Are You a People Pleaser? How to Deal with Anxiety Around Conflict and Decision Making

Define Conflict

Image from Pexels by Retha Ferguson

I commonly hear, “I hate conflict.” To which I follow up, “what do you mean by conflict?” Does that mean speaking your mind in contexts where your voice is silenced? Does that mean being seen as unlikable or possibly even a bi*ch? Is it internal discomfort? Upon further digging, many people I speak with equate clear, open communication as conflict. Let’s be clear:

Communication DOES NOT EQUAL Conflict

Speaking your mind in a respectful way is not conflict. Sharing with your partner in a kind, gentle way that what they said or did hurt your feelings is not conflict. Speaking up for someone in a time of need is not conflict. Communication can become conflict or can be confrontational, but this doesn’t automatically have to be the case. How humans communicate is complicated and relies on much more than only the words coming out of your mouth. How something is communicated comes through tone of voice, facial expressions, body posture, prosody of voice, volume, and more! Sometimes you can be super intentional about how you communicate and someone else will still take it as confrontational. You can’t control other peoples’ responses which is a really hard fact for people pleasers to accept. You can only focus on how you want to exist in the world and the rest is up to other people.

Define People Pleasing Tendencies

What does this phrase mean to you? If it means you consider other people before saying or doing something, or how your actions might impact another person, you’re probably just a kind human. Don’t pathologize being a considerate human.

People pleasing becomes an issue when you end up compromising your wellbeing for the needs, wants, ease, or comfort of others.

You’ve likely heard of the threat responses of flight, fight, freeze, and the lesser-known response of fawn. Through these autonomic nerve system responses to threat, we can better understand the initial response of people pleasing. Avoidance (flight), staying silent (freeze) or over-accommodating (fawn) can be responses to a threat or trauma. At some point in your life, this might have been a helpful strategy for your survival, but now it’s become mal-adaptive and is negatively impact your life. We want to thank these strategies for coming to your aid when you needed them, recognize them, and choose different strategies.

Co-Dependency

People will often casually self-identify as co-dependent. I pose that this phrase isn’t helpful in the average context. As humans, we are relational creatures and thrive in community with one another. In an ideal world, we are interconnected and interdependent with one another. Boundaries within these interconnected, interdependent relationships can become off, but our individualistic society would often have us believe that relying on other people is pathological rather than adaptive. Evolutionarily speaking then, it makes sense that people who work well with others, those who are collaborative and have good social skills would thrive in certain conditions. Is this you?

Decision Avoidance

I find the close relative of people pleasing tendencies is decision avoidance. They both relate to not wanting to be wrong, do something wrong, have someone be upset with you or look incompetent. It’s a way to avoid discomfort within yourself and around others. The irony is the choice to not make a decision, is still a decision. It may be a more passive choice than active decision. Are you prioritizing someone else’s needs, wants ease, or comfort over your own in a way that compromises your wellbeing?

Image from Unsplash by Katie Moum

How to Tackle Anxiety to be Unapologetically You

Let’s get you making decisions, taking steps towards your goals, and setting clear boundaries!

Clarity of Values

The best tool you have to start making decision regardless of discomfort is having a clear idea about your values. Values are not so many areas of living such as family, work, health, etc. But the way you engage in those areas of living. For example, you may value trust, hard work, communal living. Most people can identify their values, but the next step is prioritizing those values in any given moment which can change quickly. This is why present moment awareness is important, so you can notice subtle changes in the moment and tap into what you care about. This will help you make decisions.

Highlight Choice

You don’t have control over what happens to you in life, but you do have choice in how you respond. When you start to see your life as a series of choices, it quickly becomes apparent that you make choices every day you don’t even think about. Bringing choice into conscious awareness can help you clarify values you’re already prioritizing and don’t even realize. A helpful exercise is to track every minute of your time for an entire week. This will quickly show you the choices you’re making with your time. More discomfort, stress, and anxiety tend to exist when you aren’t living authentically with your values and your choices are being made by external factors such as work, family, or cultural pressures.

Minimize Avoidance

Avoidance can show up in different ways. You can avoid thing externally like loud concerts, snakes, or cherry cough syrup. You can avoid these things you don’t enjoy and not have to sacrifice much in order to keep them out of sight and mind. What if your partner joined a band and it meant the world to them that you were there to support them? Or your friend invited you to a once in a lifetime trip but its in the dessert where there’s a lot of snakes? Or a loved one dropped off medicine when you were sick and of all things they picked the cherry flavored cough syrup?

Avoidance is fine if avoiding doesn’t cost you anything. But when avoidance impacts you living your values, such as being supportive partner, being adventurous, or being grateful, it’s then an issue of facing discomfort. It’s important to minimize avoidance of discomfort when it’s of something of importance. People pleasing tendencies and decision avoidance both tend to focus on an increased avoidance of discomfort which typically gets worse over time. Mindfulness and small intentional goal setting to help in reducing avoidance of discomfort to live congruently with your values.

Change Your Mind

Speaking of discomfort, you know what can be uncomfortable? Changing your mind or admitting you were wrong. The ability to steer the lifeboat a different direction takes intention and courage. If no one has ever said this to you, it’s okay to change your mind. Are there consequences, sure, yeah, but it’s your life. Modeling this for people around you (especially kids) is a fantastic psychological flexibility tool. It’s okay to be wrong, it’s okay to change your mind. When you can lean into the freedom of that, making decisions and speaking up for yourself isn’t as scary because it means it isn’t set in stone.

Boundary Setting

Setting a boundary with another person or yourself if a great first step in taking care of yourself. Maintaining such boundaries when challenged is the second step. Think about the relationship in consideration and think about your values related to that relationship. Ask yourself, what life experiences, cultural messages or familial rules have contributed to those at this very moment. Do you want to change them? Do you see your behaviors aligning with these chosen values? If not, what’s happening? Boundary setting and maintenance is an ongoing conversation with yourself and a present moment exercise.

Need more help? Contact your Seattle Anxiety Therapist Today!

The benefits of living congruently with your values rather than continually sacrificing your wellbeing for others will change your life. Imagine days without loud thoughts, worry, and physical distress and instead exude confidence, intentionally and pride. Reach out and schedule a free consultation today and take one step closer to this reality.

Learn more about Chelsea’s specialties: grief, anxiety, infertility, pregnancy loss, chronic illness, menopause, medical trauma

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