Journal prompts for people-pleasers
Learning how we can meet our own needs
This article is cross-posted from my weekly newsletter, The Sunday Soother, a newsletter about clarity, intention, and useful tips for creating more meaning in your life that goes out every Sunday morning. Subscribe here. I am also a coach who works with sensitive people so they can stop second-guessing, make decisions confidently and live the life they’ve always dreamed of. You can learn more about working with me here.
I have a long history with people-pleasing.
Happy Sunday, Soothers. People-pleasing is a condition I’ve dealt with for much of my life, mostly unaware of it happening. I would believe that other people’s emotional states were my responsibility; that belief, plus an uncanny ability to understand people’s actual emotional states despite whatever they were saying, plus some grade-A hypervigilance, left me scanning the horizon every second of every day for a shift in somebody else’s mood. And when I would sense that shift, I would go into action: checking in with them. Doing things for then that they hadn’t asked for. Making my own emotional states neutral and small so they wouldn’t be affected by them. Never asking for anything. Pretend everything was okay at all times.
