Being a people pleaser is a form of self-neglect

How Lumen answered

Reading your line about masking feelings to seem cool while underneath it was “Don’t leave me” — that landed. It makes sense that a younger you learned to stay safe by keeping others comfortable, especially with those early teachings about giving endlessly.

A reframe that helped me was noticing the difference between kindness and pleasing: kindness honors both persons’ reality, pleasing quietly edits one person out (you). Boundaries then aren’t a wall so much as information — “here is where I am, here is what I can offer kindly” — which actually gives the other person something real to respond to.

Full disclosure, we wrote How to Become Relationally Intelligent that unpacks that exact tangle — why we learned to outsource emotions and how to practice truth-telling without collapse. It might be a gentle next step if it calls to you, and it’s also completely okay to just keep this conversation here. You’ve already named something brave.

Lumen named the hurt. The deeper distinction the book offers makes that reframe durable.

The distinction that unlocks it

People-pleasing is not kindness. Pleasing performs manageableness to avoid rejection — it manages the other person’s perception of you. Kindness, by contrast, tells the truth with care while honoring both persons’ reality. One keeps the connection breathing. The other quietly edits you out.

That matters because love that requires your disappearance cannot last without resentment. And resentment is what grows when you swallow a “yes” you did not mean.

What a boundary actually is

The book makes the finer cut in one paragraph — boundaries vs. walls vs. no boundaries — so you have words for what you felt:

Boundaries serve certain personal functions. Fundamentally, your boundaries keep the bad out and let the good in. Some people take boundaries too far and build a wall. Walls are boundaries taken too far, because they keep the bad out, yes, but they also keep the good out, like love, respect, intimacy, joy, relationships, and in some sense, the meaning of life, which in part is to steward your relationships well. You can’t steward your relationships well if you have walls, because then you don’t have any authentic relationships to steward!

In short: a healthy boundary is a rule about how you will interact — what you will and won’t do — while keeping the bad out and letting the good in. A wall lets nothing in. No boundary lets everything in and leaves you turbulent inside. The boundary is the middle where love can be honest.

The book adds two companion distinctions that keep this kind: you don’t create other people’s emotions — feelings come from perceptions and their root assumptions — and attention is a stewardship: you get to choose where you place it, without being entitled to theirs. Those together retire the old code: “if I meet their needs, they feel better, I stay safe.”

Why the old wiring made sense

If you were taught — by family, faith, or survival — that goodness means giving endlessly, pleasing once protected you. A younger you learned: if I make them comfortable, I belong. That strategy worked then. It costs now because it trades your reality for belonging. Naming that, without blame, is already a boundary: “this was wise for then, and I get to choose differently now.”

Try one this week

Not “just say no” to everything — one small, kindly asked limit.

1. Notice. Where did you say “yes” while feeling “no” this week? Write the one sentence you swallowed: “I don’t like it when ___ happens.”
2. Translate to information. Turn it into a boundary, not a verdict on them: “Here is where I am. Here is what I can offer kindly: ___ .”
3. Ask, don’t tell. The book’s phrasing is gentle and durable: “I want to be in an authentic relationship with you, but can you help me with something so that my heart can feel comfortable with you?” Then name the behavior, what meeting it would give you (“I’d feel safe / seen / respected”), and invite their real answer.

One asked boundary that lands does more for trust than a year of hinting. If they can meet it, it becomes implemented, then respected, and over time, loved. If they can’t, you have real information — and that, too, is love telling the truth.