Is People-Pleasing Causing Your Burnout? How People-Pleasing and Burnout Go Hand-in-Hand
As a therapist, I often work with clients who are experiencing burnout. They report feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and tapped out—and not just in the workplace. They are often burnt out in their personal lives, relationships, and even their hobbies. Everything feels tiring and daunting, yet they keep finding themselves saying yes to taking on more things.
There’s often one thing in common with most of these clients: a long-standing pattern of people-pleasing.
The Link Between People-Pleasing and burnout
Burnout is a state of severe physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion caused by a period of chronic stress or overwhelm. When we unpack the issue of burnout further, there is often an underlying pattern of people-pleasing that causes people to say yes, take things on, and feel overly responsible for helping others. People-pleasing is a pattern of beliefs and behaviours that often creates a cycle of emotional over-functioning: prioritizing others’ needs, minimizing your own, and suppressing discomfort or boundaries for the sake of keeping the peace.
Many of my clients say things like:
“Well, I have to do it all—because if I don’t, then who will?”
“If I let others do things, they’ll mess it up, or I’ll just have to redo it anyway.”
“I can’t ask for help—people will see me as weak or needy.”
“I don’t want to disappoint anyone, I need to keep up the façade that I’m doing well.”
Within these statements, there is an underlying belief that they cannot count on others, that others will let them down or reject them if they ask for help. So they have learned that in order to stay in safe connection or maintain certain relationships, they have to do more than their share. They feel entirely responsible for meeting their own needs (and the needs of others).
On the surface, they may feel like they are being helpful or dependable to others, which initially may seem caring and generous, but—over time—it can lead to chronic stress, overwhelm, feelings of deep resentment and anger, and a sense of unbalance in relationships.
Often, the underlying pattern of people-pleasing is what causes people to feel overly responsible for others, feel immense guilt, and take on more than we should—eventually leading to depletion and burnout.
Longstanding People-Pleasing Can Lead to Burnout
After a long time of people-pleasing and prioritizing other’s needs over your own, you may start to feel symptoms of burnout including physical fatigue, emotional numbness, irritability, or disconnection. Burnout is the body’s way of responding to being perpetually “on” and functioning beyond its capacity for an extended period of time. Those symptoms of burnout can be a signal that something needs to shift.
When we begin to examine the reasons behind why we have said yes too many times, taken on too many things, over-gave, or not allowed for rest, then we can slowly begin to heal.
Recovering from Burnout Means Working on Your People-Pleasing
Healing from burnout will take more than simply taking time off work, taking a vacation, or having a quiet spa weekend. While rest and reducing obligations is important, real recovery means addressing the underlying patterns and mindset that contributed to burnout in the first place.
Unlearning people-pleasing habits and reframing your beliefs and mindset takes time, but is an important part of shifting the underlying patterns that lead to burnout.
Here are some things you can work on to shift your people-pleasing pattern and reduce burnout:
Below are some strategies you can try to work on shifting your people-pleasing pattern and reduce burnout
1. Pause Before Saying Yes
Give yourself permission to not respond immediately when someone asks you for something. A simple, “Let me get back to you” can give you the space you need to check in with yourself.
Ask: Do I actually want to do this? Or am I saying yes out of guilt or fear? Do I have the energy for this?
2. Delegate and Ask for Help
People-pleasers often struggle to trust others to take on tasks. Practice letting go of control and allowing things to be “good enough.”
Let a friend walk your dog even if they take a different route than you would. Let your partner cook breakfast even if the toast gets a little burnt. It’s about letting yourself learn how to receive from others, while tolerating the discomfort that they may do it differently or imperfectly. You’re learning a new pattern and it means doing new things, and it won’t always go perfectly.
3. Create Intentional Rest
Carve out pockets of time that are actually restorative or rejuvenating for you. Maybe get back into reading, journalling, or spending time in nature. Let yourself feel the discomfort of doing less, and see what thoughts come up for you. For instance, when you rest, do you believe you’re being lazy? That you are being selfish or uncaring?
Get curious about where these thoughts and beliefs came from, and explore whether they are currently serving you.
4. Practice Saying No (Without Over-Explaining)
What can you take off your plate? What can you say no to? You don’t need to justify your boundaries or offer an elaborate excuse. “No” is a complete sentence. This will be extremely hard, so start small: practice saying no to things that feel like obligations.
5. Get Curious About the Guilt
It’s normal to feel guilt when breaking out of a people-pleasing pattern. That guilt isn’t a sign you’re doing something wrong—it’s a sign you’re doing something new. Explore that guilt with compassion instead of letting it steer your decisions.
How can you be present with and tolerate that guilty feeling, rather than making it go away by saying yes or helping others?
6. Be Present with Your Feelings
How can you be present with your feelings in a way that may be new or unfamiliar?
Many people-pleasers have felt deeply alone and a deep sense of longing for others to take care of them and meet their needs without feeling like a burden. They often learned to use their helpfulness as a way to stay in relationships and protect from potential hurt or abandonment.
Being rejected or let down by someone else can feel devastating. There is some inner work to be done here, to practice being present with yourself through difficult emotions in a way that was maybe never available to you.
If you want more support with this, I work with clients who are wanting to explore their people-pleasing pattern and reduce the impact of chronic stress and burnout. I help people identify and shift underlying patterns and beliefs and support them in building relationships and a life that feels more balanced, authentic, and fulfilling.
If you are interested in virtual counselling with a therapist in BC to explore your people-pleasing patterns or reduce burnout, feel free to view my counselling services.
