I have nothing much to say today…. So here I ago, about to wax lyrical for hours like the last time I said I had nothing to say!!
I want to discuss this today as it was posted by Ayrshire Counselling and Cognitive Behavious Therapy. I attended 18 sessions of CBT with them back in the end of 2019. It was game changer for me.
People pleasing….
This is the crux of everything that went wrong in my life.
I had mastered the art of trying to keep everyone happy. (Those who know me now, might raise an eyebrow at this, thinking eh naw, but it’s how I negotiated my way through life).
If I keep them happy, they won’t turn on me.
A people pleaser wants everyone to be happy, wants everyone to like them and wants to keep everyone sweet for precisely that reason. If we are kind to everyone and put them before ourselves, then life will be easy.
I lived by this for 46 years.
I always had a difficult relationship with the boss figure in my life. From the girl in 1995 who would turn to me in a factory wide meeting and ask why I hadn’t ordered a specific part to the man in 2018 who bellowed at me, in a meeting “don’t think you lot are getting away with it as you’re just as bad as all these rest”…. I made it my life work to befriend these people. To ask about their families, their weekend, enthuse over their holiday, their new car, their children…. Blah blah blah…. To let them see how nice I could be so they wouldn’t shout at me for anything. they still shouted, they still got angry, they still looked disappointed. That broke little parts of me off piece by piece.
I hate to disappoint anyone.
Detest people being upset with me.
Really struggle with it.
I can’t cope when they “turn on me” especially when I have made a ridiculous effort to try to make them happy.
I did everything to everyone else.
I tried to be in work earlier than everyone else.
I tried to stay later than everyone else.
I needed to be seen to be dependable…. Irreplaceable…. The golden girl.
I can’t keep it up.
I start to cry every time something goes wrong. There’s nothing much left inside of me to break. I’ve broken myself completely.
The day I walked out of the office, blinded by tears, changed my life.
In my head I let EVERYONE down.
I was an embarrassment. I couldn’t cope. People who had relied on me for years, disappeared off the face of the earth.
I guess no one had a clue what to say.
We all knew that no one ever came back from this. My career was over.
The people I spent most of my waking life with, moved on, without me.
It’s taken me years to come to terms with all this and to learn to be truly grateful for what I went through.
I get to choose now. I allow myself to be happy above all else. I struggle to do anything that doesn’t sit right with me now. I have very clear boundaries in place.
It’s taken years of counselling and CBT, Health Kinesiology, staying off the booze and journaling in this blog to help me get to this stage.
I don’t think it enough but I’m so proud of who I am now. despite the little crazy, anxious interludes.
Maybe I need to start doing the dance of life 😂😘♥️ told you if wax lyrical…. 🤦🏻♀️😂
Stay safe everyone ♥️♥️♥️
The Rambling Sloth 🦥 