When Kindness Becomes People Pleasing (And Other Protective Patterns)

How the values you care about most can turn into people pleasing, perfectionism, and other protective patterns — and what to do about it.

There’s a version of me that says yes before I’ve actually thought about whether I mean it. Someone needs a favour, a listening ear, one more thing done and I’m already handing myself over to them. In the moment it doesn’t feel ‘wrong’, it feels like being a good person.

For a long time I didn’t look at it any closer than that. Helping people, showing up for people, being someone others can count on, that’s important to me. I would say they are all versions of one of my core values of kindness.

But at some point, I started realising that sometimes when I thought I was acting on my value of kindness, I was actually defaulting into a protective pattern of people pleasing. I wasn’t helping because it felt aligned to me and my values, I was helping because saying no felt threatening.

And that distinction shifted something for me. That who we are in alignment is connected to how we get in our own way, that our values and protective patterns actually live on the same spectrum: what I call the Alignment-Protection Spectrum.

The Alignment-Protection Spectrum

The idea is fairly simple: a value can be expressed in an aligned way, but under pressure, uncertainty or threat, that same value can shape-shift into a protective behaviour. For example:

• Accomplishment is a value, until it tips into hyper-achieving
• Excellence is a value, until it tips into perfectionism
• Safety and security are values, until they tip into hyper-vigilance
• Peace and harmony are values, until they tip into avoidance
• Kindness is a value, until it tips into people pleasing

Are you seeing the pattern?

The thing that makes this particularly interesting is that the protective behaviour often looks like the value.

• Perfectionism can look like caring deeply about excellence
• Hyper-vigilance can look like being responsible and prepared
• Avoiding conflict can look like being easygoing
• People pleasing can look like kindness

Which means we can spend a lot of time believing we are living according to our values, when actually we are trying to protect ourselves from something.

Protective Patterns

It’s important to note that protective patterns – or our default behaviours – aren’t character flaws, they are patterns we have learned over time. They aren’t ‘bad’, they are adaptive. Somewhere earlier in life, being agreeable, or being ‘perfect’, or staying alert to what might go wrong, kept you safe and made you feel secure. It made sense at the time.

The problem is not that these patterns exist. The problem is that they can keep running long after the circumstances that created them have changed.

Now, as adults, professionals, leaders, these default responses can take over when we feel threatened, uncertain, uncomfortable or unsafe. And when they do, they can pull us away from how we actually want to show up.

Value System as Compass

Having and knowing your value system is like having and knowing how to use a compass – very useful when you feel lost, stuck or can’t see the forest from the trees. Or just in everyday life when you need to activate, prioritise, and make decisions that solve challenges or move things forward.

Knowing and understanding your own protective patterns allows you to explore the connection between values-aligned behaviour and protective behaviour. You can start seeing your own threshold: the point at which something that matters deeply to you starts shape-shifting into a behaviour that actually pulls you out of alignment with yourself.

For me, kindness is a good example. Sometimes I say yes because I genuinely want to help. I have the capacity, it matters to me, and I choose it freely. And sometimes I say yes because I don’t want to disappoint someone, or I’m worried they’ll think badly of me, orecause saying no feels uncomfortable.

On the surface, the behaviour can look exactly the same, but internally, it feels completely different.

The Alignment Practice

The most crucial thing you can practice is attempting to pick up on when you have moved into “protection mode”. When you start building real-time awareness of your protective behaviours then you can start experimenting with how to move along the spectrum towards alignment.

In these moments, you can:

1. Pause
2. Ask yourself a question like:
   a. Do I actually want to do this?
   b. Am I choosing this, or am I avoiding the discomfort of not choosing it?
   c. Is this coming from what matters to me, or from what I’m afraid might happen if I don’t?
3. Attempt to make a conscious choice based on your answer.

These are the moments I work to catch myself in. The split second before I say yes, when I can feel whether I’m choosing it or whether I’m just avoiding the discomfort of saying no. It doesn’t always work but I catch it more than I used to. And that’s the whole practice. Becoming more aware of when we are getting in our own way and giving ourselves the chance to choose again.

Amelia Kruse is the founder of Sageform, a conscious leadership studio, and creator of the Sageform Method°, a framework for creatives, leaders, and founders ready to lead from the inside out. You can learn more about working together here.