By the time I hit 30 I had largely shucked off the lessons society and several unrewarding boyfriends would have liked me to learn. I decided that I was at least as important as a shitbag and wouldn’t let them circumscribe my life anymore ✒️ LucyMangan
A friend of mine has just started therapy for being “a people-pleaser.”being “a people-pleaser” means
Why, then, has it become a faintly pejorative term? Why should, in the name of all that’s holy, you need to be therapised out of it? It is because, quite simply, so many other people are not people pleasers.
I have seen it happen to her and to other friends time and time again. It happens in personal contexts, whereby romantic partners become parasitic and end up living comfortably in the PP’s home and off her income., whereby employers keep adding responsibilities and enlarging the scope of the office PP’s job until she’s working round the clock for no more money until she is on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
I can say all this of course because I am not a people pleaser. I used to be, when I was younger. I absorbed unquestioningly all the messages society gives girls and young women to think of others, put their needs before your own , efface yourself, keep small, keep quiet, be kind – as long as it’s never to yourself.