People pleasing at work - at what cost?

On the face of it, many clients are almost proud to be amicable and agreeable and see it as a strength to just 'go with the flow' (a term I hear often in my therapy room).  However, they are also presenting with feelings identified as 'anger' and 'frustration', and they struggle to fathom out why, if they are so agreeable, they feel like this.

Meeting our own 'wants and needs'

On a basic level, we start to unpick how many of their wants and needs are being met in this dynamic. It's quickly noted that not many, and therefore, eventually, we will end up feeling depleted in many ways and at times 'resentful' towards those around us. I mean, we are meeting all of their wants and needs, are they not 'appreciating' all we are giving up for them? Worse still, perhaps they are always appreciative verbally, so why do we still not feel at ease?

I commonly use analogies in my therapy room and can only equate it to being on an aeroplane and being so busy putting everyone else’s masks on and then feeling angry as we begin to pass out ourselves that no one noticed our kind acts by appreciating and helping us! 

Impact in a work environment 

I have dealt with this topic regarding work environments in a number of sessions recently (yes, our personal life and way of being can spill into all areas of our lives). So, what presents as obvious ways we are 'people pleasing' at work to our detriment. Common themes include: 

• Being overly accommodating - this is the person who finds themselves saying 'yes' and perhaps agreeing to take on more work than they can realistically cope with, and then feeling angry when they don’t get the praise back from their colleagues or boss.
• Avoiding hard conversations - just agreeing to avoid conflict is sometimes worthwhile; however, when this becomes a pattern, it can take its toll on our emotions as we have to keep sucking down our own (think a jack in the box!).
• Taking on more than is yours - this isn't necessarily just workloads, it may be the conflict resolution position in the office, the emotional off-load of staff/colleagues, or the organisation of a team where you are all the same level.

Of course, we may strategically be doing some of these things for promotion, etc, however, what we start to fathom out together in the therapy room is where the people pleasing is actually in play instead.

How can therapy help? 

The question for many is whether there is a promotion strategy at play or not. How do we know this isn’t just justification for the people-pleasing dynamic?

If you are feeling resentful, tired, invisible and perhaps angry at times, it is likely an indicator that this is ingrained people pleasing taking place as opposed to strategic decisions.

We can then look together with compassion as to why this dynamic exists within a client, looking back at our childhood or old relationship patterns usually sheds light.  Whilst a cliche of counselling, childhood is usually the root for these protective instincts and ‘drivers’, they can be heavily ingrained and familiar despite no longer serving us well as adults.

We start to look at transactions (interactions that the client was involved with that week at work) and break them down using brainstorming and visual tools. Seeing the dynamic as well as hearing it helps to break the cycle. We look together at what other options they may have had, the fears of invoking them and ways to soothe the nervous systems as they possibly try a new way the following week. In the next session, we can unpick together what came up in the changed behaviour pattern.

Eventually, with time, patience and self-compassion, a client starts to realise that soothing things in the short term, as they have been doing, creates longer-term issues inside them and likely therefore impacts those around them too.  For example, snapping at work colleagues when you are burnt out from taking on too much.

Trading your emotional well-being for external approval is what we are really focusing on challenging. With time and support, saying 'no' becomes easier, pre-planning conversations in the supported therapy room to state how you really feel and not avoiding difficult conversations (perceived conflict) starts to feel easier, learning how to add supportive boundaries for other adults you work with becomes easier (e.g. rather than listening to all emotional off-loads, aiding a colleague to think what support they need for themselves outside of work). 

Eventually, with time, boundaries and communication increase to a level where your wants and needs are also being met and a sense of calmness can follow.