People Pleasing.

For me, and for a great many others, the act of people pleasing has had a significant role in how I have moved through the world. Up until now. 

The unravelling of this narrative has taken years of active consideration, therapy, introspection and not to mention multiple theta healing and kinesiology sessions. While I am sure that there is more of the mycelium of this particular expression to be explored, I feel that I have arrived at a fairly comprehensive understanding of how it has manifested itself in my life experiences. Enough of an understanding to share some of my learnings with you at least. 

In recent events, I have had clearly mirrored to me the impact that people pleasing has on those around you. While I am usually on the acting side of this behaviour, I was recently on the receiving end. What I saw and learned set me firmly on the path towards honouring my-self. The minimisation of self in an attempt to grasp onto love, presence, friendship or attention is damaging not only for you, but for the other. Of course, if this behaviour has been long standing you might find that you don’t even know your own needs, wants, desires and opinions. There is a good chance that you couldn’t even think about, let alone verbalise your needs to have them met by yourself and others. This lack of self-awareness and development leads to you bending to the more developed super-ego of the person or people you are surrounded by. While you may not be actively cognisant of the qualities of your authentic self, there is always a part within that can recognise when we are living out of alignment. This part will bring up emotions of frustration, resentment and discontentment to alert you to this fact. However, those who do not know them-selves are generally not aware of what their emotions are trying to communicate with them, and so these feelings get projected outwards and thrust upon the very person or people we’ve set out to please. In this way, self-abandonment leads to resentment of the very person you are trying to please, viewing them as the reason that you are feeling the frustration or discontentment that you are. 

There are various components that I see for myself within the realm of ‘people pleasing’. For me I see self-abandonment, fear of rejection, protectionism, a desire to manage the emotions and feelings of others and an act through which I would attempt to minimise my impact on the world. 

At the root of all of this narrative for me was protectionism. I see so clearly how each thread of this long winding tale leads back to feelings of un-safety and fear. For as long as I can remember, I have had the feeling of being afraid to “be found out”; the feeling that if I was to be entirely honest with my voice that it would elicit anger, rage, despair or some other big emotional reaction in the other. Instead I would speak half-truths and resort to obfuscation, to soften my words. I dreaded the implications that could come from standing in my truths. This all sounds like big self-abandonment things, and in some ways these are the big things; however, it is in the day to day, the small interactions and the conversations that have had a long standing impact. The wishy-washy responses when invited somewhere that I knew I didn’t want to attend, rather than a straight up, “No” , I would state that I would, “Try to make it”;when I knew I wouldn’t. My use of language would soften or open up what were actually firm boundaries into relaxed possibilities. This I can demonstrate most clearly in dating, while I am certain that I will not have any more children, I would often phrase it as, “Ohhh, I probably won’t have any more children; it depends on who I end up with though I suppose”. It was the fear that these people would leave if I was to be honest in my intentions. This, I learned fairly early on in my post-divorce dating, was counterintuitive to dating well. In this area, I learned to be upfront from the beginning with what was central to me. Even now, I have to remain consciously aware of my language to see what I am communicating or not. I have come to recognise the tightening that I feel in my stomach when my language does not reflect the certainty that I feel in my convictions to attend or not attend, to date or not to date, to start on a project or not. 

If I were to distil this even further, I would recognise that at the absolute core of this was an unexpanded ability to sit in and with discomfort. My own discomfort and the discomfort of others. It is incredible how many things we avoid and how much we engage in that we don’t want to, all in pursuit of avoiding feelings. Physical sensations in the body. Messages from us to us about how we are interpreting the current realty, or our perception of it. What makes this even more incredible is that feeling, when we sit with them and allow them to flow through us cannot and do not last long in the body. They are transient and ever changing. It saddens me to know the things I have engaged in and the things I have missed out on in order to avoid a feeling. 

Knowing your own needs, wants and desires well enough to know when you are ‘people pleasing’, to know when you are self-abandoning and when you are minimising your-self out of fear requires introspection, awareness and curiosity. Curiosity, in essence, cannot embody judgement. Curiosity requires an openness to all aspects of what is happening, what is felt, what is perceived and unperceived. Curiosity towards self naturally means kindness, and patience as you begin the journey to unravelling long standing beliefs and concepts of others and self. I feel that what is often missed in the conversation and practice of self-development is that we are not striving to end our “negative” experiences but rather it is an exercise in expanding our ability to hold space for this part. The fears, the “negative” emotions, the undesired experiences are in aid of us; we don’t want them to be entirely gone. Yes, we don’t want to have them over taking our lives, but they can usefully sit at 10%. 

So what does this mean for me moving forward? 

Very practically it means that I will be encouraging myself to communicate clearly what is true for me. These can be communicated clearly with kindness. Clear doesn’t have to equate with brutal, or ‘mean’. This could be turning projects down when I know they aren’t aligned rather than trying to see how I can fit them in. This could be saying, “No thanks,” to a party that I know I won’t feel like attending rather than saying that, “I’ll try to make it”. This doesn’t mean that I have to communicate everything I am thinking and feeling; there is a difference between communicating honestly and over-sharing the internal experience. Not everyone requires access to my innermost world, and honestly not everyone can be trusted in there! However, I owe it to myself to stand in my truths and my knowing, centred in my authentic self. 

People pleasing isn’t kindness,

don’t mistake the two.