Shedding the Old Skin

People Pleasing…Again


Though I mention my husband in this, it is not about my husband. It is about me. What I say about my husband in no way reflects on him but how I perceive him, and that is what this article is about…that and how I perceive people and their opinions and expectations in general.

I have been very discontent recently. I started a kick on minimalism, but I also had a realization that everything we own pretty much is four years old or older, and most things are falling apart and might need replaced. I still don’t have a job, but the steps to getting a job are getting closer and closer and closer every day. I have hopes that within the next month or two, I will have a job. I am excited to contribute to the household financially again! I feel like this has been a great time for me to process trauma and to find out what needs to stay and what needs to go, but I’m starting to squander it a bit. I thought my new hobbies of minimalism and food shopping and cooking were all good things until I got mixed reviews from people… and then my brain went haywire. These are people I care about and who care about me. My husband, my doctors, myself included, all had doubts on whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. I started doubting my independence and my voice, whether spending more time apart from my husband and enjoying it was a good thing or whether it was a bad thing. Wondering whether spending all this money on food to cook that won’t go bad right away was a great thing because it meant eating healthier and giving me self-confidence or if it was another thing for me to possibly fail at.

The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that most of my hobbies and how I felt about my hobbies were at first dictated by how I felt, which was a good thing. But as soon as I shared it with someone else and got any other opinion, people pleasing kicked in. My opinion changed based on how they felt about it. Then my opinion changed based on how I felt about how they felt about it, and it was a convoluted spiral of guilt and shame before long. And no, it hasn’t been my husband, though he has been the one who I have spent the most of my time with, he has been my most avid supporter! He has also been the one who I have taken one wrong word and exponentially multiplied it times a hundred, and again, that’s not on him. That’s 100% on me!

I have been changing, and he has been changing, and I don’t think I have fully figured out how to voice what is going on with me and what is changing inside me. I want more independence, but I don’t love him any less! I’ve never learned how to voice my boundaries and wants and needs without having to yell to be heard, so I snapped the other night, and I felt horrible! He took it in stride, and I love him for being so forgiving to me. I am trying to figure out my voice, and while I do that, it feels like I need more space, but I feel guilty asking for space. And I still can’t help the thoughts from the past creeping up of “people in love don’t need alone time” and “you should be able to handle social interactions” and “you have to please everybody.”

I guess I’m just in a position of flux. Change is happening, and I don’t like it. It’s uncomfortable. But I guess if it was comfortable, everyone would be doing it.

What small changes are you making in your life?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Drunk Uncle Boundaries

Did That Seriously Come Out of Their Mouth? We all have that friend or family member who we wince when cornered by. They lock eyes, and it seems the conversation never ends. Worse, it seems like they have opposite views as you do, but they don’t care. They just nod their heads until you nod your head and pretend like you’re enjoying the conversation. Then they take that as their cue to continue for half an hour more. If someone tries to save you, there’s a 50/50 chance they will be pulled into the conversation too, depending on how skillful they are it could lean more heavily on the side of damage. I get you. There are fortunately many Facebook reels about this very topic. Just keep researching “narcissist” and eventually Facebook will point you to these very people. Some of them don’t possess empathy. Some of them have no idea what another person could feel or think besides themselves. They are stuck in their own corner of the world. I am no expert in this, but I took classes on bound...
Read more

Autism in My Own Words Part 1

Autism in My Own Words Part 1   I don’t know how we do it. Or how “normal people” do it… they gather, have parties, talk, drink, eat, “mingle,” etc. I find myself talked at while I find a person’s eyebrows or lips moving and try to lipread to help decipher through the noise what they are trying to say. I thought I was the only one contorting my face in a carefully practiced dance of lips, cheeks, and especially eyebrows to make level expert look what everyone else looked like what level easy looked like. I’ve been doing it my whole life, and I’ve been doing it so long that I’ve forgotten I’ve even been doing it. Until I got diagnosed with autism and found others like me. And my mask slipped. Suddenly I was “being autistic” and “not who I was before.” Everything was harder, and my eyebrows took more energy to move, my eyebrows could hardly stay awake, and so many more things took so much more energy. I have hardly been to a social gathering since then. But today I was talking ...
Read more

From A Candle

Let It All Burn To The Ground No, don’t let it all burn to the ground. Then you would be left with nothing but grief and nothing to start from. Change comes slowly and from using what you already have. I had a brilliant idea as I was falling asleep for a blog post, but of course I didn’t write it down or type it up, so poof it went! I needed some time by myself (which isn’t that difficult since I’m alone when my husband goes to work in the mornings as I’m searching for a job). I made it my self-care today to stare into a candle for five minutes and put on some music, hoping that would rejuvenate me. I was also hoping it would inspire me to write a post. I’ve been holding off on what I’ve been learning in Partial until after the New Year, making way this past week for change and hope and New Year stuff, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I felt like Christmas just went awry in my attempts at changing others. And I shouldn’t have been seeking to change others in the first place. So I’m sittin...
Read more