You have a beautiful weekend away planned. On Friday afternoon, your sister called, she launched straight into her drama of ‘breaking up with her boyfriend’ and would love to come over and stay for the weekend. You, although have been looking forward to this holiday for the last few weeks, caved in and re-scheduled everything so you can be a shoulder to cry on and a listening ear you can offer, as a perfect and kind sister you are. Yet, secretly, you felt so drained and don’t know how long you can continue to do this any longer…
Does that sound like you?
As an empath and highly sensitive person, for most of my life, I lived as a perfectionist for others. I feel other’s feelings and pains. And I thought it was easier to just say yes to those small demands on my time and energy so they can feel better. The problem is that those small things have a tendency to add up. And of course I didn’t know that I can’t heal others until they are ready to heal themselves.
So as a ‘recently-retired’ nice girl / daughter / wife / friend / business partner, I newly introduce a power word “NO” in my vocabulary. I learn to put myself first without feeling the guilt.
For most of us, especially if you are an empathy, sensitives, who want to bring peace and love into our lives, People Pleasing can be an easy trap to fall into. It plays out in subtle ways. For some of you, it can play out on high levels.
People-pleasing is when you make another person more comfortable at the expense of your own discomfort. It is an act of trying to ease the state of desires, needs of another, at your own expense.
We people please because we want to be a ‘good person’, a loving friend, to not get people upset. We are quick to sooth the situation, swallow our own hurts and inconvenience. For some of us, people please can trace back to childhood trauma in order to keep the peace, that is survival. That is protecting yourself from further trauma.
There is a big difference between the problem ‘people-please’ and ‘give and take’. The problem is when it is starting to cost you. People pleasing is when you over-ride your own instinct, you start to find the mind, words are saying yes, when really your body and energy want to say no. And once you have pleased people a few times, they will keep trying it. And you don’t know how to get out of it.
People Pleasing erodes your own feeling, your own fire, your own light. It is because you are soothing the moment without understanding the greater map. The person that you are soothing in that moment may not be learning from the exchange, because you are not being honest with them.
When we approach situations this way, something happens energetically. With this comes with the loss of attachment to the natural flow of connection of self and others. Our life force cease to expand to its full potential. People pleasing in fact is a very dishonest way energetically operating.
The gift of this time is it is getting harder and harder to hurt yourself this way. It is the time not only forces us to get in touch with our centred feelings but also elevate our energetic awareness. For you are becoming more finely tuned to how you feel and what you need.
If you sense someone is timid in your presence, do you have the ability to bring your energy down a little to meet theirs? The beauty of when you stop being a People Pleaser, you become very good at who you will mould to and who you will not.
Letting go of the “People Pleasing” does not mean you no longer have compassion towards others or continue to be a loving force on the planet. On the contrary, you will only be able to open to more intimate and deep connections when you are able to set healthy boundaries.
Stop being a People Pleaser does not always result in relationship ending either. Sometimes, some of you may have to have an ‘edgy moment’ with someone who is very genuine in order to reset the relationship slightly.
Start to recognise the people and events that hurt you when you give you love their direction, or sth feels off/ unsteady inside of you.
First notice those people, then it is time to identify the worst chronic relationship patterns for this syndrome – you are the giver, while the other is the taker.
Step away from them for a period , so you can recover your own life force to see what is your loving energy can do if it is freed from those relationships you are caught in.
We are here at the tipping point on Earth where people are remembering their soul and start to feel the essence of their soul. And it is an uneasy point where all it is fear-based rising to those who are already awake, while others are playing out in full density.
But what is for sure is, the time of People Pleasing is OVER.
You have the power to say No and it is very easy and simple to do, but what makes it more complicated is how different you feel inside when you start doing it. Your heart may feel a bit unsettled, a bit nervous how others may react.
An here is the key – You have everything inside of you that you ever need, and you are ready.
You are ready to let things be a little uncomfortable for you have let them be in the past. For this is the next stage of you growth, evolution and power – not power over others but power inside of you to be who you came here to be.
If you continue to lean in others’ energy field, that lean not only takes off your own balance point. you are giving them an excuse of repeating the pattern over and over again.
When we are trying to change a pattern, we need to break a pattern and do things a different way. Feeling uncomfortable at first is very normal.
This is your life, this the life you need for yourself. it is the life you are ready to embrace and the energy you will draw back from people please will be huge and will cultivate a New life force will develop new connections for you Maybe first a little grief.
I wish you love this path you are on.
