People pleasing and lying to ourselves.

As we start to get the year underway and many of my clients are really getting stuck into their goals and resolutions, I’ve been noticing a pattern. 

The sneakiest kind of self sabotage that keeps coming up.… people-pleasing!

And I know it doesn't sound sneaky, but it creeps into EVERYTHING because our relationships, not just romantic ones or marriages but with friends, coworkers and parents, affect every part of our lives.  

Including how we see ourselves. 

It's important to realize that we ALL people please in one way or another. It's human nature. 

We want to be a part of the tribe. We need to be loved or accepted by our peers and sometimes that requires compromise and flexibility.  There always needs to be a certain amount of give and take. That is not people-pleasing. 

BUT, when it’s often and you’re finding yourself always going with what someone else wants, even though inside you’re screaming “NO!” you've got a problem. 

Whether you’re saying yes to your boss asking you to take on yet ANOTHER piece of work that you really can't fit in, or saying, 

“Sure darling, I’d love to go to the bar with you and watch <insert whatever dumb sport here> for the 5 weekend in a row even though I really would rather just stay home with netflix and a glass of Chardonnay”

Its all people-pleasing, and those are just some small examples. Often it's far bigger than that. 

I’ve worked with women who have changed careers, their dreams, their look, even their bodies to make someone else happy. 

I’ve BEEN that woman myself.

I can't tell you how destructive it really is, because people-pleasing or going with what others want out of fear or to avoid conflict is dishonest.  It's a form of manipulation to get what we THINK we want. 

And the biggest problem with that dishonestly is that it doesn’t take long to go from lying to others about what we really want, to lying to ourselves.

It’s easier just to pretend that we don’t want what we want than it is to admit that we’ve hidden, crushed and destroyed the truth of what we want and need in relationships. 

Do that for long enough and you’ll wake up suddenly one day and realize that you’ve been someone else's version of you for so long that you have no idea who you are.

It reminds me of a relationship I was in years ago where I was essentially people pleased my way into becoming a second mother to my boyfriend.

Not by choice I might add, but I believed that I had to keep him happy in order to make the relationship successful. It was somehow my job to shoulder that responsibility. 

What I really wanted was to be able to say “I need you to be the other Adult in this relationship. I need to not be expected to parent you for this to work”

What I did instead was clean up after him, made sure our bills were paid and that all the adulting was taken care of so that the boat didn’t get rocked. 

I kept my mouth shut when I should have said something. 

I took care of things myself when I wanted to ask for and require help. 

I befriended his friends and went along with the activities that he wanted to do because it was easier than asking him to also explore my wants. 

I became the “perfect” girlfriend who tolerated all his behavior and went along with whatever he wanted without complaint. 

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, that relationship didn’t end well.

Because you can only maintain the lies for so long before you either surrender yourself to the misery that this is your life now (And become depressed) or you blow up. 

I went the blow up route and demanded that he clean up his own damn mess one day!

Actually, as I recall, it basically ended with his mother calling me and telling me that boys just needed taking care of so I should suck it up (Not sure who invited her to the argument) but that’s a whole other therapy session. For them, not me!

But when I finally let go of that relationship I realized that in my desire to be loved and accepted, I had people-pleased my way into being someone I didn't even recognize. 

And did NOT want to be. 

People pleasing doesn't have to be as dramatic as my relationship was to have a negative effect. It can be as simple as feeling like you always have to check emails outside of work time, or that you can't say no to hanging out with your in-laws when you're actually exhausted and want to rest. Or not sticking to your new year's resolution because your husband doesn't like healthy food. 

Sometimes it's as simple as toning down your excitement over something so other people aren't uncomfortable. 

Every time you unconsciously do something because it's what “other people” want, when you would have done it differently, you get further away from being true to yourself. 

And it's uncomfortable as hell, but taking the time to question why you're doing it, and if it's really worth it… can be a life changing experience.