What some call “people pleasing” is often a trauma response. I have been working with traumatized youth and adults for 20 years, and I have noticed that the concept of saying “yes” or the inability to say “no” is often cultivated from the time we were children as a perception. Quick psych 101: Everything starts with a perception, which then leads to a thought; then feeling; then emotion; then action; then behavior; then habit; then personality; then finalizing character. Therefore, our perception ultimately leads to the development of our character. The concept of “in order for me to be right, do right, or resist conflict, I need to please people” is developed from perception.
This is not always the case of course, but I have seen it often. Many people know about the trauma response of “fight or flight”. Some have even gone deeper to understand the “freeze” response, but what most have either not learned, or we as educators have not taught, is the concept of “people-pleasing,” also known as “the Fawn Response”. “Fawning,” or excessive people- pleasing, is the other trauma response or physiological reaction that occurs in responding to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. It’s responsive to the body’s primary stress hormone called Cortisol that shoots through our bodies. It’s our trauma responses that become our coping mechanisms and later morph into defense mechanisms. If a young boy is bullied, degraded, and picked on at home by his brothers or his father, it is not unlikely that the young boy may mimic a similar behavior in school and bully others or stand down and allow himself to be bullied. That same young boy often grows up to be a man that is either extremely confrontational or a man that avoids conflict, fawns, and strives hard to please others. To fawn is the state of what some mental health specialists identify as “surrender”.
Surrender is what we do when we have to please people to feel recognized or avoid pain. I, too, agree with this concept in some cases. I define people-pleasing as using servitude to avoid areas that remind them of conflict, aggression, fights, or trauma. Instead of working through those circumstances, they choose to serve their way through them. The goal in recovering from the negative results of people-pleasing is identifying the root: where did this first begin? The goal is also to ask yourself if you are ok with certain requests and what those requests will require of you?” Think through how assuming new responsibilities may affect your life and relationships. Sometimes this is a concern that you should process with a mental health professional who is better equipped to help you arrive at an answer that is best for you. However, it is also important to note that sometimes, there are times where pleasing others aligns well with your character because you have defined it less as a “condition” and more as an opportunity to serve as a servant leader. Just ask yourself “do I give myself permission to say no?”. The answer to that question will help you better gauge if you are acquiring new responsibilities in a healthy or unhealthy way.