People Pleasing and the Invisible Bruises

To put it lightly, I’m a people pleaser. For as long as I can remember, I’ve worked hard to not disappoint others and live up to what I assume their expectations are for me. Here’s an example: In third grade I joined a softball team. It was pretty good for a bunch of third graders, but my skills weren’t up to par. When I was up to bat, I would try to swing twice–but if I missed, I would purposely step into the plate to get hit by the ball so I could walk to first base. The amount of bruises I had that year was unreal, but I would rather take the physical pain than have my coach and teammates disappointed in me. I look back at this story with humor, but it speaks to a larger narrative of my life, taking bruises willingly to avoid disappointment. 

In my mid 20s this issue came to a head. My family went through a year where everything that once was stable, crumbled. There was cancer, mental illness, and trauma all within an 8-month period of time. I quickly found a job closer to home and went into full gear trying to meet the needs of those around me, and at the end of the year I was left broken and feeling lonely and abandoned. I knew I needed help, so I sought therapy for the first time, read books and let others in, in an attempt to understand what got me to where I was at. 

These are some of my biggest takeaways:

1. It was important to understand what was motivating the people-pleasing. For me, it was a deep fear that if I didn’t meet other’s needs, I would be unloved. This created a motivating drive to try to get love by pleasing.

2. Once I understood the motivation and the cycle it created, it was important to create boundaries. These boundaries were not to protect myself or to keep others out, but were done to live in healthy relationships with others. The framework that helped me create boundaries and live with boundaries was this idea of a shared space in a relationship. This was demonstrated to me by my therapist throwing three couch pillows on the ground in a row. She pointed to the pillow on the left, saying, “This is your pillow,” and then pointed to the pillow on the right, saying, “This is my pillow–and this pillow in the middle is our shared relationship.” She proceeded to tell me that no one has the right to move onto my pillow and to get onto someone else’s pillow would be a violation of their trust and love. When I try to please and anticipate others’ needs, I am rushing into their space. What my therapist invited me to do in relationships was to allow others to come to the middle for relationships. Relationships were meant to be lived in this shared relational space where both of us hold risk, responsibility and ownership. 

I learned how to invite others to hold mutual space while still being able to return to my own pillow and allow them to return to theirs.

3. The boundary work was important, but part of what helped me do this hard work was recognizing I couldn’t expect others to meet my need to be loved. Instead, I needed to do my own work to meet those needs. As a follower of Jesus, I started to grapple with the reality that although I knew Jesus loved me, I didn’t actually believe He loved me deep down in my gut and I’m not sure I knew how to love myself. I started to dive deep into my own doubt about God’s love, engaging biblical passages about God’s love in ways that allowed me to show my face to God. It was in this work that I started to see God’s heart for me as His child. As I saw God’s heart for me, it became easier to recognize that I was worth loving. I also began to see the many bruises that I had absorbed over the years from invisible softballs, and to allow him to start to heal those bruises and show me the beauty underneath.

It was through deep pain that I started to realize how my people pleasing was hurting me, but as I started to engage in understanding my motives, putting boundaries into place and experiencing the Father’s love for me, healing started. The people pleaser voice is still there, but it is also matched by an ability to choose to engage relationships in mutually healthy ways. If you resonate at all with my journey, may we learn to engage in the mutual spaces together and to trust the good of staying on our pillow.

To learn more about how to set boundaries, I recommend the book:

Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud and John Townsend.

Sarah Jenson has a Masters in Spiritual Formation and Soul Care and is pursuing a Master’s Degree in Psychology with an Emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy at Fuller Theological Seminary and is a Practicum Trainee at Champion Counseling Center.