pleasing isn’t just personal; it is intergenerational, a thread woven through the fabric of our history. And deeper still, it is the primally driven movement of a social mammal. Creating social connection and attunement enables us to have fluid social dynamics and literally keeps us alive (we need the other members of our pack to survive).

A Different Perspective: Sensitivity, Not Shame

What if, instead of labelling ourselves as people-pleasers, we recognised this behaviour as a profound sensitivity to others' needs? An ability to read the room, anticipate needs, and create harmony—skills that stem from our deeply social nature as humans. We don’t exist outside of connection, and our attunement to others is a beautiful, necessary trait.

What if this was just a strong ability to externally orient and attune and an underdeveloped capacity to internally orient and attune? Then it’s not a character flaw; it’s an under-trained muscle. Like, I'm great at deadlifts, but I'm working on my squats to bring balance to my strength training! But if I learnt that I got lots of attention, love, and praise for practising my deadlifts, while my squat practice received no attention or was even mocked and punished—then which strength movement would I practice more?

Reclaiming Our Needs with Compassion

So, yes, it is important to reclaim our ability to recognise, value, and voice our own needs. But we must also offer ourselves compassion, as learning new patterns is hard and inherently clumsy. We are undoing something deeply embedded in our subconscious, and we can only unravel that old pattern one thread at a time.

That’s my issue with the term "people-pleasing." It carries shame when what we actually need is understanding.