A Recovering People-Pleaser Named Savannah

My personal story about being a people pleaser in recovery

Like many of my posts, they are inspired by my clients. In the past couple of weeks I have had chronic people-pleasers who want to learn how to establish boundaries. It sparked my self-reflection and thus, led to this week's blog post. Today I am veering away from my regular blog posts to start a conversation about my relationship with people-pleasing.

Truth be told, I am a recovering people-pleaser and I can relate all too well to those who come into my office with porous boundaries, fear of conflict, and losing someone as a result of standing up for yourself. Why? Because I too had this belief to avoid conflict at all costs and not to inconvenience others. It has been a big theme in my life that I have worked on for many years. 

The beginning

I have a memory of going out for brunch with my family one day and my eggs Benedict had small shells in it. Being a people-pleaser there was absolutely NO WAY I was going to tell the server to make it over again, so I didn’t say anything and ate it, shells and all. It wasn’t until after the bill was paid that I spoke up to my step-father who was surprised I didn’t say anything. The server was notified and she said you should have told me. I felt guilty for all of it! Why didn’t I say anything? Why can’t I speak up? Why why why. 

Sounds familiar?

You would think I learned, right? Nah. Not entirely. Unfortunately at my lowest of lows I was becoming someone who could be steamrolled without any effort. It became my personality. My porous boundaries led me to being emotionally and physically hurt, which really sucked. And when I did try to assert my boundaries, especially in relationships, I felt my boundaries were challenged by others and I gave in.

You know that feeling, right?

I was mixing up my values as an adventurous spirit who said yes to everything verses using my yes to avoid conflict. It started to become so bad that while there were genuinely times I wanted to do something, I override my No so much that I had no idea what I truly deserved.

The actual moment I decided to say no to myself to stop people-pleasing was after a breakup, so to counselling I went. Side note, it’s the only element of the relationship I am grateful for!

The middle

As I began the people-pleasing recovery process in counselling I learned a lot about relationships. The biggest one is that you ARE allowed to set a healthy boundary using empathy and compassion with discernment and do NOT have to agree with the other person. It was an aha! moment!

The second biggest teaching I learned was becoming aware of my yes’s and no’s. This lesson was tricky for me because as a non-judgemental and understanding person this meant disagreeing and worst of all, potential conflict. I relied heavily on learning about my True Self Energy and listening to her more and more. The attunement in counselling was vital to making boundaries.

I learned to identify when I say “Ah it’s not a big deal” or “It’s okay” this is the mantra my people-pleasing part says, pretending to “be cool with it”. A sneaky part I tell you!

The antidote that made no sense

As we all do when our therapist gives us homework (Riiiiiight?), I was attempting to put theory into practice. Not so confident but kind of ready to try, holy hell was it hard. I was still saying yes, because implementing No is hard! So now I was caught in my people-pleasing part and feeling even worse off than I had before because I was aware! Worst of all, STILL feeling like I was letting myself down AND the other person.

Learning it was weird because on one hand I was proud of myself for saying no but feeling bad. My thought process equation for healthy boundaries was as follows:

No + good + guilt + conflict = healthy boundaries

You can see how wrapping my head around this was a total mind fuck. BUT I did again and again, and failed again too. It happens when you are learning anything new. For me it felt like I was learning how to operate a spaceship- I know where the moon is and I see Space X get there but I have no idea what I am doing when I get into a spaceship.

The relapse

Nevertheless, it felt really good to challenge my people-pleaser part and use my True Self Energy again. Confident in my no, feeling ready to date again. Then I got into a relationship and voom! Right back into people-pleasing. Yes, it mostly took over. I didn’t implement my Plan my therapist and I carefully curated. No, it was a big old relapse into my pattern, again, and another shitty relationship. 

Then came along my dearest friend. I met her at UBC in psychology class, and the second time we talked was the day I broke up with my ex-boyfriend, tears and all. I told her how I had set a major boundary by ending the relationship and it was incredibly hard because I put myself first - something I wasn’t used to doing.

Blubbering away I remember her saying “Good for you. I am also working on my boundaries” and how she was using empathy, compassion, and discernment to get to know herself better while saying no. And that ultimately, she realized that by saying no, she was allowing space for that other person to truly know her and decide if that relationship was something they wanted to continue or not. She realized that either way they decided, she’d be ok, because she was staying true to herself. And she had a good feeling that the right people would honour her “no’s”, and that in the future, having those people around would help setting boundaries feel like just another normal part of life. 

In this moment, despite my sadness, I felt so proud of her, and of myself. There we were, two women actively demonstrating that boundaries are hard as hell but once you do it, it’s also liberating as fuck because you respect yourself more.

The recovery

I often reflect on how far we have both come since dedicating ourselves to saying no more in our lives. You know what the best part about this is? I feel like we know ourselves and each other better because we are honest and clear. And this was VITAL to the intrinsic process of knowing my people-pleasing part.

Fast forward a couple years, I realized during the recovery process how valuable having a role model like my friend and my husband who demonstrates healthy boundaries in your life is like. It’s nice too because I get away with people-pleasing less as he holds me accountable.

Words of advice from the love of my life

In the words of my husband who is a recovered people pleaser, he said “I decided it wasn’t worth it” and so he stopped. I love that about him! As for me, it takes some time and I have come to accept that is just the way I roll. For example, I recently set a boundary that took 4 months to set and I came out of the conversation proud and happy. The receiver took it as well as it could have gone. Like my husband, I have learned to say to myself, “I love this feeling so why would I deny myself of this?” Now I do my best not to deny myself anymore. 

But I am human

While I share with you my journey of people-pleasing that took many moons to get to, I still make mistakes. I am human and this part still exists. But I have to say, where my strongest boundaries were and are exercised is from being a therapist. Being attuned to my True Self Energy part with confidence and using my discernment with empathy and compassion. Now I do this everyday. Every time we have a session I benefit from our time together as well- who would have thought!

It is entirely possible to overcome your people-pleasing part just as it was for me. Hard work, yes. Worth every feeling of guilt, you bet!

So yes, if my eggs Benedict comes with shells in it, you better believe I will say something now.