People pleasing Aka Whoring for love

Photo by Roos Venema

So I’ve been addicted to people pleasing a large part of my life. It took me a long time since realizing this to overcome this addiction.

For myself, I want to be as clear and forward as possible, of what I was, and sometimes still am, doing. I am whoring and hustling for worth, for love. It comes from this belief and feeling of not being good enough. The fear of not being good enough to be loved. 

I unconsciously trained myself to sense people’s needs and wishes, so I could try to fulfill them and would be liked and loved in return. Or at least, wouldn’t lose love. 

I tried to be who others wanted me to be. I was whoring myself continuously for scraps of love. Do what they want me to do. What they approved. “They” started with my family and spread out to all I came in contact with. Cause you take your pain with you wherever you go.  

The chase of being good enough

I was so used to sensing what other people wanted, that when I tried to stop and listen to myself, I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t know what I wanted cause I never asked myself. I felt and heard nothing. What do I want? I don’t fucking know. It was never important to my survival. To the quest of achieving to be finally good enough to be loved, accepted and appreciated. Seen and heard. My power lay in the hands and mercy of others. They decided my worth. 

Turns out I was so busy whoring myself that I didn’t see or hear myself. And this is where I always end up. Owning my own part. My lesson was and is to learn to see and hear who I truly am. To love myself, accept myself, appreciate myself. I didn’t do that so I was running around hustling and whoring myself to fill this hole. This pain of feeling that I’m not good enough is excruciating and therefore it could make me do stupid things. And be so ruthlessly hard on myself. It was always my fault, as a default setting. 

Nothing left to give

There is this image that still haunts me to this day. And I’m glad it does cause I never want to forget. I never want to be that person again. Ever. 

Something like 5 years or so ago this was, when I had Lyme disease. 

I was in a wheelchair. And multiple people were unloading their problems on me. And I was trying to help them. I felt their pain and urgency and felt it my responsibility to help them. To solve their problems. They did not ask me how I was doing. I was the ”strong” one. The one that helps. I was also the one in a wheelchair. (Uhm ya not so strong no.) And still I helped others. I carried everyone except myself. I am horrified of how I treated myself cause of the belief of having no worth. I can’t believe how I did that. I taught people to take everything cause I was willingly giving it all, even when I had nothing left to give. 

In hindsight I realise this more, at the moment I did and I didn’t. I knew I was giving myself away, yet I also couldn’t stop myself. I was in this addictive pain cycle. I needed love and approval to be validated that I was worthy, to not feel like shit. When I healed from Lyme, there was space and energy to reflect and process what had happened. And one of the biggest insights was how unloving I was to myself. So unkind. So so so unkind. I treated myself like a piece of shit. 

I don’t want to do that ever ever ever never again. I want to love myself.     

I know now that my whole journey has been to come to this point. It was to break me and show me how destructive I was to myself. My physical healing was always in sync with my soul healing. The more I was able to love myself the better I got physically. Love healed me. I finally faced the pain beneath all of it. The illness, the people pleasing, the depression in my late teens. Beneath lay the fear of not being good enough to be loved. And the pain of it.   

Wanting to stop whoring for love

Oh the hustle and whoring.... Even if I sometimes did know and see what I was doing, I could not stop myself for the longest of time. I would see myself pleasing people and that was even worse. Wanting to not do it and not being able to stop myself. The fear of losing love and therefore safety was too big. It took me years and years of seeing it happen before I could slowly stop doing it. 

So firstly I started to see it happening, wanting to stop and couldn’t. I would get so disappointed and disgusted with myself. That’s actually why I don’t prefer the term people pleasing. It’s too soft. Sounds too kind. It’s selling myself out for the approval of others. I was such a whore for love. 

I gave away pieces of myself until I was so disconnected and depleted that I got depressed for several years. I couldn’t feel who I was anymore. 

The disappointment in myself would actually get me to start practicing pleasing myself.  

When seeing I wanted to tend to the needs of others, I would try to say no or ask myself what I want. Still often I didn’t hear what I wanted, which made me easier persuadable to do what someone else wanted. Cause I don’t know my own preference. It felt like a battlefield where often I lost. 

Breaking the pain cycle

When I say it took me years, I mean from the moment a therapist hinted to this notion, I was 17, till pretty recently, last year till I was 32, where I can say I mostly don’t whore myself and listen to and hear myself. 

I still have of course moments of weakness. But overall I’d say now mostly I don’t or if I do, I course correct to selflove. I ask myself what do I want and express that. 

So it took me 15 years of being conscious of it and actively trying to heal this. It took me so much practise and disappointment in myself. So much fear, pain and agony. 

When I did express my boundaries and wishes, oh I would feel so scared and vulnerable. Open for attack. Unsafe. Losing love, imagined or not.  That pain was so excruciating. So for a long long time neither option really felt good. Slowly slowly I started hearing myself, that definitely helped. Knowing where I wanted to head towards and not only where I wanted to move away from. Gave me more sense of direction. And more solid ground to stand on, to back myself. Knowing where I stand for. Who I am.  

What made it really click was feeling through the pain. Over a year ago, I started the practice of sitting with pain and uncomfortable feelings. To locate where it is in my body, to feel the physical sensations of it. To not run, and I want to run, and feel it so I can heal it. At that point often, I pray to the universe for courage. Help me be brave to see it, feel it, so I can heal it. 

Cause the pain, especially if it’s a pain that I want to run from, will feel as if I’m gonna die. And you sorta do, your ego dies. Your pain is dying. And it feels horrible and then... there is freedom. A lightness. Openness. Light. Love. Relieve. Release. You will have freed a part of your soul. 

Freedom to see and hear myself

Since practising sitting with pain and feeling through it, it became easier to see and hear myself. I’m taking on the root cause. The pain of not being good enough. So the pain no longer can control me, my actions, my life. 

I’m coming out of this pattern of pain that made me a whore. It’s losing its control over me. I finally hear my own voice, as to where I used to only hear the voices of the people around me. No longer is my voice drowned out. I can hear myself, most of the time. Or take time to listen when I don’t, or simply wait till I do. And I forgive myself at times when I don’t and give myself space to choose again. I’m kinder to myself. A big part of it is being okay with myself even when I didn’t choose “right”. I no longer demand that I am perfect. 

I accept that I am human and know that I have the intention to be loving. 

I accept that I will fail and make mistakes. And in that moment of ugliness I will still love myself and forgive myself. Which makes life softer. 

Good enough

Most of the time I know I’m good enough. Sometimes, more and more often, I even know I’m amazing. And when I have those moments of doubts, I feel through it. Get it over with. I don’t want to waste my life on it. Not let pain take over and live my life. I’ve had enough pain. 

I want to enjoy my life. Enjoy who I am. And live from that place where I am good enough.

I choose love.  

May we all shine like crazy!

With uncaused love,

Ann