People pleasing is a very difficult trait to shake off - it seems that SO MANY threads on here boil down to difficulties with people pleasing tendencies in one way or another be it family , teachers, adult dcs....the list goes on. I sympathise with everyone struggling with this - there's often very good reasons for it - parents often say to kids "I only want you to be happy" but when you look closely at actual family interactions it often seems that parents act in a way that isn't conducive to things like speaking out, standing up for oneself or self respect. I've been told off by my dad for sticking up for myself against bullying relatives in a reasonable way and commands from my mum like "don't raise your voice " don't help in the one occasion when I'd had enough!! Also if you've got parents like this sometimes so called 'friends' can reinforce people pleasing tendencies in different ways until you realise what's going on and bring things to a halt
So in short - people pleasing to ones detriment is a difficult thing to shake off so keep going if you're trying to fight it.
Here are two of my stories this week - I've had to say no by phone and text to 2 people that wanted to meet me. I don't know either very well and I didn't give either of them my phone number it was given by someone else. It's not someone in line there's a real life connection but through someone else iyswim. I was slightly 'told off'by one of them on answer phone.i feel a bit guilty but not too much as I have so much going on. I'm GLAD I said no though.
Please feel free to comment or share stories so we can help each other through this difficult battle