People Pleasing is Not Nice
“People pleasing” is a term people use, usually about themselves, to describe seemingly self-sacrificing behavior for the sake of others. There's not a lot of stigma around calling oneself a people pleaser, because the underlying message is usually that one is “too nice.” It's almost a humblebrag.
But it's not a nice thing. It is, fundamentally, self centered.
I'm a people pleaser. Like most, I grew up around a person who was a threat to my wellbeing if I did not tend to his needs. Consequently, I became extremely sensitive to other people's negative emotions, which serve as a kind of alert that I should be very careful. Negative emotional states have a nasty way of making me feel very anxious. If you're in a bad mood, I can tell. Sometimes even before you.
Except that's not entirely true. The adaptation works even better if one simply assumes that the people who can hurt them are always in a bad mood and prone to exercising their destructive power. Then one will always be careful and never make the terrible mistake of assuming one is safe.
The product of this constant fear, which one might call anxiety, is “people pleasing.” At any given time, I may feel in emotional danger if I have not done enough to prove I am worthy of being loved by those around me. So I act nice. I remain polite. I minimize my needs and invest energy into things I don't believe in. How much is enough to guarantee safety? There's no way to tell; easier to assume it never is.
This is the basis of people-pleasing behavior. It is a defense mechanism in service of the pleaser. It is therefore not altruistic in nature, but self-centered. Pleasing people out of an anxious compulsion to protect oneself is not the same as pleasing people out of genuine care for them. It's common to act as though the behavior is a kind of tragic self-sacrifice for the benefit of others, one that hurts only the pleaser. This is a misconception.
People pleasers do sabotage themselves, it's true — but they do not do it for the benefit of others. They are attempting to benefit themselves; and the real cost, what is truly sacrificed, is authentic relationships.