People Pleasing: Who Are You in a Room Full of People?

Who were you before the world told you who to become?

I feel like when we are born and when we are kids, we live life so freely up until some sort of trauma finds you along the way. And that sometimes alters your personality, or it stifles your personality, and you find yourself losing yourself along the way. That's why we see the movement of people working towards and speaking about "How I got my sparkle back." Because life can throw you through the wringer and cause you to lose a part of yourself. I just want to discuss what it takes to be yourself and to find yourself again.

Losing yourself / Why authenticity even matters

My journey to self-authenticity didn't just start clearly to me. At the time, I had actually just completed my in-person therapy, exiting a heavy season of social anxiety which was tied to other personal issues that a lot of us face (explored in other blogs). And so, at that stage, I had graduated from therapy. The social anxiety was done, I was healed, and it was amazing, right? So I'm done with the anxiety of being around people. But, in my healed era, I wanted to explore other parts of myself I could work on and continue to self-improve. I was just in my grind and falling in love with living my life again.

So I began to explore other issues I could work on, and I remembered in one of my therapy sessions, my therapist asked me, "So, what about your relationships? Do you want to get into relationships? By that, I mean romantic relationships." Girl, I had just healed social anxiety and my tendency to avoid people, so naturally my response was, "Not yet." She closed that discussion by saying, "Okay, cool, perhaps that's something we can revisit later." And so now, as I reflected, I have identified that perhaps my tendency to avoid dating could be explored. Something to revisit. And I remember thinking to myself: I have been single for 8 years. 8 years now! Not being in a relationship. What is wrong with me?

I really, really do enjoy my peace. I really enjoy my me-time. Love being alone. Hate being around people (just kidding!). But I truly love me-time. So having graduated from therapy, fast-launching into wellness and wanting to self-improve, and being in the early stages of AI, I figured I'd explore and play around with it. So naturally, I found myself in ChatGPT, as people do. And I was just yapping about how much I love me-time but wondering why I find it so hard to let other people into my space, surely me-time and relationships can coexist? Why am I such a lone wolf, wanting to do me-time all the time?

It's because I have found such a deep solace, and such deep, pure enjoyment and safety in my own company. Because I can be myself freely. I can be myself with all the quirks. I can be quirky without judgment. I can say the first thing that comes to mind and just be. I can breathe. I can sit whichever way I want. Whether I gain weight or lose weight, whether I'm comfortable in my body or not, I can just be me. That's a great quality to have, but having learned in therapy that human beings truly thrive on valuable connection, I started to look at my 8 years of being single with a closer lens. What was I avoiding?

Fear of being perceived / Why people feel unsafe

The reason sometimes I wouldn't want to bring people into my close space is because it requires a layer of vulnerability. In a relationship, you have to let a person in. And. Truly. See. You. See you say the first things that come to mind that you blurt out, and they form an opinion about you.

When you're by yourself, you can freely speak and you don't have to carefully curate anything. So now, imagine a second person being in your presence as if you were alone, but you're not. They are going to see your most random thoughts. They are going to see your quirks. They are going to see your mannerisms that nobody notices in short, safe interactions, the way you sit and breathe at rest, the way you laugh, the way you are.

I recalled memories of my childhood with an abusive stepmom, where everything I did, even the way I walked, was planned intentionally to not bring any attention to myself lest I get into trouble for something and receive a beating. So knowing that being in a relationship with someone means they are just in your space, naturally, they can collect data about you which allows them to formulate an opinion of you. And for me, the idea of someone forming an opinion of you essentially felt like a form of judgment that could be unsafe, which I had learned from childhood trauma patterns, but is not necessarily true today. I had a fear of judgment. I had a fear of being perceived, a fear of being seen, a fear of being myself.

And so, as I was exploring and doing the research in ChatGPT (which I try to use less for personal information now), I found myself arriving at that point: Who am I when other people are in the room? I know who I am when it's safe and it's just me, but around others? I couldn't conceive it. I couldn't tell you. I could not tell you, chile.

Masks, people-pleasing, and the survival self

So I thought about moments from my past. I thought to myself about my last relationship. It was a great relationship, great guy, but once or twice maybe he made a comment I did not like, for example about my body. Or say he would complain about me not wanting to hang out with his friends. It was the realization that even though we need connection to thrive as humans, everyone is different. But, having developed shapeshifting tendencies to be the right thing to a different person each time to avoid conflict, it became exhausting, which made me find solace in being alone.

Other instances that come to mind are being judged for having a certain hairstyle "only foreign people" or people of a different ethnicity would wear, which is fucking crazy, btw. So dealing with different people felt like inviting different forms of criticism. And having that childhood abuse background, I wasn't taught, or rather, did not learn about who I am, what I value, and what I will accept and bring to different connections. Instead, like sitting up straight like a robot so that my stepmother didn't notice me and find something to beat me over, I learned to shapeshift to please other people to avoid getting hurt.

But shapeshifting became exhausting. Too many people, too many different expectations, too many masks to put on to people-please and satisfy. And so I found it easier to avoid people and stay safe in my own bubble. So I ran away from it.

So when I asked myself who I am when others are in the room, I arrived at this answer: I had no cooking clue. I just thought, 'I'm in my 20s, I love my space, I really love just being alone.' But I realized I'm avoiding people because being around people comes with two options.

Option 1:Be yourself, and that has a negative in that you run the risk of being faced with judgment, right? Because there are over a billion people on the planet, so not everyone is going to vibe with you. It's being faced with being perceived, being judged.

Option 2:You can tailor yourself to the situation, shapeshift, people-please, and avoid conflict. You're faking it, faking you to fit the situation. But the negative is you lose who you are. And years later, down the line, you wake up wondering, 'truly, who am I? What are my opinions?'

I would be fun, loud, and crazy with some friends, but suddenly quiet and robotic with another group. It got confusing and exhausting flipping the switch and not feeling like I could just be. So, because my choices were either Option 1 (be with people, be seen, and be judged) or Option 2 (be with people, be fake, and be safe), I fell back on Option 3: be alone, which I leaned on like a crutch.

Trauma, safety, and how survival shaped identity

But now, the thing about being a human being is that we were meant for relationship. Think about it: Adam and Eve back in day one. God created Adam. Adam was lonely, and He made Eve. And there was less loneliness. So as much as I enjoyed being alone, I started to explore how I can be myself, truly be able to just "be," but doing it, being me, around people I love. People were meant for connection. So basically, what I'm trying to say is, even if I decided to stay alone, that was never going to be a viable option because, at the end of the day, my human nature craves connection with people. And that brings me right back to Option 1 or Option 2: connect with people being myself, or connect with people being fake.

I then considered Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Not by the textbook, but simply from my memory, these are your basic needs, the physical needs, things like needing food and water. After that, you need safety. A household, a roof over your head, you just want to be safe, to feel protected. And maybe that is why a part of me was inauthentic or fake. Because I realized as a kid, in order to avoid a beating, I needed to be less of myself and more of what the situation called me to be. More of what the step-parent wanted to see in that moment. Which led me to learning how to read people, how to gauge people, and delivering on that.

The next hierarchy of needs is all things love-related. For me, with the exception of the abusive stepmom, I had my beautiful family to lean on, and I was blessed with good friends. Then the next hierarchy: self-esteem and self-actualization. The way you see yourself. The way others see you. The drive in you to achieve bigger and better, to create a beautiful life since you have the basic needs, the safety, the love.

Self-actualization and Returning to yourself

This is the final need for the human. It speaks to who you truly are. Once you've received everything you could possibly need to survive in life, what does the human heart desire? Self-actualization. It's to thrive as yourself. It's to be valued as yourself, and to add some sort of value as yourself. It's literally being your highest, happiest self. It's your highest high of happiness.

This told me that of the two paths that I could take, which is either Option 1 (be myself and be rejected or criticized in some instances) or Option 2 (be fake and pretentious and get exhausted from switching the masks), the one that I needed in order to reach true happiness is to be myself, right? And this is the key that a lot of people are missing: being yourself is the truest form of happiness. You get to be yourself, have your values, and anyone who doesn't fall in line falls to the side. Instead of sucking up to everyone because it feels safe, you sift through them, because the safety is actually about who you let into your space. You pick and choose and sift through people and eventually, you will find your tribe who will gladly receive you as yourself.

Between all those childhood trauma days, those high school trauma days, those grad trauma days, your early young adult trauma days... you lost yourself in between because you needed to keep yourself safe. That is completely fair. That is valid. But now you realize safety and happiness are clashing, and you need to get back to happiness. And to get back to happiness, you need to find yourself again. Yeah, that's just where I landed. My journey to self-authenticity has just been so important to finding inner joy.

People-pleasing helps nobody: The "empty cup" realization

Another thing that comes to mind is how I showed up all fake and people-pleasing to keep myself safe, and I hate to say fake, but in the simplest way, that is what it was. I was being fake to survive. For example at work, feeling the need to show up in a certain way, and falling into those people-pleasing tendencies. I realized that didn't help anyone either.

My therapist said, "But that is not fair. It's literally not fair to the next person. Imagine you're having a discussion with someone, you think they are a friend, but they are pretending. Simply acting. They are just telling you what you want to hear. It's not fair that the next person does not get to experience you." It's almost like when you're chatting with an AI and the AI is just telling you what you want to hear; at some point, you get so flipping frustrated at the lack of true authenticity.

Really, it hit me when my therapist said this, because I was depriving someone out there of a true connection with me. I didn't even fathom that the next person simply just wants to get to know me. That's what connection is about. I know it's almost embarrassing to think of myself in that way... too scared to show up as me. Showing up like a fake, agreeable AI algorithm when in reality, the next person genuinely just wanted to get to know me. It was kinda an embarrassing realization for me, but it was so important. Because the truth is, the majority of the world does want to get to know you. Yes, there will be criticism here and there, but for the most part, the world has decent human beings. Not everyone is the abusive stepmom you experienced in the past. Truly, there are good, kindhearted human beings who want to get to know you, for you.

Back to that work example, I would people-please to stay safe, and I would people-please to the point where I had no opinions, no ideas... like, nothing to bring to the table, literally. I was just the agreeable AI. And so, this one day, I had a colleague who really needed my help and honest opinion come up to me with a bunch of statements that made no sense. She was clearly unwell and asking me all sorts of questions; it was my first time experiencing someone having a manic breakdown. The questions and statements would be so random. For example, maybe she would say, "Listen, we need to get those reports with the KPIs ready. A spaceship is about to land. Pack your laptop. Let's go outside and hop on it, we need to go deliver the reports, hurry."

And instead of checking in with her, saying, "Hey, maybe you should take a break and go home," my people-pleasing self agreed with all of her bizarre statements. She was a gentle human in need of support, having a mental breakdown, and me, in my people-pleasing behaviors, I just agreed with her every word, which was not helpful considering her state of mind. Later, someone else was able to recognize it and get her help. Granted, this happened when I too had social anxiety. It was mental struggle meets mental struggle. So I try not to be hard on myself when I reflect on it. But I do feel bad, with some regret and embarrassment. Someone needed me, but I was blinded by my own people-pleasing behaviors.

That was a bit of a rare case, but dear reader, know that people-pleasing can sometimes cause more harm than good. It is best to be yourself, which is whatever your heart tells you in that moment, instead of putting on a mask you think will make someone else happy and keep you safe.

So I now understand 100% that you need to show up as you, or else you are depriving the world of you. God created you to be you. He created you for a reason. What if God had created me to have opinions, values, a personality, things that I stand by and believe, or insights that are unique to me, that would have supported the lady in her mental breakdown at that very moment?

When you are people-pleasing, you think you are protecting yourself, but you are hurting yourself by shoving yourself deeper and deeper and deeper beneath, and shrinking yourself from the level that God has called you to. And you are not only harming yourself, but you're harming the people, you're harming the audience, the set of people that do need to hear from you. The way I think of it is, there is always going to be someone judging you. There will always be someone perceiving you. There will always be some rejection. But in that same way, there will always be someone receiving you, and someone who needs your personality.

Healing, awareness, and the journey back to self

Have you ever had a childlike feeling that you would stumble on luck? For example, as a kid, daydreaming that you could find gold in your backyard? Or as an adult, imagining your home was built of exportable oil and suddenly you're rich, baby, no more worries about those nasty bills. Perhaps the fantasy of winning the lottery.

My theory is this: I believe each and every single human being is sitting on gold in their own intrinsic value, in their own identity. I believe each and every single human being is a gold mine, each with your own personality or something invaluable deep down in you to offer. And we need to reach for that and unlock it, and unleash that full potential. For example, someone who is naturally good at giving advice, tapping into a line of work that enables them to do that to the best of their ability. They get to earn for themselves and help others while doing something that comes naturally to them. Not only will this help you with all the things that you're struggling with in your life, like, for example, in this instance, not only will tapping into your intrinsic value make you rich, but it's also going to give you true happiness because you are being your truest, authentic self.

That is a sigh of relief. A burden off your shoulders. You can be yourself. You can speak the first thing that comes to your mind as if you were alone in the room. You can be quirky. You can wear what you want, be relaxed in your body the way it is, and still be cool with yourself, and still love yourself, and still be able to share a part of yourself with the people who will receive it. Whoever doesn't receive it is just not your crowd, and that is okay. But there is a crowd for you. I think that is what self-actualization is about. I think that's what self-actualization boils down to. I think that that is what the truest, purest, final form of happiness is. Being you.

So the question is: how do we get back to self-authenticity?

Imagine yourself as a kid, and you grew up being you, doing whatever came naturally in the moment, and you didn't have any childhood masks developed to manage abuse or bullying or whatever it is that you faced. You didn't have the things of the world rob the sparkle in your eye; instead, you started on a clean slate, viewing the world from a lens of your pure, rose-colored glasses. Untainted by the darkness of the world. No limits to what you can do, who you can become (because it's true). That is what I mean by self-authenticity: getting to a place where you can just be you, no burden, no weight on your chest.

And I'm telling you guys, if you can get to this, it's going to unlock everything for you. I'm talking career goals, I'm talking body goals, relationships, happiness. Learning true manifestation (not the woo-woo kind), but following people who speak about neuroscience and altering your brain chemistry, is one of the biggest steps you can take to altering your mind and believing you can truly accomplish what you set your heart on (as a byproduct of unlocking your self-authenticity).

So yes, the next step is going on a customized journey of things you can do to reconnect with yourself. I am on a journey myself, literally on things I've researched, put into actionable steps, and put into a calendar I can tick off. I can come back and share my experiences once done, but it is something we can all already start to create for our own lives with research, putting together a plan of a journey to follow on becoming your truest and most authentic self.

But more than anything, this is really just an eye-opener for the person who just feels dead inside. For the person who just feels like, in a group setting, you are a robot. You just feel like an empty slate. You feel like a plain canvas, and whichever person you are interacting with brings their pen, you just let whomever come in and scribble on your canvas, not knowing what type of art you want to create for yourself. You feel as if you're an empty glass, and whichever group setting you're in, you just let the people come in and pour. They pour the juice, they pour their alcohol, the coffee, and they just make a big, messy concoction. They add the milkshakes, they add the kombucha, and they just keep creating and molding and shaping you. And you never get to decide which drink you want to be. Then you go home, and you have to empty out the glass, re-energize, and the next day you go out and it's the same thing. It's robotic. Then you dread going to social events. Because. Who. Are. You. Really? You don't know who to be in a group of people.

This is your call to go on a journey to discover who that truly is. I want that for you, because that is when you will experience true happiness, and that is what the self-authenticity journey is about.

My self-authenticity journey started with reading. After therapy, I started becoming intentional about reading self-help books to help identify the guardrails I had put up that were no longer serving me. To unpack childhood trauma, I started reading *Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving* by Pete Walker. It helped me start identifying the issues and at least be knowledgeable, because knowing is the first step to overcoming: identifying the issue and being able to name it. Like the main character from the show *Crazy Ex-Girlfriend*, who made a song where she sings, "I have a diagnosis, I have a diagnosis!" She realized that identifying your patterns can help you work on them.

My journey started with understanding my trauma, and that's why I started with CPTSD. And I would love to share more tips, tricks, and knowledge gathered along the way in my blogs to come. But my first piece of advice for now is to go and read, and understand your trauma. Know it, and then you know which way to grow from there.

Signing out: As always on this glow-up journey, I leave you with a tool to expand your mind as you level up. I create monthly ebooks and audiobooks, pouring into them genuinely to help others with some targeted learning. Because the more you expose yourself to something, the more you become it. And eventually, you wake up one day as your highest, hottest self.

🤍 Here is the link to this week's ebook: https://safehavencornerstudio.com/how-to-be-yourself-again-guide

💛 Audiobook for the listeners : https://safehavencornerstudio.com/the-audio-deepdive-how-to-be-yourself-again-

🧡 Chitchatting and unpacking on YouTube : https://youtu.be/O7PZf0y_Uos

TTFN, ta ta for now.

Haven ✨️

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