Mental health articles

Why do I want to please others?

  The arrangements of genes physiologically and the deepest instructions from social patterns urge us to actively pursue praise and recognitions of other people, especially those important persons having control over rewards(such as care, social status, grades in school, salary and so on), whose praise and recognitions are more essential.

  As pleasing others can help pleasers gain recognitions they are eager for, they will be addicted to do so. If something makes you feel good, you may well do it continually to maintain the good feeling.

  Generally, parents are the most important roles to us during out early life. Therefore, most children will try to please their parents to get recognitions and sense of security. This sort of parent-child relationship seeming harmonious sometimes changes due to parents’ crankiness, turning kids into puppets that behave according to “recognition”. Especially when parents give their love as a conditional reward, they are equivalent to pushing their kids to a path of seeking recognition that leads them to pleasers.

  When children’s appearances and behaviors satisfy their parents, they will label their kids as well-behaved babies, which will also make kids aware of the value of love. However, once children are unable to please their parents, love will be called back. Such conditional love of parents will have a profound negative impact on children.

  This type of disease of pleasing, begins from childhood, develops slowly into three causations of pleasing with aging (including the mentality of pleasing, the habit of pleasing, the feel of pleasing), and leads you unconsciously a pleaser who pleases others but feels unhappy.

Wrong cognitions of pleasers

Pleasers make wrong assumptions about interpersonal relationship. For instance, the demand and expectations of others are more important than mine. Anyway I shouldn’t disappoint or trouble others; I should keep kind forever and never hurt others’ feeling; I should be happy and cheerful forever and show negative emotions to others; I never impose my own problems or demand on others; People should like and accept me forever, since I have done so much for them.

Most pleasers believe that if they don’t take priority on others, they will be regarded as selfish persons who are not worthy of being cared, and are abandoned eventually, living a miserable destiny. It is assumed by pleasers that only by making contributions continually and doing a lot to please others can they have a chance to gain love and care.

In the interpersonal relationship, pleasers always fail to put others’ demand and their own needs on unequal status, resulting in an imbalanced life as they usually have to meet with others. As a matter of fact, acting in a self-centered way is not same as selfishness what is called.

Offers are not always happier than receivers all the time, and the best balanced state of interpersonal relationship is offering and receiving at the same time. To change these assumptions, cognitions about “kindness” in self-concept must be changed first.

It doesn’t matter if you are not kind

  It doesn’t matter if you fail to be kind to others at all times. At first, this perception still seems threatening as pleasers always have the characteristic of kindness from a long time. However, think it over, how much have you paid as a pleaser to make kindness be the center of self-concept?

   Now you need friends to help you establish new self-concept. How will other people look upon you if you are bereft of kindness? Ideal self-concept is closer to behaviors happened truly to you, your self-esteem will benefit more. The most direct way of enhancing self-esteem is acting just as an ideal self.

   To unlock the heart knot, pleasers should tell themselves: my own demand, desires and opinions are also important as others’, even more important; take care of myself, make those I love aware that I have demand too and they are supposed to undertake a part of responsibilities to help me meet the demand of mine; to get rid of the disease of seeking recognition, the important thing is your own feeling other than what you have done; if you want to say” no”, never say OK.

   A good person can also say no. If saying no makes you feel so anxious and guilty, please think this way: to preserve the right of saying good to the most important person, the only method is saying no firmly and effectively to some people in some occasions. It will not harm your value in others’ eyes to say no proper persons in proper occasions. On the contrary, it will increase your value.

Live for yourself, not for your parents

   Dating back to early life, pleasers might well find it is the pattern of relationship between themselves and their parents that mainly contributes them to pleasers. If so, please cut the encircling band of memory bravely, tell yourself: I should live for myself from birth other than for meeting parent’s expectations and needs; if parents do not accept my life; it is not necessary to be disappointed and unhappy; respecting myself is the most important thing.

   If parents fail to give recognitions or unconditional love to me, I will love my own children with the mentality when I expect parents’ love. Children have their own life; they do not born to meet my expectations or needs.

Regardless of your cognitions, the real transformation requires practical actions, changing bad habits by systematic strategies and replacing them with healthier lifestyle. If you are able to change the disease of pleading for so long with these methods, you will manage again any part you are not satisfied with currently, including behavior, appearance, healthy habits, relationship, thought and feeling. In other word, you will possess the power of changing yourself once you manage to overcome the disease of pleasing.

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