People Pleasing Stuff

Do you find yourself:

constantly worried what other people think of you
working really hard to avoid anyone being upset with you
not knowing what you need or what the hell boundaries even look like for you
experiencing hard core social anxiety
feeling like you don’t really know what makes you happy

People pleasing is so painful! It’s the worst! And we know we do it; oftentimes, we even know when we’re doing it, but it feels like we have no control over it. It feels like if we set a boundary (who’s she?) or say no (never heard of him) we would literally implode. Obviously that’s not real, but that’s how it feels!! It gets in the way of our relationships, it keeps us from showing (or even knowing) our true selves, our wants, needs, desires, and it keeps our bodies in a state of hyper-arousal, which is difficult to function through.

At hella good, we think about people pleasing as a really smart way we figured out how to meet our most basic, fundamental human need: connection and belonging. Being part of a pack, so to speak. Humans are wired to one another for survival - we literally need other humans in order to survive outside the womb. And when other humans meet our need to survive in fucked up ways, we figure out how to remain in control by keeping the other humans happy with us. Enter: people-pleasing.

We don’t have a “5 ways to beat people pleasing” list or a “4 weeks to free yourself from people pleasing” workshop - we believe it takes some time and some deep healing to feel safe enough to stop people pleasing. We work with this often and have effective approaches for your specific experiences and wounding.

Check out our people pleasing specialists below and schedule a free consultation to see if we are a good fit for you!