People pleasing is often considered to be an anxious trait – but are some people simply imposing their need for praise onto others?
In her column in the Irish Examiner, Communications Clinic Chairman Terry Prone explained why she thinks ‘people pleasers’ are not as virtuous as they might seem.
“What got me started was Christmas because after Christmas, I got not three but four emails from a friend who was, ‘Just checking’ - as she put it – that I had got her Christmas card,” she told Newstalk Breakfast.
“Now, you can’t say to somebody, ‘Look, I have a life, I am not going to go back to try and figure out whether you gave me a robin or a Santa [card] - I don’t care.'
"I didn’t ask for the bloody Christmas card, you chose to send it to me – now buzz off."
Stressed woman having problems, looking at laptop screen. Image: Aleksandr Davydov / Alamy. 9 September 2020Ms Prone said she sees this behaviour as attention seeking.
“People who then say that they’re giving up being people pleasers, you want to say to them - ‘Hang on a second, you never thought of anybody else but you whenever you did something for somebody else’,” she said.
“'You wanted either to be praised to everybody for doing something that didn’t kill you anyway, or they wanted to be able to say, ‘And I never even got a thank you note’.”
'Beyond manipulation
According to Ms Prone, this can become an invasion into others’ lives.
“I remember a woman who drove me nuts for a while and when I realised now this has to stop, this is veering towards stalking, was when she gave me a juicer on the basis that I didn’t take good enough account of my own health,” she said.
“Therefore, she needed to prompt me into juicing fruits each day – now that’s way too far, that’s gone beyond manipulation.”
According to Ms Prone, many ‘reformed’ people pleasers never truly realise the impact of their past behaviour.
Main image: Sad student checking smart phone being comforted by a friend in a park or campus. Antonio Guillem / Alamy. 8 June 2021
