People pleasing is something a lot of us struggle with. A surface-level glance at the notion might prompt one to think, ‘people pleasing doesn’t sound like a bad thing,’ and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. People pleasing is absolutely beneficial to everyone, aside from the person doing the actual pleasing.
I feel like a bit of an idiot admitting this, but I was a people pleaser for a very long time, and I didn’t even realize it. I guess I realized this after I got married, if I had to pinpoint a specific timeframe, and when I did finally come to the realization I was investing so much in everyone but myself, I knew I had to try and get a handle on it for my own sake.
For me, the hardest thing about abstaining from pleasing others before myself was having to create boundaries and stop this behaviour. When you are a people pleaser and then all of a sudden stop, individuals will arguably note this shift and perhaps say or think you’re being rude, when, in actuality, you aren’t; rather, you’re being assertive and mindful of yourself for the first time in your life, and that can throw some people off.
Not to sound too harsh, but for anyone who thinks you’re being nasty because you’re establishing boundaries can get fucked. They’re not the sort of folks you want in your life anyway.
I’m not going to spew bullshit that ending the cycle of pleasing others is simple, because it isn’t. At least, it hasn’t been for me, and I recognize this will be a work in progress and likely something I have to work towards over an extended period of time. But the desire to put an end to this behaviour is a start, and it can only go up from here.
Photo by Dev Asangbam on Unsplash
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