I spent my childhood as a people pleaser being used and abused by others.
The cause was my abusive parents - there was one time when I was 24 and stood my ground with them because they didn’t want me living with my boyfriend. Over the years I’ve rolled over constantly doing what they want even though I’ve not wanted to do things and felt acutely uncomfortable. When my Dad tried to stop me living with my boyfriend though aged 24 the worm turned and I shouted at him to high heaven telling him to F off, calling him a motherfucker, you get the picture.
My parents while they didn’t like it got the message and backed off.
I’m an only child of 2 only children ! - just for context I do l think in SOME circumstances if you’ve got immature parents it can be more difficult being an only child because you haven’t seen siblings go through the same thing / also neither have your parents. I think this effect is intensified if your parents are both only children as well because in my case I felt my parents were annoyed that I wasn’t ‘like them’ whereas if they were more used to siblings they’d realise that’s there’s often HUGE variations in kids’ personalities within the and family.
only children of emotionally mature parents can thrive though.
After a lifetime of people pleasing and the bullying and humiliation this often led to - I finally felt secure enough in myself to ‘push back’ and stand up for myself and not care about the ensuing consequences and felt I could handle them
AIBU to feel you have to feel secure in yourself to say no and push back sometimes? And that it’s often very difficult?