I am a people pleaser.

Are you a people pleaser??

I think this term is used quite often in so many situations. Usually derogatory, but I’m sure most everyone has used this term at least once. However, have you ever really taken a second to think about why that person feels the need to please everyone? Why it is in their human nature to want everyone else to be happy? Probably not!

So, Let’s talk about it.

I consider myself someone who is quite vocal and if you know me personally, I’m sure you can attest to that.  I am loud, typically rude without even trying, I lack a filter and blurt out things that I shouldn’t. Once you get me talking about my feelings, which doesn’t happen often, I literally can’t stop everything I have been holding in pours out of me faster than I even know what it is happening and typically, I immediately regret it. Because vulnerability isn’t my thing (ya know trauma). However, I have the HARDEST time telling ANYONE no.

People pleasing in the trauma world is called “the fawn response”. To better explain this, we need to break down all 4 F’s. Some of them we all know. FIGHT- confronting the threat FLIGHT-running away from the threat FREEZE- shut down to block the threat and FAWN- Appeasing to the threat.

Fawning is one of the hardest trauma responses to deal with because until its out of hand a lot of people don’t even realize they are doing it.

I didn’t, until my life was out of control, I was losing everything, and really needed to look at how everything had gone from bad to worse in those few years.

I was married young, 19 years old. I had just been diagnosed with cervical cancer, I had extreme endometriosis that was treated with a medication that put me into early menopause for three years and just told I wasn’t going to have children until I started trying now. I panicked and did what I thought was the right thing to do. I decided to get married and started trying for a baby. Three weeks before my wedding I found out I was pregnant with my oldest son.

I fell into the wife role pretty quickly, I worked hard and a lot I got us a place to live, I paid all of our bills, I went through an open-heart surgery with my son, and then everything started collapsing on me at once. I hated being home. I hated my husband. I felt guilty for working all the time and not being with my son, but I still never went home, I’d work a double and head to the bar. I would drink the guilt away come home at 3 am and do it all again the next day. At the time I didn’t feel like I was doing anything wrong, my son was in bed, I wasn’t drinking around him, I knew he was safe at home with his father, and I was making it to work every day. Every time I would come home, I was accused of being a whore, sleeping around and not giving a shit about my family. Why would I want to be there? I wasn’t sleeping around but I honestly didn’t care if that’s what he thought.

Then, I found messages between him and another woman, while my son was recovering from open heart surgery. I was so angry I couldn’t even look at him the thought of my HUSBAND doing these things to me the only man I had put my trust into since it was ripped away from me in childhood, had just ripped that trust away also.

But this is when the fawning took over and I didn’t even realize it. I stayed. I managed to allow him to convince me that it was my fault, because I was gone all the time, I didn’t give him enough attention, I worked too much. So, I STAYED.

Fast forward about 8 months and I come home from work, and he tells me he’s leaving- he wants a divorce. Logically speaking, I should have let him go, I should have been thrilled that I wasn’t ending things, and he was doing it for me. But I BEGGED him to come back, apologizing for everything wrong I ever did not even knowing what exactly I was apologizing for…. In reality, I was appeasing the threat. The threat of being abandoned, the threat of not feeling safe, the threat of being alone. All of the PTSD I had from childhood, all of things that had altered the chemical makeup in my brain, that told me I needed to be dependent on him, were screaming at me to get him home.

Eventually he came home, and things just weren’t ever the same. I had built up this wall of protection that was impenetrable by him. My defense mechanism of protecting myself had kicked in full force and at that point there was no going back.

This began a cycle I am still living today, still trying to cope with, still trying to learn through, still trying to break the cycle from.

Yes, I am a people-pleaser.

I am trying my hardest to learn how to say no.

And I am sure all the other people pleasers you’ve met are trying their hardest too.

Give us grace.

We don’t want to be this way.