As someone who is a recovering people pleaser, disappointing people is one of my least favorite things to do. It physically makes my chest hurt to know that I have disappointed someone and/or let someone down. The universe decided to speed up my people pleasing recovery process by giving me illnesses that require me to be selfish and often disappoint people.

A+ therapist and I spend a considerable amount of our time together talking about my people pleasing tendencies and how skilled I am at it. People pleasing comes naturally to me, so natural in fact, that there are many times I don’t realize I am doing it until after the fact. Recently, I had an exacerbation of symptoms that occurred in a car ride home from a trip and my first thought was not of myself and of my body, but of how my symptoms were affecting everyone else and making them feel. While I’m trying to concentrate on not getting sick and keeping my eyes closed because everything was blurry and making me dizzy, I’m worried about the reactions, feelings, etc of the other passengers in the car. This is just one of many examples in my life where the needs, reactions, feelings, wants, etc of others have been put before my own because somewhere along in my life journey I learned that for me to be loved, accepted, liked, etc I had to be easy to get along with.

My illness journey has greatly interrupted my people pleasing skills because I physically can’t abandon myself and my needs like I have for most of my life. My body simply won’t let me. And while this is good it’s also hard because I have had to come to terms with the fact that I have and will disappoint people. I have and will let people down. I have and will make plans and have to cancel them, sometimes at the very last minute. Every time I do it, it gets a little bit easier, but there is still that voice in the back of my head that wonders “Will they be upset? Will they judge me? Will they decide this is too much for them to handle? Will they think less of me?” It’s clearly a very kind, loving, and supportive tape of messages I have running through my head. Let me know if you’d like a copy of People Pleasing: The Greatest Hits.

What I am having to come to terms with is that there have been and there will be people for who this journey and the way I have to live my life will be too much and they won’t be able to be actively involved in my life. There will be people who just can’t understand an illness that doesn’t fit into our nicely defined images of what “sick” looks like. And that’s ok. Those people aren’t bad people they just aren’t the people meant to accompany me through this season of my life. I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to make this journey easier for everyone around me so as to not be a burden, disrupt people’s lives, and out of fear of losing people. I have realized that doing so is a form of people pleasing and that I have abandoned myself all in the name of being liked, accepted, understood, seen as normal, etc.

Moving forward, instead of disappointing myself I am going to continue to get real comfortable with disappointing others. Instead of worrying about how everyone else feels about my journey I am going to worry about how I feel and what I need. I am also going to focus on changing my perspective because what I see as an overwhelming burden, a distraction, and a disruption others see far differently. One of the passengers in the car ride I mentioned above said to me, “All I saw was you being quiet.” Here I was literally freaking out that I was such a disruption and burden on that car ride home and yet this person just saw me being quiet. They didn’t feel disrupted and/or inconvenienced in the least. It was a lightbulb moment for me that the way I perceive my illnesses and their symptoms is far different than the way others perceive them.

If you’re reading this and you to struggle with people pleasing, I know the struggle. I know how hard it is to disappoint people and the physical manifestations in your body that it can cause. I know that when you disappoint people a lovely tape of not so kind messages begins to play. I also know that you can play another tape. A tape that is more loving, kind, and grace filled. A tape that reminds you that your worth as a human being comes from you being human and from nothing else. A tape that reminds you that if there are people in your life who only love you, accept you, and support you when you self-abandon, those aren’t your people. I also know that if you play this tape often enough and loud enough it eventually begins to drown out The People Pleasing: Greatest Hits tape.. or at least that’s what A+ therapist tells me and as much as it pains me to type this.. she has yet to be wrong.

So friends, go forward and disappoint others before you ever disappoint yourself.