I am what you’d call a people pleaser.  A giver.  A grace-giving, loving, hospitable servant of others. A person that gives to others physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

It sounds braggy and self-inflating, but it really isn’t.  I really am all of those things, and I come by them honestly.  I was raised in a family that believes in “others before self,” the kind of family that, without being asked, helps you tie 300 bows on custom made cards at 4 am because you failed to plan ahead very well (or at all).  I had the mom that everyone knew because she baked for EVERY bake sale, and volunteered at EVERY event, and sold snacks out of the concession stand or sat in the bleachers for EVERY game of every sport we ever played.  I had the dad who hosted every party for every family gathering and every class reunion for as long as I can remember.  I was raised in a culture of giving, and service, and kindness.  I was taught that the best way to love others is through acts of wholehearted grace.  I was nurtured to consider every person’s feelings, extend every possible courtesy to everyone involved, to always give attention to the desires and goals of others when making a decision that might affect them.

EXCELLENT LESSONS.  I am glad I learned them.  And I do still believe those things to be true.

The trouble came when I took “others before self” too far.  Trouble comes when I TAKE it too far, because I still do that.  I do it without thinking, and for the wrong reasons.

I am a people pleaser, but for me you can translate “people pleaser” to mean “afraid.”  I am afraid.  I am afraid that I will disappoint.  I am afraid I will FAIL.

I was NURTURED to serve others… giving and kind and generous and a helper to all mankind.  What wasn’t taken into account, though, is that I am already NATURALLY that way.  My deck of cards was already stacked toward “giving away the farm,” and then I was taught to do it more.  I was taught to give without question, and help without discernment.  Oh, and I’m also a perfectionist.  AND I’m an overachiever.  When a naturally giving, perfectionist overachiever is nurtured to be MORE that way and never taught to discern…  …well, then you get people like me.

People pleaser.  HARD.  I don’t know how to NOT try and please people.

And that’s not even the worst part.

I’m not just a people pleaser in the sense that I’d do for others what they wouldn’t do for themselves (because I am inclined to do that a lot), I’m a people pleaser in EVERY. POSSIBLE. WAY.  I attempt to please others with my image, thoughts, words, ideas, and choices.  I don’t want to upset  or disappoint anyone ever, for any reason.  The worst most terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing I could do would be to make someone else upset because I said the wrong thing, or wore something they didn’t like, or expressed myself contrary to what they believe, or made a choice that they don’t agree with.  I would bend myself over backwards and fold myself in half to make someone else happy no matter how much suffering or pain or misery it brought me.  I did it for a long, long, long time.  I do that still.  Not for everyone all the time (like I used to), but for the people closest to me, the people I love the most, I do that still.  My kids, my sister, my brother, my parents, uncles, aunts, cousins.

I don’t want to be a disappointment.

Figuring out where the lines were drawn between “what’s okay” and “what’s not okay” was difficult as a child.  I lived in the drastic dichotomy of a culturally blended family with two drastically different sets of rules.  My mother is Japanese and true to the stereotype of demure, meek, passive, somewhat withdrawn, and completely politically correct.  My father is Norwegian Viking, barrel chested, aggressive, confident, offensive, and loud, conquering everyone and everything he comes in contact with like his ancestors before him.

I take after my father.  …which for me made life way more difficult, and way more entertaining.

By location we folded in quite tightly with my dad’s five brothers, four sisters, and my thirty-odd cousins.  I say this lovingly and without judgement – my dad’s family is composed primarily of rednecks.  They are salt-of-the-earth, gun-toting, game-hunting, homesteading, beer-swigging, hard-working, give-it-your-all people.  They are the kind of people that, when you throw a party and run out of beer, they simply walk to their cars and pull out case after case of Schmidt Ice from their trunks to keep the good times a-rollin’.  They’re the kind of people that chase unwanted visitors off their property with shovels and shotguns.  They are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT the kind of people you want on your team during the zombie apocalypse.

By upbringing we were held tightly to my mother’s way of living.  Although we were raised outside of the Japanese extended family we were still held to many of those expectations:  excellence in education, pursuance of perfection, demand for greatness.  I was exposed to the world, music, art, dance, theater, baking, crafts, table manners, and a softness that wasn’t to be found from the Vikings. With my temperament inclined to take after my father, GOD ONLY KNOWS what I would have become without the gentler Asian influence.  It rounded out the sharp and pointy edges of my personality.

I am grateful for the exposure to both cultures NOW, but at the time it was confusing. There were two sets of rules depending on which family we spent time with, two sets of expectations, two sets of acceptable behaviors.  While “Mom’s rules” would have been accepted in both families, using them in Dad’s family meant you got beat up, bowled over, and left behind.  Thanks to my “got it from my dad” disposition I was fine with that family, but it made visits to my mom’s family …uncomfortable.  Confusing.  Awkward.  Difficult.  Miserable.  Humiliating.  I learned that using “Dad’s rules” in the Japanese family meant you got sent to your room.  A LOT.

I hated it.  Not because I got in trouble, but because I failed.  Over and over and again.  DISAPPOINTMENT AGAIN.

I DO NOT WANT TO BE A DISAPPOINTMENT.  I do not want to be a failure.

I honestly can’t remember one time in my life when I haven’t felt that way.  Even at a young age, five or six, I remember my parents expressing disappointment in me and it made me wish I was dead.  Any punishment for any reason was devastating to my heart, but the punishments that I received because I was being… well, being myself, were the worst ones.

You’d think I’d have been used to upsetting them for being ME.  Along with a desire to serve others I was blessed with a profound ability to put my foot in my mouth.  I can’t even begin to count the times I was told “GO TO YOUR ROOM” for uttering an insulting (ALBEIT ALWAYS TRUTHFUL) comment.  “Just because it’s true doesn’t mean you should say it” was my childhood mantra.

On occasion I did actually EARN redirecting discipline.  Telling my mom loudly at the checkout stand “Mommy look, that lady has yellow teeth” was hugely embarrassing to everyone within earshot.  Yes I was a child, and yes children are inclined to “tell it like it is,” but that tendency did not diminish as I got older.  I did eventually learn TACT, but like a genuine compulsive if it was true and I thought it I HAD TO SAY IT.  EVEN STILL.  IF IT’S TRUE AND I THINK IT I HAVE TO SAY IT.  Thankfully I have learned how to point my near-Tourette verbal compulsion in a productive direction.  I have been told that I’m quite good with words and communicating with others, but my studies of the English language and tactics for effective communication are just as much about self-preservation as genuine interest.

Every time I upset someone by speaking my mind, for being too bold, for being too rough around the edges, I would get sent to my room to “think about what you’ve done.”  I would trudge down the hall with my mind spinning to make sense of “why can’t I say it if it’s true,” and my heart aching, and the voices in my head chastising me all the way.

“You did it again. You’re not being good enough.  You FAILED.  They don’t like you, they sent you away.  You’re not enough.  BE BETTER.  BE PERFECT.”

I would tear my little-kid-self to pieces.

And so I learned.  I learned that you don’t say what you’re thinking out loud because people will be angry with you and send you away.  I learned that the truth, although always, always RIGHT, isn’t always acceptable.  I learned that people very rarely want to hear the truth because it destroys their self-deception, that people LIKE living in their delusion, and people get bitter and hurt and angry when you pop their bubbles of fantasy.  I learned that on the inside I was fundamentally different than those around me because no matter how thick the bullshit was painted on I could still see reality underneath, and that even when I tried to NOT see it it was still as easy to see as sand in the Sahara.

I learned that there is a big difference between what I am and what people want me to be, and that my best effort should be put into closing the gap between those two versions of myself.

I learned to project someone different than my true self in order to feel loved.

I learned to be someone I wasn’t.

I suppose that out of love we do this to some extent, and we do this often.  We hold back a bit to spare someone’s feelings, or avoid saying what we’re thinking because it isn’t productive.  As a mother I put a lid on my insecurities and shortcomings to exemplify to my kids the mom I want to be, not the very scared, I-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing person that I am.

It’s different, though, when you do that all the time.  And for a very LONG time.  AND for reasons that are outside of your integrity.  It’s different when you’re pretending for so long, shooting for perfect to avoid failure for SO LONG, that you forget who you really are.

I forgot who I really was. And honestly, I started pretending at such a young age I don’t know if I ever really KNEW who I was.

My whole life has been spent trying to keep other people happy.  My marriage happened because I was afraid of how my parents and family would react to me living with someone without being married, so marriage was the next step.  My choice of classes, my desired job as an MD, the sports I played, the grades I got, the location of the college I chose, the church I attended, MY BODY IMAGE.  All of those things were “what I wanted” because it was what I thought THEY wanted.

It sounds so incredibly lame.  AND IT IS.  And I was.  I was so lost, and so confused.  For years and years.

When you try to follow the paths others lay down for you, when you strive toward goals for anyone other than yourself, you lose yourself along the way.  Even if they’re also yours, your goals are no longer YOURS.  You change.  You become someone else, a stranger to yourself.  And one day you wake up and have no idea how you got where you are, or where you turned off your own path, or what your own path looks like.

Or how to find it.

I remember the day I woke up.

It was Saturday, June 13, 2009.  I woke up that morning with a hangover from drinking, a headache, and a monster bloat because of a huge binge.  I woke to a three month old baby crying next to my head, an eighteen month old toddler crying from the next room, and a three year old child that barely tolerated me stirring down the hall.  About four feet away on the other side of a wall of pillows lay the stranger I had been married to for nearly 10 years, sleeping soundly and not to be bothered.

I rolled my ample 160-ish pound self up to a sitting position, my head spinning, pushed back the waves of nausea and took a breath.  The normal “what’s the fucking point” feelings of suicide were there like every other morning, but something was different that day.  For some reason I looked over at the angry, hungry, crying baby next to me, listened to the crying kids down the hall, looked at the mess on the floor I hadn’t gotten to the day before, at the walls of the rental house I really didn’t feel comfortable in, at the man that hadn’t really looked at me or touched me in almost a year, at my swollen feet, at my mommy-tummy folded over onto my lap, and I just …woke up.

REALLY woke up.

And I broke down in tears.

I realized that I had no idea what road I was on, or how I got there.  I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d felt happy, or what it felt like to belly laugh until I cried, or to feel anything other than darkness and loneliness and self-loathing.  I couldn’t remember what FREE felt like, or what it felt to be just unburdened enough to smile at something stupid.  What it felt like to not be failing.  What it felt like to be PROUD of myself, or to be glad for even just one choice I’d made the day before.  At that point, in that moment, I didn’t know what it was I wanted or where I was headed.

I just knew “Not this.”

“NO MORE.”

That was the day I decided shit had to change.

That was the day I discovered for the first time ever, I think, the priority of SELF.

I started making some (what I considered at the time to be) pretty significant efforts to fix my marriage.  I put myself back on birth control and took charge of my body.  I started eating more and binging less.  The cycle of eating disorder didn’t stop completely, but it did wane considerably.  I stopped drinking almost full stop.  I got in touch with some old friends that knew me before I’d lost my way.  Having them remind me of who I was while I was closer to my own path helped me to find my way back to it.  I lost a considerable amount of weight.  I was on the path toward something hopeful.

Change is hard, though.  I learned that fixing a marriage takes TWO people, not just one.  I learned that no matter how badly I wanted things to change very rarely do those changes come easily, or for free.  After six months of trying to dig myself out of the hole I was in I realized things weren’t going to be different for me unless I left my marriage.  It was a hard decision to make.  People pleaser, remember?  I was in a position where I had to choose between keeping everyone happy, doing what everyone else wanted, what my nuclear, old-fashioned, morally straight family wanted, or doing what I knew I needed to do to LIVE.

It was a hard choice, but I believe that I made the right one.  I chose to put myself over others in a BIG WAY.  I chose to survive, and thrive, and live the truth instead of faking a lie.

Since then I’ve made a lot more big decisions with regard to myself.  I stopped drinking completely.  Haven’t had a drink in almost three years.  I stopped smoking, stopped taking drugs in almost every form.  I even shy away from antihistamines because of the drowsiness they cause.  I’ve stopped saying “yes I’ll do that for you” to anyone that asks (I still do help, just not for everyone all the time), stopped pouring myself completely into all of the sob stories that cross my path (I still do pour myself into SOME, just not ALL).  I’ve learned to hold something back for myself, that it’s okay to sit and watch a movie once or four times a week, that clean laundry can sit in the hamper for a few days, that the world won’t end if I leave dirty dishes in the sink, that it’s okay to tell my kids “Not right now, I’m going to finish my work first,” or that I can put off work for a whole afternoon to go blow bubbles with them at the park.

I’ve come to realize and accept that the grace-giving, service-oriented person I have always been is a pretty amazing person, and that I like her.  She is kind and loving and caring.  She leaves all people she meets better than when she found them, but she leaves HERSELF better than when she found them, too.

The biggest and last obstacles for me to overcome are my disordered eating and exercise habits, and thanks to Weight Loss Rebels even those are falling into place.

Working out regularly is an act of SELF.  Telling my kids “okay, I need 20 minutes to get sweaty” is something I NEVER would have been able to do even two months ago.  I’m still learning how to prioritize myself and my exercise, how to fold myself and my desires and goals into the huge to-do list that keeps my job and kids and life organized.

Taking time to write these blogs and journal about my food cravings, making the kids eat Paleo even though they don’t understand where their cereal went, making TFB try quinoa, throwing out junk food in my house that someone else paid for are all acts of SELF.  I’m still learning that until I take myself and my priorities seriously enough to plan for them and make them happen, there’s no way I’m going to get healthy. 

I’m still learning every day, but I do think I finally know who I am.  I’m back on the right path, surrounded (mostly, almost there) by the people that love me for the REAL me, not the pretend me I put out there to be accepted and loved.  I LIKE ME, which is new and wonderful and exciting.  Self and I are getting along really well.

I’ve read story after story on WLR forums and many, many Facebook pages about women that don’t understand why they’re not given more support.  Why people around them don’t make their journey easier, why is it so hard to stay on target and make the right choices.  I understand that the problems we face as individuals are as complex and diverse as the people that have them, but I wonder how many of those people struggle with their journey because they don’t adequately prioritize themselves.  How different would your journey be if you said “HELL OR HIGH WATER I am going to get what I want?”  If you were willing to set aside all of the obstacles in your path in the name of SELF?  If you looked at your kids-spouse-boyfriend-girlfriend-family-friends and said “I do love you, but this is for me and I have to do this.  Walk beside me or get out of my way.”

As a first-class people pleaser I know how hard that is.  I know that putting yourself first is an act of defiance and goes against EVERYTHING YOU ARE.  I also know, now that I’m on the other side of the trench, that it’s really the only way.  Only when we understand and embrace the priority of self can we achieve for ourselves what we desire most.

The next time someone tries to blow your diet with a cookie, or carelessly offers you second helpings of a cheat meal, or buys you a drink without asking, remember your priorities and how you feel about yourself.  PRIORITIZE YOURSELF.  Decide that SELF supercedes fleeting desires, or keeping someone happy, or doing it “their way.”

Decline politely and remind yourself, “I know what I want.  It is MY TURN.  THIS IS MY TIME.”

Hello, Self, let’s go kick some ass.

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