Imagine going to a restaurant and ordering a hamburger without sauce or cheese. Once you arrive to the discovery: mayo and cheddar are definitely in your sandwich. what do you decide to do? If the answer is “this time I’ll eat it like this, there’s no point bothering the waitress, the cook and the whole kitchen” according to TikTok, you can be people pleasers. But what does that mean? How do we understand if we are and if it hurts us? As always when it comes to mental health and related health, diagnoses and definitions thrown around on social media should be taken with a grain of salt. a hint of disbelief. That’s why we asked some people for their opinion professional psychologistswhich helped us see ourselves more clearly and seek a deeper and more comprehensive approach.
What does people pleaser mean?
Phenomenon people pleasers – which could be loosely translated as “the will to please people” – was first studied by social psychology in the 1970s and is today the subject of interest for many researchers and practitioners in the field. “Being a people pleaser means living your life and trying to make others as comfortable as possible often at the expense of our own well-being. This tendency to be with others can be caused by many aspects that can very often be attributed to our family and the role models we were given growing up,” explains psychologist Francesca Picozzi.
Are we all people pleasers? A word from the experts
Let’s not kid ourselves we all want to be liked by others. We like to make a good impression, and sometimes to do so we momentarily change our ways or lie about our personal tastes. So it will be true that we are everyone is a bit of a people pleaser, Finally? Psychologist Gaia Cavalleri emphasizesexcess: “A people pleaser comes off as overly available and accommodating to others in order to gain their approval. These people have real trouble knowing how to say no, setting limits for others to know how to create a personal space, thereby ending accepting situations in which they would not like to find themselves or which they are unable to satisfy and solve”. From his words, we understand that it is wrong to generalize and turn into a diagnosis social behavior, often superficial or natural. We have to go deeper.
Is it dangerous to be a people pleaser?
These trends in fact themselves they are not necessarily problematicbut they become so when they present themselves consistently and incisively and outline a recurring pattern. Ice axes confirms and reminds that “there is no form of psychopathology that takes this name. Instead, we can say that it refers more to a personality dimension that develops in adolescence and then consolidates in adulthood”. How do you understand when it became pathological and what caused this pattern? Doctor knights is rather direct: “It is not possible to identify a single cause that leads people to adopt certain attitudes. Among the possible factors we have low self-esteem or the presence of anxiety-related disorders. In the long term, people who present these attitudes always push their needs, feelings and emotions more aside to please others, which can cause great stress, worsening anxiety, feelings of frustration, and an overall negative impact on life.
Beware of People Pleasing (and Shallow Attitudes)
Dr. Picozzi invites us to reflect, because if this way of being and experiencing relationships disturbs the balance of our daily lives – especially when it comes to relating to others in a peaceful way – it is the best and most useful thing. is to understand why. “As a psychologist, I can only strongly recommend talking to a mental health professional about this,” concludes the psychotherapist. People pleasers have transformed social media and taken the form of a meme or an ironic trend that is ignored deep roots and ways to deal with an attitude that can prove beneficial in the long run almost self-destructive. On the one hand, it can contribute to the expansion of knowledge about the topic, but on the other hand, it can distance us from it, or worse, downplay and disguise the importance behind the superficial jokes.