The thing is that at a certain point, it's like you need to prove to yourself that you can be horrible, abysmal, flawed as it gets, and the world will still catch you, the world will still love you, or at least someone will. -- Amy A.

 

And then you can work your way back to the middle ground because you've had to push out to the extremes to break free. It's like an earthquake happens, then there's a Tsunami and shock waves and so on, including some collateral damage, and then everything settles, and you start picking up the pieces.

 

Then the key is to try to keep that rift open wide enough that such horrible tension doesn't build up again, as tends to happen where two plates of the earth meet, even as you face the amends you will inevitably need to make.

 

Yeah, I can relate to that. Looking at my own art and writing, I have described myself as people pleasing, which is no surprise to me, except that is also IS a surprise to me because I continue to buck against it.

 

Since childhood, I have felt at war with myself. The two parts were, in essence: please others v please self (or empathy v logic)

 

I was very aware of the pressure to please others, but I also didn't understand why I couldn't also please myself. Like, teenage voice, Why is this an either/or thing? Why can't we BOTH find joy in this? Of course, as a child, raised when I was, a lot of parenting focused on No, end of story, and less on Yes, but go this way.

 

I knew my parents loved me, though I was reasonably terrified of our grumpy father, who was being treated like shit at work and had unaddressed family of origin trauma, and I was sad that I'd "lost" him, acutely after my younger brother came along, and my parents now had 3 children to wrangle amidst the already tough conditions of life. I blamed my brother for a short while. Then I blamed my father, or suspected him at least.

 

Something wasn't right with him. So, I listened, and I learned over time that life is hard, and that my dad did care about people still. He was still there, but "stolen" somehow.

 

I think every child dreams about wanting to save their struggling parent from some overwhelming problem. This was probably mine. It probably explains a lot.

 

So, we were all supposed to cooperate and make life as easy as possible for my father, who worked very hard for us all, and he did that unfailingly, but it wrecked his body and probably kept him in trauma, especially because of the way management targeted him for speaking up about worker conditions.

 

It is not the least bit ironic that a machine sloppily replaced after a shut down crushed him from shoulder to shoulder. It was a miracle he survived, and it crippled him for life. BUT, WCB and their "special" doctors had him back to work before any of us knew it, because his injuries weren't that big of a deal, and his injuries preventing him from work weren't related to the accident.

 

Um, pardon me? Which one is it, liars? Where is the class action lawsuit against WCB for this kind of fraud, amirite? I know TOO MANY people who have been treated this way.

 

ANYWAY, my dad's life was hard. I probably wanted to save him. I certainly was not shy of battle at times in my active life, though, here's the OTHER side, the people pleasing side.

 

I just want everybody to get along! I just want to help make sure EVERYONE is at least ok. Isn't it so much nicer when people are attuned to one another, and we can float around each other like birds of the same flock?

 

And that was my literal job as a kid. I say literal, but I mean my own understanding of my duty within this group of people taking care of me for some reason.

 

I was supposed to make things easy for my dad, but he was grumpy, and he would take his mood out on us, and never explain why, and the sense of justice that HE HIMSELF instilled in me protested. It was like, HEY, this is fucked. We're all bending over backwards for you here, TOO. Give us a break! Why is it NEVER enough for you?

 

If I could have actually spoken words, or if the looks on my face sometimes could be put to words, that might be them.

 

We did exactly as he wished most of the time. That's how a traditional patriarchal household rolls, right? One person is in charge.

 

 

So, here's the thing with people pleasing. It's a natural thing. It's beautiful to enjoy other people's pleasure. Notice how babies organize themselves socially around the pleasing behaviour of their parents. We like it when our loved ones are pleased. There's nothing  overly complicated about it, though it can become distorted in extremes.

 

We learn almost immediately  in infancy that our pleasure (satisfaction in our needs being met) is not always within our control. Or... maybe it never is for a long time, and then we develop some agency. Rinse and repeat the sense of freedom and independence and subsequent reckoning with our continued interdependence. DAMMIT! I though I had this in the bag.

 

But the creatures who survived in our line of brain development next, after meeting our basic survival needs, were community-oriented creatures. Mice. And this is awesome but also confusing because it's an abrupt left turn in behaviour, at least that's what it looks like to me. I'm probably missing something.

 

The people pleasing lizard is the chameleon, I think.

 

ANyway, the point is that I love this podcast with Andrew G. Marshall and Robert Glover on The Meaningful Life. It's something I've been struggling with for as long as I can remember. Still working out the middle ground. I've developed a lot of flexibility around people because of it, but that gets confusing when I'm not in touch with what I want. I know I'm not when I experience a lot of frustration in relationships.

 

I'm going to leave my 2 cents here, and go watch a high school play. :)

 

I wonder how you all might relate to this people pleasing thing.

 

Enjoy,

 

 

J