The need to please others
The natural tendency to belong to the group, to establish emotional ties with the people around us, leads us to the need to please others. This attitude is fundamental to socialize, in a certain way, it can be positive, and favors relationships and interactions. But it can also become an obsession.
When attempts to please others are excessive, reaching to exceed their own needs, and their own tastes and interests, can be harmful to the person and bring negative consequences for welfare. When the obsession to please others, to be accepted by others, exceeds their own needs, we run the risk of forgetting ourselves.
The obsession to please others
Some people spend a lot of time and dedicate a lot of effort in getting to please others. Attempts to give a good image, to be accepted, valued and loved by others, can become a true obsession that directs the behavior to very dangerous limits. But why is it so important to please others?
1. Social acceptance. On the one hand it has to do with an extreme, almost sickly need to be accepted by others. All people need to belong to a social group and be accepted by it. It is a natural need, which can have positive effects, but when the need becomes obsession and becomes sickly, we can have serious consequences.
2. Low self-esteem.On the other hand, the need to please others may be related to low self-esteem. Some people with low self-esteem, constantly need positive assessments about their person, these positive assessments feed their self-esteem, working as reinforcers to the behavior of pleasing. In these cases the attempts to please serve to provide an apparent coverage to their self-esteem.
Conduct intended to please others
Part of the social skills consist of helping others and being nice people around us Normally, when we behave well with others we get positive results: acceptance, belonging to a group, esteem, confidence of the other, etc. and that's why these emotional behaviors that at first are normal, natural and healthy, begin to be reinforced and generalized, becoming a habit that we do not realize, but that can have many negative consequences.
What happens when we obsess to please others constantly?
Acts to please others initially have positive effects, but these effects are soon transformed:
1. When the role of the person consists in constantly pleasing the other, instead of obtaining social benefits, negative consequences are obtained in this sense. Other people get used to the pleasure and do not value what is done for them, with which they stop valuing those acts and see it as an obligation of the other.
2. An overly constant liking can overwhelm and overload the other. The others do not need that pleasure. It is important to keep this in mind, when we relate to others we do not seek to be right, or we are constantly pleased, we look for an interaction or a link.
3. The person forgets their needs, at least unconsciously. By not meeting your needs, little by little you begin to experience discomfort.
How can we face the need to please
1. Behave well with others is positive, but without exceeding limits. Remember that others just want our company, not our liking.
2. Start thinking about you. It is good to think of others, and it is not about being selfish and imposing our preferences, but about finding the balance between the needs of others and their own.
3. When showing pleasure will generate discomfort, stop this behavior.
Celia Rodríguez Ruiz. Clinical health psychologist. Specialist in pedagogy and child and youth psychology. Director of Educa and Aprende.com Author of the collection Stimulate Reading and Writing Processes.
