Help! I'm a High Performing "People Pleaser"

Beloved, part of my culturally informed trauma-informed work is to help you, using my TikTok page, this website, and these blog posts, to help you understand more about why you are the way you are and do the things you do over and over again. Self-awareness is the superpower that is necessary to acquire as a precursor to your healing and workplace trauma resolution. So today, let's talk about your people-pleasing tendencies, which you’ve brought from your childhood trauma into your workplace, high performance, which are now traumatizing YOU with anxiety, dwindling self-confidence, depression, and rage.

There are two types of high-performing Black Women. A type one high performer exceeds performance standards as a natural part of a learned or inherited work ethic. We are internally wired to go hard, do well, kill it, and just get ‘er done, all in black excellence, with the need of only our own internal affirmation of “job well done”. Being an elite performer comes much easier to us sans the plaguing fear, anxiety, and self-doubt commonly experienced by the type two high performer. During the appropriate psychosocial development stage, we learned to trust ourselves, trust our intuition, and most importantly, our accomplishments as tangible proof of our grit, talent, and capabilities. We do not look to or need others to confirm what we already know as true. This type of high performer performs for the hell of it, just to add to our list of achievements and to be able to say mostly to ourselves, “We did that ish.”

The second type of high performer performs errands, tasks, chores, and tricks for the authority figure as a result of a learned trauma response from childhood that taught you that you had to “perform” to either earn self-worth-boosting praise and approval or to avoid criticism, judgment, or punishment. Your high-performing type’s performance excellence is intersectional with your childhood trauma response, which you developed in childhood as a coping/survival mechanism.

 You will know if you have a People Pleasing-trauma response if you:

• Agreeableness: Always pleasantly prioritizing the needs and desires of others, even at the expense of your own, to avoid disagreement or unpleasantness. 

• Submissiveness: Avoid conflict and submit to the authority or wishes of others. 

• Self-sacrifice: Neglect one's own needs and well-being to maintain harmony or avoid rejection. 

• Hypervigilance: Overly sensitive to cues of disapproval or danger, leading to constant anxiety and appeasement. 

• Poor self-image and reliance on the praise and approval of others to feel valuable. 

• Transactional Relationships: To please others, you hide your true feelings, needs, and desires, leading to one-sided relationships where you use people pleasing as a means to either obtain the accolades you need or avoid negative consequences.

• Fawning: (one of the 4 trauma responses) is your default trauma response because of chronic/complex trauma, where you've learned that it's safer to submit to your abuser (please/appease) to avoid danger or conflict.

  
  

You will know if your People Pleasing informs/impacts your High Performing if:

• You excel at your job or tasks because you have a strong desire to please all authority figures, such as your boss or peers, often by overperforming, being overly empathetic, and providing unwavering support to your team. 

• You bring your perfectionist performance expectations imposed on you from your childhood into your work life  

• You put your team’s needs first, although it leaves you feeling drained, stressed, overwhelmed, and resentful

• You feel depressed when your external validation at work decreases or disappears

• You have a poor self-image and rely on the praise and approval of those you work for and with to feel valuable. 

• Difficulty saying "no", a reluctance to decline requests, leads you to take on too many tasks, spreading yourself too thin.

• You feel a lack of authenticity because you yourself doubt your high-performance ability, because all your confidence comes from the praise of others

  
  

Don’t worry, Queen, you are also fantastic in these ways:

• Excellent problem-solving skills

• Adeptness at anticipating others' needs

• A desire to help and support others/fosters a harmonious and collaborative work environment, 

• Empathetic and caring, tuned in to others' feelings, leading to increased trust and loyalty within a team. 

• High emotional intelligence is associated with more engaged and productive teams. 

  
  

High-performing people pleaser leverages these positive traits to achieve success, but must also be mindful of the potential for burnout and the importance of establishing healthy boundaries to maintain their own well-being. This is what I help my high-performing clients heal/achieve:

How to fix your high-performing people-pleasing behavior:

• Stop lying to your damn self, become self-aware of your behavior and its negative mental and physical health consequences

• Set healthy personal AND work boundaries, learn to say NO, NO THANK YOU, NOT NOW

• Prioritize your needs by practicing self-compassion, then develop a self-care plan

• Learn to trust yourself, thereby relinquishing the desperate need for others' approval