Why People-Pleasing Isn’t Nice—It’s Dishonest: My Recovery Wake-Up Call

Issue 124. June 6, 2025 ✨ Higher Power Coaching & Consulting ✨

Step 4 and the Power of Honest Inventory

For those of you not familiar with the 12-step recovery process, Step 4 is where we take a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. That sounds pretty daunting just to read those words. And it can be daunting, but it’s also the key to unlocking long-standing patterns of behavior. You can’t change something if you don’t realize it exists.

The most important gift I got from recovery was understanding my part in things. That is, what I was doing to create chaos and drama in my life, and to exacerbate the existing chaos around me. I learned “my part” by doing a searching and fearless moral inventory of my life. Boy, was that eye-opening!

What I Didn’t Know About Myself

Before I got to step 4, I learned that I was codependent, which was quite a shocker! I’d done so much personal development work for decades, and that had never come up. I’d never even heard the word. Then I learned I had a victim mentality, which was my most important mindset shift of recovery. That’s still unfolding for me, bit by bit. I also came to realize that I was not the honest person I thought I was. So by the time I got to step 4, I thought, “WTF else am I going to learn about myself that I don’t already know??”

It turns out there wasn’t much that was brand new. What was new was learning that many things I was doing, that I thought were positive qualities were actually negative. They were dysfunctional and negatively impacted me and all those around me.

People-Pleasing Isn’t What You Think It Is

There are many examples, but I’m going to talk about people-pleasing in this article. I thought I was “nice” and that I was “helpful” to others. I actually remember saying to someone as a teen, “I’m nice, that’s why I help people.” 

I didn’t know about people-pleasing until I got into recovery. When I first heard the term, I didn’t think it applied to me. Ha! Yet another thing I didn’t know about myself, despite my decades of introspection and personal development. I truly thought I was helpful to others because I was nice.

Why People-Pleasing Is Manipulative and Dishonest

It turns out that people-pleasing isn’t “nice.” Doing and saying things to get people to approve of you isn’t “nice.” It’s actually dishonest and manipulative.

For you people-pleasers reading this, please don’t use this knowledge as ammunition to beat yourself up. It’s info, not ammo. It’s information for you to learn and grow from, not ammunition to beat yourself up with. You’re not a bad person if you’re a people pleaser; you learned that behavior from someone. It typically develops as a coping mechanism to keep us safe as children. It’s just that it’s no longer working now that we’re adults.

 Let me break this down for you. People-pleasing is manipulative because we’re not helping people just to be helpful. Of course, we want to be helpful to others. But just wanting to be helpful doesn’t explain why we become resentful about helping, or why we become overwhelmed from all the helping we’re doing. We become resentful and overwhelmed when we are helping people with an end goal in mind, which is to get their approval in some fashion.

It could be that we want them to think we’re nice or helpful, or that we’re smart, dependable, or have all the answers (which is what I wanted). When we do that, we’re essentially trying to control their perception of us. That’s called manipulation.

People pleasing is dishonest because we say things that aren’t true. For example:

• “I’m happy to help you” (no, I’m not!)
•  “It’s no bother” (yes, it is!)
• “That’s okay, I don’t mind” (yes, I do!)
• “Of course it’s okay” (no, it’s not!)

What I can see now is that I really didn’t want people to think I was a bad person. And to me, a “bad person” was someone who said no and was unhelpful. Yet here I was lying and manipulating people into thinking I was a good person who was helpful and never said no. If we were to make a list of behaviors that “bad people” engage in, I bet lying and manipulating would be on that list!

As a reminder, if you’re a fellow people pleaser, you’re not a bad person. You’re a wounded person. And it’s time to stop leading your life by your wounds and start living intentionally and with purpose.

The Turning Point: Living With Integrity

So, how do you make that shift in real life? For me, it started with realizing that I cared more about what other people thought about me than what I thought of myself. That doesn’t mean I turned into someone who doesn’t care at all what others think. That’s not what I’m saying. It means turning the focus from “out there” to “in here.”

I never gave a thought to what I thought of myself; I was super focused on what others thought of me. Yet I didn’t even realize that was going on. Perhaps the same is true for you. When I started doing this work, it became clear to me I wasn’t being in integrity with myself. My perception of myself was that I was honest, yet here I was lying in people-pleasing ways. It turns out I was also lying about cigarettes, alcohol, weed, relationships…So I was not the honest woman I thought I was.

Now, I care more about being an honest woman of integrity than I do about people thinking I’m nice, or helpful, or reliable. I still want them to think those things, but now I’m more interested in being them.

And guess what? If I’m actually honest, then people will trust me and will think good things of me. If I give help and support to people in ways that are sustainable, I’ll be more reliable, and people will trust me to follow through without bailing at the last minute because I’ve over-committed.

Back when I was more invested in opportunities to get people to like me, I wasn’t capable of being an honest woman who communicates directly about what she wants. I wasn’t even thinking of my integrity within myself. That is,  I cared less about what I thought about myself than what others thought of me. That’s what my people-pleasing was covering up 

When I realized I was dishonest and manipulative, it was initially quite a blow. I soon realized that these were coping mechanisms I learned for how to manage life as a result of growing up in dysfunction. 

These were patterns of behavior laid down in my family before I was born. Realizing that took the sting away. There was no way I could have come out of my family any differently. But then it was time to change my ways.

Boundaries: The Bridge to Self-Respect

The best way I know how to start focusing internally and living with intention is to build healthy boundaries. That’s because the boundary-building process is about getting to know yourself. That means things like

• Understanding what’s okay and not okay with you
• Determining what you want, like, need, and prefer
• Figuring out where you end and others begin
• Getting clear on what your responsibilities are and what’s not your responsibility

When you do those things, you learn “The Boundaries of You.” You learn to focus internally. And you’ll be amazed at how much more control you have over your life! When you figure all this stuff out, you’ll start caring more about being an honest woman of integrity than getting people to like you.

You may still want people to like you (I know I still do). But you won’t need people to like you that way you used to. As they say, it’s fine to seek others’ approval, but only if you have your own approval first. If you’re going to do something to get someone’s approval and you feel really good about it, go ahead! But if you’re going to do something to get someone’s approval and feel like shit about it, please don’t. When you compromise your integrity, it’s hard to get that back. It’s possible, but it’s easier if you don’t compromise your integrity in the first place.

What It Really Means to Be Honest and Free

When you build healthy boundaries, you learn to communicate directly and clearly with people about what’s okay and not okay with you. You let them know what you want, like, need and prefer, and take responsibility for ensuring your life is guided by those preferences. You stop expecting others to give you those things because you understand, “This is my life, I’m in charge of it.” As one of my clients said, “I’ve become the leading lady of my life, not a supporting actress in my life.”

The reality is, when you having healthy boundaries, there will be times when people get pissed off at you. That’s because you’re no longer making their lives easier. Personally, I can live with that now. I’d rather have somebody be pissed off at me, knowing that I’ve told the truth. I have to live with myself, and I don’t have to live inside of you.

When I’m honest with you, you know who you’re getting. You’re not getting some people-pleasing version who’s just saying yes to get you to like me. You know you can count on me to tell the truth.  We’re only able to develop truly intimate relationships with others when we’re honest about who we are, what we like and don’t, what we’ll put up with, and what we won’t.

I will leave you with this. It’s a concept I got from Kim Scott, who wrote the book  Radical Candor about how to be an effective leader. She says that, as a leader, you want to care about the people you’re leading, and not so much what they think about you.

Looking back, I can clearly see the arc of my transformation. 

Before recovery, I was unknowingly codependent and deeply invested in people-pleasing. I truly believed I was just “being nice,” until I started doing the deep work of inventory and realized I was being dishonest and manipulative in ways I never understood. 

During recovery, I faced hard truths: I wasn’t living with integrity, I was outsourcing my self-worth, and I didn’t even know what I thought of myself. But through that discomfort came clarity. I started setting boundaries, learning what was okay and not okay with me, and taking ownership of my life. Now, I live from a place of honesty and self-respect. I still want people to like me, but I don’t need it. What I need is to be in alignment with who I really am.

Ready to stop people-pleasing and start living with integrity?
Unshakable You: The Fragmented to Whole Method is my 12-week 1:1 coaching program for women ready to build unshakable boundaries, live with purpose, and finally put themselves first.

Let’s talk about whether it’s right for you: Free 30-minute Unshakable You call.