“But I’m Not a People Pleaser Anymore”

The full moon this past Saturday night, shining brightly through the bare tree branches, casting a rainbow halo on the moody, shifting clouds.

“But I’m not a people pleaser anymore.”

Lol, this is literally me, and then this week in couples’ therapy we spent the whole time talking about the way I track how people respond to me and try to act in ways that please them.

As I wrote the last few blog entries on people pleasing, I thought, “I have this thought that I’ve gotten past this, but this feeling that that isn’t true. So what are my particular struggles?” Yesterday’s therapy session clarified that for me and serendipitously provided today’s topic.

I think I’ve done some good work around people pleasing. I also think that trauma and things we internalize in childhood are hard to dislodge from our makeup. So, while I’ve worked through some big layers around this, I’m reaching new, deeper ones through observing how I act with my partner, friends, and family, and where I struggle to relax.

We started talking about this because my therapist asked, “How much of the your issues connecting in the moment are about your inability to relax?”

“A LOT,” I replied.

She asked me some more thoughtful questions, and then she put forward the hypothesis that having things go “well” interpersonally is how I show myself I have value.

“If you remove that bolster, you have to grapple with what your value really is,” she said. She was right, and I was relieved to have something new and clearer to grapple with, even if it was heavy.

The truth is, while I’ve come a long way in the journey of “not caring what other people think,” I think that phrase is oversimplified. It’s never “I no longer care what anyone things of me, whee, I’m free!”

Even withpeople I respect deeply who are in their 70s who have told me “You don’t care as you get older, and it’s so freeing,” I still want to ask:

Do you really not care? Don’t you have moments where your child self comes through and says “We care!! We care so much because our safety depends on it!”

And,

Aren’t there some times that we should care? Maybe what we’re really talking about is not basing our idea of who we are on how others respond to us.

If we have trauma, or felt like we needed to make our parents happy in order to be safe, or learned that our “gifted”-ness was why people loved us, we are going to struggle with people pleasing. And literally all of us have at least one of those - for me, and many people, it’s all three! So it’s okay that it’s a lifelong journey -we’re only human. All of us. So we’re not alone. I’m telling myself this too, this week.

When I feel relaxed around people, I have an easier time saying what I think, contradicting, and asserting my own value. But when I don’t feel relaxed around people, I try to keep myself feeling valuable by saying or doing the right thing - the thing that would please my companion.

Often our family, partners, and the people we spend the most time with push our buttons the most, which is . . . not relaxing.

“When we’re able to bolster ourselves with other’s good opinions, we think we’re ‘doing well,’” my therapist told me. “But when we can’t bolster ourselves, we get a truer sense of how we’re actually doing.”

When I try to please the people around me, I compromise myself: it’s a little betrayal of what I actually think, how I want to act. It feels off. The bolster might help temporarily, but it doesn’t really solve the underlying problem, and I can feel this.

Over time, I start to get annoyed at other people. This reveals how I’m actually doing. When I get defensive around my partner, or want to snap at my mom, this is a better idea of how I’m doing, baseline. Fortunately / unfortunately, it reveals where I’m getting my value from.

I think this is mostly fortunate, because it’s the compass.

It shows me what I actually need to grapple with in order to liberate myself from this problem, and stop putting a band-aid on it:

What value do I have when I’m not sure if others will like how I behave?

Who am I when I don’t base my identity on being liked?

What am I willing to do, risk, and overcome in order to be free in my mind and heart?

I hope these questions resonate with you too, friends and fellow healing people-pleasers.

~ • ~

I used to hear my writer’s workshop students wrestle with the guilt that if they took time to be creative, they should have been spending it with family, or doing more “productive” things.

These niggling beliefs come from the same place that our people pleasing comes from: wanting to do things “right” in order to stay safe and accepted.

In my writer’s workshop, we work on addressing the challenges of being creative long-term, as well as the challenges of creating.

If you’re ready for accountability in your creation . . .

If you’re ready to feel supported in overcoming the struggle to make consistent creative time . . .

If you’re ready to relax into the warm embrace of your own art again . . .

Then Fiction Cauldron, my biweekly writer’s workshop designed to support you in your particular creative journey, is a good fit for you. (You don’t need to be a fiction writer - memoir and other prose is welcome too!)

Much love, and I’ll be back with Story Time about people pleasing next week,

Isabel

A mistletoe bundle hanging from a willow oak tree with a gray-blue sky behind the interweaving, bare branches. Did you know that mistletoe is a parasitic plant that attaches to trees and siphons their nutrients?

Village Witch’s Corner

Spell of the Week : 

Grapple with where I’m establishing my value based on how others respond to me.

Question(s) I'm asking this week:

What is my value when it’s not based on how others respond to me?

What I’m Reading:

I read a lot of web comics, specifically through the platform WebToons. Right now I’m really enjoying a story called Not So Silent, about two high school boys who come together to support each other in their struggles. One of the characters is deaf, and I’m learning a lot from his challenges and representation. Also, they have crushes on each other, so it’s cute.

Wheel of the year:

The light has started to grow as the days wheel by in wake of the winter solstice. Every day is longer, every moment a little brighter. We can draw strength from this, even as we continue to see what the darkness and quiet of winter bring out in us. This is the important period when all subtle preparation happens for the upcoming growth of the year. To learn more about living in alignment with the seasons, sign up for my Patreon (free and paid options available) 𓇢𓆸