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Heart and Grit

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What is a People Pleaser?

Celebrating Ourselves

27 Jul

The short version is: I enact an adaptation of myself designed to appeal to others. To entice them to like me, accept me, respect me. Not reject me. To ensure that I remain in their good graces by fitting into their world of perception and belief.

How do I know this? I’ve done it a thousand times.

For years, I became an award-winning actress each summer when I flew 3000 miles to visit my father and his second wife. Behaving as the daughter I thought he wanted me to be (and, as it turns out, he did). When I could no longer sustain this pretense, he cut me out of his life — sparing me the trouble.

On the surface, people-pleasing does appear to work. It maintains the relationship on an even keel. All appears to be well. But deeper down, what’s happened is an isolation. My authenticity has gone missing. I’ve isolated myself from myself. I have also separated away from you.

You may think you are seeing the real me, but it’s not so. Even if my people-pleasing has produced results and you seem to approve of me, I have lost myself in the bigger picture.

As empaths, we spend a lot of our time and energies meeting others where they live. Always visiting their home as our place of meeting. Perhaps we sense intuitively that a friend may lack capacity to receive us — to really take us in. Or, maybe we fear that if we were to show up as our big authentic self, they’d feel threatened. Sometimes, we do the dance to avoid domination or control.

We travel to the world of that other person, having left our suitcase behind — the one containing our deepest heart.

We travel to the world of that other person, having left our suitcase behind — the one containing our deepest heart.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this. We are always the perfect version of ourselves as we appear in the moment. We do the best we can with the resources available. Even if in the very next moment, life opens up and we see it another way — as a perfect set-up for the needed change that is ready to come forth.

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