People Pleasing Story Time: Hannah
Last week it was so warm, I put my feet in the sand. This weekend, it shall snow. Ah, winter in North Carolina :)
Early this fall, I started working with a client who came to me because they knew I have experience with polyamory. I was excited - they were my first client who sought me out for this particular reason, and I have a lot of knowledge around navigating the interpersonal realities of creating emotionally intimate relationships with multiple people.
When I start with a client, we set 3 Main Focuses that we’ll work on during our time together. Using conversation and a Tarot reading, we choose the 3 most important aspects of their life they want to shift. Then, during our season together, I create tangible internal and external tools for my client to facilitate those shifts.
When I started with Hannah, one of our goals was “Discover a balance and approach in polyamory that is fulfilling and aligned for you.” Hannah had multiple partners and was finding a lot of joy in exploring themself with new people, AND they were feeling on the cusp of burnout with so much scheduling and emotional awareness to manage.
While poly can be messy, so can monogamy. I’ve found that it’s our internal growth and experience that allows us to shift this messiness into care and clarity, not our number of partners. The easy answer to Hannah would have been “Just date fewer people!” But I knew this wasn’t the right answer for allowing Hannah to live their path, and that I’d lose their trust if I gave such advice. Rightfully so: that’s not my choice to make, and I believe strongly that my client knows what’s right for them - not me. I’m just here to guide them towards that knowledge.
In our first sessions, we used Parts Work (IFS therapy) to get in tune with the Parts of Hannah that were fretting about making everyone in their life happy. This quickly brought up the subject of people pleasing.
“I have a real history of people pleasing because of my childhood,” Hannah said. “I can see how it’s playing out in my partnerships: the ways I’m wanting to keep everyone happy in order to keep myself feeling safe.”
This made a lot of sense. When we’re kids, we want to keep our caregivers happy, because our physical and emotional safety depends on their emotional state. When we grow up, our Parts are still playing out the roles they took on when we were small. They don’t know things are different now - so we have to teach them.
That’s what we did. Hannah and I spent several sessions talking with their Parts and recording information about the Parts’ fears, hopes, and support wants in a spreadsheet that either of us could reference any time. (I make such a spreadsheet with all my clients, and it’s unbelievably helpful in understanding and healing what’s happening when they hit a stuck spot.)
Hannah had people pleasing Parts, for sure, but to balance them, she also had a Boundaries & Anger Part. This is an aspect of people pleasing we can forget: there has to be internal balance, so if we’re compromising ourselves by pleasing others, some other Part in us is going to say, “Fuck this, I’ll make sure we don’t overextend.” These parts tend to lash out with angry overreactions.
Hannah’s Part was named Athena. Athena was truly a warrior, and “Bitch, you deserve better!” was her rallying cry. Athena had some excellent points: she wanted Hannah to only date people who treated Hannah well and who had their shit together. But in laying down the law, Athena sometimes overreacted, which led Hannah to not have their own shit together. So very human, no? None of us can have our shit together all the time. We’re all just healing.
In one important conversation, Hannah and I talked with Athena.
“What are you afraid of?” Hannah asked Athena.
“Of being mistreated, of you giving into your people pleasing,” said Athena.
“What support do you want?” Hannah asked.
“Pause your dating app accounts. I’m tired. We’re tired,” was the clear answer.
In that conversation, we learned that Hannah needed to call their energy back in and pause the activity that was drawing the most on their energy.
If this sounds obvious to you, it’s possible you’ve never been on a dating app. They are dopamine machines, a game where the objective is to find people who think your’e hot. It’s a hotbed of external validation and temporarily positive brain chemicals. I speak from experience. The brain is literally wired to not want to stop.
However, in slowing down and talking to our Parts, we can see more clearly how high the stakes are. Taking care of a Part of ourselves who needs support is great motivation: it feels good to know what we need and how we can give it to ourselves. This kind of clarity allows us to break patterns and make better moves for our wellness.
Hannah paused their accounts and decided to only date their current partners. When I checked in with them at our next session, they felt much better. Setting that boundary for themself led to clearer understanding of how to schedule and communicate with their partners.
This kind of internal work is fun in its own way: it feels damn good. But the really fun stuff comes when we’ve figured out how to support the Parts inside you that need it the most. Then we ask: what creative projects or forms of self expression are ready to come out, now that they have space?
Once we’d gotten their Parts feeling better, Hannah knew immediately how they wanted to use their freed-up energy: “I want to start creative writing again,” they said.
I made it their Witch’s Work to write a little every day. They decided they’d finish their work day, then spend 10-20 minutes writing in a notebook. Immediately Hannah started sending me snippets of their writing. “I have a longer story I want to write,” they told me. They detailed the characters, the story of the protagonist, how it echoed Hannah’s own story and would allow them to process their traumas while having a great time world-building.
Recently, Hannah and Athena and I did a Future Self Visualization. Hannah and Athena traveled three years into the future, and together they witnessed how much more relaxed they both become over time, as they continue to work together. Athena was reluctant to return, but Hannah comforted her, letting her know that they were committed to the growth they’d seen and that Athena was safe. When they returned to the present day, I could see a new level of trust had grown between them.
Yesterday, Hannah and I had our last session. I always lead clients through a Wrap-Up Ritual, where we witness and they absorb the ways they’ve changed their internal and external worlds in just 4 months. “The trust between me and Athena is so much stronger,” Hannah told me seriously. “She’s strong, but not jumping to defend. She’s a bad bitch.” Hannah broke into a grin.
Witnessing a client’s internal transformation is deeply rewarding. Getting to see how they take that forward to live their live more fully fills my whole body with a sort of sunshine-like warmth and satisfaction. Thank you to Hannah and Athena for letting me write this story - I wish you beautiful creation and self-expression on your badass journey ;)
Cordelia the Cat basking in a rare warm-day sunbeam.
Village Witch’s Corner
Win of the Week:
It’s gotta be Hannah, with the win of allowing their story to be shared. Athena chimed in with a “hell yes” when I asked if I could share their experience.
Spell of the Week :
Prioritize my own wellbeing over orderly scheduling.
Question(s) I'm asking this week:
Where am I binding myself in with rules-for-behaving that I made up?
What I’m Watching:
Bridgerton. It’s officially Bridgerton-Late-January, I need a little escapism. (Plus I wanna review before the new season comes out.)
Wheel of the year:
They days are longer, but still cold. This time calls for “marathon-not-sprint” energy, for really digging deep into how we care for ourselves, rather than glossing over what’s truly needed. This is the important period when all subtle preparation happens for the upcoming growth of the year. Imbolc is next weekend! To learn more about living in alignment with the seasons, sign up for my Patreon (free and paid options available) 𓇢𓆸
