How People Pleasing Affects Your Relationship With Your Body
This is the second blog of a series that began last week. Here’s a link to that blog entry: https://www.revolution-within.com/blog/revolutionizing-your-relationship-with-your-body
Let’s talk about being a people pleaser! What is that?
If you are a people pleaser, you’re likely to do one or more of these things:
Say you agree with someone when you don’t.
Apologize for things that you didn’t actually do.
Say yes to things that you’d rather say no to.
Altering your personality to suit the wants, needs, or preferences of others.
Basing your entire self-worth on others’ opinions of you.
And guess what?
Unless everything that you’re doing is from a place of selflessness with the purpose being to cultivate unconditional love with everyone that you come across, then you’re deceiving people.
You’re also deceiving yourself.
I suppose it’s possible that it could be done with total selflessness, but I highly doubt it. (I’m not even sure it’s possible to be completely magnanimous AND human at the same time. Human beings are inherently wired for survival, and that wiring laughs in the face of unselfish generosity.)
Again, people pleasing isn’t “being nice;” it’s lying. It’s manipulative behavior.
And we’re totally conditioned to it. We avoid saying how we REALLY feel to keep the peace, or to make someone else feel good, or to make someone like us, or for one of a million other reasons.
Oh! Here’s a people-pleasing tendency that I’m personally really familiar with…perhaps you “play the martyr.”
So what does that mean, exactly?
It means that you continually sacrifice your own needs for the needs of others while using guilt to (often inadvertently) passive-aggressively manipulate others to feel bad for you.
Example: *Sigh* My husband isn’t taking out the trash. Again. Even though I’ve asked him a thousand times. I guess I’ll just do it myself. AGAIN. *Sigh*
This is even more effective when done within earshot of said husband. (Or let’s add the kids into it to really mix it up.)
And ooooooooh babycakes, I am good at being a martyr!! My mom taught me this behavior well. (This is an observation, not an indictment. May she continue to rest peacefully.)
One of my friends joked with me recently that martyrs are revered throughout history (Joan of Arc, for example) so what’s really so bad about being a martyr in our relationships?
Resentment, that’s what. And exhaustion. Both of which can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms (i.e., comfort eating, over drinking, etc) that allow us to completely neglect our physical and mental health, leading us to not create the life we really want and deserve to be living.
As much as we’d like to deny it, the more we give and give of ourselves without (expected and/or appropriate) reciprocity the more worn down and resentful we become.
And rather than take responsibility for it, we often assign blame:
“If only my kids would just listen to me, then I wouldn’t be drinking so much.”
“If only my husband would just help around the house, then I’d be able to stay out of the pantry after dinner.”
‘Round and ‘round we go on that endless cycle of martyrdom.
What’s the solution?
Communication. Having difficult conversations. Expressing your needs, no matter how uncomfortable it is to do so.
You might be thinking, “Well Dana, that’s so much easier said than done. If I start being completely honest with everyone then people will think I’m a total bitch and will hate me.”
Let’s talk about that thought for a minute.
Is that really true? If you start showing people who you really are and what you really think, everyone will stop loving you?
That seems a bit extreme, yes? Black and white thinking? Perfectionism? (That’s next week’s topic).
So how about we incorporate kindness?
As I’ve learned how to be kind to myself, I’ve also learned that it’s so much kinder to be honest with everyone else - using gentle and supportive language - than to continue pretending that everything is okay when it isn’t.
Learning how to form, set, and enforce boundaries is the key. And that isn’t easy! It takes quite a bit of time to figure out what our boundaries are when we’re not used to having them in the first place.
Then it takes practice, patience, and persistence to keep them in place.
And they might change as you go. AND THAT’S OKAY. You don’t have to figure everything out all at once. You can make mistakes and adjust accordingly.
Because we’re all just doing our best every single day. And our best looks different every single day.
That’s all I have this week. If you’re interested in learning more about how to work with me to change these behavior patterns and feel better in your body, email me at dana@revolution-within.com.
Love & hugs,
Dana