People-Pleasing Writers: The Surprising Connection that Slows You Down

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably heard that writers and people-pleasing don’t usually go together. One is about self-expression. The other is about self-abandonment.

But here’s something I found out recently: the same traits that make you creative can also make you a world-class people pleaser.

How Writers and People-Pleasing Are Connected

When we talk about creativity, we’re usually picturing imagination, coming up with ideas, stories, music, and art. But underneath that, creativity depends on how your brain processes the world.

Researchers have found that creative people don’t just think differently; they feel differently. They notice more. They take in more details, sensations, and emotions from their environment.

A recent study published in Frontiers in Psychology showed that people high in sensory processing sensitivity—which simply means that they react more strongly to things they see, hear, or feel—also tend to score higher in both creativity and empathy.

That means that creativity often walks hand-in-hand with emotional depth and awareness. It’s part of what helps us writers capture human truth or helps musicians turn feelings into sound. You don’t just see the world; you absorb it.

And while that’s a gift, it also means your system picks up on a lot, like other people’s moods, expectations, and reactions.

The Twist: When Sensitivity Responds to Pressure

Here’s the twist. The same traits that make you creative—the sensitivity, the empathy, and the awareness that helps you notice everything—don’t just respond to beauty or things that make you feel awe. They also respond, unfortunately, to pressure.

The same sensitivity that helps you create also reacts when there’s tension. If someone is upset near you or the air changes in the room, you probably feel it.

If you grew up in an environment where being liked or praised made things easier for you, your creativity can naturally shift toward keeping the peace.

How Writers and People-Pleasing Start in Childhood

As kids, many of us learned early on that our awareness was useful; that we could sense what adults wanted, what kept the peace in the household, or what might earn the smile or praise.

Because we were sensitive, that feedback was important to us. If your nervous system reacts strongly to emotion—which, for many creative people, it does—approval kind of feels like relief, but disapproval feels like danger.

Psychologists call this “conditional regard,” when love or praise is given only when you behave, achieve or perform a certain way. If this happened when you were young, over time your brain connected being good or gaining approval with being safe.

So your creative wiring starts to bend toward people-pleasing.

It’s the same creative system; it’s just that it becomes trained to keep us safe instead of helping us to feel free. That’s why so many creative adults struggle to draw boundaries or trust their own taste.

Do You Seek Approval Or Expression?

So, the question then becomes, how do we know if this happened to us?

If you’ve ever felt like your creativity helped you fit in or earn praise or smooth things over, there’s a chance that you started using it for approval instead of expression.

And that can hurt us in the long run, because if we’re constantly seeking approval with our work, the writing life becomes much more of a roller coaster. When we do get the approval, we feel like we’re doing the right thing. When we don’t get the approval, we can feel like maybe this isn’t for me, or I shouldn’t be writing.

Tying our creativity too closely to approval can lead to a very discouraging creative life. It can take us down a road that eventually leads to quitting or, at the very least, being way too hard on ourselves.

We have a much better chance of succeeding as writers if we are writing with our own particular goals in mind. We may want to publish a book, gain a readership, or build an author platform, but we’re not constantly seeking approval to help us to feel safe or worthwhile.

A true creative artist creates and then puts it out there. And sure, we want that feedback. We want to know if what we’re doing is matching up for readers, but at the same time, we want to be strong enough so that the occasional bad review isn’t going to throw us or that one book that doesn’t sell as well is not going to make us want to quit.

Three Ways to Break Free from People-Pleasing as a Writer 1. Remember When Creating Felt Safe

Start by remembering when being creative felt safe (if you can). Think back to when you used to make things. Those might have been drawings, stories, or songs. What did those moments feel like? What were you creating for?

It’s completely normal to enjoy approval, especially when we’re kids. We all light up when someone sees our work and says, “Hey, that’s great!” That kind of feedback can help build confidence and even fuel our creativity.

The difference is what happens next. If you kept creating because it made you feel alive, then that’s healthy motivation. But if somewhere along the way you started creating mainly to keep other people’s smiles coming or to hold on to peace, love, or praise, that’s where creativity can start shifting toward people-pleasing.

It’s not that you did anything wrong. Your system just learned that expression and approval often came as a package deal.

2. Notice What Happens When You Write Now

Pay attention to the small things, like the little thoughts you have the moment before you share your work or the way your shoulders might tense up when you imagine someone reading your story.

Maybe you find yourself editing to sound more polished or avoiding something that feels too raw. That doesn’t automatically mean you’re people-pleasing. Sometimes it’s just your desire to have your work land well with readers.

But if that worry starts taking over—if the fear of being judged, misunderstood, or “too much” starts shrinking what you make or affecting it in a negative way—that’s the approval-seeking showing up. Your nervous system is trying to protect you the same way as it did when you were a kid by keeping you safe through acceptance.

The goal isn’t to judge it. Just notice, because that awareness can give you a choice.

3. Write Something No One Will Ever Read

We are used to thinking about readers and editors, or at least the possibility of being published someday. But try writing something that’s just for you. That could be a letter you’ll never send, a story you’ll never show anyone, or a journal entry that doesn’t have to make sense.

When you take the audience out of the equation, something might shift inside you. The pressure is likely to drop, or the voice that’s been trying to sound “right” might start to sound real.

You might write faster, risk more, or say things you didn’t know you needed to say. That’s the version of your creativity that doesn’t perform anymore. It’s just being, and that’s the space where your truest work starts to grow.

I think you may be surprised if you try this exercise. Even if you’ve been writing for a while and you’re really tuned in to your readers now, go back and write something that you don’t plan to share with anybody. Give yourself some time to explore that.

What I found in working with writers is that this often unleashes a higher level of creativity than they had noticed before. They start to create from a truer space because they’re not worried anymore about what anybody else is going to think.

Sometimes the rawness of that writing can actually connect us more to our readers than what we’re polishing or creating that we think they’re going to like. Give it a try and see what you come up with. The results of that exercise can be really magical.

How to Spot People-Pleasing in Your Writing This Week

Pay attention to the moment when you hesitate in your writing. Maybe before you share a draft, read your work aloud, or hit publish, or maybe even while you’re writing.

Instead of pushing past it, maybe pause a minute when that feeling comes up and ask yourself, “Who am I trying to please right now?”

You don’t need to change anything yet. Sometimes, that awareness alone is enough to loosen an old pattern.

The more you see where approval sneaks into your creative process, the easier it becomes to tell the difference between writing from truth and writing for reassurance.

As you move through your week, let your writing be a small act of trust in yourself and a reminder that your voice doesn’t have to earn its place. You’re not seeking approval anymore. You are an artist. Creating from your truest artistic self is what’s going to make you feel the most rewarded by your writing.

Note: For more information about your unique creative mindset, check out my Master Writer Mindset Type quiz for FREE here!

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