When People Pleasing is Really About Controlling People’s Emotions

I thought people-pleasing, by definition, was a selfless quality.  Granted, people-pleasing isn’t for the faint of heart.  It requires exhausting over-thinking, painstaking anticipation of emotional responses BEFORE they occur, and the compromising flexibility of a contortionist to bend into whatever agreeable shape is needed in the moment.

But surely it was all a labor of love in the name of serving OTHERS.  Right?

Apparently not.  Yesterday I experienced a delayed epiphany.  It wasn’t the kind of “aha!” moment that clever people experience after reading a great article or hearing profound wisdom.  It was more like my epiphany was trying to get through the TSA of my brain to travel to my lobe of rational thought, but got detained because it was flagged as a suspicious potential threat.  

I’m reading a book called Difficult Conversations (Stone, Patton, Heen) where the authors pose the following mind-blowing ideas:

“As we grow up, each of us develops a characteristic ’emotional footprint’ whose shape is determined by which feelings we believe are okay to have and express and which are not.” 

AND

“A second assumption many of us incorporate into our footprint is that there are certain emotions ‘good people’ should never feel: good people don’t get angry at people they love, they don’t cry, they don’t fail, and they are never a burden.”

This started the slow journey of my epiphany, as I began to think back to my life and all the emotions I didn’t feel it was OK to have: anger, wanting something that cost more than $2, or the full spectrum of emotions that might step on or cause conflict with someone else’s emotions. 

But as the book states, “The problem is that when feelings are at the heart of what’s going on, they are the business at hand and ignoring them is nearly impossible.  In many difficult conversations, it is really only at the level of feelings that the problem can be addressed.”

So the turtle-paced epiphany started when I realized that I had to stop limiting MY OWN emotions and feelings based on what I thought was valid or appropriate.  Whaaaaat?? 

But as I said, the epiphany stalled when it had the nerve to start pointing the finger at ME and the way I was limiting the emotions of those around me.  In an enlightening conversation with my husband, he revealed that he doesn’t always feel permission from ME to have certain feelings.  

People-pleaser’s are by nature “fixers” because what we most want is peace.  And, in the name of “peace” we’ll take the blame and shoulder the responsibility to fix and glue what’s wrong.  

The darker underlying desire, for me anyway, is control.  If I can take the BLAME for what’s wrong, I should also be able to FIX it by some action that I CONTROL.  Taking the blame may seem altruistic, but it’s really my twisted way of keeping the ball in my court.

So let’s say my husband is annoyed and it has nothing to do with me.  But I don’t want him to feel annoyed, so I try to fix everything around me with some whimsy and soul-searching questions and promising to clean the world or at least the dishes if that might make him happy.  

The problem is, if he STAYS annoyed after all I do to “FIX” it…I become mad at him.  How dare he have a negative emotion once I, people-pleasing fairy, have come along to make it better? 

I’ve unwittingly created a scenario in which my actions dictate whether my husband’s emotions are valid.  It’s a no-win for him or me.

Yet once the epiphany boarded the plane, it got stuck on the tarmac for a bit longer before finally landing at its final destination.  

Yesterday as  I drove my kids home from a appointment that threw our schedule off kilter, I felt my stress levels rising as my daughter melted down in the back of the car.

She was distraught about her to-do list and her dwindling electronic time and probably something about her brother.

Once again, I wanted to “fix” the emotion so we could get back to Peaceville- and at some point I realized I was doing it again.  I didn’t like her emotion because it was wreaking havoc on the calm of the ride home and it would be easier for me if she could just find the kill switch for her dramatic emotion.  

If I had yelled at her and told her to “knock-it-off” or “get over it”, I’d essentially be revoking her permission to have very human feelings that she couldn’t control.

But the full epiphany came when I realized that with both my husband and daughter I was actually locking myself in a cage along with them.  If I can disentangle my own emotions from what those around me might be experiencing, I can actually find MORE peace than by trying to fix everyone else.  

It’s not my job to make my husband or daughter or anyone else have the feelings that I think would bring peace.  It is simply my job to evaluate and deal with me.  And if I’m NOT always responsible for the emotions of everyone around me 24/7…my job just got a lot easier.

Are you a people-pleaser?  Do you struggle with wanting to fix other people’s emotions or with trying to constantly keep the peace?  How might you be limiting your emotions or someone else’s?  What can you do this week to give others and YOURSELF permission to have and express feelings?