Good Man, Bad Wizard

Unveiling people-pleasing

In The Wizard of Oz (novel and movie), the Wizard — a character famed throughout the land for his power and magic — ends his narrative arc by emerging from behind a curtain and revealing himself to be nothing more than a “humbug” from Omaha. In the novel, after his revelation, he says: “I have fooled everyone so long that I thought I should never be found out. It was a great mistake my ever letting you into the Throne Room. Usually, I will not see even my subjects, and so they believe I am something terrible.” I believe that this is the plight of a chronic people-pleaser: to live behind the curtain of a different persona, designed to avoid conflict and please unfailingly. Not everybody agrees — many people have told me that my definition of people-pleasing is inaccurate and too broad. But I’ve only ever seen people-pleasing, both in myself and in others, as a deeply dangerous social disease. One that, as it progresses, looks less and less like saying yes to things you want to say no to, and more and more like an outright repression of your true self. 

To begin, here’s as close to a productive description of people-pleasing as I’ve gotten: people-pleasing is fighting a one-sided war against other people. It’s a doctrine that first wrongfully assumes all people are irrational, cruel, and indelicate. Second, it assumes that you can’t survive these people — making it better to just turn into something so unobtrusive that you’ll never have to risk trying. Finally, it teaches you that you can’t be alone — all while ensuring that you will be. The people-pleaser, to placate everybody, has to become someone so uninteresting that they could never be objected to. Susan Wolf hit the nail on the head in her 1982 essay ‘Moral Saints’: “A moral saint will have to be very, very nice. It is important that he not be offensive. The worry is that, as a result, he will have to be dull-witted or humourless or bland.” The same goes for the chronic people-pleaser — to eliminate points of conflict there must be no points of interest. Nobody has ever hated something because it was boring. Nobody ever bothered burning or banning a washing machine’s instruction manual. 

Sometime last summer, I realized that I wasn’t just saying yes to things I wanted to say no to, but that “people-pleasing” had leached so far into my being that it no longer looked how I expected it to. For years, a saintly, puritanical Sam had been the evil dictator of my whole being. He was the ultimate people-pleaser. He ran a campaign on keeping the peace and my soul had voted resoundingly that he should hold permanent office. Whoever I truly was hid behind the curtain — a humbug, cowering behind an elaborate presentation that succeeded in warding off all conflict and just about everything else. 

Dictator Sam had me in a prison — all my desires, needs, and wants, looked out from behind the bars he had put up. I was living entirely off of what-ifs and if-onlys, dreaming of those amazing things in life that only risk and conflict can buy. Feeling that my time to break free was running short, I decided that this semester I’d set myself a challenge. What there was to say, I’d say, what there was to write, I’d write — at every opportunity I’d work to open that curtain and feel the sting of being perceived in all my humbugness. So I did it; I did everything I wanted to in every sector of my life. The very fact that you’re currently reading something I’ve written is proof. I pitted my true self against my people-pleasing persona, and they screeched and tore at each other in a competition for control over my life.

Bluntly, the experience kicked my a**. As I pushed against my people-pleasing instincts, I came face to face with the reality of myself as a fallible, messy being; I could be terrible, annoying, embarrassing, and downright human (*gag*). But as scary as that was, the realization nevertheless had hit: by avoiding conflict and disagreement, as well as the possibility of ever being someone other than that straight-laced little puritan, I had avoided living a full life. Those cardinal rules of people-pleasing I had  laid out acted as more than just the foundations of my social life, they had formed the foundations of my entire sense of self. My case of people-pleasing had become terminal, and for the better part of twenty years, I had been permanently on bedrest. It was no wonder the itch for change had gotten so difficult to ignore; my inner self had been telling me that I was starving, desperate for anything interesting to happen. 

For the benefit of people-pleasers everywhere, we have to accept the wider definition of what it truly means to please the people. Because they are able to say no, or can sometimes appear assertive, many people think that people-pleasing isn’t a problem that they struggle with. But if the core assumptions of people-pleasing survive within you, it doesn’t matter what you say yes or no to. Acting on these assumptions, vulnerability is what you need to avoid— and for that to happen, the inner self has got to go. This is where the damage resulting from people-pleasing happens, when a person obliterates who they are to make way for peace and a lack of conflict. True interpersonal conflict arises when someone’s deepest self contradicts someone else's. Keeping things light, breezy, and shallow is the defense against this; assent to everything, allow everything, and bury your grudges and disagreements. If a part of a people-pleaser’s likes or dislikes threatens the pleasing image, then the likes and dislikes go behind the curtain. And then, what’s left? One or two places where a people-pleaser can be themselves and an entire world where they can’t. So then the question is not whether or not you can say no, it’s how much of your own life truly belongs to you. To cure the social disease of people-pleasing, the doctor has to know where to look. 

I believe to truly find where your persona comes from, you have to face the difficult questions. For example, ask yourself how much of your life you spend waiting for somebody else to leave the room. Ask yourself when you last had a conversation you truly felt present for. 

The challenge I set myself at the beginning of this semester is over, and, through terror and fire, I have won. And, for the benefit of people-pleasers everywhere, here’s my review of breaking free: it’s so worth it — terrifying, sickening, potentially catastrophic, but worth it. It’s true, people-pleasing was such a small word for a monster that ended up being so massive. Still, there are no better words for it; it’s an insecurity, it’s an anxiety, it’s a paranoia, but in the end, its goal is always to please the people. So we have to stretch the definition. We have to understand that ugly beast for what it is. 

To end, some advice: when Dorothy and friends come to call, tell them that you’re keeping the brains, the courage, and the heart for yourself. You’ll need them when you open that curtain.

Illustration by Holly Ward