Is Moving Beyond People Pleasing Worth It?
Understanding Core Wounds and Their Impact
If you had asked me this question in May of this year, I would have said "NO!"
As I journeyed through my people-pleasing story, it was nothing short of confronting, painful, and bleak. As I delved deeper into my journey, I realized that at the heart of my people-pleasing tendencies lay a core wound. This wound, which had been a silent driver of my behavior, was intricately tied to my feelings of unworthiness and fear of abandonment.
And yet, while my journey of transformation has been a long one thus far (15 years and counting) of all sorts, such as:
Ascension work - 3 principles
Pattern work - Imago therapy
Mindset work - NLP
Behaviour change work - Coaching
Trauma work - Matrix Reimprinting
Polarity work - Embodied practices
And yet, none of them were as precise as the shadow work that I did this year that really identified and pinpointed my core wound and how I had shown up most of my life to protect it. It has been nothing short of extraordinary to make sense of my life in the way it does now.
Core Wounds: Behavior Change and Transformation
Recognizing my core wound was only the beginning. The next step was initiating a behavior change, a process that required deep commitment and self-awareness.
Reclaiming Emotional Boundaries: Clarity in Relationships
It’s created clarity around:
WHY I couldn’t receive LOVE and sabotaged my relationships with good, safe men.
WHY I would chase after unavailable men and friendships instead to prove to myself I was lovable.
WHY I would become the therapist in the relationship and pick men to RESCUE to feel worthy.
WHY I couldn’t fully express my boundaries because I was so scared they would leave if I did.
WHY I couldn’t express my desires because I feared rejection.
WHY I would early attach and move in after 1 month or so?!
WHY I would get super needy, angry, and anxious if the masculine pulled away.
WHY I would use sex to hook men in as I couldn’t face being on my own.
WHY I found vulnerability so hard as I was so scared they would take advantage of me.
WHY I would resent the masculine because they couldn’t give me what I wanted (even though I never asked!)
WHY I would change my plans for the masculine and wait on them to decide what we were doing.
WHY I would spend much time in my masculine and attract men in their feminine, and the sexual energy would go after a while.
WHY I would numb out in the ways I used to.
Years of attempting to protect my abandonment wound with people-pleasing ways, making unconscious choices that only attracted more of what I didn’t want. It was nothing short of exhausting.
And so, yesterday I was reminded of my journey with my people-pleasing shadow this year, when I decided to ski off-piste and play around in this small gully with the little powder that was left. The experience was hard, and in some moments I heard the inner dialogue going,
"Why did you come down here? It’s tiring and difficult, why didn’t you take the easy route?"
And yet, the moments I found a little bit of untouched powder, it was divine and well worth the journey off-piste...
The Reward of Transformation
This experience and yet while it’s been hard, gruelling in moments (as if I were running a never-ending gauntlet), the reward has been priceless.
It’s given me the unwavering clarity of what I was put on this earth to do.
It’s given me laser-like awareness of my people-pleaser and what to do when she shows up.
It’s transformed my relationship with myself as I LOVE myself harder.
My relationship with my partner has changed beyond recognition (for the better).
The behaviours listed above have fallen away.
This journey isn’t for everyone, just as skiing off-piste with these conditions isn’t either.
And yet, has it been worth it?
I would say so.
