If you broke me in half, just like a stick of rock, you’d see ‘People Pleaser’ emblazoned in the middle. It’s a blessing and a curse. My parents raised me to be polite, but maybe to a fault – I have stayed in jobs to please others and I’ve stayed in relationships that were ripping me apart from the inside out because I was frightened of having no friends. And I have always felt like an inconvenience, be it in the workplace, relationships or friendships. You name it, I’ve felt in the way, and because of this I have gone out of my way in the past to please others.
It all came to a head in a recent counselling session when my therapist told me that my people-pleasing mentality had led me to being overly grateful for things that a lot of people would not care for. This reminded me of a time when my previous therapist told me, in reference to a particular person, that previous clients had removed people from their lives for a lot less than I had been subjected to.
So my questions is: what should I be grateful for and where does it end? We live in a country that is very happy to stamp on anyone who sticks their head above the parapet and therefore, I am sometimes frightened of being anything other than grateful. On one of Glennon Doyle’s many podcast appearances she said that she had stopped writing down her ‘gratitudes’ because it’s not often you hear men taking stock of their blessings.
We are trained to believe that we’re supposed to be grateful all the time and if we can imagine more that means we’re not grateful enough, when really if we can imagine more that might mean that we were meant for more.
Glennon Doyle
It was often noted that I should be grateful by others, when if they had asked or listened to me, they would have found out that I was grateful and did not need reminding. This resulted in so much anxiety that it physically manifested as acid reflux. I had this lump in my chest and throat constantly and I was struggling to swallow easily and freely. My doctor gave me all sorts of medication before I realised it was anxiety. My therapist told me that I was physically swallowing everyone’s negativity and judgement and that it was physically harming me.
I’ve come to the realisation that I can’t trust my judgement in reference to what is good for me. By having weekly counselling sessions, I am building brand new pathways to essentially discard my old thought processes and install some new and improved ones. I’m hopeful for a future of reasonable gratefulness.