The Hidden Cost of Keeping Peace
When Approval Becomes Oxygen
At some point, doing well or being liked stopped feeling optional — it became survival. Maybe love felt conditional, or peace at home depended on you keeping everyone calm. You learned that harmony kept you safe.
That pattern works until adulthood turns it into a trap. Your nervous system still links approval with safety, so even small disapproval feels like threat. You keep performing calmness, competence, or kindness until it drains the colour from your life.
At a glance
- People-pleasing and perfectionism both grow from needing safety and approval.
- They can look helpful or high-functioning, but often mask fear of rejection or failure.
- Burnout, resentment, anxiety, and shame are common side-effects.
- Therapy helps you separate care from compliance, and effort from worth.
People-pleasing is self-erasure dressed as goodwill.
Why do we prioritise someone else’s comfort over our own — their happiness over our time or peace?
The Two Faces of Control
Perfectionism and people-pleasing are cousins. Both are about control — one manages the self, the other manages the room.
The perfectionist fears chaos and criticism. The people-pleaser fears conflict and disconnection. One polishes; the other smooths. Both try to stop the world from turning unpredictable.
You might even switch between the two: flawless performance at work, invisible compromise at home. Different armour, same purpose.
Why It’s Hard to Stop
These behaviours aren’t habits; they’re safety strategies. When you start saying no or relaxing your standards, the body interprets it as danger. That’s why you can know you’re overdoing it and still keep doing it.
Change doesn’t begin with willpower — it starts with safety. The moment you believe you can survive disapproval, you can begin to choose.
When Care Turns Into Compliance
Empathy is beautiful, but without boundaries it mutates into compliance. You start fixing other people’s emotions instead of feeling your own. You apologise for existing in the wrong tone, time, or energy.
The irony is that people-pleasers rarely feel truly seen. They get praised for being dependable, not for being them.
When you spend your life making everyone comfortable, you forget what comfort feels like.
When you stop prioritising your own, you’re teaching people that your boundaries don’t matter — and the cycle repeats.
The Hidden Toll
Constant vigilance has a cost: chronic tension, headaches, sleeplessness, resentment you can’t quite justify. The perfectionist lies awake rehearsing tomorrow’s performance; the people-pleaser worries who might secretly be annoyed. Both end up living from the neck up — disconnected from body and need.
Sometimes this looks like high achievement. You get rewarded for the same behaviour that’s quietly burning you out. Society applauds compliance and productivity; it rarely celebrates rest or boundary.
Learning to Tolerate Imperfection
Recovery isn’t about swinging to the opposite extreme. You don’t have to become careless or confrontational. It’s about balance — learning to disappoint people kindly, and to leave things half-done without panic.
Small acts of imperfection are often the bravest. Letting an email wait, leaving the dishes, saying “I can’t this week.” Each one teaches your nervous system that the world doesn’t collapse when you stop performing.
Therapy’s Role
In therapy, we often explore the origin story of your pleasing or perfecting. Whose comfort did you manage as a child? Whose approval became your measure?
The aim isn’t to blame, but to understand. Once you see the pattern, you can separate genuine care from survival strategy. The goal isn’t to stop caring — it’s to care without disappearing.
The World Won’t End (Promise)
Learning to live without constant approval feels strange at first — like walking without a familiar limp. But gradually the space fills with colour. You start asking, What do I want? instead of What’s expected?
And yes, some people will find the new you unsettling. Boundaries rearrange dynamics. But the relationships that survive are real, not reliant on your silence.
They Once protected you
People-pleasing and perfectionism once protected you. They kept things calm, predictable, and safe. Now they keep you small.
Therapy helps you trade safety for freedom — slowly, on your terms. Not a rebellion, but a re-calibration: learning that being human, messy, and enough are not opposites.
