True Life: I'm A People Pleaser

 

A little prelude before you enter the journey of reading the below, the awareness that I have, in being able to write this post, has come from hours and hours on end of really going deeper within myself. I’ve always been a reader, I’ve always had a yearning to learn something new every day, in a sense its what I’ve learned is one of the ways I ensure my happiness. My brain is the happiest when she (yes, it’s a she, do you even know me?) 😊 is learning.

I think my first dive into the self-journey started with a You are A BadAss, which skimmed the surface, and from there I just continued the process. Through therapy, mediation work, journaling, reading, and reading, listening, and learning to other’s stories, I can say I am starting to skim the surface and really put into perspective who I am, and better yet, understand my past, reactions I’ve had and still have, and really start to attempt in putting the pieces together.

With that being said, this significant post is a basic HEY GIRL WAKE UP, post, message to myself, of a light bulb-ness moment, I say moment but really its taken a ton of work, that I finally can say I myself, am a self-proclaimed people pleaser. Now this persona can take on many forms but let me tackle what it means for me, and the relevancy of sharing this small portion of my story.

Being a people pleaser, in the way it resonates with me, is basically having constant relationships with others, whether they are surface level or deep, that revolved around me telling you what you want to hear, which basically boils down to me having a consistent fear of someone “being mad at me”. This sounds elementary, and get ready for another mind-blowing boomish moment, ITS BECAUSE IT IS. My people pleasing tendencies stems from my childhood when I experienced bullying.

This is something that I really haven’t shared with a lot of people, and unless your from my small town of Erie PA, and were actually involved in the wonderous middle school knows as Walnut Creek, you wouldn’t know this, I hid it, I moved schools, and I did what I had to do to survive and protect myself, which was mold my opinion, render my voice, and shape into the person you needed me to be, say what you needed to hear, agree with whatever statement you made, just so I would feel welcomed, and not have to experience the abandonment I experienced through the toxic bullying I experienced in 6^th grade.

I can remember sitting at a lunch table with all of the “cool” girls at the time, and we would just go around asking each other if they were mad at each other, and the dynamic of not only being in middle school and already being insecure, trying to hang on with dear life and just make it and fit in, adding on the constant stress of if one of the girls was going to turn on you, really created this sense of fear that I just had to shield who I was, or what I thought, or what I felt, to be liked.

Look, my story isn’t in anyway tragic, I was able to move to a different school, and start again, where I met a great new group of friends, I had a wonderful high school experience, shaded with anxious moments when I would see the other kids from my old school at a football game, or here them chanting my name, but I hid I enough, and had made good new friends that I was able to in some ways “move on” or so I thought.

The people please skill wasn’t and isn’t all bad, I worked my way up in jobs, I turned into the girl everyone wanted to have around, the life of the party, the girl who people turned to vent, but what I didn’t realize was happening, was that I was losing myself along the way. I didn’t even know what I thought, or what my opinions were, because I spent so many years shielding any conflictive feelings so I didn’t have to feel what I felt and deal with the unresolved trauma from grade school.

Although I say I prospered with this trait, I truly didn’t, when looking at past romantic relationships, my people please skills put these men-ish, 😊 on pedastools, I was a chameleon in each one, truly molding to each one, and being looked at as the cool girlfriend. Friendships, same scenario, I was the vent blanket, I listened and said what I knew they wanted to hear, out of fear of being judged, or spoken ill about. It was a constant circle of exhaustion.

Fast forward, I started therapy, and when this realization, and connection came crashing down on me, my therapist asked me one simple thing, “How are you feeling?”. If you’re connecting the dots here, I couldn’t even tell her how I was feeling, because I didn’t know. I lost myself so much that I couldn’t even articulate how I truly was feeling. She started asking me questions, and listened, and you got it, I couldn’t answer, I caught myself telling her what she wanted to hear, basically I was people pleasing my therapist who pointed out I was people pleasing my entire life. (true commitment to the protection of myself there eh).

It was only when I started connecting with myself again, going back to what I liked as a little girl, reading, journaling, being outdoors, that I slowly began to remember who I am, and my voice is slowly coming back. I’m writing this to not only bring peace to myself, and to continue to bring awareness of this tendency I am still working on, but honestly to just be genuine and authentic with people for the first time in a while.

I’m ready to put the people pleasing on hold, and just walk and speak in my truth, and I think that may offend and scare people, and in all honesty it has. Friendships have slowly withered away, romantic relationships didn’t stand a chance, but I’m okay with this, because I’m ready for the world to get to know me, for the first time in a long time.

Being yourself, raw, and understanding who you are is not for the weak, it is not for the timid, and it requires a ton of patience with yourself. But I can say that 2 months before my 35^th birthday, and I am writing this sitting in my parent’s house, with my beautiful puppy by my feet, I have never felt more like myself, and that self is someone who deserves to be known.

Remember to tell them you love them.

XoXo Ab