You’re a people pleaser? Here’s how to not lose yourself.

Hi readers! Shayla Love here, science journalist and longtime fan of Your Mileage May Vary.

I’m honored to be subbing for Sigal Samuel while she’s out on parental leave.

I’m diving into your questions as a way to help understand human nature and our choices through multiple lenses: philosophical, psychological, and beyond.

Please send in any emotional, body/brain, sociological, perceptual, or other kind of life quandaries you might have.

My wife says I’m a people pleaser.

I want to turn over a new leaf (maybe to please her?!) so I’m making a resolution to be less of a weathervane and stand up for myself more.

But it’s hard — I love to fit in.

I’m a joiner and a collaborator.

It’s not that I’m passive, it’s more that I find other people’s “ways of being” contagious.

Sometimes I catch myself slipping into imitation of the friends or colleagues I’m talking to.

What’s a chameleon to do? Or, more scarily, who am I when I’m alone? How do I find out who I really am? Dear Identity Crisis, At first glance, it’s a bit funny to be accused of being a people pleaser as if it’s entirely a bad thing.

It sounds like you have others’ interests genuinely in mind, and that seems like a nice way to build connection.

But I find the term people pleaser to also be a sneaky euphemism.

Do you want to know how this sort of behavior is often discussed in the psychological literature? In studies, it’s not always called people pleasing; it’s called lying.