You don’t win friends with salad.
No, you win them by keeping your opinions to yourself and revolving your entire life around them. Yes, than sounds right. And very healthy. And completely attainable!
I have a very clear memory from when I was about 9, sitting on my Auntie Margaret’s living room floor with my cousin Caroline (who would’ve been about 17) and one her pals organising photos, and Caroline telling her pal “I’m not going to go out tonight” and her pal going “okay!” and that was the end of it.
I was absolutely flabbergasted.
What if Caroline’s pal was mad? Didn’t she feel bad about letting her down? What was her pal going to do now? Was that their friendship over? HOW WERE CAROLINE AND HER PAL SO COOL ABOUT THIS.
It is important to remember that prioritising yourself and your own needs is essential for personal growth and wellbeing. While forming connections and relationships with others is important, it is equally important to establish boundaries and ensure that your own goals and interests are being fulfilled. It may be helpful to reflect on why you feel the need to revolve your life around others and to consider ways to cultivate a healthier balance that prioritises your own needs and happiness.
In other words, fuck dem bitches. Rich coming from me liiiike.
I have an uncontrollable need to please people, and I always put anyone and everyone before me. And not in a Mother Teresa-esque way, in a sort of I-am-worthless-so-why-should-I-get-anything-before-anyone-esque way. Most people pleasers are the way they are due to childhood experiences and social conditioning, We feel we are worth less than others and feel our needs are unimportant. We advocate for ourselves less or have less awareness of what we want. It’s a great game like!
You often hear people come out with “I’m a bit OCD” when they’re wanting to tidy something, or want something done a certain way. I have OCD, but it’s not the ritualistic behaviours and fear of contamination one. Mine is approval-seeking and death obsession. Absolute barrel of lols. Approval-seeking behavior can be linked to only a small number of people in your life. You tend to not give a shit what the vast majority of people think, but your whole mood can be changed by the reaction of one person. To satisfy this obsession, you must be inauthentic and reduced versions of yourself, hypervigilant of the preferences of others.
For me, it was usually a friend who I would allow to pretty much run my life. Other friends and family would usually see that the friend was, in fact, trash. But I would see the good in them, which in turn became another obsession; wanting everyone else to see the good that I see in this person. Saying it now makes me want to punch my own teeth in, because it’s utterly ridiculous. But at the time I just want them to love me and everyone else to love them. I would overextend myself, change plans to accommodate their needs, put their needs in front of mine, all of the time without them even knowing it was happening. I would brew resentment towards them if their reaction wasn’t extravagant enough for me to feel like I had succeeded in my quest for approval. I would then feel bad for feeling resentment and want to make up for it, and the whole ugly (and really quite desperate) process started again.
When you stop people-pleasing you notice a lot of your relationships change. For the most part people just see you’ve grown a backbone and are happy for you, but the people whose life was made easier by your services tend to be a a bit ticked off. They probably never knew you revolved your whole life around them, so they’ll just see your change as you being a bit of a dick.
People pleasing isn’t a weakness. Wanting to see other people happy, and help them to be happy isn’t a bad thing. But, like anything, people-pleasing can turn into a full-on shortcoming when we start addictively putting the needs of others before ourselves. The things I try to remind myself on a daily basis are:
It’s okay to say no. And that “no.” is a full sentence.
Don’t over-apologise. And never ruin an apology with an excuse.
You literally can’t please everyone.
Be honest with your own thoughts and feelings. Don’t tell yourself you’re an idiot for feeling a certain way.
Don’t dwell on your past mistakes. Easier said than done, am I right?
Life is hard enough without adding made-up pressures on. You'll be alright, I promise.
