Yes, I know. “You can’t please everyone” is a one-liner you’ve heard a million times before. But hearing it and believing it are not the same thing. Most people (including you?) are out there every day trying to please everyone. Consider how much you worry about people not liking you. Why does it put a knot in your stomach whenever someone is upset with you? Why are you willing to do almost anything to ensure that people will be pleased with you?
The answer is that we all have a God-given need for approval that we take much too far. The need for approval itself isn’t the problem—it is normal and human to want approval from others. In fact, if we don’t receive adequate approval from people, we don’t make it through life very well. The problem arises, however, when we live for the approval of others and try to get it from everyone. Approval becomes our god, and we emotionally wipe ourselves out looking for it in every nook and cranny.
Childhood and Approval
The origin of the need to please everyone, and thereby gain approval, often goes back to childhood where there was a real (or perhaps perceived) lack of love and approval from one or both parents. This critical missing element of personal development creates an internal “thirst” for love and approval that is very strong and hard to ever satisfy later on in life.
Brett, one of my clients who came to see me because of marital problems, struggled with an extremely strong need to please everyone and receive approval. During his childhood, Brett had been ignored by his father. Brett’s father hadn’t criticized him or hit him or yelled at him. He had just ignored him. His father was so caught up in his own world that he never took the time to enter Brett’s. Brett never received one of the essentials for growing up a reasonably healthy person—a father’s love.
Feeling rejected by the most important male in his life, Brett spent his adult years trying to make up for the love he had missed by doing his best to get everyone else to love and accept him, especially people at work.
“My wife and I had another one of those heated arguments the other day,” Brett told me at the start of a session.
“What caused it?” I asked.
“Same as always. She thinks I work too much. I’m usually the last guy out of the office every night. That puts me home late. And even then, I have a briefcase filled with contracts to review, proposals to analyze, and ad campaigns to help design. My wife says she is so far down on my list of priorities, we might as well not even be married.”
“What do you think about that?”
Brett shrugged his shoulders. “I guess if actions speak louder than words, she’s probably right. She just doesn’t understand, though, that I have a lot of responsibilities and a lot of people depending on me.”
One glance at Brett showed that he was physically exhausted. He had bags under his eyes and a pallor to his skin. His posture was slumped and heavy.
“Looks like your work life is jeopardizing your relationship with your wife and ruining your health, Brett,” I told him flatly. “Why do you think you continually get yourself involved in so many different things?”
Brett’s eyes avoided mine. “I don’t know.”
“Do you remember our discussion last session about how you felt you never received any approval from your father?”
“Yes, sure, I remember.”
“And do you remember how you decided that because of that, you developed a heightened need to have people like you and approve of you? You admitted last time that you were deathly afraid of anyone ever being displeased with you.”
“Yes, I know,” he said.
“Let me ask you this: Do you see any connection between how hard you work and the hurt you felt from being ignored by your dad?”
“That happened thirty years ago,” said Brett, ducking the question. “What does that have to do with me now?”
“I think you know,” I insisted. “You do know, don’t you?”
“This is where I’m supposed to say that I’m still looking for my father’s approval by working so hard,” he said with a tone of indifference. “You want me to say that since I couldn’t please my old man, I’m now trying to please everybody else I come in contact with. It’s my unfulfilled need to find love and approval, right?”
“We both know that,” I agreed. “But don’t you see the irony in all this? In going ‘all out’ for everybody at work, you are ignoring your wife. And she’s the one who wants to give you love and approval. You’re treating her exactly the way your father treated you.”
That struck a chord in Brett. He began to tear up and sat silently for nearly a minute weighing what I’d said. Finally, he spoke.
“The last person in the world I want to be like is my father. It never occurred to me that I have been doing to my wife what he did to me. It’s just that . . . well, I’ve spent so many years trying to get people’s approval, I don’t know if I can change. I know that if I pulled back at work, I’d upset a lot of folks. The boss, especially, would really be angry with me. That worries me.”
“Change is always hard. But listen to yourself, Brett. You’re saying that at the expense of your marriage and your health, you’re more concerned with trying to please everyone at work. Isn’t that a rather high price to pay?”
At that, Brett began to cry. “What’s . . . what’s wrong with me, Dr. Thurman? When I hear you talk about my life, I see how stupid it is to be like I am, but then, I just go out and continue to live that way. Why am I acting like this?”
“Maybe you are addicted to approval?”
Brett’s eyes widened. “Addicted! Can you be addicted to approval?”
“Sure. It’s possible to be addicted to almost anything, not just alcohol or drugs.”
“I would never have thought of it like that. But . . . it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? I’m like a drug addict. If I can get daily injections of approval, then I’m fine. But if I don’t, it’s like I go into withdrawal. I can’t handle that. I need a ‘fix’ of approval on a regular basis. It’s frightening to think of it like that. I’m addicted to approval. I’ve got to do something about this.”
“How would you handle it if you were addicted to drugs?” I asked him.
“I’d . . . I’d quit,” he stammered. “I’d stop taking that poison. I’d clean out my system. I’d purge myself of the addiction.”
“It would be painful,” I reminded him. “It hurts to go through withdrawal from any kind of addiction.”
“But that would be a matter of life and death,” Brett responded, a sense of genuine anxiety coming over him.
“So is your addiction to approval,” I warned him. “The shape your marriage is in and the way you look right now, it’s obvious you’re headed for serious problems.”
“You’re right,” Brett said seriously. “I’m hooked on approval, and I need to break the habit. Until today, I didn’t want to see that.”
A Cure for the Addiction
Can you relate to parts of Brett’s confession? Although the truth is that we can’t please everyone, a lot of us keep trying anyway. If you find yourself seeking everyone’s approval, don’t deceive yourself into thinking it is not an addiction. It is. For too many people, approval is the “drug” they crave night and day. But just as with any comparable street drug, the effects of approval are short-lived, and the addict all too quickly needs to “score” again so that he can feel good once more. It’s a vicious, dangerous, and life-threatening cycle, but something that can be overcome.
My client, Brett, was able to make positive changes in his life related to trying to please everyone. He made changes with much “fear and trembling,” but his sincere desire to break his addiction to approval motivated him.
I helped Brett create a list of priorities for his life. Right at the top he listed renewing his love for God. He realized that he had become so consumed with seeking people’s approval that he had allowed his relationship with God to atrophy. Brett was spiritually wise enough to know that people’s approval had become his god and that
things were never going to get any better in his life until the one, true God became his God again. Second on his list of priorities was nurturing a close, intimate relationship with his wife. Brett knew he had run from intimacy with her for years, and he saw that it was time to stop running. Whether it felt comfortable or not, he needed to work on becoming her soul mate and learn to love her and accept her love in return. Third, Brett admitted that he hadn’t had a close male buddy since college and that he should deepen his relationships with men. Specifically, he thought he might become good friends with a couple of guys who had asked him to play golf and go to some football games; it was time to find out. Finally, he made a commitment to balance his life better. He would have to cut back at work by going home earlier, get much-needed rest, do some regular exercise, and watch his diet. Along work lines, he focused on doing an excellent job for his employer but staying within the confines of his job description rather than trying to be everything for everybody. By sticking to these priorities, Brett saw his life take a significant positive upturn. He shifted from trying to please everyone to trying to love God and the people who really loved him for who he was. In doing so, he got his life back.
Yet Brett also ran into disapproval and rejection from some people at work for remaining true to his priorities. Some of his colleagues, being overly committed to work and pleasing the higher-ups, didn’t like the fact that Brett was not working as hard as they were. They didn’t like seeing him go home at 6:00 P.M. while they worked until 7:00 P.M. or 8:00 P.M. or later. They resented Brett’s taking breaks during the day while they worked through their own. They felt Brett should plug away at work on the weekends, just as they often did.
Misery loves company, and these coworkers, probably without really being aware of it, wanted Brett to be as miserable as they were. In a very real sense, they resented his choice to be healthy as they chose to remain sick. As he quit trying to please them in order to get their approval, some of them liked him less. The boss wasn’t thrilled with the “new” Brett, either. That was tough for Brett to accept, but he came to see that the only way to get his life back was to risk not receiving applause from others.
Rick Nelson was right—you can’t please everyone. I would put it even more strongly—you are not on this earth to please people. It isn’t your job. Nor are people here to please you. We are here to glorify God. That means being displeasing to others at times whether we like that or not. Christ is the ultimate example of what I am talking about. Christ was morally perfect, and people hated Him so much that they killed Him. That ought to tell us just how shallow and flaky people’s approval and disapproval can be.
If you consider yourself to be a person who is addicted to approval, take some positive steps to “go straight.” Begin by admitting you have the addiction. Admit that approval has become your god and that it is a god that will kill you. Nothing changes until you admit you have a problem.
Next, return home to the God who loves you as you are. He is ready to kill the fatted calf and throw a party for you if you will just come out of the foreign land where you have wasted your life. We are all prodigal sons and daughters in some way, and we need to come home.
Then, think of the people who accept you as you are, and work on being intimate with them. If there isn’t anyone like that, try to connect with people at church or other safe places, and do what you can to allow relationships to form. As I said earlier, we all need approval, but it is impossible to get any if we don’t allow people to get to know us well enough.
Finally, stay balanced. Work, play, rest, have fun, eat well, do hobbies, cultivate new interests, enjoy the arts—put your eggs in multiple baskets. Brett was a mess partly because he had allowed his need for approval to lead him into putting all his eggs in the basket called “work.” All work and no play made Brett a very dull boy, and it makes us dull as well.
I’m sure you are thinking, Chris, get real! I barely have time to brush my teeth at night before I drag my dead carcass into bed, much less do all the things you are talking about. Well, I have only one thing to say to you: Bull! You have the time. You just don’t use it right. Quit making excuses. Life is passing you by, and you are boring us all to tears with all your complaints while you’re letting it. Get off the couch and reclaim your life.
Growthwork
If you have led a life like Brett’s, I want to challenge you to do something right now to start breaking your addiction. If you feel that you need everyone’s approval, I want you to do something that purposely leads to disapproval. Here are some possibilities to choose from:
• Yell out the time in the middle of a large store.
• Walk down a city street wearing Mickey Mouse ears.
• Express an opinion in a conversation at work tomorrow that is different from what the others are saying.
• If someone asks you to do something that is unreasonable, say no.
• If someone asks you to do something that is reasonable, say no.
• Wear a dress shoe and a tennis shoe out in public.
• Walk around in a shopping mall with a sign that reads, ADVICE, 25¢.
I am not encouraging you to do anything unkind, immoral, insensitive, or dangerous. I am just asking you to act in a manner that is consistent with the truth “you can’t please everyone.” I’m challenging you to find the courage to live a life that doesn’t make pleasing everyone and getting universal approval the central focus.
Oh, and don’t be surprised that life will go on, because it will. And better.
10
THERE IS NO GAIN WITHOUT PAIN
One cannot get through life without pain.
—Bernie Siegel
Imagine what your reaction might be if you saw a story in your hometown newspaper tomorrow morning that read as follows:
New Psychosurgery Procedure Makes
Mental Health Possible Without Any Effort
Unbelievable Press International (UPI)—Doctors at Happy Days Hospital in Nirvana, New York, have developed a new surgical procedure that creates mental health in a matter of minutes. The procedure involves removing all of the patient’s faulty beliefs, attitudes, and expectations through laser surgery of a certain part of the brain. Patients who have undergone the procedure report the complete absence of emotional problems afterward, and they are now kind, self-controlled, patient, giving, selfless, and unconditionally loving people. Dr. I. M. Deluded, the surgeon who pioneered the psychosurgery technique, hails his discovery as, “What everyone has been looking for all along—all the benefits of mental health without any of the hard work!” Dr. Deluded has reported receiving thousands of calls from people all over the world asking about the availability of the new surgery. He stated that within ten years, it would be possible for the whole population of the world to have undergone the procedure and have complete mental health.
That sounds pretty attractive, doesn’t it? Most people would love to undergo a procedure that would free them from all of their distorted thinking and the psychological misery created by it (except for those of us in the mental health profession who would be put out of work!). There is only one problem: there is no way to achieve mental (or spiritual or physical) health without painful effort on our part.
The idea that something can be done to you to help you achieve mental and spiritual health goes way back in time. One of the earliest treatments of mental/ spiritual disorders for which we have evidence was a practice in the Stone Age called trephening. Trephening involved using crude stone instruments to chip away an area of the skull of a disturbed person. This opening presumably allowed the evil spirit that was causing the illness to escape. Some people actually appear to have survived the surgery and lived for many years afterward.
The early belief that all psychological problems were the result of possession by evil spirits also gave rise to exorcism as a way to mental/spiritual growth. Exorcisms varied considerably, but most involved prayer, noise making, and the use of horrible-tasting concoctio
ns. Extreme cases involved making the body of the possessed person such an unpleasant place that the evil spirit would leave voluntarily.
Another method used to treat psychological and spiritual problems through external means was the circulating swing. This approach, used in the early nineteenth century, involved strapping a patient in a chair that could be spun around. I assume the idea behind it was that the operator could spin a person’s problems right out of him. The technique was believed to bring the disturbed person back to sound reasoning.
In our current age, many still continue to search for ways to achieve personal growth and maturity that are easy and painless. Too many hurting people even view medication that way. More than a few clients have come in just to have medication prescribed to make their emotional and spiritual pain go away, not to work on the underlying issues causing their pain. When I informed them that I was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist who could prescribe medication, some didn’t return. All they wanted was a pill to make them better. Since I couldn’t offer that, they went off looking for a psychiatrist who could.
The problem here isn’t that people in emotional and spiritual pain turn for help where they think they can find it. Who doesn’t? Pain motivates all of us to look for help, and it should. The problem is that we think some technique or procedure or pill can make us better people. Becoming a better person requires hard work on our part from the inside out, not something from the outside doing its magic internally. We may find relief from our pain through something external—medication, a warm bath, a trip to Maui—but relief is not the same thing as growth. Growth comes only from painful effort.
No Quick-Fix Solutions
Dan, a client of mine, truly wished for an external, painless solution to all his problems. He came to see me because of depression and anxiety related to problems at work and in his marriage. He was about to lose his job, and his wife was very close to walking out on him.
The Lies We Believe Page 17