Have you ever been around people pleasers? They tend to be displeasing. Being around someone who is turned inside out to please another is often irritating and anxiety producing.
People pleasing is a behavior we may have adapted to survive in our family. We may not have been able to get the love and attention we deserved. We may not have been given permission to please ourselves, to trust ourselves, and to choose a course of action that demonstrated self trust.
People pleasing can be overt or covert. We may run around fussing over others, chattering a mile a minute when what we are really saying is, "I hope I'm pleasing you." Or, we may be more covert, quietly going through life making important decisions based on pleasing others.
Taking other people's wants and needs into consideration is an important part of our relationships. We have responsibilities to friends and family and employers. We have a strong inner responsibility to be loving and caring. But, people pleasing backfires. Not only do others get annoyed with us, we often get annoyed when our efforts to please do not work as we planned. The most comfortable people to be around are those who are considerate of others but ultimately please themselves.
Help me, God, work through my fears and begin to please myself.
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'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
There's a little expectation tag involved with people pleasing, which sets us up for disappointments. I am in tune with pleasing the HP of my understanding, but today I find that while I'm wrapping gifts, I still have that old streak in me with trying to show love in monetary things, when a simple I love you would do just fine. I am going to make sure the words and actions go along with the stuff as best I can this year :) Thanks for posting Pappy :)
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Thanks for everything. Peace and Love on your journey.
People-pleasing is a sure-fire way to end up filled with resentment because of the chronic disappointment that is involved with it. It's a purely self-centered venture. Mike D.
Yes it is. I see it in myself here quite often. These recent threads on the whole AA program itself has that people pleasing twist to it. I want people to do it my way and like me for my way and validate my way and affirm that I am okay because clearly I am not okay just being okay between God and I - hence - I need to do yet some more people pleasing. My defect of character is fear based and lack of faith. If I believe I will be okay as long as I follow God's will for my life, I don't need to defend it or even get involved! As I'm writing, I notice ALLLLLLLLlll the regular people on this board who never say a word. Who never get involved in the little tiffs. They simply walk away knowing what they do and what they believe... and trust in God that they are good enough and okay exactly as they are. I try and stop myself but I still give in. DAMN those defects !!! LOL
I have some 6 & 7 work to do tonight, and boy I sure hope I'm not like 20 yrs sober and still looking for constant validation and behaving like a people pleaser and a self centered AA member who spends more time on arguments than her family or her sponsee's or the newcomers. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired of myself! Thanks again for listening. I have so many people here to be thankful for.
-- Edited by justadrunk on Monday 9th of December 2013 05:40:29 PM
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Thanks for everything. Peace and Love on your journey.
Hi Tasha, I wonder if many folks have varied ideas about what "people pleasing" really is. Do you think it has different elements to it? Or, are there various levels of it? I'm not sure, but I think one of the most common ways that people get into "people pleasing" is when they will go out of their way to make sure that everyone likes them, regardless of how much they have to compromise their own beliefs, or ideas, or principles. They're consistently agreeable. Therefore, they're always afraid to speak their mind openly for fear that someone might disagree....or, find them disagreeable. Interesting topic. Do you have any more to add? Thanks for sharing. Blessings, Mike D.
I'm always trying to please someone - may not be the person I'm talking to exactly. Could have old stuff in it. Lots of things I do are still to please my father, but it looks like I just want to buy this house or this car or do xy or z - but it's really got tags to it with what my father or mother or friends or whomever will think. It's all about someone else - not me and God. I'm getting better, but still not even close to all the way there. The good thing is - I have the steps and the work, and the fellowship and entire program to help me shake it out. I am better and I take actions specifically aimed at healing this in me. I have been on a challenge to do nice things for people for 7 straight days where no other human can possibly give me validation or affirmation. It's tricky. Even if I want to pay for the guy in line behind me at the ice cream shop - the register worker can give me an "awe that's so nice" So it's out. It's not just between God and I> it has to be things like leaving a quarter in the kids gumball machine... picking wild flowers for my elderly neighbor and leaving them at her door when she's not home - etc etc. I've been at it for like a year and still haven't made it to day 7 - but that's the point I'm thinking - to continue...
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Thanks for everything. Peace and Love on your journey.
It was a person from this message board who introduced me to the idea - a guy with the nick name linababa - Andrew. I still go back and read those old threads often. I learn so much from you - and the ones who've come before us here at MIP :)
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Thanks for everything. Peace and Love on your journey.
Hi once again Tasha, Thanks for getting back to me and sharing more. I think I understood parts of what you said, but not everything. Probably just me. LOL. I'm sure I have lots to learn on this topic. It appears to me that the Steps have given you a lot of insight into yourself. It was all a revelation for me, that's for sure. Share more if you can (or, want to) about this subject. Blessings, Mike.
Well... I'm afraid to say that most of that comes out of other 12 step programs and I do follow aaers around that spend time in coda aca or ala non like me. Andrew was one of many from this board. The only requirement is the desire to start living ;)
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Thanks for everything. Peace and Love on your journey.
Great post and love the comments from justadrunk and Mike D.....
I have always been told I was a people pleaser. I believe it is when you put yourself and your own beliefs, desires, etc. get put on a mental back burner and you become more agreeable than you should be with someone just to get them to like you. I am guilty of that. I am not sure if I would call those in the AA rooms and on this board who get into altercations with one another because they have different approaches to staying sober and interpret the BB in different ways would be "people pleasers" or ones who are just trying to out-thump one another and have that need to be right and get the last word in. Justadrunk has the right idea about needing only to please our self and our HP and she told me that a while back, and I try to keep it in mind. I had someone tell me last night to stop putting myself down and just say thank you. I am bad about when someone compliments me, I don't accept it gracefully. Instead I tear myself down. They told me to just stop doing that and to say "thank you". I have a hard time with that, and I think it comes from not feeling worthy and good about myself and I have always diminished compliments. I think that has something to do with being a people pleaser, too, but I may be wrong.
Out doing one another is about pleasing someone tho - we learned ALL of this here... so we're on someone's 'side' with most anything we say. It seems we especially love to take sides about certain matters and this has a very strong people pleasing element to it with those who are on "our side". Really - we're all on the same team against alcoholism and all the isms from any 12 step room. We're all just here trying to get better and live a life as a reflection of the HP we understand. We're all different and all over the map on where we are that journey - but in the end - we're still a team - trying to do the best we can and get over ourselves. Bondage of self is a real bugger. People pleasing over it is like a crazy appendage that just flops around and does crazy stuff. Can't just hack the thing off cuz it's part of us. Gotta learn to work with it, live with it, be okay with ourselves exactly as we are, and love ourselves the way our loving HP loves us and hopes for us. Once we learn to do that - loving others becomes easy and natural and real - and practicing all the steps and especially the 12th step is just part of who we are. I don't really go around thinking about it - it's just part of me and my life everywhere I go - 12 step rooms, home, work, school, grocery store - etc.
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Thanks for everything. Peace and Love on your journey.
