People pleasers suffer in ways that they don’t even really realize.

There’s the chronic anxiety.

You can have anxiety that’s so constant, you don’t even know you have anxiety.

That’s what it was like for me—I only realized I had it when it went away.

Constant overthinking, worrying about the future, perfectionism—all these signs that you’re just constantly hypervigilant and concerned about something other than what’s happening in the present.

Chronic loneliness.

People pleasers might be surrounded by people who like them.

They might even have people who love them. But because they’re being fake—putting effort into manufacturing these connections—they actually end up feeling isolated.

They’ll describe themselves as feeling like an alien, or a robot, or like there’s a glass wall between them and other people.

So, they don’t actually have connection, even if they have a lot of friends.

This almost always extends into romantic relationships.

There are very few nice guys or people pleasers who have a healthy romantic partnership.

Self-harm—from binge eating through to other addictions, even self-sabotaging behaviours.

Doing things that constantly make your life worse.

Making what seem like simple mistakes or errors, or overlooking opportunities, that lead to more harm.

Burnout and breakdowns.

Eventually, nice guys will snap.

They will have a burnout period.

They will collapse under the weight of that exhaustion—from constantly having to be fake, and manage everyone’s opinions, and manage everyone’s feelings, and manage their reputation all the time, on top of just trying to survive.

To dive deeper into this topic, check out the original video here: