Why is it important to communicate your needs if you are a people pleaser

Sometimes when we are brought up in dysfunctional homes, we tend to become people pleasers in our adult relationships. This makes us keep our own needs, wants and expectations away to prioritise the needs of others. "Many times, people who struggle with people-pleasing think that not sharing what they feel/want is helpful to the relationship - maybe you avoid a fight, maybe you don't want to hurt the other person's feelings. But - emotions and needs are resilient - they stay even if you don't express them, they stay even if you ignore them, they stay until you resolve them (by acknowledging, validating them or doing something to meet them)," wrote Therapist Israa Nasir as she explained the importance of communicating needs.

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Authentic connections: When a people pleaser learns to communicate their needs, they start to build authentic connections based on honesty and equality and not the fear of being left out. When we start to share our feelings and needs, we start to create a space for intimacy and closeness, urging more people to come and communicate.

Conflict resolution skills: This helps us to be patient about going deep into the disagreements and finding the root causes – it can help us to resolve conflicts and address arguments in a healthy way.

Prevent emotional build-up: When we hold on to a lot of emotions without venting it out in a healthy way, they start to build up in the mind and explode one day. To prevent the same, we need to learn to communicate about our needs and emotions.

Emotional validation: When we become vulnerable to safe people about our needs and feelings, we also start to get emotional validation – this further makes us know that our emotions are equally important.

Emotional support: We should surround ourselves with safe people who can emotionally support us and help us become more self-aware.

Healthy communication: As we learn to communicate more, we create the space for healthy communication for other people as well.