People Pleaser

People-pleasers, so dependent on being approved and accepted by others, are incapable of validating themselves independent of others’ confirmation.

The longing to feel secure, prompting behaviors of compliance and conformity, necessarily had to prevail over the not-quite-so powerful yearning to hold onto their true selves.

When people-pleasers grow up, they do so with a fully crystallized program to be good enough they must comply with the wishes and demands of others. As with so many other personality dysfunctions, they're unable to validate themselves from within so must depend on others to confirm their value from without. Not having developed any sense that they're inherently worth caring for--i.e., lovable for themselves--they strive to make themselves lovable by becoming for others whatever they think might be wanted from them.

It is a resentment that over time has accumulated so much mass that inevitably it's begun to leak out in the form of passive-aggressive behavior.

And it should be added that many people-pleasers become so frustrated about having to stifle themselves that with enough provocation they can verbally explode at the person they've been taking such inordinately good care of. 

Ultimately, the solution for people-pleasers, as with so many other dysfunctional personality patterns, is to learn how to become more self-validating. Only through learning how to feel okay solely from within is it possible to undo the essential motivation for pleasing others--which, of course, is based on the need to earn their validation. To this point, people-pleasers have been unable to internalize (or make "real" for themselves) this external validation anyway. Like any other addiction (whether to a substance, activity, or relationship) implicitly the keyword for them has been more. For without the ability to truly "get" that they're good enough--despite any number of compliments or kudos from without--they've spent their whole lives trying to get more and more of what finally could never lead to the self-approval and -acceptance they've yearned for all along.

For people who truly value themselves simply don't need to focus on pleasing others in order to feel (conditionally) good enough. With sufficient self-valuing, they're free to independently pursue their own dreams, not feel bound to fulfill someone else's.

The key to people-pleasers' metamorphosis is not in doing anything differently as such, but in learning over time how to come from a place of genuine self-deserving.

They have a perfect right both to assert their needs and to say no whenever a request or demand feels unfair or excessive to them. Over and over they need to get the new and revised message that their own wants and desires are legitimate and important, and that it's safe to hold onto them even when they differ from another's.

Do things for others because you really care about them--not simply because you're afraid they'd abandon you if you didn't. (And, again, remember that anyone who would forsake you if you failed to submit to their preferences really isn't someone you want in your life anyhow.)

Self-Judgment is generally a form of control to get yourself to do things "right" so that others will validate you and approve of you. But as much as you may succeed in getting others to approve of you, as long as you are judging yourself you will continue to feel badly about yourself.