Recently my friend Carmen posted a YouTube short – a clip from one of her livestream videos – where the topics was about people-pleasing, a subject with which yours truly is intimately acquainted.
So, small story time.
Having been born the oldest of a handful of siblings, it fell to me to ensure my family was safe from an angry forever-drunken father. Or at least, that’s what my 7 year old mind determined was the case.
It wasn’t true, obviously. But what do you do when you see Armageddon peering down at you on a weekly basis; when a roaring 350 pound shirtless beast is pounding the shit out of your mother?
Often, I just sat in fear, down in the basement, while hearing the horrific noises, screams and shouts coming from the floor just above us. I honestly just tried to stay out of the way, knowing full well a scrawny little guy wasn’t going to be of much use to anyone and would likely get slaughtered if he tried.
In the truly desperate moments though, I did what I could. I called the cops on him, twice. Once, I think, when I was 7, and the second when I was a few years older.
I remember the second time most vividly. The sky was overcast and some snowflakes were just starting to come down, the ground not yet covered. Dad was roaring yet again, his black greasy hair all askew on his drunken head, and his shirt once again off, revealing a horror of a torso covered in sweat. His eyes were bulging so I knew he was about ready to do some damage.
He was in the kitchen with mom and as that’s where the rotary phone was, I couldn’t use it to call the police. So I ran out the door to the neighbour’s house. The panic was so bad I fought down the pending embarrassment awaiting, knowing they would shortly become aware of our shameful situation. I pounded on their door and they graciously let me in.
I walked back to our house, entirely rattled and afraid, and waited outside till the police arrived. I hoped they would take my dad away from us so we could have peace. But, that was not to be. The cop arrived and spoke with my parents, and I watched as dad calmed right down. Honestly, it didn’t seem possible, he was so out of control all the time. But yeah. He did.
Mom taught us how to not set him off – not realizing that he didn’t need a trigger anyway. He was going to get drunk and he was damned well going to find a reason to be angry. It always happened that way.
I learned to recognize the signals though, eventually being able to read him like a book. I walked on eggshells around him.
This carried on through my teen years, with other people. I knew how to read them, and more importantly, knew how to mitigate their anger or upset. The words that would soothe them came easy to me. So much so I become somewhat of an empath around them.
One night four of us gathered at our friend Henry’s house, and we called in for pizza. It was late at night and we were all having a blast watching something on TV. One of the guys – Jim – seemed a little subdued. When he and I were alone I said “You’re thinking you’re not sure you belong here and you don’t really know why. Well you DO belong and I’m glad you’re here.”
Jim’s eyes bugged out. “How…how did you know that? That’s exactly what I was thinking.” He couldn’t believe it. Didn’t seem that odd to me. It was just a matter of fact, like the sky is blue.
This penchant for reading people translated into adulthood and work. I could always see all sides of a situation or argument and find common ground between the parties. My boss once gave me a verbal job evaluation, where he said “Wolf, I was starting to think you weren’t really engaging with the group, until I saw you sitting quietly during one of our heated team discussions. At first I wondered why you didn’t say anything, but then you spoke up and provided a clear picture for everyone on what had to be done.”
Unfortunately this penchant for reading people translated over into knowing how to please people, and then doing just that. It not only affected work but my relationships too. People for years felt they could rely on me to accommodate them because they could and because I would. It became counter-productive.
I learned to suppress who I was, and in the process, completely forgot my personality. I was never my own person; I was whoever everyone else needed me to be. To be blunt, I was an honest phony, never speaking my mind on anything. Looking back, I think if I was someone else back then and met me, I’d feel utterly bored.
It wasn’t until many years into adulthood (and after a lot of therapy) that I found my footing and turned it around, gaining a sense of self, and with it, genuine singular opinions that didn’t rely on others’ approvals. I stopped being a doormat for people, and at first many resented it.
My first “no” happened when my drug-addicted brother-in-law broke into our home to steal pills. No one was at home at the time other than the cats. They were ok but the place was a mess with broken glass everywhere. We quickly determined who had broken in by sharing Hank’s picture with the neighbours. This was in broad daylight of course, and he wasn’t quite as sneaky about it as he’d hoped, so they recognized him right away.
We told all this to the police, who later charged him.
One of my kids shared how they were afraid of him, and had a nightmare about him. So when one of Hank’s relatives phoned, asking me to drop the charges, the knee-jerk reaction she expected wasn’t there. I told her no, I was going to make sure he faced the charges in court.
“How can you sleep with yourself?” she complained. I was angry. “I’ll sleep just fine.”
It felt good saying “no” to her. Cathartic.
They say the first “no” is usually the worst, because you’re worried about how people will view you. You’re not making peace with anyone when you say it, and that can be alarming. For once this wasn’t the case. I did not want him scaring or harming my family.
He was sentenced to prison, for this and a few other drug-related crimes. Afterward, he apologized, so that was good. Not to say I trusted him, of course. But he never bothered us again.
Someone once said that people-pleasing is the other side of the coin to sociopathic behaviour, which sounds unfair. But I believe it to be true. Both the sociopath and the people-pleaser are doing the same thing: they’re reading people, with the intent of manipulating them. In the case of the people-pleaser the goal is to just be safe. The sociopath is a different story.
I would suggest that anyone who sees themself in this post should consider getting therapy. There’s a reason someone becomes a people-pleaser and often help is needed to figure out why that is.
But the bottom line is that it’s just not healthy to be that way. And worse: you’re not actually living life for yourself when you do; you’re living it for everyone except yourself.
View from a Wolf 