The world's worst people pleaser

So you're a people pleaser? Name 3 people you've pleased lately

I suffer from an affliction. Try as I might, it won’t take to treatment. I’ve tried to coax it out of my system like an emotional tapeworm, consulted my local physician, been swiftly and rather mercilessly rebuffed, turned to the internet, decided that WebMD is definitely doing more harm than good, and now I’m retiring to Substack to impose my innermost personality gripes on you, the unwitting victim of my trying-to-be-introspective-but-it’s-giving-surface-level melodrama. Sorry in advance.

Prevarication aside, people pleasing has always formed a hefty part of my personality. Or so I thought. Originally, I saw it as a challenge, to see if I could contort myself into a person a stranger would like. I’d put on my best Oscar-nom-wannabe performance and try to learn a person’s language, figure them out, write a mental User’s Guide to Whoeverthefuck This Person Is so that they would like me and be my friend and so that we could eventually play in the sandpit together and live happily ever after. Wohoo, etc.

But yesterday I saw a rather sobering post while doomscrolling my 20s away. It read “So you’re a people pleaser? Name 3 people you’ve pleased lately”. Instantly winded. All this time, I’ve been lauding myself as a people pleaser, going through the motions, worshiping at the alter of pop psychology so people would like me, but did they actually? Who, pray tell, had I actually pleased lately? And most importantly, did I really want them to like me, or did I just want some time apart from myself?

Because the thing is, I have been boring myself recently, so I will take any personality PTO I can get. I don’t know if my 9-5 is to blame, becoming an anthropomorphised desk monkey, or the fact I haven’t read a full book in (redacted) months, but when I talk, I can hear myself sounding glibber and glibber. I guess that’s why I haven’t written anything for a while - the last time I read my writing back I eye-rolled so much I think I sprained something. I feel like I have to apologise to my friends for being a bit meh, à la insipid celebrity apology vids where they find their poorest looking background and dress like they’re factionless in Divergent. I dread the well-intentioned yet phatic “How are you”, because A. I have no clue and B. I always end up droning on and on about fuck all, probably a minor work thing, and my interlocutor has to obediently “ahh” and “"ohhh” and “yeah I get that” until we are both granted the mercy of me shutting up.

All this to say, in my people-pleasing efforts I’ve completely forgotten to please myself. I desperately want to like myself, and have done before (brag), but I think warping into various iterations of myself has meant the OG version feels, well, underwhelming. A solid 5/10, and though I like odd numbers, I want my personality to sit staunchly in the 8-9 range, a 10 on a good day. People pleasing precipitates nothing but a net loss - the more you attempt to please the people, the less of yourself you have left to give, then the more depleted your personality becomes, and the less you have to draw from to please the people. You’ve greedily exhausted your personality reserves. The people will naturally dissent, and you’re left with a stilted pastiche of a personality, which people can sense from a mile off btw. It’s a massive mental clusterfuck, rendered all the cringier when you realise that the term People Pleaser is just the Gen-Z version of millennials calling themselves Empaths. If that doesn’t give you the ick I don’t know what will.

Being a bore has been a perennial fear of mine for as long as I can remember, but from experience, people pleasing doesn’t assuage this fear, it makes it massively worse. When I don my people pleasing mask it’s clumsy and ill fitting, but when I take it off I am an open wound, wincing and grossly underdressed for any form of social interaction.

Is the answer to stop trying altogether? It might yield harsher results, fewer cloying ‘nice to meet you’s and more veiled disdain. My social stock might plummet (literally what social stock babe, you’re in arrears and the shareholders have a dartboard with your face on it). But hopefully it will render my interactions with people I actually like, my infinitely lovely friends and cool strangers for whom I don’t feel like I have to don any personality garb, all the more meaningful. I want to be excited to meet people, to laugh not out of social obligation but because I can’t help it. I think we as a society prematurely dismissed the contented philosophical musings of white women’s kitchen art, living monuments to pleasing yourself over everyone else. Come to think of it, maybe I should dance like nobody’s watching, and you know what, maybe it is wine-o’clock, and I should never have derided that concept. A “Live Laugh Love” sign breeds more probity and self-assurance than people pleasing ever could. (But even I have my limits vis-à-vis kitchen decor, so I will admire from afar)

But I digress - the irony is that the people, myself very much included, who identify as people pleasers aren’t actually doing that much pleasing. We’re just taking a stab in the dark trying to please people, but turn on the lights and it’s clear we’re just hurting ourselves and making a bloody mess. It’s just so much more liberating (she says aspirationally, not from experience) to reject all that, and to try to make yourself happy. Which is a very kumbaya sentiment, I know, but surely it’s better to try to make yourself happy than to please someone else who, let’s face it, is probably a prick?