People pleasing is manipulative: the dark side of always being the easy one

Separating being an insecure person from being someone who gets insecure sometimes.

May 09, 2026

live footage of me managing everyone’s perception of me

There’s a version of me that thought if I was careful enough, I could control how people saw me.

So I got very careful.

Careful with what I said. Careful with what I wanted. Careful with who I was.

I paid attention to what people responded to. I adjusted. I got good at being someone people liked.

And it worked.

People liked me.

That felt like proof I was doing something right.

It took me a long time to realize what I was actually doing.

I wasn’t being careful.

I was trying to control everyone around me.

I just didn’t have language for it yet.

The book Courage to Be Disliked gave me that language.

If you’re not being true to yourself and to the people around you, you’re living in a delusional world where you think you can control other people’s actions.

That’s what I was doing.

Trying to manage the outcome. Deciding whether who I am is palatable, then adjusting. Not being true to my desires or my boundaries.

And then dealing with the quiet resentment that comes from that.

I felt my brain develop when I read that.

When I’m not being true to myself, I’m making decisions for other people. Acting like I have power to decide what people think of me.

Experience tells me I could be the nicest person in the world, the most charming, gentlest person, and people could still decide to hate me.

And I was still trying to manage that.

Trying to be the most accommodating person in the room.

Even when it worked, it was still manipulation.

That’s what flipped the switch for me.

I don’t want to live like that.

It hurts me and it hurts my relationships, because people aren’t in relationship with me. They’re in relationship with an image.

When you create an image to get loved, what gets loved is the image.

Once I saw it, I started to see it everywhere.

I’m suspicious of people who are too nice. Some people are genuinely like that, but it’s rare. People without clear boundaries are hard to trust.

I look to the people in my life and want to know that when they say no, they mean it. I can trust their no, so I can trust their yes.

I don’t trust people who say yes to everything. People pleasers are still trying to manage the outcome. When I can’t sense boundaries around someone, it’s hard to trust them.

I feel most at ease with people who understand who they are, or at least try to. They have moments where what the group wants isn’t what they want, and they’re okay with that. They take actions that don’t fit the group.

I can trust that they belong to themselves.

I also see it in insecurity.

People who are always thinking about what others think of them. Constant reassurance. Still trying to manage perception.

Like the book mentions, inferiority sits on the same coin as superiority.

Acting very insecure isn’t that far from acting superior. It’s a miscalculation about how much people are thinking about you.

I saw myself in that too.

So I had to separate being an insecure person from being someone who gets insecure sometimes.

I needed to become more real and more boundaried. About who I am, what I want, what I’ll accept, and to be okay with the consequences.

I was a very insecure, closeted gay kid.

My coping mechanism was to be a people person. To be charming, cooperative, skillful, a golden child, successful.

My hope was to become exceptional so I could be the exception. That if people found out my secret, they’d make space for me anyway.

But even that was a kind of control.

So I’ve had to change the direction of this boat.

Work against years of momentum as a climbing immigrant kid chasing the same dream as my parents.

Become a little less governable.
A little more outwardly opinionated.
A lot more serious about my boundaries.

It mattered to me to become an example of the person I needed when I was younger.

Someone who belongs to themselves.

First Draft Thoughts with RV Mendoza

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?