Lost myself while looking out for others
I'm struggling with being or say showing personalities to just please people. I didn't even realise that by constantly trying to please people and make them feel comfortable and thinking so deeply about others, somewhere I lost myself along the way🥺
I want to journey to find my original self which I should have expressed and behaved and reacted with my individual feelings rather than losing myself.🥲
Please help if you know what's the right approach to be taken by me because it's a habit and a bad one in that. It's been more than 2 decades of this. Pls help.I 'm tired of thinking about others constantly while having left myself 100% behind.😰
@sensitiveStrings3160
It sounds you haven't set proper boundaries.. What do you expect from people, what do you you truly deserve, What is your goals, How do you want to be treated?
You have a right to be comfortable in your skin, good luck! 🌲
Thanks for your response. I'm going to start working on these points.
@sensitiveStrings3160
Hey, that sounds like a worthwhile journey--and it's pretty courageous to be interested in changing something that's been happening for decades. 💜
I'm trying to understand what the situation is--which of these feels closer?
1) "I know what my feelings are but I'm afraid of being myself or taking up space because other people might not like it and might get angry or reject me"
2) "I've gotten so used to looking outwards and trying to take care of others that I don't actually know who I am independent from that--who I'd be or what I'd think/feel/want if I wasn't preoccupied with other people's wants/needs"
It's quite deep actually. Um...I have had a really bad childhood of seperating from my parents for their profession rules reason @ around 4 or 5 years old. I lived in hostel. And made one friend during admission, but she quickly became friends with another girl because that girl was good in studies, spoke lot and was not quiet like me.This made me feel abandoned and unwanted first my parents, then losing the only friendship I had in that campus. It felt like jail all alone- this was step 1 of me losing myself . Then step 2- I started withdrawing from everyone because I felt if my parents can abandon me , then I'm not sure if anyone likes me. Then step 3- since I stopped making friends I was always quiet. This abandoned feeling I had made me stop trusting people. I struggled to have enough trust to make friends.I was in that hostel for 10 yrs without any gaps. Then because of loneliness& lack of any friends, I got into pattern of pleasing ppl and being there for them bcoz I never wanted that I should lack having ppl for me. I know it's too much but all these steps happened before I got into the people pleasing loop I'm stuck in. Pls give ur insight & solution if that will help ,it would make my life a little more lighter& joyful
@sensitiveStrings3160
Thanks for sharing, that really illuminates what happened and I'm sorry you went through all of that. 💜 Even if it was for work-related reasons, that's brutal on a 4-year-old to have your parents basically send you off to a hostel. And you're too young at that point to have any kind of reasoning of "my parents still love me and aren't abandoning me; this is something they're forced to do". It just feels like having your parents trying to get rid of you.
Then going from that to trying to make friends but getting abandoned there. So then the conclusion you made was "I guess I have to give up on this and withdraw and stop trusting people". But then the isolation became too much and the next step was "yeah, I actually need people... so I need to make myself useful/pleasing to people or else they're going to get rid of me like everybody else in my life has already done".
So then the felt risk of trying not to people-please is "if I stop making myself fit other people's wants, they might abandon me and I might end up alone, because people-pleasing was the only way that I got people to pay attention and care for me in the first place". And both of those choices feel pretty heavy--either "abandon myself" or "be abandoned by other people" 💜
A couple follow-up questions:
1) Has the people-pleasing felt like it's worked and gotten you some of those friendships that you wanted?
2) What kinds of things would you be doing differently if you weren't people-pleasing?
Well the two questions are really hard to answer. But I'll have to take my time to think on these questions.👍
