How People-Pleasing Makes You Sick & Tired
Oct 23, 2020
Growing up as a young girl in the Midwest, I learned from the adults around me that girls/women had a list of unspoken “rules” that we were to do and not question:
- Take care of everyone else; put their needs in front of your own.
- Act in pleasing or conforming ways so that others would approve of and like you; follow the rules; be a good girl.
- Feel and process your own emotions PLUS everyone else’s (esp. the men’s emotions).
- Anticipate the needs of others; be 5-10 steps ahead of everyone else in order to make your own life easier.
- Believe that men are in charge of women.
- If you wanted to be loved & accepted by others, follow these rules.
Now, I didn’t have to buy into these unspoken teachings. But I did anyway. I thought this was just what we were supposed to do. This left me a prisoner to my own limiting thinking.
It didn’t dawn on me until I was much older that this was all BS. I had no idea that these patterns of belief were causing me to...