Kat’s back for another session. This time, we talk about their experience of people pleasing and worthlessness. Kat describes the ideal of being a “wantless angel” that spends their time satisfying other people’s needs and wants. It may sound awful, but sometimes I think the body can be a traumatic place to be and focusing on someone else can sometimes be a relief, and a great way to get needs for validation met… and of course, sometimes a place of avoidance that many of us visit regularly or vacation in occasionally.
I bring up the idea of slowing down the process of reliving trauma or “titrating” it, allowing someone to control how much they process at once. We talk about mental health and therapy. Finally, we make it to giving or getting permission to ask for what you want.
Resources
- https://askingforwhatyouwant.com
- I Don’t Want to Talk about It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression (Terrence Real from 1998)
- What does it mean to be a ‘good girl’? [“Among those socialized as girls, however, there’s a often particular extra-strong need to be nice, to put others’ needs before your own, and to follow the unwritten expectation that you must be compliant and self-sacrificing to be of value.” – Marcia Baczynski]
- What are your early experiences with being a ‘good girl’
- Have you always been a people pleaser?
- Where do you think your ideas about self-sacrifice came from?
- How has people pleasing negatively affected your life?
- Do you think people pleasing can have physical as well as psychological effects?
- Do you see benefits to being a people pleaser?
- How has people pleasing affected your relationships?
- What steps have you taken to overcome the good girl conditioning?
- How has shaking off the good girl conditioning (or at least trying to) benefitted your life?