Perimenopause and People Pleasing: Why It Stops Working and What to Do Instead
Many women find that people pleasing becomes unsustainable during perimenopause. Here is why that shift happens and how to move through it with confidence.
When the People Pleaser Runs Out of Fuel
People pleasing is a pattern that requires energy. It involves monitoring other people's reactions, adjusting your behaviour to manage their feelings, suppressing your own needs, and maintaining a constant low-level performance of agreeableness. During perimenopause, when fatigue, mood shifts, and reduced cognitive bandwidth are all competing for your attention, this performance becomes harder and harder to sustain. Many women describe perimenopause as the moment they simply ran out of the ability to keep accommodating everyone. That is not a crisis. It is often the beginning of something healthier.
The Hormonal Shift That Lowers Tolerance
There is a physiological dimension to this change. Falling estrogen and progesterone affect neurotransmitter systems involved in mood regulation and social bonding. The hormonal wiring that previously made prioritising others feel natural and even rewarding begins to shift. Some researchers link this to the evolutionary argument that midlife women's energy is better spent on direct productivity and self-preservation than on appeasement. Whatever the mechanism, the feeling of reduced patience for others' demands is extremely common and is not a character flaw.
The Cost of Continuing to Please
If you push through and maintain people-pleasing patterns despite your reduced capacity, the cost shows up in resentment, exhaustion, and a growing sense of invisibility. Resentment is almost always a sign that you have given more than was genuinely sustainable. Exhaustion follows when you consistently prioritise others' comfort over your own rest and recovery. And the invisibility comes from years of signalling that your needs are less important than everyone else's. Perimenopause, for all its difficulty, offers a genuine opportunity to revise that signal.
What Drives People Pleasing
People pleasing is usually rooted in fear, of conflict, disapproval, rejection, or the collapse of relationships that feel conditional on your helpfulness. Understanding your specific driver helps. Are you afraid that people will leave if you say no? That you will be seen as difficult or selfish? That conflict will escalate beyond what you can manage? Naming the fear accurately makes it possible to examine how realistic it actually is, and often, it is considerably less realistic than it feels.
Practical Steps Toward a More Honest Way of Being
Start small. Practice saying 'let me think about that' before agreeing to anything new. It buys time and breaks the automatic yes reflex. Notice which situations trigger the strongest urge to comply and reflect on why. Build a small vocabulary of honest, kind responses: 'I cannot commit to that right now,' 'I would prefer not to,' 'that does not work for me.' The words do not need to be elaborate. They need to be true.
The Relationships That Survive the Shift
Some people in your life will adjust well when you stop automatically accommodating them. Others will find it unsettling. The relationships that cannot tolerate you having limits were never as secure as they appeared. The relationships that adapt will be more genuine and more sustainable. Perimenopause, with its enforced reduction in capacity, has a way of sorting these two categories out. That sorting, though uncomfortable, is ultimately useful information about the relationships worth maintaining.
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