Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm speaking to you as a people-pleaser in recovery, to someone who I think has the same affliction. It will be long, but I'm going to tell the whole journey in case some of it resonates and rattles something loose in you.

Like you, I was raised to always accommodate the needs of others over my own, even (or perhaps especially) when those needs are over-the-top, aggressive, very imposing, or even upsetting to me. I grew up in a family of very emotionally immature people and learned from very young that one survival path for me was to have no needs of my own and be as accommodating as possible.

I started to recognize the problems with this in my 20s, though didn't realize it was people pleasing. I had a serious romantic relationship that fell apart and my partner accused me of being needy, which really hurt me because I work so hard to NOT be needy. I started seeing a therapist who started to scratch the surface of the dysfunction from my childhood and how I was carrying it forward. The biggest take away from that therapist was the idea that maybe it was okay to be "needy" if it helped me realize I do in fact have needs. And also to start thinking about how the people around me respond to my needs, and the balance of power in my relationships -- who sets the tone? whose emotions dominate? how do they respond to my emotions, especially my negative emotions, and so on? These were all good questions to wrestle with. I did, I got over that ex and also left a really unsatisfying job for one with more potential, and I thought "ah, I'm fixed!"

Haha, I was not fixed. In my 30s, I found myself in multiple relationships (a significant other, several friendships, and two workplace mentorships) that I now recognize as dysfunctional. I was still accommodating others all the time while not having my own needs met, despite being more conscious of this dynamic. I turns out these tendencies are so engrained that it happens unconsciously for me, so it's hard to change. I convince myself that I'm happy with things that just coincidentally make others happy, especially the most demanding people in my life. It was WAY harder to stop this than I originally anticipated.

At this part I started to realize something. I'm going to bold it because I think it's most relevant to your present struggle: Lifelong people pleasers like you and me tend to attract people into our lives who are eager to use and abuse our people pleasing tendencies, and especially people who know precisely which buttons to push (guilt, implying we are bad people, withholding affection or friendship) to coerce us into giving them what they want. They find us. Realizing this sucks because you realize that you have people in your life who are mainly attracted to you because they know you will roll over and give them what you want at your own expense. THESE PEOPLE ARE USERS. They may have redeeming qualities, but they have dysfunction, and it is perfectly tailored to take advantage of your dysfunction.

I am in my 40s now and I still struggle with these issues. I've been through three rounds of therapy and will go through more. Each new life stage and situation creates more opportunities for me to fall back into these habits and then to have to relearn how to stand up for myself and extract myself from these situations again. But the one thing I am finally becoming better at is recognizing the users who see me as a mark.

Your friend is a user. She is intentionally trying to make you feel guilty to induce you to give her something you don't want to give her. She is creating conflict in your marriage by inserting her own needs into YOUR marriage. She is using a whole range of tools -- passive aggression, guilt tripping, undermining your self worth, self-aggrandizement, perceived quid pro quo (which isn't actually quid pro quo -- she never gives you anything she isn't eager to part with). She has likely honed these skills over a lifetime, since childhood, just like your people pleasing has been refined since a very young age.

Standing up to this person, saying no as many times as you need to when she tries to take advantage of you, and not allowing her dysfunction to cause you emotional pain and relationship strife, will be an incredibly valuable experience for you. Do it now, with this person, and it will help you practice for all the future people who will try to take advantage of you. Focus on your friends and family who don't try to use you in this way. Invest in those relationships. Let this particular friendship go, though. She is bad for you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm speaking to you as a people-pleaser in recovery, to someone who I think has the same affliction. It will be long, but I'm going to tell the whole journey in case some of it resonates and rattles something loose in you.

Like you, I was raised to always accommodate the needs of others over my own, even (or perhaps especially) when those needs are over-the-top, aggressive, very imposing, or even upsetting to me. I grew up in a family of very emotionally immature people and learned from very young that one survival path for me was to have no needs of my own and be as accommodating as possible.

I started to recognize the problems with this in my 20s, though didn't realize it was people pleasing. I had a serious romantic relationship that fell apart and my partner accused me of being needy, which really hurt me because I work so hard to NOT be needy. I started seeing a therapist who started to scratch the surface of the dysfunction from my childhood and how I was carrying it forward. The biggest take away from that therapist was the idea that maybe it was okay to be "needy" if it helped me realize I do in fact have needs. And also to start thinking about how the people around me respond to my needs, and the balance of power in my relationships -- who sets the tone? whose emotions dominate? how do they respond to my emotions, especially my negative emotions, and so on? These were all good questions to wrestle with. I did, I got over that ex and also left a really unsatisfying job for one with more potential, and I thought "ah, I'm fixed!"

Haha, I was not fixed. In my 30s, I found myself in multiple relationships (a significant other, several friendships, and two workplace mentorships) that I now recognize as dysfunctional. I was still accommodating others all the time while not having my own needs met, despite being more conscious of this dynamic. I turns out these tendencies are so engrained that it happens unconsciously for me, so it's hard to change. I convince myself that I'm happy with things that just coincidentally make others happy, especially the most demanding people in my life. It was WAY harder to stop this than I originally anticipated.

At this part I started to realize something. I'm going to bold it because I think it's most relevant to your present struggle: Lifelong people pleasers like you and me tend to attract people into our lives who are eager to use and abuse our people pleasing tendencies, and especially people who know precisely which buttons to push (guilt, implying we are bad people, withholding affection or friendship) to coerce us into giving them what they want. They find us. Realizing this sucks because you realize that you have people in your life who are mainly attracted to you because they know you will roll over and give them what you want at your own expense. THESE PEOPLE ARE USERS. They may have redeeming qualities, but they have dysfunction, and it is perfectly tailored to take advantage of your dysfunction.

I am in my 40s now and I still struggle with these issues. I've been through three rounds of therapy and will go through more. Each new life stage and situation creates more opportunities for me to fall back into these habits and then to have to relearn how to stand up for myself and extract myself from these situations again. But the one thing I am finally becoming better at is recognizing the users who see me as a mark.

Your friend is a user. She is intentionally trying to make you feel guilty to induce you to give her something you don't want to give her. She is creating conflict in your marriage by inserting her own needs into YOUR marriage. She is using a whole range of tools -- passive aggression, guilt tripping, undermining your self worth, self-aggrandizement, perceived quid pro quo (which isn't actually quid pro quo -- she never gives you anything she isn't eager to part with). She has likely honed these skills over a lifetime, since childhood, just like your people pleasing has been refined since a very young age.

Standing up to this person, saying no as many times as you need to when she tries to take advantage of you, and not allowing her dysfunction to cause you emotional pain and relationship strife, will be an incredibly valuable experience for you. Do it now, with this person, and it will help you practice for all the future people who will try to take advantage of you. Focus on your friends and family who don't try to use you in this way. Invest in those relationships. Let this particular friendship go, though. She is bad for you.

Excellent post. Clearly you have been there, me too, and this really resonates. Hope OP reads it.

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm speaking to you as a people-pleaser in recovery, to someone who I think has the same affliction. It will be long, but I'm going to tell the whole journey in case some of it resonates and rattles something loose in you.

Like you, I was raised to always accommodate the needs of others over my own, even (or perhaps especially) when those needs are over-the-top, aggressive, very imposing, or even upsetting to me. I grew up in a family of very emotionally immature people and learned from very young that one survival path for me was to have no needs of my own and be as accommodating as possible.

I started to recognize the problems with this in my 20s, though didn't realize it was people pleasing. I had a serious romantic relationship that fell apart and my partner accused me of being needy, which really hurt me because I work so hard to NOT be needy. I started seeing a therapist who started to scratch the surface of the dysfunction from my childhood and how I was carrying it forward. The biggest take away from that therapist was the idea that maybe it was okay to be "needy" if it helped me realize I do in fact have needs. And also to start thinking about how the people around me respond to my needs, and the balance of power in my relationships -- who sets the tone? whose emotions dominate? how do they respond to my emotions, especially my negative emotions, and so on? These were all good questions to wrestle with. I did, I got over that ex and also left a really unsatisfying job for one with more potential, and I thought "ah, I'm fixed!"

Haha, I was not fixed. In my 30s, I found myself in multiple relationships (a significant other, several friendships, and two workplace mentorships) that I now recognize as dysfunctional. I was still accommodating others all the time while not having my own needs met, despite being more conscious of this dynamic. I turns out these tendencies are so engrained that it happens unconsciously for me, so it's hard to change. I convince myself that I'm happy with things that just coincidentally make others happy, especially the most demanding people in my life. It was WAY harder to stop this than I originally anticipated.

At this part I started to realize something. I'm going to bold it because I think it's most relevant to your present struggle: Lifelong people pleasers like you and me tend to attract people into our lives who are eager to use and abuse our people pleasing tendencies, and especially people who know precisely which buttons to push (guilt, implying we are bad people, withholding affection or friendship) to coerce us into giving them what they want. They find us. Realizing this sucks because you realize that you have people in your life who are mainly attracted to you because they know you will roll over and give them what you want at your own expense. THESE PEOPLE ARE USERS. They may have redeeming qualities, but they have dysfunction, and it is perfectly tailored to take advantage of your dysfunction.

I am in my 40s now and I still struggle with these issues. I've been through three rounds of therapy and will go through more. Each new life stage and situation creates more opportunities for me to fall back into these habits and then to have to relearn how to stand up for myself and extract myself from these situations again. But the one thing I am finally becoming better at is recognizing the users who see me as a mark.

Your friend is a user. She is intentionally trying to make you feel guilty to induce you to give her something you don't want to give her. She is creating conflict in your marriage by inserting her own needs into YOUR marriage. She is using a whole range of tools -- passive aggression, guilt tripping, undermining your self worth, self-aggrandizement, perceived quid pro quo (which isn't actually quid pro quo -- she never gives you anything she isn't eager to part with). She has likely honed these skills over a lifetime, since childhood, just like your people pleasing has been refined since a very young age.

Standing up to this person, saying no as many times as you need to when she tries to take advantage of you, and not allowing her dysfunction to cause you emotional pain and relationship strife, will be an incredibly valuable experience for you. Do it now, with this person, and it will help you practice for all the future people who will try to take advantage of you. Focus on your friends and family who don't try to use you in this way. Invest in those relationships. Let this particular friendship go, though. She is bad for you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact you have had three friends like this means there is something going on with you that you put up with this nonsense. I’m not blaming you — these people are terrible. But I’m 51 with lots of friends over many years. No one has ever asked me something like this. I do think you need more insight as to why you remain friends with people like this.

Many of us learn these behaviors from one of our parents so the behavior is familiar and we don't shy away from it as other people might, even if it makes us uncomfortable. OP - the first step is to acknowledge that your friend's behavior makes you really uncomfortable. The next step is to ask yourself why you invited someone like this into your life. And then you work on learning to build boundaries in your relationships and not to say yes when you really want to say no. Who cares that this person does so much for others. That doesn't actually make them a good person. Selflessness can be a good trait but not always. They feed off people like you who think you must be crazy to say no to someone who is seemingly so generous to others with their time. You are not a bad person for having manipulative people in your life but you can definitely learn how to stop the cycle once you understand why you do this.

I thought about this, and whether it was true. My parents never took my stuff. But I also I never really had ownership over anything until I was closer to 18.

This is fairly typical right? In other words, up until I was close to an adult, I never picked out anything for myself, although things were bought for me. And also, things would just disappear from my room without a word.

president then.



Honestly this is bizarre. I was given gifts and those were mine. Like from 5 on. I picked out things for my room. I had an allowance and what I used it for was mine. Things never disappeared.

No allowance. They also didn’t want me getting a job. If I needed anything, I had to ask. And honestly most things they said no to, so I didn’t ask, or I just felt too guilty to ask for something for myself. But things like school supplies, and such, I could buy. My aunts brought me clothes on my bdays and I got hand me downs. My aunts decorated my room, I had no input. My room was like a hotel room. Nothing individualized. No pictures.

Looking back maybe that’s why I felt so sentimentally attached to those little things like my shorts and the clock.

Anonymous wrote:That doesn't matter. She is not entitled to any of your belongings, especially a sentimental gift from your spouse, just because she wants it. That's crazy

Anonymous wrote:The fact you have had three friends like this means there is something going on with you that you put up with this nonsense. I’m not blaming you — these people are terrible. But I’m 51 with lots of friends over many years. No one has ever asked me something like this. I do think you need more insight as to why you remain friends with people like this.

Anonymous wrote:WTAF??? She is incredibly rude.

NO, do not give her the poster.