Confessions of a Recovering People-Pleaser

Over the past few years I’ve become a big fan of meditation. No, I don’t go on meditation retreats or study with meditation masters. I keep it simple. Usually just a 10 minute guided meditation on the Calm app each morning.

A recent meditation was titled "Individuality". The woman leading the meditation shared how she had ignored the expectations society had put on her and taken her own path.

"I'm proud of most of my choices," she said.

And she went on to affirm others who had done something similar, those who had ignored the social expectations — a college degree, career taking off in your 20's, then getting married and having kids in your 30's.

I couldn’t relate. I did not ignore societal expectations. In fact, I did everything in my power to stay in step with the societal (and religious) expectations I grew up with.

Now this meditation teacher is clearly younger than me, and perhaps lacked my religious upbringing. But I was not a free spirit in my twenties, going against the grain. In fact, when I was 24 with no marriage prospects, I was starting to panic that it was too late. I grew up believing that my purpose was to get married and have babies. And if you didn’t manage that in your early 20’s, you were at risk of becoming some weird old cat lady — an old maid.

Maybe if waiting until I was in my 30's to get married felt like an option, I'd have made different choices. But I was so blinded by my fear of not being who I was “supposed” to be that it never even occurred to me.

As I was listening to this meditation teacher, I was struck by how she assumed everyone listening would have listened to their inner voice and taken their own path. How they would have resisted the pressures of the world around them and followed their own inner voice.

But I didn't do that. I grew up believing that my inner voice was wrong… sinful. Parents, preachers, and Sunday school teachers drummed religious mantras into my head and heart. 

😕 “The heart is deceitful above all things”.  

😕 “Deny yourself and carry your cross daily.” 

😕 “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.”

From the time I was little I knew that my purpose was to be a Chrsitain wife and mother. It didn’t matter what I felt. It didn’t matter what I wanted. So I went all in and devoted myself to becoming that person. Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t go that route under protest. I was almost obsessed with reaching that pinnacle of womanhood. But in order to get there, I had to silence my inner voice. 

And then I did everything I could to cram myself into the Christian wife and mother box. I was determined to do it right.

✔ Be a “sold out” Christian

✔ Marry a Christian man and have babies

✔ Give up my career dreams to stay home with my kids

✔ Homeschool my kids with Christian curricula

And the truly ironic part is that I did all of this because I didn't want to have regrets when I got older. I wanted to make sure that I did everything "right" so that when I got to the end of my life, I'd be happy with the choices I'd made.

And yes, you guessed it. I have more regrets than I could have ever imagined. I was so sure I was on the “right” path. But I wasn’t on the right path for me. 

I chose to trust what I was told instead of what I felt. 

I was raised in a religion that taught me to ignore my inner voice, that what she had to say would only lead me astray. That every impulse I had was born of a sinful nature that I had inherited and couldn't escape.

I know not everyone who is raised Christian buys in as deeply as I did. And maybe there are versions of Christianity that don’t teach those things.  I know not everyone sets their jaw with determination to do the "right" thing and live the life they are told to live. But I did. 

I was a devoted people-pleaser.

I hate the term "people pleasing". It just rubs me the wrong way. I spent several years in a church where that term was weaponized — people pleasers were considered bad. Of course, the leaders of this church told us what to do, think, and be. So we were supposed to please them. Just not the people outside the church. 

So we were trained to be people pleasers, all while being told that people pleasing was wrong. Cognitive dissonance anyone?

But as a next-level overachiever, I went hard on doing exactly what I was told, starting from childhood. I pleased my parents, my teachers, the church leaders, bosses — just about everyone who had any authority over me. And I lived that way for decades.

It’s taken a lot of effort and self-awareness, but I've learned to let go of many of my people-pleasing ways. I’m not saying those old tendencies don’t still creep up. They absolutely do. Sometimes it's still hard for me to stand up for myself — especially when I'm speaking to a person I perceive to have authority. But I’m getting better.

I think recovering from people-pleasing is a process. It takes a lot of internal work to stop caring what other people think, to stop trying to make the people around me happy, to be okay with letting people down and feeling like I’m “in trouble”. I’m learning about how people-pleasing is rooted in trauma, in self-protection.

And while I wish I could be like the meditation teacher who always followed her own path from the time she was young, at least I'm on my own path now.