How to Disrupt People Pleasing; Why You Don’t Need Their Approval
So much of overwhelmed women’s lives are built around being acceptable to others.
You check how things look before you check how they make you feel. You replay conversations in your head to make sure you sounded agreeable, capable, easy to be around. You adjust your tone, your timing, your standards, and your expectations based on how it might be received.
From the outside, it looks like you have your life together. Internally, you are constantly adjusting yourself to be acceptable and to fit in. And it never stops.
Why Does Chasing Approval Lead to Overwhelm?
Chasing approval adds an invisible layer to your already heavy mental load. You make decisions, manage perceptions anticipate reactions, and try to stay on the “right side” of other people’s expectations. That constant mental tracking builds pressure and leads to burnout over time.
Overwhelm is often what happens when your life is shaped more by what is acceptable rather than by what actually supports you.
When Your Life Feels Like A Performance
Seeking approval can look like ambition. You’re the person everyone relies on. You become the person who smooths things over, keeps things moving, and avoids unnecessary conflict.
And because you can handle it, you keep handling it.
But slowly, your decisions are no longer made based on what you want or need and are measured by what you think everyone expects of you. You begin organizing your life around avoiding disappointment, keeping the peace, and maintaining an image that feels increasingly disconnected from how you actually feel.
That’s when life starts to feel less like something you’re living and more like something you’re performing.
If this feels familiar, it sits right alongside what I wrote in You Hold Everything Together. Who’s Holding You? because approval and over-responsibility tend to travel together.
The Invisible Contract Women Live Within
Most women operate within an invisible contract that says, your worth is measured by how agreeable, impressive, and reliable you are.
The unspoken agreement goes something like this:
Be easy to like
Don’t disappoint people
Keep things running smoothly
Don’t make others uncomfortable
Stay agreeable, even when it costs you
The reward is approval.
The cost is that your needs, limits, and preferences slowly get pushed out of the picture.
The more you follow this contract, the more your life gets shaped around maintaining comfort for others instead of stability for yourself.
Learn more about The 6 Invisible Social Contracts underlying all women’s lives and see if you recognize any of them in your own life.
Approval Is a Moving Target
Approval can feel like safety, but it’s unstable by nature. It changes depending on who you’re around, what they expect, and which version of you they’re used to. Trying to keep up which version of yourself you need to be around each person creates a moving target you can never fully land on.
And it’s exhausting.
It’s also why so many women google what’s wrong with me when the real issue isn’t their capability, it’s the structure of the life they’ve been carrying. I go deeper into that shift in the article Overwhelmed, Not Broken.
Signs You’re Chasing Approval
You make decisions based on how they will be perceived
You feel responsible for how other people react
You replay conversations to check if you said the right thing
You over-commit to avoid disappointing others
You feel uneasy when you’re not being helpful or productive
You tolerate things that drain you because addressing them feels uncomfortable
How to Disrupt Your Need for Approval
Don’t panic if you’re not the disruptive type (like I am). You don’t need to overhaul your personality and your entire life, and I’m not asking you to become someone you’re not. All you have to do is recognize when you are about automatically choose approval, and stop. Yep, it’s that simple in theory, but it’s not easy when you’ve been programmed to behave a certain way for years. It will take practice.
Disrupting you need for approval might look like:
Letting someone else’s moment of discomfort happen without fixing it
Not over-explaining your decision
Saying no without cushioning it to make it easier for someone else
Making one choice based on what supports you, not how it will be received
These are small disruptions, and they matter because they help you break the pattern of constant self-adjustment and people-pleasing.
You are allowed to stop living a life that requires constant approval to feel valid and you don’t have to keep proving that you’re worthy of being taken seriously, cared about, or respected.
Your life was never supposed to be a performance.
Before You Go
Where in your life are you still performing for approval instead of choosing what actually supports you?
If this article spoke to you or answered questions you don’t have answers to, leave me a comment below, I respond to every comment. You might inspire other women who are struggling with their identity.
Melissa
