How to Stop People Pleasing If You Grew Up in a South Asian Family
If you grew up in a South Asian family, there’s a good chance you’ve learnt to put other people’s needs before your own.
Maybe you’re sick of everyone taking advantage of you.
Maybe you feel like you give, give, give and never get the same back.
Maybe you feel like your life is just on autopilot, and that none of your decisions are actually your own.
Or maybe you’ve got so good at keeping everyone else happy that you don’t even really know what you want anymore.
If that’s you, I really want you to know that there is hope for your relationships.
You can start to reclaim your power and learn how to stop people pleasing — and today I want to give you some practical things you can start doing.
Why is people pleasing so common in South Asian families?
In the last episode, we talked about this idea that we are biologically wired to adapt to our caregivers as children so they don’t leave us in the jungle to be eaten by tigers.
The same is true of culture.
Culture is our tribe.
We grow up seeing our mothers, our aunties, our grandmothers being pressured into marriages with people they don’t even like to make their families happy.
Because social standing is so important to South Asian cultures, from a very young age we can begin to realise that individual choice and happiness must be sacrificed for the wellbeing of the collective.
Now, I want to say that being from a collectivist culture does have some fantastic benefits.
There’s generosity.
There’s hospitality.
There’s a concern and a care for the community.
We really look out for each other and will go the extra mile when someone else is suffering.
There’s this idea on social media right now about rejecting Western individualism and wanting the return of a village.
That’s us.
We are pretty village-like, and I love that.
But there are also some downsides.
There can be less freedom.
Less accountability for abuse.
The shame of speaking out.
What will people think?
Problems can really fester when the priority is togetherness over honesty.
And the problem can be intensified if you’re an immigrant, a refugee, or have experienced historical trauma.
You cling together for safety in foreign lands and sometimes have to forgo individual happiness for collective safety.
The threat is not just metaphorical and primal tigers in the jungle.
The threat is lived experience.
We learn that love is about sacrifice
This is SO evident in Bollywood films.
In DDLJ, when Simran’s dad wants her to marry someone else instead of Shah Rukh Khan, she essentially decides that she can sacrifice her own happiness for her dad’s happiness.
And when you grow up seeing stories like this, hearing messages like this and watching the people around you live this way, it makes sense that we find it so hard to dare to want.
Because we are told that love is all about sacrifice.
In Veer Zaara, Zaara’s mum tells her that true love isn’t real and that she just needs to marry this abusive guy because it will be good for her father’s political career.
And she’s just like:
Yeah, that makes sense.
NO IT DOESN’T.
I think there’s another movie where the father collapses or is ill in bed because his son or daughter didn’t comply with his wishes.
I can’t remember which film this was, so if anyone knows please put it in the comments because I don’t know if I’ve actually made this up.
But all the reasons are pretty clear as day why we’ve all learnt to do this.
So what are some things that you can actually start doing about it?
First: figure out what your needs are
The first thing we need to do in order to stop pleasing others is to know what pleases you.
What are your needs?
What do you want from other people?
What do you need from yourself?
Do you ever ask for these things?
Do you ever tell people what you need?
If you have been socialised this way, it can feel pretty alien.
And it might take some time to get to know yourself again.
If you’ve never really had your needs met by another person — or even by yourself — if you’ve never met your own needs, it’s pretty likely that you might not actually know what they are.
So take some time to get to know yourself.
You could use these as journal prompts, or just think about them:
What do I actually want?
What do I need from the people in my life?
What do I need from myself?
What am I saying yes to when I actually want to say no?
What has stopped me from voicing my needs and wants in the past?
What am I afraid will happen if I tell someone what I want?
And notice what feelings come up.
Is it anger?
Is it irritation?
Is it sadness?
It can be a really common response to feel sadness that you haven’t had your needs met.
And anger can also come up because you feel like other people should KNOW your needs without you having to tell them.
Make space for whatever that is.
What has stopped you from asking for what you need?
Now I want you to think about what has stopped you from voicing your needs and wants in the past.
Is it rejection?
Is it abandonment?
Could it be a fear of conflict?
How have people responded in the past — and particularly in your childhood — to your needs and wants?
Was it the start of arguments?
Did it impact how connected you felt to your parents?
Did you learn that having needs created problems?
I think the idea of keeping the peace tends to come up a lot here.
But if this is the case, I want you to ask yourself:
Do you feel at peace?
Does your life feel peaceful?
Because if you are constantly making sure everyone else is okay while you are exhausted, resentful, anxious or unhappy, are you actually keeping the peace?
I saw a meme that said:
“If you are a people pleaser, name one person that is pleased with you.”
And it cracked me up because it is so true.
Sometimes reframing the discomfort can be really helpful.
You might feel uncomfortable when you start saying what you want.
But discomfort doesn't necessarily mean you're doing something wrong.
Sometimes it means you're doing something different.
How to stop feeling like everyone is taking advantage of you
Let's move on to the problem of people taking advantage of you.
If you feel like you give, give, give and you never ever receive the same back, I get that.
It would be so much easier and convenient if we could just change other people’s behaviour.
It’s very annoying that we can’t.
But we can be curious about our own behaviour.
I want you to be an explorer of your own mind.
Let’s lift the bonnet and root around.
Ask yourself:
What do you feel like you bring to relationships that are not based on giving or doing something for someone else?
Take a second to notice how easy it is to answer this question.
Notice what comes up for you if you are finding this hard to answer.
What makes you loveable?
Why do the people in your life love you?
Sometimes when our own self-worth is low, when we can’t see what other people see, it can be really tempting to unconsciously make up for what we feel we lack by endlessly giving.
Being there for everyone also benefits you.
It makes you feel loved and connected.
But the trade-off can be feeling depressed and tired of not receiving the same back.
You don't have to constantly audition for love
I want you to get out your notes app, a Trello board, a notebook and pen — whatever works for you — and I’m so serious:
Write down the ways you are loveable.
Ask your friends and family:
“What do you love about me?”
Try and get five things.
Then aim for ten.
Then fifteen.
And so on.
Keep adding to it.
It’s your choice how long you keep adding to it, but nothing is too small to add.
You are trying to start levelling the playing field inside yourself so you don’t constantly feel like you are auditioning for love.
It’s like when you start a job and you’re on probation for three months, so you’re just absolutely doing the most to make sure you can secure the position permanently.
You don’t have to do this with the people you love.
You can relax.
Start practising taking up space
The last thing I want to talk about is how to start implementing this with your Desi family.
And I think if this is a new thing for you, I’d encourage you to start off small.
Start building the muscle.
Family is the most biologically close relationship we have, so that primal fear of being eaten in the jungle is going to be way more intense with family than it will be with the checkout person at Tesco or a stranger.
I once read this tip in Emma Reed Turrell’s book Please Yourself, which I’ll link in the show notes.
It’s a fantastic read for anyone trying to stop people pleasing in their relationships.
Start practising taking up space.
Take your time with packing your shopping.
Learn to tolerate being an inconvenience.
If you’re eating and there’s one slice of pizza left and you want it:
Just eat it.
What you want is important too.
The next time someone asks you what you want to eat, stop yourself before you say:
“I don’t mind, whatever you want to eat.”
And actually tell them what you want.
Practice makes perfect here.
Start telling people:
“I want…”
Start telling them:
“I need…”
This isn’t about getting everything you ask for.
It’s about strengthening that part of your brain.
You are practising having a preference.
You are practising voicing it.
You are practising tolerating someone else potentially not liking it.
And the more you do it, the stronger that muscle becomes.
Eventually, you can start using it for the bigger decisions.
Who you want to marry.
What you want to do with your career.
What you want to study.
Where you want to live.
What kind of relationships you want.
What kind of life you actually want.
One really important caveat
There’s one last thing I want to add because it’s quite important to name.
If you have trauma, this can be so much harder.
Sometimes it might not be safe to say no.
People pleasing in the South Asian community can unfortunately make abuse a lot more likely.
And if there is a risk to your housing, or you are risking physical or verbal abuse if you say no, then that people pleasing is doing a fantastic job of protecting you from harm.
If this is the case, you will need a lot more support with this.
Because the behaviour is still protecting you from an active threat, not a metaphorical tiger one.
There is a difference between saying no to someone who might be annoyed with you and saying no to someone who could hurt you.
So please don’t use this article to pressure yourself into setting boundaries in a situation where doing so could put you at risk.
Sometimes people pleasing is a survival strategy.
And you don't need to shame yourself for surviving.
You are allowed to want things
There’s so much more I could talk about on this, but I’ll leave you with those things for now.
If you grew up believing that being a good person meant keeping everyone else happy, it can feel really uncomfortable to start putting yourself into the equation.
But you are allowed to have needs.
You are allowed to want things.
You are allowed to tell people what you want.
You are allowed to take up space.
You are allowed to disappoint people.
And you don't have to stop loving your family to start loving yourself.
What you want is important too.
If this brought anything up for you, I’d love to know.
Are there things you didn’t agree with?
Did something resonate?
Do you have more questions?
Send me a DM, email me or leave a comment. I want this to be a conversation and not just me yapping at you.
And if you need more support and guidance with people pleasing, family trauma or difficult family dynamics, you can book a free call with me.
And if you want to read more about people pleasing, I also recommend Emma Reed Turrell’s Please Yourself:
