people pleasing Archives - Complete Wellbeing

Get rid of the disease called ‘What will people say?’

Dinesh Kumar — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 04:30:41 +0000

If we cannot look after ourselves, not in a selfish but in a self-esteeming way and instead spend time on speculating what other people will say or do, we are sure to tie ourselves in veritable knots of perpetual pain. In a world of billions, how many are we going to satisfy?

Sacrificing daughter’s wishes for societal norms

This is just what Prakash and his family were trying to do, at the cost of their daughter’s happiness and their grandson’s future—“to save face”. Prakash’s daughter Jyoti was 19 when she gained admission to a college in the US. Though Jyoti had shown maturity well beyond her age, she was denied permission to go abroad by her family for fear that she was too young to be left alone in a foreign country. Jyoti lost her scholarship and with it, her dream of studying further.

Jyoti’s family, though well-to-do, were bound by tradition. They did what many such families do—made their daughter rush to tie the knot through an arranged marriage. In many arranged marriages, the girl in particular, has no say in the matter. In her case, every decision was taken by the parents. When everything had been finalised, she was asked what she thought of the boy and his family. Jyoti knew it was just a formality to evade any responsibility if things did not work out.

In a world of billions, how many are we going to satisfy?

Discovering that your partner is a schizophrenic

So Jyoti married Suresh, a software engineer. In less than a week, Jyoti found something strange about Suresh’s behaviour. She heard him talking to himself and often saw him standing in front of the mirror, having conversations with his reflection. She found this very odd but kept her counsel. When his behaviour began to disturb her, she spoke to her parents who advised her to check whether Suresh was on any medication. Jyoti discovered that her mother-in-law would add a little medicine into Suresh’s coffee every morning. When Jyoti reported this to her parents, she was asked to note down the name of the medicine Suresh was being given.

Jyoti’s father was told by a psychiatrist that the medicine was usually prescribed to those suffering from mental illness. The doctor said it was difficult to make an assessment without meeting the man, but he suspected Suresh could be suffering from schizophrenia and he explained what the disease was. Jyoti’s father was troubled and asked if she could get the prescription and the name of the doctor who started the medication. Jyoti found out that Suresh had been visiting a well-known psychiatrist in Delhi. Prakash then met the doctor who confirmed that Suresh was schizophrenic; he then said that Suresh would have to be kept on medication for as long as was necessary.

In Suresh’s case, the disease was reflected in the unconventional way he dressed and the grandiose statements he made. Even more noticeable, while most software engineers carry their laptops in a bag, Suresh used a big box. In this, he would carry not just his laptop but CDs with all his software. He also constantly saved all his data, music and spiritual lectures on pen-drives. In fact, he carried his entire office along with him. It was just a matter of time before he was fired.

What will people say?

The family blamed Jyoti for all the ills her husband faced. When Jyoti came to see me, enough of a mess had been created in her life because of the ‘what will people say?’ mindset followed by her parents. “Stay in the marriage, otherwise what will people say?” “Don’t say a word to anyone, including your friends, otherwise what will people say?” “Look after Suresh, he is your husband, otherwise what will people say?” The situation got compounded when she got pregnant. Caught between her parents’ diktats and her in-laws’ accusations, Jyoti felt helpless. Abortion was out of the question because she was too far along. Her parents told her that her life would be lovely once the ‘bundle of joy’ arrived. As a counsellor I knew that the new arrival could also suffer from the disease as it grew up, since schizophrenia could be hereditary.

When I saw Jyoti the first time, she too suffered from the ‘what will people say’ mindset. This attitude was reinforced whenever she would go back to her parents to get away from the stressful environment at home. She would not join her parents when they visited friends or attended events, worried about what people would say when they knew she had been away from her husband for two months.

Terminating my sessions

After two months of weekly visits to me, I asked Jyoti and her father if there was anything they could change in the behaviour of Suresh and his mother. The reply was that they had no control over them—one was mentally sick and the other had an aggressive stance on the subject. I then used an analogy I often apply to bring home the point—if you were to continue to travel on the same track, you would visit the same station you had been visiting in the past.

I suggested they change tracks in order to get to a different destination. They insisted I choose the track for them, but that is not for the counsellor to decide. The most I could do was add to the choices that can be made by the counselee. Both Jyoti and her father fell back into the ‘what will people say’ approach and I had to regretfully terminate counselling.

Counselling is a joint venture between the counsellor and counselees and if any in this joint venture cannot add further value to the process, there is no point labouring over it.

To my surprise, Prakash later set up another appointment. After a couple of sessions with me and other doctors about Suresh’s chances of recovery, he finally concluded his daughter should get a divorce. Jyoti filed the case only to face the wrath of Suresh’s aggressive mother. She believed that the source of all the problems were Jyoti and her parents. In this narrative, you will observe there has been no mention of Suresh’s father. Whenever the subject of Suresh’s condition came up, he would be missing. He would go up to the roof of the house or step out to attend to some urgent work.

Maybe he knew the truth—only he can tell. But the sad part is that while all this was going on, Jyoti and her family continued to harp on the cursed ‘What will people say?’ attitude. Unfortunately, Jyoti’s 12-year-old son got stuck in the mire and became a loner.

History repeats itself

I happened to meet Jyoti a couple of years later and learned that on the advice of her parents and relatives, she had withdrawn her application for divorce. She told me that since her brother was of a marriageable age, everyone felt a court case would be a slur on the family and the chances of his finding the right bride would suffer. She mentioned she had taken over the duty of adding the medicines to Suresh’s coffee—a task previously performed by his mother. She also told me she and her son were both undergoing treatment for depression—a heavy price for keeping others happy.

Let this case be the reminder that running our lives on what people say is a zero sum game. If we spend our time and energies on other people’s reactions we will end up going nowhere.

Adapted from An Insider’s View of Emotional Traumas by Dinesh Kumar, published by LEADSTART. Reproduced with permission.

A note on Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a psychotic disease that distorts the reality of a person and leads to faulty thinking and withdrawal from social contact. It literally disintegrates the process of thinking and makes one emotionally dysfunctional. Depression can be a side effect; I have known patients who completely lose touch with reality. One such patient would come to me for counselling because he needed to talk to someone. But he would threaten me saying if I did not do something fast to help him recover, he would report my poor performance to General Musharraf.

This excerpt was first published in the January 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Trying too hard to be loved by your partner? May be it’s codependency

Savannah Grey — Sat, 08 Oct 2016 04:30:53 +0000

Codependency is a silent epidemic. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably never even heard the term. For many individuals, worldwide, it is a way of life. At its core, codependency is a dysfunctional relationship with the self.

Codependency occurs in families where one or both parents are emotionally abusive, where children are made to feel unwanted, unloved and unimportant. A parent that is an emotional manipulator is accustomed to getting their needs met at the expense of their family. In this atmosphere, a child learns to suppress their own needs and to focus on the needs of others.

Melody Beatti, author of Co-Dependent No More, says, “There are rules that you are brought up with in your immediate family, rules that prohibit discussion about problems, open expression of feelings, direct and honest communication, realistic expectations, such as being human, being vulnerable or imperfect, selfishness; trust in other people and one’s self; playing and having fun; and rocking the delicately balanced family canoe through growth or change—however healthy and beneficial that movement might be.”

Lost value

Codependency sufferers believe that they do not have value. From childhood they were given messages that attacked their self-esteem. They were made to feel insignificant and their only value was in what they could do for others.

They are taught that love and attention are conditional upon the mood of their caregiver. Children born into this type of environment develop a radar system, which allows them to pick up on the body language, tone and other non-verbal cues of people. It teaches them when to approach, and when to be invisible. They are compelled to become experts at this, because their safety and need for love and attention is entirely dependent upon their ability to pick up these signals.

The relationship that we have with our parents is the prototype for the relationships we have in adulthood. Often, we choose partners that mimic the dysfunctional behaviours of our abusive parent. That way we are able to keep playing out the same scripts we learned in childhood, because they feel normal and familiar.

The relationship that we have with our parents is the prototype for the relationships we have in adulthood

This creates adults who are, in laymen’s terms, doormats—individuals who do not know how to love and protect themselves. They grow up to be people pleasers, believing that their only value is in giving, that they aren’t good enough, and that they are unworthy of love.

Symptoms of codependency

The symptoms of a codependent relationship include:

Becoming romantically attached to dysfunctional people and becoming their rescuers and fixers
Suppressing and neglecting your own needs and interests for the sake of your partner, to the extent where you have no identity outside of the relationship
Accepting blame and responsibility when it is not yours
Minimising and rationalising serious relationship problems
Believing that you deserve, or become accustomed to, receiving poor treatment from your partner
Having terrible communication skills; having problems speaking up, or voicing displeasure
Passive and submissive behaviours; tendency to fear or avoid conflict
Derive your sense of self-worth externally, often by helping or fixing others
Have few or no boundaries
Low to no self-esteem or self-worth
Caring is to an extreme, too nice, too giving to the point of exploitation.

Breaking free

The key to breaking free of codependency is a multi-step process. It’s about teaching yourself as an adult the things that you should’ve been taught as a child.

Step 1 – Recognise the pattern. Recognise when people are using you and when you are giving too much, when a relationship feels like it’s draining you and when you are being treated poorly.

Step 2 – Eliminate toxic people from your life. You have to realise that you can’t change or fix other people. You and you alone are responsible for your happiness. This means knowing that certain people aren’t going to change and they don’t belong in your life.

Step 3 – Create and enforce boundaries. Boundaries are essential to having a healthy relationship with yourself. It shows other people where you stand on you. It’s your way of teaching people how you expect to be treated. It’s your line in the sand and it’s up to you to enforce it. Unhealthy people don’t respect boundaries. If you express your wishes and someone continually busts your boundaries, then it becomes your job to eliminate them from your life.

You have to realise that you can’t change or fix other people. You and you alone are responsible for your happiness

Once you’ve set the bar, if people continue to cross your line, it tells you all you need to know about them. These are things that may not feel natural at first, but healthy people know where their own line is, and they try really hard to respect and not cross other people’s.

Step 4 – Learn to communicate properly. Get in the habit of saying exactly what you mean. Stop hoping that other people can read your mind, or guess what you want. Practise being direct by saying exactly what you want and don’t back down when it comes to defending yourself, or your boundaries. Being direct and sticking up for yourself are how healthy people communicate. Codependents learn early to be quiet, and not upset people. But you’re an adult now, so you have to learn that healthy people aren’t afraid to say what they mean and mean what they say.

Step 5 – Start expecting more from yourself and others. If you’re codependent, you’ve probably had very low standards when it comes to the people you’ve let into your circle. If there are people that don’t add value to your life and don’t make you feel good, then it’s time to start cleaning house and opening up some spaces. Sure, making new friends is hard, giving up a family member might be difficult, but what’s more difficult is being the recipient of abusive and disrespectful behaviour. If you want a better life, then you have to have higher standards. Raise your bar.

Practise being direct by saying exactly what you want and don’t back down when it comes to defending yourself, or your boundaries

Step 6 – The final step is about self-esteem. It’s about changing the way you feel about you and seeing yourself as a person of value. Figure out what your interests are, what makes you happy and do those things and keep doing those things. Pay attention to your feelings. They are your radar system, letting you know when something is off track. Developing self-esteem is a process, a decision that you have to make every day. When you start to see yourself as a person of value, others will pick up on that vibe and follow your lead.

Fix your foundation

Leaving co-dependency is a journey. Trying to change the way you were taught to behave, communicate and feel about yourself is a difficult process, but it’s time to accept that what we were taught as children was wrong and unhealthy. As adults, it’s our job to fix our own foundation, because the quality of our life starts and ends with us.

Anthony Robbins always says, “Success leaves clues.” So understand that people have overcome this and so can you. Set your plan in motion, create your list of boundaries, raise your standards and get into the habit of expecting more from yourself and others. Practise feeling good about yourself. Take the time and put in the work, it’s worth it—because you’re worth it.

This was first published in the July 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Why People Pleasing Is Destroying Your Life (And How to Stop)

Manoj Khatri — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 05:30:46 +0000

Arti Sharma’s heart was in music, but she decided to pursue medicine because both her parents were doctors and she was expected to follow suit. By becoming a doctor, she managed to get the approval of others but lost herself in the process. Was the trade-off worth it? Arti now lives with regret, dreaming of how fulfilling her life would have been if she had listened to her heart instead of the voices around her.

Rakesh Dev carefully measures every word before speaking to friends and family. He sugar-coats everything to avoid offending anyone. When someone disagrees with his views, he quickly backtracks and aligns himself with their perspective. This constant self-editing has left Rakesh emotionally exhausted, with fractured self-esteem and barely any confidence in his own judgment.

Both Arti and Rakesh share a common burden: they have handed over the steering wheel of their lives to other people, or more specifically, to what the others think of them.

The Trap of External Validation

There’s a book titled What You Think of Me is None of My Business by Terry Cole Whittaker. I haven’t read it, so I can’t speak to its content, but the title alone captures something profound. Some might find it arrogant, but I think it’s both witty and wise. The title points to a fundamental truth we rarely acknowledge: we consistently place other people’s opinions ahead of our own judgment.

“People striving for approval from others become phony,” observes Japanese-born baseball champion Ichiro Suzuki. This phoniness doesn’t develop overnight. It’s carefully cultivated from childhood, both at home and in school. We learn early that maintaining our image matters more than expressing our truth. Being obedient and behaving “appropriately” earns rewards, while speaking our minds or following our instincts brings disapproval.

This conditioning runs so deep that we carry it into every major decision of our adult lives. We choose careers, relationships, and life paths not because they align with our values, but because they won’t disappoint others. We become so preoccupied with external judgment that we allow other people’s approval to dictate our entire existence.

The Hidden Cost of People Pleasing

Consider this moment: how many of your recent decisions were truly your own? Strip away the voices of parents, friends, society, and strangers. What remains? You might discover that much of your current reality stems from choices that didn’t originate from within you.

When we reshape ourselves to earn approval, we set ourselves up for failure on two fronts. First, it’s impossible to please everyone consistently. Second, we become easy targets for manipulation. People quickly learn that the threat of disapproval can control our behavior.

Academy Award winner Anne Hathaway understands this dynamic well: “There’s something very addictive about people pleasing. It’s a thought pattern and a habit that feels really, really good until it becomes desperate.”

Dr. Nicole LePera, a holistic psychologist and self-described “recovered people pleaser,” offers an even sharper insight: “People pleasers aren’t trying to please other people. They’re trying to avoid their own feelings of shame when they disappoint someone. Every people pleaser has one core goal: control how another person views them.”

This perspective might sting, but it reveals the self-deception at the heart of people pleasing. We convince ourselves we’re being kind or considerate, but we’re actually trying to manipulate how others see us. The irony is devastating: the moment we show our authentic selves, those we’ve worked so hard to impress often feel deceived by the gap between our performed and genuine personalities.

The Price of Self-Betrayal

Every time you sacrifice your interests to please another person, you erode your self-worth and compromise your potential for genuine fulfillment. You signal to yourself that your thoughts, dreams, and instincts matter less than someone else’s comfort. This isn’t humility; it’s self-abandonment.

Over time, this pattern of people pleasing transforms your life into a performance designed by committee. You lose touch with your authentic preferences, your natural responses, your unguarded thoughts. You become a stranger to yourself, living as a shadow of other people’s expectations rather than the author of your own story.

Breaking Free

This doesn’t mean you should ignore all feedback or become indifferent to others’ feelings. Healthy relationships involve mutual consideration and respect. But there’s a crucial difference between being thoughtful and being controlled by the fear of disapproval.

Appreciate praise when it comes genuinely, but don’t rearrange your life’s priorities to manufacture it. Remember that living for applause is a form of voluntary imprisonment. The people whose approval you’re chasing are often dealing with their own insecurities and may not even be qualified to judge what’s right for your life.

You came here to discover who you are and what you’re capable of becoming. Don’t spend your precious time on earth living out someone else’s script. Your authentic self, with all its imperfections and unique perspectives, deserves better than that.

My humble suggestion is to try trusting your own judgment and living according to your own values. It won’t always be comfortable, and not everyone will approve. But at least the life you’re living will be genuinely yours.

A version of this article was published in the July 2013 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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