The Silent Career Killer: People-Pleasing
You’re in a meeting. Your boss casually asks if someone can take on just one more project. Before your brain catches up, your mouth blurts, “I can do it!” Everyone nods appreciatively while you silently scream into the void. Another late night. Another sacrificed lunch break. Another silent resentment brewing under your bright, eager smile.
Welcome to the world of people-pleasing: the silent killer of careers, influence, and sanity.
The Hidden Cost of People-Pleasing: Psychiatric Injury at Work
Let’s call it what it is: people-pleasing is just socially acceptable self-abandonment. It masquerades as kindness, helpfulness, and team spirit, but underneath lies fear – fear of rejection, conflict, disappointing others, or being seen as anything less than perfect.
And it comes at a high cost.
Psychiatric injury is a term used in occupational health psychology to describe psychological harm caused by chronic workplace stress, toxic cultures, or systemic issues that lead to mental health deterioration. While it’s often associated with bullying or harassment, people-pleasing can cause a subtler but equally damaging form of psychiatric injury: self-inflicted burnout and anxiety resulting from chronic overextension and identity erosion.
Here’s how:
🔻 Hypervigilance and anxiety. People-pleasers live on high alert, scanning for cues of approval or rejection. This constant psychological tension elevates cortisol and erodes mental well-being over time.
🔻 Identity disintegration. Saying yes to everything dilutes your sense of self. You become whatever people need, losing touch with what you actually want, value, or feel called to do.
🔻 Emotional exhaustion and depression. Studies in occupational psychology show that employees who overcommit and suppress their needs to maintain relational harmony are at higher risk of depression, insomnia, and severe burnout – core markers of psychiatric injury.
🔻 Moral injury. Continuously violating your own values to keep the peace creates inner fragmentation. You feel guilt, shame, and grief over your choices, further fueling emotional distress.
Why Saying Yes Too Much Sabotages Your Influence
Here’s what people-pleasing quietly does to your work life:
🔻 Dilutes your credibility. If you’re always agreeable, colleagues may stop seeing you as a strategic thinker and start seeing you as an execution robot.
🔻 Breeds silent resentment. You say yes, but inside you’re angry at yourself and everyone else. This festers and leaks into your energy and presence.
🔻 Blocks your real purpose. Every yes to what drains you is a no to what truly aligns with your gifts, calling, and God-given assignments.
🔻 Destroys boundaries. You train others to believe your time is infinite and your needs are optional.
Who Are You Really Serving?
Here’s the truth that snaps people-pleasing in half: you were never called to serve at the expense of your identity and calling.
People-pleasing often masquerades as servanthood, but more often than not, it’s about seeking validation to soothe your fear of rejection. Paul puts it plainly in Galatians 1:10: “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
True service is rooted in love and obedience to God, not fear of man. There’s a massive difference between Christlike servanthood and insecure self-erasure.
And here’s the hard truth: God never designed you to live in a state of perpetual self-abandonment. In Matthew 5:37, Jesus says, “Let your yes be yes, and your no, no.” Anything beyond this – excessive appeasing, manipulative agreement, self-betrayal for approval – He says, “comes from the evil one.” Strong words, but revealing. People-pleasing isn’t innocent. It robs you of integrity, authenticity, and mental health, becoming a foothold for burnout, despair, and a life misaligned from the very purpose God created you to walk in.
Final Reflection
People-pleasing isn’t just a bad habit. It’s a form of self-neglect that can lead to psychiatric injury, burnout, and a slow erosion of your God-given identity. Every time you say yes out of fear rather than conviction, you chip away at your confidence, clarity, and peace. You teach yourself that your needs don’t matter, that your worth is tied to how useful or agreeable you are, and that boundaries are selfish rather than sacred.
Over time, this doesn’t just exhaust you – it changes you. Your passions dim. Your creativity fades under constant overwhelm. Your relationships become transactional, based on what you do rather than who you are. And spiritually, you begin to live for the approval of others instead of the approval of God, losing touch with His voice amidst the noise of everyone else’s expectations.
Here’s the truth: your workplace doesn’t need another yes-person. It needs a whole, rooted you – someone who says yes from purpose, not fear, and no from clarity, not guilt. Someone who knows that true impact isn’t about pleasing everyone, but about stewarding your energy, gifts, and calling with wisdom and courage. That’s where real influence – and true freedom – begins.
Reflection:
Where is people-pleasing harming your mental health and spiritual integrity at work? What small boundary shift could begin your healing this week?
If this spoke to you and you’re tired of living as a yes-person at the cost of your peace, purpose, and identity, it’s time to shift. I work with professionals like you to break free from people-pleasing, build healthy boundaries, and step into work with confidence and clarity rooted in who God created you to be.
👉🏽 Ready to reclaim your influence and mental health at work?
Book a consultancy session today to start your journey toward a purpose-driven, people-freeing career.
Welcome to the THRIVE AT WORK Series—Because “Just Getting Through the Week” Isn’t a Career Strategy
Look, we all know work can be a lot. Between passive-aggressive emails, soul-sucking meetings that could’ve been a Slack message, and the delicate art of not rolling your eyes in Zoom calls, it’s no wonder so many people are operating in bare-minimum mode.
But here’s the thing—you weren’t built just to survive the workplace. You were made to thrive in it. And no, that doesn’t mean hustling yourself into burnout or selling your soul for a corner office. It means showing up with confidence, navigating office drama like a pro, setting boundaries without guilt, and aligning your work with your actual purpose (because yes, even your job can have meaning beyond just paying rent).
That’s where Thrive at Work by Love Ninja comes in. We’re diving into the real stuff—how to handle workplace stress without becoming a human doormat, how to advocate for yourself without feeling like a fraud, and how to bring faith, integrity, and emotional intelligence into your work life without being that person who awkwardly throws Bible verses into PowerPoint presentations.
Oh, and in case you were wondering—new articles drop every Friday. But will we be sending out cute little email reminders? Nope. If you want the goods, you’ll have to actually check our Substack page yourself like the responsible, thriving professional you are.
For now, this series is completely free. But one day? It won’t be. So, grab it while you can, because “I’ll read it later” is just corporate-speak for never.
Ready to stop enduring your work life and start thriving in it? Let’s do this.