Quote:
Originally Posted by Needsmet
I feel the same. I dont have stats to prove one way or another. But I suspect that this is common to Avoidants.
I always want to please people. I am a people pleaser. I think this is a positive thing. Being a people please is a good thing, but its easy to get taken advantage of in our society. I often allow others to take the lead and have their way.
This is because of inadequacy. I think that others are better than me and have more value than I do.
This is wrong. We all have value. In fact I find that we have just as much to say, and perhaps more, than anyone else. And what we have to say is just as valuable and important as anyone else.
In fact, what we have to say is perhaps more valuable because we have been silent for so long. We have been spending a lot of time thinking and just sitting back and watching life.
We have amassed a wealth of knowledge and wisdom that needs to be shared. We just need to be brave enough to share it.
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You are so very right in the fact that, as 'people pleasers' we can be & are taken advantage of. Many times right in our own homes by the people who are supposed to love us the most.
That is my situation.
I was raised by Southern parents with highly conservative Christian values - in fact, my father is a minister (you should be able to identify with that, right?!
So, you've got a built-in "people pleaser" right there as a 'Pastor's Daughter'. My older sister was the 'perfect one': she epitomized goodliness and was obedient to the core. She was & is a good person. However, there were two brothers in between us, the younger of those two abused me from as long as I can remember until I was in HS. It was a horrid, horrid existence. When I tried to tell my parents, they told me to "go & pray about it", refusing to believe anything except that he was a 'mean & sometimes violent boy'. I remember him laughing at me in the hallway. His face was twisted in a devil's sneer. I was scared to death of him. I had never felt so alone & betrayed. I was 7 years old.
I have so much residual 'muck' from trying to deal with all of that on my own - feeling alone & helpless; abandoned; forced to stay & 'perform' my duties; being looked down on by my parents for 'acting out'; and the endless, endless pain. I became obsessed with seeking the approval of others. Even to the point of setting aside my own dreams/plans and 'doing what I was told' for my life. I attended the university they chose, majored in the field they wanted me to, dated the guys they picked.... Three kids, 28 years & what seems like eons of depression later, I can now realize how damaging the whole 'seeking approval' mantra has been on my life. If I had been able to break free of that belief system long ago, I would have been able to escape the chains of someone else's plans for my life, someone else's dreams and the demeaning control of an ungrateful, disparaging & abusive spouse.
Yet I am not bitter. I simply want to go on from here and make the best of what I can. You are so right when you say that 'what we have to say is perhaps more valuable because we have been silent for so long'. I could not have said it better myself.