The Price of the People Pleaser

The Monster Will Turn On You

As good of a direction as love is, we can sure crash our ships against the rocks when we sail those waters with good intentions and poor navigation.

I have tried to live by the principle that the least selfish thing you can do is to plainly say what you want. Please don’t think me lofty or high and mighty here. In practice, I have not always expressed my desires in plain manner. I’ve got a logbook full of crashes into the rocks.

Let me say it again:

The least selfish thing you can do is to plainly say what you want

Where does such a principle come from? I wish I could remember the first time I read it, most likely it was my later teen years, but I got this principle from Letter 26 of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.

By so much “unselfishness” we open up our defenses to destructive forces, not the least of which is our own natures that were trying to counter in the first place.

This is a deep trickery we fall for. It’s a bait and switch. It’s a concept that seems cozy until it morphs into a raging monster.

We know we’re selfish. That’s why we try to prefer others. That’s why we try to give them what they want instead of what we want. That’s the nice and kind thing to do, right?

How long does it take for the words “after all I’ve done for them” creep into your thoughts and all the ways you’ve given up yourself for them play on repeat through your hear head?

Seriously. Stop and think about it.

This is a seriously subtle siren call. How could we possibly argue against being nice to someone? Isn’t it good to give ourselves up for the benefit of others?

Think about where this leads. You find yourself in a situation where you want to say no but don’t feel like you can say anything but yes.

This could be falling in with the wrong crowd (remember Edward Scissorhands helping Jim break into his dad’s vault because it was the nice thing to do for Kim?). This could be compromise at work, at home, in your relationships. This could be a failure to shut down unwelcome advances because you don’t want to be rude or make things awkward.

It can also mean you’re saying yes to too many things and overbooking your time, energy, and resources. I mean, personally, I love meeting friends for lunch but I can’t do that all the time when eating out for lunch in 2025 runs $12-15 a person. This is for fast food! Heck, even a gas station hot dog and fountain drink costs almost $5, but I’m getting off topic.

Do you keep your opinions to yourself just to keep the peace? If you say what you want and interject your opinions into the conversation, you will likely NOT get peace. You will get the perpetual, “No, you go first” stalemate where nobody says what they want and nobody goes anywhere. Throw in resentment for unmet expectations or unreceived acknowledgements of appreciation, and you’re in some real toxic waste waters.

Someone has to say something. Someone has to take the first step. Someone says, “Here’s where I think we should go.” It’s up to the hearers to say, “Have you considered this or that?” Without the feedback, the person who has actually said what they want or believe cannot act on what other people want.

The very decision to say what you want is an admission you cannot read minds. Maybe you don’t want to be the initiator, and that’s fine. Maybe you struggle to come up with ideas and that’s OK, too. Not everyone is an idea person. It doesn’t mean you have to go along with something just to make somebody else happy.

Have you ever said or thought the words, “I’m just trying to make everybody happy”?

Then you may already be following the song of the People Pleaser.

How much has it cost you?

The Price of Passage

All of this comes with a cost. As we stand at the edge of a decision how to respond, it’s like we are rubbing two coins together for the ferryman at the edge of the river Styx. What will we pay to cross the river? What will stepping onto this ferry of compromising people pleasing actually cost us? What’s the price we will pay for giving part of ourselves away?

I don’t use AI to write this newsletter. Unless otherwise noted, as I’m about to do, all the words are mine. The Story of the Marsh Boy doesn’t even get AI help to work out what happens next or possible twists in the plot. I do use various AI sources to generate the images for each post, with prompts that I come up with. As I was wondering what kind of existential nightmare image an AI would give me for this post, I began to wonder what AI would identify as negative aspects of people pleasing.

So I asked Grok. It’s words are dark green and bracketed.

[Grok begins]

People pleasing behavior, while often coming from a place of kindness or desire for harmony, can have several negative aspects:

• Loss of Personal Identity: Constantly prioritizing others' needs over one's own can lead to a loss of self-identity, where individuals may not know what they truly want or need.

• Resentment: Over time, people pleasers might feel unappreciated or taken for granted, leading to resentment towards others as they feel their own needs are consistently unmet.

• Emotional Burnout: The stress of always meeting others' expectations can lead to emotional exhaustion or burnout, as it involves significant mental and emotional labor.

• Difficulty with Boundaries: People pleasers often struggle with setting or maintaining healthy boundaries, which can lead to being exploited or overwhelmed by others' demands.

• Relationship Imbalance: Relationships can become one-sided, where the people pleaser gives more than they receive, potentially damaging the relationship quality or leading to unhealthy dependencies.

• Anxiety and Stress: The pressure to keep everyone happy can increase anxiety levels, especially in social situations where conflict might arise.

• Manipulability: People pleasers can be more easily manipulated or taken advantage of by others who recognize and exploit this trait.

• Neglect of Personal Needs: Their own health, hobbies, or personal growth might be neglected as they focus on pleasing others, leading to personal dissatisfaction or health issues.

• Decision Paralysis: Fear of making the wrong choice for someone else can lead to indecisiveness or avoidance of making decisions altogether.

• Lack of Authenticity: In an effort to please, individuals might suppress their true feelings or opinions, leading to inauthentic interactions and preventing genuine connections.

Understanding these negative aspects can help in fostering a balance where one can care for others while also honoring their own needs and boundaries.

[Grok ends]

Not a bad analysis for an AI, in my opinion. How many of those bullet points resonate with you?

How many of these points will shipwreck us and our kids if we keep on giving away things we don’t actually want to give away? We’re going to get stuck in a rip current we can’t escape from, then what good will we be to anyone?

It’s better to give a drowning man a life preserver instead of a hug, lest he drag you down into the water with him.

The Way to Break Free

What this is getting down to is truth telling.

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Honestly, that can be tough. I’m a verbal processor and I have a lot of ideas. I’m not always sure of the best way to communicate what I mean, and even if I am successful, that doesn’t mean the reader or listener is guaranteed to comprehend what I mean. Communication is tough. That doesn’t mean inadequately expressing what you’re trying to say is a lie. It’s not a denial of what you know to be true, nor is it a violation of your principles or beliefs.

Maybe this whole confrontation with people pleasing is resolved by simply following the word of Jesus. Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. The original context of Matthew 5:37 is in taking oaths, but isn’t that kind of what people pleasing is? Not all oaths are people pleasing, but all people pleasing is an oath to… enter into an arrangement to please the person you’re making it to. It’s not an oath that ends up with all things well. At the very least, the 10 Commandments tell us not to give false testimony (Exodus 20:16).

So what do you do? Just say what you want. If we all do that instead of trying to act on what we think the other person wants, especially if that’s an inaccurate reading (and its a massive assumption that it isn’t), then we can rightly choose to prefer someone else. “Oh, you want to do this? While its true I want to do that, it can be simultaneously true that I want to love you and express a genuine interest in you.” Odds are we won’t say it so mechanically, but that’s what we can do.

Let’s tease that thought out a little bit more.

“I want to do that because I love you.”

It’s not doing something you don’t want to do to make someone else happy. That leads to the loss of yourself. It’s as if we’re taking fake religion that Jesus calls out in Matthew 15:8 and we turn it on each other: “These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.”

The cost of people pleasing for the sake of niceness is high.

It’s selling your soul for a shipwreck.

That’s a price you don’t have to pay and a ferry you don’t have to step aboard of.

Love takes on other people’s burdens but it also takes on other people’s interests. “This particular thing is important to you so I want to make it important to me. Help me see why things so important.” You can give preference to someone else because you love them, but that takes the someone else actually saying what they want. Taking an interest in others and what’s important to them isn’t nearly as costly as trying to be a people pleaser. Plus it’s far more effective.

When we start treating others this way, we can truly begin to love one another because we will, by telling the truth, know each other and be known by each other.

But that’s a post for another day.

If you haven’t listened to it yet, I’m going to post the link again so you can tap here to listen to Letter 26 of The Screwtape Letters.

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Talk to y’all in two weeks.

~ J.P. Simons