Nothing nice about people pleasers

They walk among us. But they aren’t one of us. They are the people pleasers. And they not only invite unhappiness and misery into our personal lives, but have negatively altered the course of history. They have enabled monsters to wage wars, they have convinced us that weakness is kindness, and they have conspired with evil to fool good people into believing that appeasement is the answer.

People pleasers destroy the world.

I looked it up. According to Medical News Today, “People pleaser” isn’t a medical term, so there’s no clinical definition for what it means. Generally, however, it describes a person who consistently strives to please others, often sacrificing their own wants or needs in the process.

Most people want to feel loved and valued. This is typical, as humans are social creatures and want to belong. As a result, many people occasionally adapt their behaviour to make social interactions smoother. They say what they think others want them to say.

Altruism, or the desire to help others, is another common trait in humans. And whereas this might involve an element of self-sacrifice such as giving money, time, or energy to a cause, people pleasers find it difficult to recognise when it’s time to stop.

Like gamblers – or is that winners – who don’t know when to quit.

On a global scale, people pleasers have left carnage in their wake. Neville Chamberlain, one of the most famous of this type, chose to appease Hitler. And in doing so, allowed him to build a base that took years and many millions of deaths to reverse. Barack Obama, with his inability to name terrorism for what it is, even to enforce even his own “red line”, is partly to blame for slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Syria and the empowerment of Iran. And Cyril Ramaphosa, failing to act against a corrupt African National Congress, allowed the country to sink so low that it cost his party the elections.

It’s not only world leaders who suffer this affliction. Business leaders, rabbis, teachers, professors, community leaders, moms, dads, grandparents, and partners in a relationship can suffer the affliction, failing to recognise when to say no, draw the line, and risk an uncomfortable short-term conversation for longer-term behavioural gain.

People pleasing causes the heads of Ivy League universities to stumble and stutter when asked a simple question, and transitioning athletes to compete in divisions that award them unfair advantage. People pleasing robs us of the courage to speak out.

People pleasing is often sign of low self-esteem or of anxiety. It has an impact on people who are afraid of conflict, or feel they must avoid it, and will do what they can to prevent disagreements. The result is that boundaries are seldom set, behaviour isn’t modified, and remediation becomes more difficult.

Whether it’s Iran or aunty Bessie, a congregant or a colleague, a child or a chairperson, we all need to be curtailed. Failure to do so will result in us becoming the monsters we fear.

In an age of social media, where “likes” has become currency and “followers” represent power, we are a generation more at risk than before. We might not, like Chamberlain, be remembered for supporting the policy of appeasement towards Hitler over the annexation of Czechoslovakia, or be responsible for not stopping the nuclear empowerment of Iran, but we will, without doubt, contribute to the scale of the chaos in the world around us.

Every family has at least one. It’s time to identify who that is, and to address it. And if you’re unable to determine who it is, the people pleaser might well be you.