So you’ve always thought that your kindness and passion to help others were strengths, values and positive motivators in your life. But now you’re starting to wonder - is it people pleasing? Is this actually a flaw? Do I need to put a hard ‘no’ on caring so much?

As a coach working with people who want to make a positive impact in the world, who are compassionate and driven to help others – people who are changemakers or work in helping professions such as the care industry, health or education, or active in community and voluntary work – I often come across people questioning how much should you keep giving, how much CAN you keep giving, should you stop caring, is it too much?

And they often relate this issue to ‘people pleasing’ - whether they have self-identified as ‘people pleasers’, or have been ‘accused’ of it (quite often by good friends or adult daughters!). So now you find yourself in this situation where kindness and compassion, being passionate about helping others and making a positive difference in the world - your strengths and qualities that you have been proud of, and that have driven so many of the behaviours and achievements that you have felt good about - now look like flaws or weaknesses. And maybe they feel like it too - you feel permanently pulled to pieces and you’re not sure you’re really helping anyone anyway. But what are you supposed to do? Stop caring, stop helping people? What would you do instead? And how would you prioritise your own needs when you don’t even know what they are, and there is so much obvious need all around you?

Let’s start by saying that your kindness is a strength.

Positive Psychologists have included Kindness (doing favours and good deeds) alongside Love (valuing close relationships with others) and Social Intelligence (being aware of other people’s motives and feelings) on a list of character strengths under the category of ‘humanity’.

Research has linked kindness to happiness, and prosocial behaviour to resilience.

“A growing body of evidence suggests that the single greatest driver of both achievement and well-being is understanding how your daily efforts enhance the lives of others. Scientists have determined human beings are innately other-directed, which they refer to as being ‘prosocial’. According to top researchers who reviewed hundreds of studies on this subject, the defining features of a meaningful life are ‘connecting and contributing to something beyond the self”

— Tom Rath, It's Not About You: A Brief Guide to a Meaningful Life

‘Giving’ is one of the evidence-based Five Ways to Wellbeing.

The desire or drive to help and please others is normal for our species, although some people are particularly driven in this way, and it is known to be part of what has contributed to the success of our species.

And if you look on Brene Brown’s list of core values, (and on most variations of values lists) you’ll see values that you might appreciate, such as compassion, cooperation, harmony, generosity, kindness, making a difference, peace, service. Clearly the possibility of these being your core values is normal and expected, and it is generally agreed that aligning yourself with your values can lead to authenticity, fulfilment, satisfaction and wellbeing. So, not weaknesses.

But there is a problem, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be questioning it.

Maybe you agree about kindness and helping being strengths, and you operate on this basis, but somehow it doesn’t feel like it’s giving you happiness, fulfilment and resilience – in fact you feel exhausted, anxious, and maybe burnt out, angry or depressed.

Maybe people aren’t as pleased as they should be, you don’t feel appreciated, your relationships aren’t as secure as you might hope considering all this effort, or pleasing some people displeases others, and you feel so torn between trying to meet all the needs that you’re not managing to do a good job for anyone.

Perhaps you have reached a wall in the genuine impact you can make as someone trying to make a difference and change things for the better, because this sometimes means doing things differently, speaking up, changing systems, rocking the boat and potentially upsetting some people in order to help others, or to make the positive impact that you want – and for you this means too much anxiety, or you don’t feel like your voice is worth raising.

Maybe it doesn’t feel like you are intentionally choosing to use your strengths or act in alignment with your values - perhaps it feels more like you have no choice, or that it’s just better than the alternative: conflict, guilt, anxiety, rejection. Perhaps you’ve been trying to say ‘no’ more often, but it doesn’t seem to be going down very well and you feel even worse.

The problem with pleasing people – that causes it not to work the way you hope (and some of what you ‘hope’ may be unconscious), and that leads to you feeling so depleted - is usually not ‘the pleasing of people’ itself, but whatever is running underneath or alongside it. So that might be where you should pay attention.

Photo by Ekaterina Shevchenko on Unsplash

Might any of these be under the surface or entangled in your drive to help and please?

Below are a few examples of the kind of thing that might be going on in and amongst your strength of kindness and value of helping – do any of these resonate with you? Some of this may be unconscious so it might be interesting to notice if you have a response of any sort (even indignation?!) to any of the below, and then looking at whether there is a grain of truth in it.

Believing that you do not have worth unless you please others, that you are not safe unless you are liked or pleasing others
Being criticised, judged, rejected or disliked by anyone is intolerable – and carries inherent meaning about who you are and your value
Believing that your inherent value is lower than others, that your needs don’t count as much, and feeling disconnected from your own needs
That your needs are an inconvenience, selfish, and cause problems - or putting your needs to one side makes you a good person
You feel responsible for everyone and everything - and if things go wrong it will be your fault, and you will feel guilty, so you try to pre-empt that by doing what is needed
If you don’t take care of things yourself, it’s likely that things will go wrong
Believing that people will let you down, or there’ll be bad consequences if you leave it to them (people are untrustworthy)
Believing that other people cannot cope if they don’t have their needs met or experience negative emotions, so it’s better for you to prioritise their needs over yours
Not wanting to experience uncomfortable emotions yourself, for example guilt or anxiety / fear of conflict
Feeling that you ‘owe’ everyone
Attempting to control (other people’s feelings, the outcomes, etc) to alleviate your anxiety about uncertainty

These can come from trauma, but also from a more benign but still impactful conditioning throughout our childhood, and get entrenched in adulthood, or can result from an accumulation of experiences or social/cultural conditioning throughout life.

One big problem with believing many of the above, is that it puts you in an impossible situation.

There is an obvious tension here if you hold any of these beliefs or expectations, because quite a lot of it is out of your control. We can’t actually control the outcomes, other people’s feelings or whether or not they like us, and we can’t really avoid unpleasant emotional experiences for ourselves either. Paradoxically the more we try to ensure things go a certain way, or avoid certain feelings, the more we might end up with the opposite. So we try even harder, to do these things that are impossible. You cannot ensure that someone else feels pleased or happy as a result of your action, and you certainly can’t please everyone – and so you can end up getting more torn and confused and depleted and resentful. The more you attempt to avoid uncomfortable emotions like fear and anxiety, the more scary and worrying they become.

What can you do?

When people talk about addressing people pleasing, a lot of attention goes on the behaviour – saying ‘no’ and doing less pleasing and helping. But if the issue is less in the helping itself, and more in what’s rumbling along underneath and alongside it, perhaps that’s where your attention should be.

Understanding and bringing unconscious beliefs into the light can help you to start to separate them out from your helping behaviour. Sometimes simple awareness of the underlying beliefs and observing them in action can be enough for them to lose their power, so that they are less likely to trigger the anxiety, fear or sense of obligation that directs your actions, allowing you to make choices each time about being helpful or kind, if it brings you joy, and is in line with your values and morals.

Challenging, re-framing or replacing outdated or unhelpful beliefs - sometimes just observing them isn’t enough and you need to actively attempt to change them.

Embody new beliefs - I’ve lost count of how many times people start coaching saying they have tried to tell themselves something (effectively attempting to challenge or a replace a belief as per the point above), and they just don’t seem to be convincing themselves. Sometimes it’s because it’s still tangled up with some beliefs that we haven’t uncovered yet, but it can also be because our body is holding different information that we are not taking into consideration, and bringing the body on board can be a powerful way to make the shifts. Or, concepts that we are trying to communicate to ourselves go beyond words or logic, and this is why sometimes visualisation or metaphors can give you a new perspective that trying to persuade yourself logically couldn’t do.

Re-connecting with your values and purpose and refocussing so that you can make values-based decisions and feel motivated by what you want to do, rather than the purpose being avoidance of negative consequences. So it’s looking at what you want to move towards rather than what you are moving away from.

Identifying what needs you are attempting to meet through your current behaviour, and finding ways to meet those needs that serve you (and others) better. For example you might be making an assumption that to meet your need for connection, you have to prove yourself worthy of connecting with and therefore the question you are asking is ‘How can I prove myself worthy?’ But if you take that assumption out and go back to the need itself, the question might become ‘How can I make a connection?’

You could get started through journalling, meditation, quite reflection or with help from a professional such as a therapist or coach. If you would like help to get started, so that your strenghths and values of kindness, compassion and helping others can actually FEEL and ACT like strengths and values rather than weights and burdens, email me to arrange a free, no commitment call and we can take a look together: christina.transformational@gmail.com

Is your kindness a strength (or is it just ‘people- pleasing’)?