RE: Empowered...if I can accept it
Like you, I have spent much of my life trying to please EVERYONE which is an impossible task. I didn't even realize it until I was in my thirties and I still struggle to keep my desire to please people in check. I know this is only a small bit of what you've posted here but I really do feel your pain in that sense.
Pleasing other people is exhausting and after all the agonizing and trying to be perceived the way you want to there will still always be people who see others in a negative way. It's a very difficult thing to let go of and I feel a little better knowing that there are others like me and people who have overcome this desire to please everyone to some extent.
Regarding finding yourself and accepting who you are, I'm really happy to hear that you've made some progress over the past few years. I still struggle to even grasp who I really am on most days. That too is exhausting in itself. Maybe in another decade I'll have overcome this and I can that wasted time and energy into better things. Steemit has kind of helped me let go of my own fears about how others perceive me as I'm more anonymous here than I am on Facebook. On fb I have people I work with and family members who can see everything that I post and I always wonder how I'll be judged / perceived by them because a lot of the things I do and the things that are important to me and make me who I am are not generally accepted especially in the part of the country where I live. I feel very isolated in that sense. In so many cases I'm an exception to the rule and I fear that people will unfairly judge me based on my differences.
This was a great post and I can tell you really poured your heart out here. Keep the honest and inspiring content coming!
Wow John… I had no idea we have this in common. See folks like us, with this struggle I mean, long fly under the radar of our Challenge being noticed by others, because our security plan is to please and as a result we don't cause much trouble! I hid my anxiety really well because revealing that would've caused distressed to those I was trying to please and being a pleaser… We just don't do that! Also, I think this pleaser tactic starts young before we are even conscious of what doing and then it becomes our norm and our baseline… I didn't realize I had anxiety or that I tried to deal with it by being ever pleasing to everyone until only the last few years. Thank you for letting me know you can relate to that part, because like you said it does feel nice to know I'm not the only one. It is exhausting and something I work to keep myself free of more every day.
IMO The not knowing who you are and the pleaser issue are intimately related. When we live in other peoples' heads, trying to figure out how to be in order to be to please this person and then change to please that next person, it prevents us from ever really being present. From looking introspectively at who the hell we even really are inside! For me this habit also impacted my ability to develop deep genuine relationships with friends in the past, because if you have no sense of center then who are you going to be when you're just hanging out with someone being " yourself?" In that situation...There is no known self to be.
This is a process to overcome and you are well ahead of where I was at your age. 🙌🏽🙏🏽 I too started out finding more comfort practicing being myself in an anonymous way online. Over the years different websites and blogs I have slowly revealed more and more of who I truly am as I figured it out along the way. I'm nearly fully revealed in truth now on Steemit and Instagram except for not going by my "real life" name here...and a few other details.
Yeah I've been a people pleaser and a perfectionist since I was 10-12 years old. At least that's when I realized I was a perfectionist. The people pleasing realization came to me in my mid 20's but I'd been doing it unknowingly for over a decade.
I still struggle with it and I think it kind of takes its toll on me mentally...trying to please people is frustrating and exhausting but I feel this weird obligation to do it still.