Are you a care taker/people pleaser?

 12 February 2025

 You may have come across the phrases ‘care taker’ or ‘people pleaser’ and wondered if they apply to you, especially if you find yourself often in the situation of doing things for other people but feeling it’s unappreciated or that your needs and wants seem to get left until last.

 Care takers/pleasers often find themselves in the role of taking care of others - their children, younger siblings, aged parents and even their partners. 

 Clearly there is a positive element of this behaviour. It is often a healthy quality to be thoughtful towards others and  - especially in the case where people are too young or vulnerable to look after themselves - it is necessary that we are able to show care.

 The problem comes when the care taking becomes a habitual way of dealing with the world and it leaves us feeling exhausted or resentful.

 Because of the way girls are socialised and the messages we get from society it is probably that care taking is more common among women. Still, there are also plenty of men who fall into this category. 

 The beliefs that care takers/people pleasers have include:

 I can’t relax until everything if finished and everyone is taken care of and feels happy;

 I put myself last because I don’t deserve to go first;

 I need to be seen as helpful and caring in order for people to like me;

 Care takers often come from chaotic families where they couldn’t rely on consistent love or care. They become care takers in order to try and control their environment so that those early experiences of chaos or vulnerability are never felt.

 They are often brought up to believes that if they give attention to their own needs and wants then they are being ‘selfish’. This childhood conditioning lasts into adulthood, making it very difficult for care takers to think about their own needs without feeling they are doing something wrong. 

Resentment

 One of the problems with being a care taker/pleaser is feeling resentment. This is because the care is not coming from a healthy place but rather from an under-resourced part of the person. Your tank is not full but instead you often ‘running on empty’. So, when the recipients of the care do not show appropriate appreciation the care giver can feel resentful and become a bit of a martyr. 

 The care giver often feels huge guilt if they choose to do something for themselves rather than taking care of someone else’s needs. They find it easier to continue the care giving, even if they are exhausted, than to feel the guilt. 

 But the guilt care takers feel is generally ‘toxic’ guilt rather than ‘appropriate’ guilt - in other words it is guild that goes back to being made to feel inappropriately responsible for other people as a child. 

 For example, they may have had a parent who gave them the message that it was their job to make the parent happy by not making demands or not showing ‘selfish’ feelings.

 Hal and Sidra Stone point out in their book Embracing Ourselves that the main question to ask ourselves when we behave in a care taking/pleasing role is are we making a conscious choice or are we acting in an unconscious automatic way. 

 They give the example of Nancy, a mother who is always doing things for her husband and family, who says: “I’ve learned to recognise when people want things. My job is to see that no-one gets grouchy. I’m very sensitive to moods and I can tell when they’re coming on, so I do whatever I have to do to stop the moods.”

 Nancy learned to be a pleaser from when she was a child and she was the only one who could pacify her ‘growler’ father. 

'Selfish' side

 What people like Nancy need to explore, say Hal and Sidra Stone, is their ‘selfish’ side and perhaps their angry side, as care taker/pleaser behaviour is often covering over resentment and anger. 

 Ultimately, care takers/pleasers need to discover their own autonomy and be willing to say yes and no, according to their own needs and wants, rather than automatically taking on other people’s wants. “If we live life on our terms, saying yes and now appropriately, then we tend to have less occasion to be angry,” say the Stones. 

 Certain professions attract care takers/pleasers. These are the ‘helping’ professions, such as doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers, charity workers and priests. Such jobs require the individual to be very attuned to others’ needs and feelings but often the individuals neglect their own needs. 

 In their book about men who are enmeshed with their mothers, When he’s Married to Mom, Kenneth Adams and Alexander Morgan describe how the care taker “fools himself into believing his has chosen a life of sacrifice,” but really he is following an early life script. 

 They say: “The burned out care taker wants to stop being always on call because he is exhausted. He can’t consciously choose to stop but his unconscious is operating at a more primitive level,” and eventually the unconscious makes sure the individual stops by making sure there is a health emergency, such as a heart attack or stroke. 

 According to Steven Melemis, author of I Want to Change my Life, there is a big difference between selfishness and self-care: “Selfishness is taking more than you need. Self-care is taking what you need. Care takers. Usually take less than they need, which is why they’re exhausted.”

 He argues that the way out of being a caretaker is to understand the difference between selfishness and self-care. It is important, he says, to put aside some time each day just for you: “That way you will have the energy to take care of others. If you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t have anything left for anyone else.”

Bibliography

I Want to Change my Llfe, Melemis Steven, 2010, Modern Therapies, Toronto

When he’s Married to Mom, Adams, Kenneth and Morgan, Alexander, 2007, Simon and Schuster, New York

Embracing Ourselves, Stone, Hal and Sidra, 1998, Nataraj Publishing,