Attachment Style and People Pleasing

What do you know about People Pleasing? Attachment is a big deal. Each of us has an attachment style based on a range of experiences and genetic information. Attachment matters because of how influential it is in our lives. It affects all our relationships, impacts the way we perceive others’ intentions toward us, and even influences our views of self. 

Now envision a person who always puts everyone else first (aka, people pleasers). They strive to make everyone around them happy; they long to be liked by everyone and spend a lot of time second guessing themselves and wondering if they are on the right track when it comes to relationships. 

People pleasers are often the most caring, devoted folks you can meet, but it comes with a price tag that can torment them endlessly and leave them feeling dissatisfied or riddled with guilt, fear, or stress.

Exploring attachment style and the ways it influences our functioning is good for anyone in their journey toward better emotional health. For those with people-pleasing tendencies, it can provide valuable information about how attachment style feeds into these types of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  

When we learn about the underlying factors that influence our inner world, it becomes easier to observe areas of our behavior that can be adjusted, or new perspectives on the way we feel and think. 

People Pleasers and Attachment 

While there is no hard and fast rule about the type of attachment style of people pleasers we can make some logical conclusions about common overlaps between certain types of attachment and people-pleasing tendencies. 

Of the three types of attachment (secure, anxious, and avoidant), people pleasers, who try to earn love through self-sacrifice often tend to have an anxious or avoidant (insecure) attachment style. 

It may seem counterintuitive that people who are living their lives in a way to please others and gain love would be considered avoidant or anxious, but if we look a little closer it becomes more evident how they are connected.

When we think about attachment, it is rooted in an individual’s core personal understanding of the nature of other humans and what we can expect from them.  

Someone with an innate sense of people being unreliable for love, connection, and security (people with avoidant or anxious attachment styles) would understandably learn to work around that barrier to gain access to love and connection. 

Each of us need (and even crave) love, validation, and a sense of belonging with one another. People with anxious or avoidant attachment styles are no different; the need for connection is deeply ingrained in human beings. 

The ways in which someone with an insecure attachment style goes about accessing connection may differ in that the expectation from others is rejection, disdain, or apathy. With this expectation as a subconscious benchmark of human behavior, avoidant or anxiously attached folks may find themselves going above and beyond to deem themselves “worthy” of connection. 

This can manifest in people-pleasing behaviors, such as not setting healthy boundaries or saying no when it would be best to do so. For people who are prone to this type of behavior, it can seem more important to have a secure connection with another person than to honor one’s own needs. 

How People Pleasers Can Break the Habit

Attachment style is sort of baked-in, since it starts to develop before we are born, based on our mothers’ experiences in pregnancy and other biological factors. 

Even though we have no say in how we are biologically wired for attachment, we can find ways to work around an anxious or avoidant attachment style and people-pleasing tendencies. As with most things related to mental health, it starts with awareness.

Check in with your thoughts around relationships

When you reflect on your relationships, are you fearful of losing love, affection, or connection? If so, how does that influence your behaviors? An important factor in working around people pleasing and insecure attachment is challenging your assumptions.  

It may be worth reconsidering your preconceived notions about others’ limitations. Perhaps the people you care about will have greater tolerance for your limit setting than you think, for example. 

Build your self-love

Increasing your self-love quotient will help you build tolerance as you navigate your relationships. Having sufficient levels of love and attachment within yourself can reduce the devastation that can happen when people do let you down or when you begin to doubt others’ care for you for one reason or another. 

Practice Perspective-Keeping

Sometimes people truly do disappoint or mistreat us; sometimes people let us down without even realizing it, or inadvertently reinforce a hidden rejection bias we may have. For people pleasers and those with anxious or avoidant coping styles, this can result in self-doubt and taking undue ownership of others’ behaviors. 

Stepping back from the emotions of the situation and looking with objectivity can help reframe these challenges. Ask yourself, “am I taking on feelings that don’t belong to me?” Giving yourself permission to release feelings that do not serve you is powerful and can be a springboard for other self-affirming decisions. 

Whether you have a secure, avoidant, or anxious attachment style, and regardless of your status as a people-pleaser (active or recovering), you can make thoughtful decisions about what is best for you and challenge automatic thoughts about your worth and lovability. 

Couples and Attachment Differences

When we enter an intimate relationship, whether we have a complementary attachment style to our love interest is not on the radar in the least, but ultimately it is the factor that influences relationships the most. 

Couples do not need to have an identical attachment style to function successfully in a relationship but having an awareness of the ways one’s style can impact the relationship increases the odds of satisfaction and longevity. 

Attachment develops as a result of nature and nurture. It begins in utero and is influenced by maternal experiences and genetics. It is then impacted during early childhood in the ways caregivers respond to our cries in infancy, how our needs are met, and the way we are treated. 

Throughout our lives, relationships with family, friends, and others play into our attachment style, reinforcing or correcting our innate understanding of how other humans respond to us. 

Through this collection of experiences and genetic wiring, our attachment style is borne. Attachment styles are classified as secure, avoidant, anxious, or disorganized. 

How Couples’ Attachment Styles Impact the Relationship

Two people with secure attachment are likely to have a greater sense of stability in their relationship. Not to say that the relationship will be perfect or without strife, but the baseline ability to trust the process of human relationships is a good indicator for success. 

Even with two securely attached people, the need for communication and problem solving is crucial for a healthy relationship. For couples in which one (or both) people have anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment, communication can be difficult. 

Communication Issues

Attachment style can impact the way couples communicate, and often it is as much about what is unspoken as what is said aloud. People who struggle with anxious or avoidant attachment styles may read too much into non-verbal communication or make assumptions about their partner’s intent or feelings based on underlying beliefs about themselves. 

Someone who has an avoidant attachment style may struggle with confrontation and this can result in resentments and perpetuated miscommunication between couples. 

Problems with Trust

Trust is a primary challenge for people with insecure attachment styles. It may not even be obvious that the underlying issue is trust-related, but it manifests in murky ways like not fully investing in a relationship or keeping emotional distance for self-protection. 

More obvious ways trust is affected is through jealousy, insecurity about a partner’s dedication, and feeling preoccupied by self-doubt. Insecure attachment can even contribute to infidelity, as there can be a sense of relationship futility, boredom, and challenges with getting one’s needs met. 

Positive Outcomes for Differing Attachment Styles in Relationships

Differing attachment styles in a relationship does not mean imminent doom, it just requires extra intention and effort to work through the problem areas. 

Sometimes couples who have attachment differences can experience personal growth because of their work in a relationship, and this can mean greater couple satisfaction and a healthier sense of self-worth. 

While no one should enter a relationship with the expectation of healing personal pain, (a setup for failure), sometimes it can become a joint effort and a happy side effect if two people are committed to mutual growth.  

Healing Old Wounds

Couples who begin to explore the way their attachment styles affect their relationship may find that it helps reframe a lot of past life events, including prior relationships and lessons learned in childhood. 

When individuals are doing their own attachment work within a safe, loving relationship it can offer a lot of healing. The work is two parts; one’s own journey toward exploring self-worth and having a safe place to practice healthy attachment behaviors within a committed relationship. 

Learning to Trust 

One of the most beautiful aspects of couples growing together and doing attachment work is the mutual trust that can be built. 

Learning how to communicate and get one’s needs met effectively, gaining a greater understanding of how attachment directs relationship behaviors and finding workarounds can disrupt insecure attachment and offer new, healthier experiences. 

Even though our innate attachment style is hard-wired, we can make informed decisions about thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that can shape the quality of our relationships with ourselves and others. 

Couples who have differing attachment styles may find that the best is yet to come when they are open to exploring attachment together.