If you know you’re a people-pleaser, I have good news – you can find balance between caring about others, and caring about yourself. The way I talk about this with clients is probably not something you’ve heard before: When I work with clients who lean toward people-pleasing, we talk about how to be a healthy moving toward.
If you’ve never heard of being a moving toward, I’m not surprised. It comes from the work of Dr. Karen Horney, often termed the first feminist psychologist. She criticized Freud’s sexist tenets, like penis envy, and of course, she deserves to be acknowledged for this aspect of her work.
However, Horney also had her own perspectives on mental health, and it amazes me that her work is not more appreciated. Of her books, Our Inner Conflicts, in which Horney describes how personality influences behavior, is my favorite. (If you click on the link and purchase, I earn a small finder's fee on qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate, at no cost to you. You can buy it elsewhere, if you prefer.) It’s an easy read, and whether or not you’re a people-pleaser, you’ll benefit from reading it. You’ll see yourself and everyone you know in her book!
Before delving into personality, it’s worth mentioning that personality is complicated. One reason it gets complicated is because most people are a mix of all three of the personality groups that Horney discusses. Some people are a mix of just two. An even smaller number of people belong to just one group. As you read through the descriptions of personality groups, I encourage you to focus on which one feels like your primary way of responding to people and situations in your life. You can always read through it again, and notice your secondary or tertiary ways of responding.
Horney believed children respond to rejection, neglect, or worry by forming defenses. Horney categorized those defenses into three groups--moving toward, moving against, and moving away. Within each group, a person’s response can be healthy or unhealthy.
I use Horney’s perspectives in working with clients, because understanding your tendency to move toward, against, or away is powerful. When you know how you respond to worry, you can learn to respond in a healthy way. You can also see how others respond to worry, and it becomes easier to see things as happening to you personally, not because of you personally.
Many of my clients quickly recognize themselves as moving toward people. Moving towards are the warm-fuzzies of the world. They like other people, and they want other people to like them. This leads them to care more about how other people feel than they care about their own feelings.
Moving toward energy can be expressed in different ways, like caretaking, entertaining, planning and organizing, and troubleshooting and problem-solving. Of course, it’s not that other personality groups don’t do these things. But when moving towards people do these things, they 1) do these things for the benefit of others, and 2) they do so whether or not they have the time, energy, or resources to do them. Moving towards don’t like setting limits, because they want other people to like them.
In contrast, moving against people are competitive, not cooperative. They naturally care more about their own feelings than about the feelings of others. This allows them to effectively set limits and follow through on boundaries. When healthy, moving against are agents of positive change in a competitive and unjust world. They are confident and courageous, and they fight for social change, provide for the protection of others, and take responsibility for their own well-being as they do so. When unhealthy, moving againsts are unempathetic and aggressive. This is the personality group that is at risk for narcissism.
Moving away people, when they're healthy, are neither focused on their own feelings, nor focused on the feelings of others. This allows them to be balanced and serene. They effortlessly see both sides of situations, sit with both comfortable and uncomfortable feelings, or value knowledge and information, regardless of how what they learn makes them feel. They are profoundly connected and curious. When unhealthy, moving aways detach from the feelings of others, as well as their own feelings. This creates a cascade of problems, because although feelings aren’t facts, feelings are information about self and the world. When moving aways detach from their feelings, they miss out on the information they need to get their needs and wants met.
Although moving against and moving away people can find themselves engaging in people-pleasing, it’s easy for moving toward people to get caught up in people-pleasing as a lifestyle. Horney believed the purpose of a defense is to relieve worry. For a moving toward, they worry about liking others, and others liking them. When a moving toward focuses on people-pleasing, it’s an attempt to relieve the fear that they’re not liked.
There’s nothing wrong with caring about others. If you’re a parent, or otherwise responsible for someone else, then you have an obligation to care about what someone else needs and wants. However, as an adult, the responsibility of caring for you belongs to you. If your primary focus is on making sure that others like you, it’s unlikely you’ll have the time, energy, and resources to care for yourself.
The antidote for people-pleasing is to focus on what I call turning the spinner to you. Imagine a conversation between two people. Now imagine a big game spinner in between the two people, with the spinner landing on the person whose needs will be met. The moving toward person’s challenge is to see the spinner landing on the other person, acknowledging the other person’s needs and wants, and then turning the spinner to themselves.
How do you learn to turn the spinner to yourself? The place I encourage clients to start is with building self-esteem. After all, moving toward people choose to focus on the other person because they’re worried about being liked. If you like yourself, it’s far less threatening to think about the other person not liking you. You like you!
Of course, if you’re a moving toward person, you may need to learn to identify and regulate your feelings, speak up for yourself assertively, and take care of your mind and body. But ultimately, people-pleasing ends when you no longer focus on what others think about you, and your focus becomes what you think about you.
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