More than anything else I have always wanted to be liked. It has consumed my thoughts and motives since my earliest memories. In kindergarten I came home swelling with pride, ribbon in hand that read “Best Eater Award” with a picture of a monkey eating a banana on it. I do love food. Snacks are the gateway to my heart… my husband learned this lesson the hard way early on when he offered me baby carrots to “hold me over” and then endured a five foot me’s wrath of God for it. You bring me coffee and a cookie on your way over… I’ll love you for life. I’m not the kind of person that says no when being offered food regardless of if I just ate or am not in the mood for that type of food. I truly don’t understand a person who says “I’m good” when offered a latte. What is this discipline, this masochism? I do think however, that loving food was such a point of pride for me as a child because I knew it added to what we’ll call my “likeness factor” which is this perpetual scale that I’ve held myself at gunpoint to for forever.
Being a good eater meant I was not picky, it meant I was easy to have over for dinner and was certainly a way I could make people feel good. What feels better than someone delightfully cleaning a plate that you prepared for them? What pleasantly surprises more than a child begging for seconds of the veggies you crossed your fingers that the kids would at least taste. I do love food, but I know this part of me is also intrinsically attached to my need to be liked... something I summoned into being to protect myself.
Food is such a small example of the lens I’ve always looked at the world through which is “how can I interact with this aspect of life in a way that is the least inconvenient for anyone else involved.”
Fast forward 20 years and an autoimmune system in crisis has me sensitive to every delicious food under the sun… truly. Google “what foods are inflammatory?”… There aren’t many that are not. I’ve done cleanses and elimination diets…the low histamine diet, carnivore, medical medium, GAPS, paleo, keto, ketovore… I’ll stop but the list dreadfully continues. I still feel bad for the doctor that told me, the girl who treated the mini cream cups by the sugar packets at diners as delicacy appetizers that I could no longer have dairy. Cutting out coffee and chocolate, pasta and pastries is a cruel form of torture for a food lover but even moreso for a people pleaser because it requires you to do the absolute worst thing imaginable in a people pleaser’s heart which is to have to ask the hostess in advance what they’re serving and then either eat beforehand, ask for accommodations or bring your own options. This is my living nightmare. I am ribbon girl, I am the disposal that eats it all, beaming with gratitude over every morsel.
I am a soul that wants to eat, delight in and please trapped in a body that to heal has had to learn to either inconvenience others or be hungry.
My health has brought me to my knees in this way… It has forced me to answer the question “who are you outside of people pleasing?”… And the answer is, well, …pending I suppose. The answer is, I’m 31 and I don’t have a beautifully clear response about the woman I am because I have spent my life so intensely aware of the desires of those around me that I’ve gathered very little data on what I really want and who I really am. I know the parts of my identity that relate to others… I know I’m a good gift giver… I know I can host the heck out of any occasion… I know I’m a good friend and daughter but I don’t know what my hobbies are…I don’t know my favorite movie or dessert… my style vacillates between hippie and Kardashian on any given day and I don’t always even truly know my own opinion because I’ve spent so many years agreeing and being agreeable.
My health more than anything has taught me that although people pleasing can make life fun and easy, standing up for oneself and taking a stand is a deeply profound experience that I wasn’t allowing myself to have…and that likeability means nothing if you do not know the ins and outs of what makes you you…. If there’s no clear distinction between where your personality ends and other people's opinion of you begins, what is the point?
Writing is something that I have always known is a part of who I am. It is one of the few things that I find myself doing solely to understand myself better, not to pacify others more… it is one of the only things that has kept me tethered to myself through the identity roller coaster that is being a chameleon. Some people can simply declare the deepest truths of who they are in a moment's notice…for me these truths reveal themselves where paper meets pen.
I write and I feel liberated but sharing that liberation has always terrified me because it inevitably invites critique… a people pleaser’s kryptonite. But it is not the critique of my words or how I arrange them that scares me … It is the critique of who I am declaring myself to be without the people pleaser gun grazing my temple that terrifies me.
It terrifies me but it is also my mission.
Writing freely is the way I begin to take back my power and unearth the little girl that has been buried underneath decades of other people’s agendas.
I learned early on that taking a stand on anything, especially as a female meant foregoing your likeability to both people that disagree with that stance and people that dislike certainty in women.
I am not a movie character in one of those monologues where the protagonist transforms her identity completely within three scenes and an empowering chorus…I still want to be liked and hone in on my superpower of being keenly aware of what others want but I want to be liked because of my heart… not because I can shapeshift …. I want to be aware of the needs of others because I love THEM not because I need them to like me to feel secure.
This is why I am here. I hope you enjoy the journey but mostly I hope that the journey makes me more me than ever because I think the truest version of me has much more to offer than the me that had smiling and nodding down to an art form.
To my fellow people pleasers and likeability seekers, let the digging and unearthing begin.
An exercise:
What is something you loved about yourself as a child?
My answer:
•Small scale: I loved my hands, I thought they were dang good-looking hands
•Big scale: I loved that I was brave “for a girl”… which in the 90s meant that I would confidently do all the things that were deemed masculine with a lot of enthusiasm and success… i.e. dodge ball, toad hunting, speaking up in class, extreme sports ( which I thought were dirt biking and any water sport), and of course, the scary rides at Valley Fair… i.e. the Wild Thing & Steel Venom😜
WHY THE EXERCISE:
To learn as much about yourself as you know about other people
To practice answering questions purely to reveal truth rather than please
Awesome Heather! Totally enjoyed you writing. Kind of hits home a bit. (Lot)
Between Kim and you...life is getting so much better! Can't wait to read your next!
Mary