Are You Giving Out the Wrong Signals?

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A lot of the time we tend to think of communication as being open, and easily recognisable:

• You say something, I hear it
• I say something back, you hear it

… and so it goes on.

Much of the time, though, we communicate indirectly and in ​unconscious ways. We do this by ​giving each other signals ​through our behaviour and by the way we treat ourselves. 

Actually ​we make ‘Subconscious Psychological ​Agreements’ with each other all the time: subtle signals ​indicating what ​we expect from each other.

When we approach life from the belief ‘I have to please people,’ we unwittingly set up ​​the subconscious signal that we really don't mind putting ​someone else's needs before our own.

The Pleasing People Agreement Goes Something Like This:

 ‘I will put up with your stuff; you don’t need to think about my needs, but I’ll always be understanding of your needs and make sure you’re OK. Then I can be happy because you’ll like me and think I’m a good person and want to be around me.’

​People often don't even realise they are doing this because the belief and the behaviour ​has become such a pattern.

Amanda’s Story

Like Amanda, one of my clients who said

‘I must have “TREAT ME LIKE AN IDIOT” tattooed on my forehead’. ‘Why are people so awful to me? I try really hard to be nice, but they still treat me like dirt!’

Everyone in Amanda’s life; her family friends and work colleagues treated her poorly no matter how hard she tried to please them.

Amanda was always eager to give her friends a helping hand; she offered to babysit, she helped them decorate, and she walked people’s dogs and looked after their cats. She told me she was always offering to help other people because she thought that they would be nice to her in return. But these friends very often took Amanda for granted.

Amanda assumed that she was unhappy because of the way other people treated her. She hadn’t ever considered that by looking for validation from other people she was forgetting to ​focus on validating herself. ​

Once she saw this she immediately started to feel more empowered. She began to see that instead of seeking her happiness ​from other people, she could start ​providing it for herself.

​People pleasing is so very common

If you want to stop ​people-pleasing ​you’re certainly not alone. Many people recognise this habit in themselves, it's one of the most common limiting beliefs which hold people back from ​feeling confident and ​having fulfilling and secure relationships of all sorts.

We get so caught up in chasing approval from others that we completely forget to stop and look at ourselves and remember our own self worth.

​However it is perfectly possible to change this habit. The first step is recognising that you do it, then practcing ways to provide your own validation so that other's validation becomes less important. The first step, is to notice how you talk to yourself. Self worth ocmes from treating yourself with loving kindness instead of criticising yourself.