How to Recover from CEN by understanding people pleasing

April 5, 2021

Childhood Emotional Neglect ( Episode 3 )

Click here to download the worksheet

Episode 3: How to overcome CEN

Hi everyone, this is Ludemia ( aka Mia ), and welcome to Heart-Mind Equation.

This is Episode 3 of our CEN  series. 

In this episode, we are going to address the people-pleasing syndrome ( commonly known as The Disease to Please ). It is considered as one of the many residual effects of CEN 

( Childhood Emotional Neglect ).

I would invite you to go on my website: heartmindequation.com, to access worksheets I have put in place to accompany you, throughout this episode. 

You can download a worksheet for each of the 12 episodes to come. They are specially designed to help you understand and eliminate these people-pleasing behaviors, related to CEN.  

I need to point out that these self-development activities are not to be considered as a substitute for any psychological or individual therapy.  They’re only tools, used as support to help you work on yourselves.

Since childhood emotional neglect is invisible and silent, it is not so obvious to some of us, if we have experienced it or not. That’s why I would invite you to go on Dr. Jonice Webb’s website at childhoodemotionalneglect.com, to take a quiz of 22 questions.  This will help you figure out if you were submitted to CEN, growing up.  And if so, to what extent is it still subconsciously influencing your decisions, today. 

So, we can estimate that the adults who tend to be people-pleasers have childhood unmet needs for acceptance, love, and appreciation, searching for a sense of emotional safety, or simply, avoid conflict, or disappointing others.  Sometimes, we are not even aware that we are a people-pleaser. There are many different behaviors we can manifest that reveal that we are 

 We all know about the common ones, such as:

1. The tendency to be too nice to people
2. Difficulty saying No
3. Overgenerosity towards others ( with your time and energy )

But some other people-pleasing behaviors are not so obvious, such as:

1. You offer to help all the time, but refuse when you are offered any kind of help 
2. The very moment you say yes to someone’s request, you start feeling resentful.
3. You can have a tendency to self-blame by constantly apologizing.

1. You sometimes change your voice tone, your accent or your opinion, to match the person’s that you are talking to.
2. Sometimes, feel underappreciated for the sacrifices you do for people ( partner, family, friends, or even coworkers )
3. You can feel the need to prove, in every situation, how good of a person you are, consciously or not, search for praise, recognition or, simply appreciation from others.

Analyzing all those behavioral tendencies of people-pleasers, we notice a common denominator, which is a lack of authenticity. We can define this as ‘living in a persona, wearing a social mask all the time.  It defies the purpose since we can get appreciated for that fake perception that people have of us.  Therefore, we are lacking real connections with people, putting us at risk for loneliness.  In romantic relationships,  people-pleasers are the ones more at risk for codependency.

Well, I once was, a people-pleaser myself for quite some time, in my life. But I had come to realize that, being a people-pleaser is a way of giving away our power, allowing people to take advantage of us, sometimes.  Sadly, it shows a lack of character,  self-identity, and lack of self-respect. That’s how we put ourselves at risk for emotional and psychological abuse.   As Eleonore Roosevelt once said: ‘Noone can make you feel inferior without your permission.

To understand the core reasons for that people-pleasing syndrome, we need to consider where that behavior comes from, going all the way back to our childhood.

Often, it is expressed by some of us, who had extreme authoritative, perfectionist, or narcissistic parents, growing up. Especially when the parent was constantly criticizing or blaming us, as a child, when we either disobey or act differently from how we were expected to.  Yet, our effort to please our parents often comes out unnoticed. 

People-pleasing is also a reaction we have picked up along the way, when who we were, as a child, was overlooked by our own parents, or even by an authority figure, like a teacher.  We then, molded ourselves to their expectations, and later on, to other people’s expectations.  Some of us carried out that appreciation-seeking behavior or that fear of disagreement or disappointment, all the way up to our adulthood.  This craving for an acknowledgment (meaning: to be seen, heard, and understood ), was an emotional need we had, during our childhood, that was often neglected, consciously or not, by the people we cared about, the most.   We have then developed the limiting belief that our self-worth depends on external validations and recognition.

But, how do we break these people-pleasing behaviors?

Well,  there are a few recommendations we can make, to manage them, on 4 levels  (mental – emotional – behavioral – spiritual). These recommendations can also be applied for other CEN behavioral reactions ( like attention-approval-validation seeking )

On a Mental Level:

1. Cultivating our personal awareness ( meaning acknowledging, in the present moment, the thoughts and emotions  leading us to please this particular person or this group of people );
2. Identifying our LB ( Limiting Beliefs ) related to our self-perception.  What do we believe about ourselves that makes us engage in people-pleasing habits;
3. Uncovering what we get from that LB. How does it serve us or why do we feel the need to hold on to it?

On an Emotional Level:

1. Addressing our fears ( fear of judgment, rejection, conflict, or disappointing others, to mention the common ones );
2. Practicing emotional resilience (forgiving, accepting ourselves)
3. Nurturing our Inner Child (with a Self-Parental-Care Mindset), starting by revealing to ourselves our neglected childhood emotions; and by identifying what we were expecting our parent to do for us at the time. Then, be that parent to ourselves.

On a Behavioral Level:

1. Practicing Self-Care ( applying the 10 relational needs to ourselves )
2. Practicing self-expression by being authentic ( removing our social mask and our mental filters to verbalize our wishes and desires )
3. Establishing boundaries to cultivate our self-respect
4. Learning when to say NO, without feeling guilty;

On a Spiritual Level:

1. Shifting energy focus, from our weaknesses  to our strengths;
2. Connecting to our Inner Support System  ( such as: our inner wisdom / our Higher Self / our Oneness with the Higher Power-God-or if you prefer to Divine Consciousness ).

We” ll make separate episodes for each of those 12 recommendations, one by one. For each of those episodes, a worksheet will be also available on my website.

Some of you would ask a very legitimate question such as: How is eliminating people-pleasing behaviors is going to help us recover from CEN ( Childhood Emotional Neglect )?

Well, since people-pleasing is one of the common consequences of childhood emotional neglect, it is relevant to say that preventing the results, brings us back to addressing, managing or changing the rooted causes, why we manifest this behavior, in the first place.

To highlight this topic of people-pleasing, I would invite you to read this book, by Dr. Mike Bechtle, called:  The People-Pleasers’ Guide: To Loving Others Without Losing Yourself.

In conclusion, no one can please everyone simultaneously. Pleasing one person also means letting another person down. You have to prioritize yourself enough, to make sure that the person you are letting down is not … yourself.

 If that episode resonates with you, feel free to like, comment, or share with someone.

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Until then, you can still follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, or simply on my website: heartmindequation.com, to unlock hidden potential.