Breaking Free
How People-Pleasing and Attachment Wounds Hold Us Back in Career (And What You Can Do About It)
“Be a good girl and get good grades. Go to a good school, marry a good person who got good grades at a good school, and your life will be good.”
If you’re a child of immigrants, this might sound familiar to you. Growing up, you might have even felt that any deviation from this path would be “bad” - a disgrace to the sacrifice that your parents made to secure a life for you that was better than theirs. So you did everything you could to ensure their approval of you, because you wanted to make them proud, and because you believed that this straight and narrow path was the only one to your fulfillment. You might have even learned to put aside your own feelings and wants out of a desire to have the full approval of your family, even if it didn’t feel good.
It’s important to honor and recognize the sacrifice of our families, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve learned it’s equally important to acknowledge that for some of us, this need for approval, validation and acceptance conditioned us to people-please as adults. Additionally, a lack of emotional nurturance and sense of security can create attachment wounds that manifest in future relationships, including professional ones.
People-pleasing involves putting other people's needs and desires before your own, often to the detriment of your own goals and desires. This can lead to a lack of assertiveness, difficulty setting boundaries, and a fear of rejection or disapproval. While healthy people-pleasing can be useful in certain contexts, such as maintaining strong relationships, it can also be a significant obstacle to personal and career development.
Relatedly, attachment wounds are emotional scars that can result from childhood experiences of abandonment, emotional neglect, or inconsistent caregiving. These wounds can also manifest as a fear of rejection, thus feeding into an unhealthy pattern of people-pleasing. Attachment wounds can also make it hard to form close relationships due to a lack of trust in others.
Together, people-pleasing and attachment wounds can create a mire of obstacles when it comes to how we progress in our career. We might find ourselves stuck in jobs that don't fulfill us, or feeling like we're constantly spinning our wheels without making any real progress. And while we’re spinning our own wheels we’re also spinning plates while balancing on a ball to ensure everyone else’s comfort and pleasure while dismissing our own.
Here’s the good news: it’s possible to heal through these wounds. The first step is in recognizing how people-pleasing and attachment wounds might be impacting your career. Are you staying in a job or industry that doesn't fulfill you because you're afraid of disappointing others? Are you avoiding opportunities because of a false sense of safety, out of self-doubt, unworthiness, fear of rejection, failure, or change? Are you struggling to form solid working relationships with your coworkers or bosses?
Once you've identified these patterns, you can start taking steps to overcome them. Here are some strategies to consider:
Give yourself grace. Recognize that people-pleasing and attachment wounds are common struggles, and that you're not alone in experiencing them. Be gentle with yourself and take steps to cultivate self-compassion.
Set clear boundaries. Practice saying no when you need to, and choose yourself by prioritizing your own needs and goals. This might be uncomfortable at first, but it's an important step towards breaking the cycle of people-pleasing.
Seek out supportive relationships. Look for emotionally mature and safe people to surround yourself with, both personally and professionally. Cultivating healthy and fulfilling relationships with others, and learning how to sustain them, can be incredibly healing for our attachment wounds.
Take risks. Learn how to safely take on new challenges and opportunities, even if they're just slightly outside of your comfort zone. It’s okay to take small steps. This can help build confidence and overcome fear of rejection or failure.
Consider working with a trauma-responsive coach or therapist to support you in working through attachment wounds and to develop strategies for reprogramming people-pleasing tendencies.
By courageously choosing yourself, you can take the first steps towards building a fulfilling path that aligns with what you truly want for yourself. While it can be uncomfortable to confront these patterns, remember that growth and development are a natural part of the human experience, and that you have the power to overcome these challenges.
