People Pleasing

Well people pleasing for me personally has taken interesting twists and turns.

Earlier in my life, I thought people pleasing would help me get my worth, feel worthy, find a place in the community and prove I am good enough.

Later in my mid thirties, I got stuck with this belief when I was alone with my kids in the UK. Suddenly I asked myself this question: What am I doing? Does all this make any sense? Would I want my kids to do this habit too? People pleasing? Is this make me proud in the long run?

I remember being in the library. Instead of working on my thesis, I was googling: Emotional neglect. Emotional abuse. Emotional torture.

At that moment, I realized I don’t have any idea of emotional education and emotional intelligence. I was totally blank and don’t know anything about it. What I learned in my earlier living experiences was just suppress the feelings, be strong and don’t show them. It was seen in my environment as a sign of weakness.

And oh my god. How shocked and traumatized I was. I lived my life with this lie: I need to prove myself to be worthy to exist here. Otherwise I am nothing.

Nowadays I live life daily detangling from the tight knots of this idea. I self reflect and self regulate and ask myself: What do I want? What is my motivation from this? Am I just pleasing others or do I have a genuine reason for this this task or accepting this obligation?

People pleasing is something started several generations ago. It is not easy to detangle from it. Because you see majority are in this dark hole. But it is worth the effort and the hard work if we want to be true and real with ourselves and others.