Brain health · Sanctum

People-pleasing and fawning

You manage everyone’s feelings before your own. You say yes when you mean no, you avoid conflict at almost any cost, you disappear into being whoever each person needs, and you only notice the resentment and exhaustion later.

People-pleasing here is often a survival strategy, not a personality trait. A brain braced for criticism or rejection learns to head it off by keeping everyone happy, and a self that has masked for years finds it safer to fawn than to risk being too much. It is protective, and it is depleting.

Because being accommodating is rewarded, the cost stays hidden, and the loss of your own needs gets mistaken for kindness or being easy-going. Underneath is a person who has been managing everyone else for so long they have lost track of themselves.

We look at what the people-pleasing is protecting against, because that is more useful than admiring how giving you are. None of this is a diagnosis. It is what we explore with you.

Written by Dr Asad RaffiConsultant Psychiatrist · Founder & Medical Director