Thank you @WaterBaby9 for starting this thread. I also had an alcoholic parent, and was also a people pleaser, chronically so. I’m better now, but still don’t speak my mind if someone upsets me (tend to think it’s not worth it, but it does mean my own needs are unmet, and that can be tiring). Unsurprisingly, I still have quite a bit of anxiety.
Really liked this, from @Dacquoises ”childhood trauma can lead to repeating patterns of allowing abusers in your life, a mixture of very low boundaries and familiarity with this type so you end up fawning over ar**holes rather than filtering them out.” This is so so so true! “Fawning over the aresholes” - I still tend to think I can win even the worst ones over. (And even I could see I was doing this intentionally, through psychological manipulation.) But why? They aren’t worth our time. The woman who was rude to you, well she can fuck off. Say it with me 😁.
I only learnt this ability to say “enough” in my early 30s (am now 50), when I finally saw how dreadfully my (now ex) boyfriend behaved to me - but it was only when I worked closely with a married couple that I realised how a happily married couple actually behave. Million miles from what I’d seen at home. Yes their relationship included disagreements, but they would be solved, not spiral into an alcoholic rage.
basically, we have been abused as kids, and people pleasing was our coping mechanism, survival, as a pp said. Well, now it’s our time.
Incidentally, my father in law is a chronic people pleaser and I can confirm it’s exhausting to everyone at the receiving end. He’s very Christian so he sees himself as a gentle peace loving soul, very Christ like (like another pp). But others see him as a walk over, a doormat, a mouse, or annoying. We know he’s a good person, and means well, but it’s exhausting the way he genuflects like a second class servant. I just want him to speak up, be more genuine, and also maybe give others a chance to show that they can be kind too (a la the Franklin law above). I’m sure I was very much like this in my 20s. It had been knocked into me as daughter of alcoholic unpredictable narcissistic mother. and yes, we can lay the blame at others’ doors, rather than thinking it was something we had done, and that we need to change!
The poster talking about sex with a people pleaser, oh god, also true. And then I’d get upset if he criticised me, since I wasn’t even meeting my own needs. Onwards and upwards OP and all of us (former or present or recovering :-) people pleasers!