The People-Pleasing Project, Vol. 4: Comfortability

A people-pleaser: someone whom consistently caters to the people in their orbit, but often to the detriment of their own needs, desires, and mental health overall.

Being a people-pleaser means carrying many central traits. The one we'll be exploring in this piece is the people-pleaser's drive to create comfortable spaces for the people in their orbit.

As we've discussed on this project, many people-pleasing traits appear to be noble on the surface. Possessing the desire to make others comfortable appears to be an unobjectionable quality of a good and gracious person. However, this quality is more complicated and convoluted in the life and the mind of a people-pleaser.

Going far and beyond to create comfortable spaces for people can work against the people-pleaser in a litany of ways. For one, the person(s) on the other side can either subconsciously or consciously identify this "weakness" and start to seek out opportunities to take advantage of the people-pleaser's compulsion to make them comfortable. This can invite scenarios of disrespect, manipulation and taking-advantage toward the people-pleaser.

Adversely, the people-pleaser can manipulate people through their appeared selflessness in creating these spaces of comfortability for others. This is one thing that we have not discussed on this project enough to this point, admittedly.

People-pleasers are not always victims. Often times, they are the agents of their own chaos when it comes to their behaviors within relationships.

Like many other mental health matters, people-pleasing is a learned behavior from the poisonous tree of the "hurt people hurt people" trope.

Unfortunate, but true. How we handle our suffered trauma is up to us; it's our responsibility. Whether we decide to become a better person from it or decide to inflict that same damage onto others, it's our choice and our choice alone. This becomes more true the deeper we get into adulthood.

Let's re-hash the anatomy of a people-pleaser before we continue: the chief psychological traits for a people-pleaser are conflict avoidance, fear of rejection and the need for approval. These traits are extremely relevant when it comes to the subject of the people-pleaser's relationship with comfortability.

The idea of doing nice things for people under a hidden agenda isn't uncommon. Not great, but not uncommon. People-pleasers aren't malicious with this, necessarily. As I've said before, it's human to desire to be liked by others. It's something else entirely to tie your self-worth to others' opinions of you, good or bad. This is the people-pleaser's curse.

But it's impossible to be genuine and authentic when trying to please everyone. This is the fatal flaw of the people-pleaser; pouring into others at the expense of self. This is where resentment and other bitter emotions get bred, which the people-pleaser can only keep down for so long before it eventually starts emanating in their actions.

For people-pleasers to break their own vicious cycle, they have to meditate on & realize what they want their personal relationship with authenticity to be.

Are you creating comfortable spaces for people because that's truly what your character speaks to? Or is it instead bred in desire to be liked and be told what a "great person" you are in return?

Truth be told, the latter means the people-pleaser is carrying an agenda through their "good deeds" for others.

Think of it as a "quid pro quo" relationship created by the people-pleaser that the other party doesn't even know that they're in. The people-pleaser may create these comfortable spaces for the other party, but what happens when the other party stops supplying the people-pleaser with the approval, validation and appreciation in return?

If you've been tapped in with this project thus far, you probably know what I'm going to say next: the people-pleaser can lash out, making their hidden, underlying resentment known, as their greatest fear has finally arrived: rejection. Their self-esteem takes a hit, and erratic behavior can often follow.

If you're reading this and you're somebody that feels that they go out of their way to make others comfortable in your orbit at whatever cost, that doesn't automatically mean you're a people-pleaser. Yet and still, you have to look inward and discover if that's out of your pure-hearted nature, or if you're... expecting something in return, for lack of a better phrase.

There's a reason why I chose the comedy/tragedy mask as the logo for this project. People-pleasers can appear to be beacons of joy for how selflessly they give and behave towards others; their romantic partners, their bosses, their friends and family. But because people-pleasers don't have the best relationship with regulating their needs vs others', this can brew a lot of pain underneath the surface.

Be authentically gracious. Be genuine in desiring comfortability and calm for others. But try not to do so without an agenda. And if you find that you are, determine what it is inside of you that needs work.

Otherwise, expect the house of cards that you've built on the shaky foundation of people-pleasing and approval-seeking to come crashing down in time.

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