The Five Wounds of a People Pleaser

I think most of us struggle with being a people pleaser at some point. Our development as adults requires that we let go of the fear of man as the Bible calls it. We first individuate from our parents, a task that takes decades. After that, we must carve out our identities, choosing what we will and will not stand for as a person. Often this process means eliminating friends along the way, determining which relationships are toxic and which are life-giving.

C.S. Lewis famously said that man’s strongest drive was to belong to a group. In essence, humans are herd animals. And like sheep, each of us has gone astray. I suppose the issue is that we follow the wrong shepherds. Whichever shepherd soothes our insecurities and sagging self-worth is the one we will follow to the ends of the earth. But the path to finding the one true shepherd is not an external one. Finding the right church, the one that makes us feel like we belong, doesn’t necessarily guide us to maturity.

Giving up the drug of approval is a rough road, but walking on the Calvary Road requires it of us. So what prevents us from casting off the shelter of other people’s opinions? Usually, if we look within ourselves, we will find wounds that must first be bound up and healed from the inside out.  The longer I live, the more I realize that the way to emotional health is usually from the inside out rather than the outside in.

People Pleaser Wound 1: A Lack of Identity

Individuation is the process whereby we learn what is us and what is not us. Two-year-olds saying no to their parents do that on a scale that seems small to us. But boy, is it big for them! If, as parents, we quash their ability to say no, we begin undermining the individuation process early. And parents often do this, seeing their children as extensions of themselves, rather than individuals in their own right. Usually, this isn’t malicious. Sometimes we don’t recognize that our children might have very different abilities or personalities than our own.

The problem is that if we receive approval when we imitate our parents, then we get initiated into becoming a people pleaser early on. And compliant children can fall into this trap far too easily. I am not knocking teaching children obedience, but I am suggesting that if we examine ourselves, we may find that we learned early to be different was to be found lacking.

Wound 2: Fear of Rejection

Proverbs 29:25 tells us that the fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe. What person does not dread rejection? It hurts! These rejections wound us to the core: getting dumped, getting fired, or suffering through a betrayal. But as painful as they are, lessons lie within the heartache. Hopefully, we learn that we can be stronger than the rejection, that God does not reject us, or that we can carry on despite adversity.

But to live in constant fear of rejection means we must constantly be compromising ourselves, bending and shifting with whatever people demand of us. Fear of rejection hangs like the sword of Damocles over our heads. At any moment, we might find ourselves unloved, confirming our worst fear: that we are unlovable.

People Pleaser Wound 3: Anxious Attachment

This brutal form of anxiety occurs when a parent looks to a child for love rather than being a source of love. The result is a clingy, needy adult who requires constant reassurance and approval. The most important gift a parent must give a child is enough love to give them a sense of security. Children are to be the receivers of love. When parents look to their children as a source for love and security, their children never develop a sense of safety within themselves.

Sometimes parents don’t have enough love to give because their parents deprived them of the same. The good news is that fixing this is doable. After ten years of abuse, my inner security was at an all-time low. But every time neediness threatened to overtake me,  I spent time meditating and absorbing the love of God. It took me about a year to regain any sense of normalcy. Feeling empty inside makes us vulnerable to filling up with harmful distractions, like the false promises of abusers.

Wound 4: Fear of Punishment

The incredible news of the Gospel is difficult to assimilate simply because we are so punishment focused. In the movies, the bad people receive a harsh punishment for their crimes, and we rejoice. As children, most of us learned that punishment meant we were cut off from love for a certain amount of time. If our parents treated us severely and without reestablishing a connection, punishment meant devastation, particularly for the sensitive.

If our parent’s discipline was random or inconsistent, we learned that the other shoe could drop at any time. We absorbed a sense of dread. Worse than rejection, punishment confirms our worst fears. We don’t just do bad things; we are bad people, and everyone knows it. The fear of punishment inspires hypocrisy on the deepest levels. A people pleaser will generally avoid anything that might expose them as bad simply on this basis.

People Pleaser Wound 5: A Need for Justification

By a need for justification, I do not mean a need to be right because anyone who is a people pleaser will gladly forgo that for a chance at approval and love. What I mean is the need to justify one’s existence. Those of us who suffer from this feel constant anxiety, the root of which is the belief that we don’t belong here. Because of this, a people pleaser will always go along with what others want. We will over-serve, rarely ask for help, and never allow ourselves to owe anyone anything.

Some of us constantly apologize for existing. We are convinced that we are only included on the condition that we never become a nuisance or an inconvenience. Our greatest fear is for others to see us as a burden. We hover on the outside of groups, just wanting to warm our hands a little on the fires of friendship.

The truth of the matter is that no one needs justification for existing. How can anyone justify anything over which one has no control? I did not choose to exist; God chose that for me. I need no justification for my existence. I am because He is.

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