Pathological People-Pleasing

People pleasers, givers, martyrs....where would we be in life without them right?  I mean...if nobody opened the door for anyone else in public, there's be a whole lot of smashed faces walkin' around.  I remember thinking as a kid whenever "Let's Make A Deal" was on t.v., how I always wanted to hang out with the "mom" who had the most stuff in her purse to show Monty Hall when asked.  He'd say things like "Show me eight bobby pins and I'll give you $50.00!"  (And back then, that was a lot of dough!)  Or he might request a notebook...or matches...or a snack item.   In my young mind, any "mom" who was that prepared was the kind of mom I wanted!  Back then I didn't know how moms like these were also typically people pleasers, because who really carries a bunch of stuff around in her own purse for "somebody else" who might need or want it?!
As time passed, I learned more and more about people pleasers and "why" I believed they were so pathologically "nice".  This, in direct opposition to my own parents, who were about one step short of a professional career in grifting for fun and profit.
Now that I am "grown" and do this for a living, I can see both the positive side---and the shadow side of the people pleasing paradigm. 
So let's look at "appropriate" people pleasing first.  It's pretty simple actually.  You treat others how you yourself would hope to be treated in whatever circumstance you find yourself in.  As I type that, I am reminded of the saying "Sometimes saying "Be Yourself!" is the worse advice you could possibly give to a person."  So if you are one of those people whose middle name is "drama"....please ignore what I just typed here.  Your goal would be to treat others in the exact opposite way you want or are used to being treated!
Holding the door open for someone who is right behind you in public....saying "God bless you" when someone sneezes within your earshot...offering a tissue if someone "obviously" needs one and you're right there (with tissues on your person)...these are all small examples of practicing not only good manners, proper etiquette, but appropriate people-pleasing skills as well.  We acknowledge what is going on around us which involves another person or persons...and we do what we can comfortably "do" in order to help, assist, encourage, and/or motivate them in a positive way.  Pretty simple stuff.  What's not so simple is understanding when people pleasing behaviors become pathological in nature....and why.
Susan was a client of mine who was raised to believe she was basically "nothing" unless she was doing something for someone else.  Her self esteem was below zero by the time I met her.  She had an overbearing and demanding mother, an emotionally vacant and often-times absent father, and little brothers and sisters who looked to her as their primary caregiver as all were growing up together under the same roof.  We all know people with Susan's same history...maybe even yourself.  My best friend in childhood was certainly a Susan also.  She couldn't even go out with me on a Saturday after her "chores" were done UNLESS we also dragged her younger sister, brother and dog along with us wherever we were going.  At the time, I viewed her life as "normal" because I didn't know anything different myself. 
But then Susan grew up.  And Susan really never stopped with the people-pleasing behaviors..but now it was definitely out of control.  She told me a story about having a pizza party for her youngest child and waiting until every kid and adult at the party had two or three go arounds with the pizzas before she dared to take one for herself.  Nobody was looking to see "when" she did or didn't take a piece of pizza...nobody was going to judge her harshly if she ate when everyone else ate.  But in Susan's mind, she was being "selfish" if she took a piece of pizza before everyone else had two or three chances to get theirs.  Seriously Susan?  Yes, Susan was most certainly serious.  And that was just a "small" example of her people-pleasing behaviors gone pathological.
Another story involved Susan "volunteering" to bring items to a party her sister-in-law was having and hosting in her own home.  Since Susan didn't think a whole lot of her sister-in-law's ability to people-please her own parents (and Susan's in-laws), Susan thought she'd do "Anne" a favor by basically bringing the entire party over to Anne's house...decorations, paper products, crystal water pitchers, drinking glasses, silverware, and all.  And this was before Susan decided what food items she would bring!  Again, people-pleasing gone pathological...but now on behalf of someone else's "lack" of people-pleasing skills (in Susan's own mind that is)!
I asked Susan what she expected "for real" as a result of all this people-pleasing behavior at the expense of her own general mental health and well-being.  She said she didn't know.  (Which is a typical answer I receive to this question which came as no surprise!).  The reason why Susan didn't know is because Susan never really stopped to figure out who she was and what she was authentically about as a person separate and apart from her life-long training in the "Serve Others Unto Death" lifestyle.
Like I have often said to clients over the years, "If you want to give that much, go to school and become a nurse!"  At least with nursing, your "giving" to your patients can definitely make the difference between life and death for them.  But to pursue a never-ending series of "giving moments" in your private life is not only exhausting...it is insane!  Especially when you find yourself doing mental somersaults over "Well, I should  blah blah blah so she won't feel blah blah blah."  Are you kidding me?  You do NOT have to think of someone else's "possible" feelings, needs, or wants and how to satisfy them before the other person even realizes what it is they do feel, need, or want!!  No!  Bad bad habit!  Break it before it breaks you!
So that's what I want to share on the topic of pathological people pleasing.  If this sounds like you, call me.  You definitely need my help.  Stat.

Friends....(by me and not Jody Watley!)

Whenever I speak with someone who is more "down" than up (whether this is happening in my personal life---or professionally at my office), there always is at least one common thread present.  That thread is what I will be speaking about today in this post.  It is the thread of "disconnection"...
Just yesterday one of my fifteen-year old clients was struggling with identifying exactly "what" it is that has caused her to risk what she has over the past several months.  It took a little while, but she finally was able to articulate it as follows:  "I don't have enough friends."  Gotcha.  So let's talk about how and why this state of being can happen to any of us at any time in our lives....
Friendship is considered to be a gift.  It is a gift to you and a gift to the person you are friends with.  Unfortunately, many so-called "friends" are not really friends at all.   I can remember as a young woman in my mid-teens and early 20s how easy it was to spot OR to be someone who just needed a warm body to join them at the bar (or a party) on any given night.  Being authentic "friends" didn't even enter into the equation.  If you were alive, breathing, and didn't look like a complete hot mess...you qualified for receiving a phone call around 8:00PM asking "Do you want to go to Coral Gables tonite?"  (Don't ask, Coral Gables used to be a real place o.k.?!)  Back then, it didn't matter if you had any real conversations or not while "out" with one another;  the whole goal was to party party party and then make sure you made it home before 3:00AM.  I was just as guilty of treating my "friends" back then as objects as they did me.  There were too many new people to meet (as it usually is when you are 16-25) and if people ended up dropping out of your life or you dropped out of theirs, who cared?  There were always more where they came from!
Yet it is this type of thinking that is at the very heart of the problem.  When we start getting used to loving things and "opportunties" more than we do people, we can get into a kind of trouble that follows us throughout our adult lives.   People are NOT things to be used to advance our opportunities...make us "look" good....or to help us only when we are in real trouble.  We are ALL of us people each with our own unique needs, wants, feelings, attitudes, opinions,and beliefs!  Even a fool knows when he or she is being treated like a thing.  It doesn't feel good. 
Treating each other as "equals" instead of "I'm up here and you're down there" or "You're up here and I'm down there" is the first step towards making the "right" kinds of friends for yourself.  Don't forget it.  It's easy to forget it especially when you meet someone whom you feel is "SO great!" or "SO together!" or "SO amazing!"  Nobody is that great, together, or amazing o.k.?  Get over it.  We're all equals!
Having said this, the "next" issue I see that most influences a person's ability to make or keep "good" friendships is how they handle conflict/disappointment/incompatible (fill in the blanks) which may arise.  I had a childhood friend who had a whole lot of expectations regarding her "friends" that I never realized until she started yelling at me about what I "did" and "didn't do" as her friend (that she of course did NOT like!).  This after watching her "lose" a considerable amount of friends over the years for similarly self-perceived transgressions committed against her.  You don't "owe" your friends a good life...you don't "owe" them an entertaining evening (though I have to say I am really good at that one!)...and you certainly don't "owe" them happiness if they aren't happy people to begin with!  Some friends you make may end up being more "high maintenance" over time than you ever dared to imagine.  It's o.k. to either forgive them and accept who they are while maintaining your friendship....just as it is equally o.k. to give them the ditch.  Just be honest with yourself (and with them!) if you are going the route of the ditch.  Nobody is going to get "better" if they don't know what they did to ruin the friendship (in your eyes that is!).  So tell them.  And don't be a chicken about it either.
The last issue I am going to bring up about friendship has to do with knowing yourself well enough so you can "be" yourself in the context of a friendship relationship.  If you don't know who you truly are, you are ripe for becoming anyone you "think" anyone else wants you to be....which is not a good thing in the long run.  This ties in to the "you're a person and not an object" issue described earlier in this post.  Just because someone approaches you as a potential "new" friend does NOT mean you have to respond if you don't want to.  Did you always say "yes" to any person who asked you out on a date?  DOH!  You don't have to always say "yes"...and you can say "no".  It's o.k.  It's not the end of the world.  Rejection whether it is real or perceived is neither fatal nor contagious!  If you need time to figure out who you are, please take it!  There's nothing worse than a "friend" who is so afraid to be themselves that they end up feeling like a flea on a dog's back for anyone who knows them!
So---there you have it....friends!

Digging Up Photos...and Bones

I wrote in an earlier post this year about my "family scrapbook" project.  I'm not quite finished yet...but I'm getting there.  My last round of photo-collecting opportunities had to do with my maternal grandfather's side of the family.  One of eight kids, there were only two who I understand made it to the U.S. from this teeny-tiny village in Croatia.  My grandfather Eli....and his brother Jovo.  As Eli settled here in a surburb of Detroit, my great-uncle Jovo settled in Chicago.
I always wanted to find out about my extended families as I was growing up, but it seemed I never got too far.  Nobody knew the name of my grandmother's mother...then they didn't know the name of my grandfather's mother (this was on my mother's side).  Then there was my father who never mentioned a sister he had and who had died when she was 14.  I tell ya, trying to get information (let alone any photos!) from my parents was worse than trying to dig up bones with a plastic spoon!  And to try and figure out who was who in relation to my grandparents' siblings on all sides was a joke.  So I gave up---for a long long time.
It wasn't until around the year 2000 that I finally figured out how the internet could help me finally identify all these "relatives" I had both here in our country and abroad.  Through some hardcore sleuthing, I found a first cousin in Sydney (my father's only brother's daughter!).  Over the last ten years, I have made some easy and other times tenuous connections with cousins from both sides of my parents' families.
You know the saying, "Be careful what you wish for.."?  I can now admit that finding out what I have since my scrapbook project began has brought up a whole lot more than just old photographs from the various branches of my family tree.  It has brought up some hard truths that have helped me to understand the legacies I inherited as a result of being born into the family I was born into.
In psychology, we often work with clients to create genograms, which is very different from a typical family tree.  Instead of focusing on names and dates to identify who was born when, who got married to who and had which kids, and when everyone died....genograms get into the "icky stuff" of family history.  Who were the alcoholics, womanizers, gamblers, runaways, thieves, convicts, and relatives to one another.  "How" any given genogram is customized is limited only by the creator's imagination.  I've seen and created genograms for clients that document completed suicides occurring within a family history....incest....acts of violence....illegtimate children....and whatever else has happened "more than once" up and down one's family tree.
Digging up bones with a plastic spoon is one thing;  having those bones handed to you like two-by-fours is quite another.  For example, I had no idea I came from a long-enough line of womanizers on my maternal grandfather's side of the family.  But I do.  So much so that even today, in 2012, a seventy-year old male cousin of mine (who I have never met mind you!) cut himself off from his branch of our family decades ago and moved thousands of miles away.  Never married...had no children himself...but  when I was shown his photo on Facebook, he's quite the handsome devil even now.  Go figure.  I've tried contacting him, but I assume that effort will get me nowhere.  After all, I'm part of "the family" and that's the last thing he wants anything to do with.  It's somewhat sad too because we do the same work but with different titles attached.  Go figure.  Oh wait...that's what I am doing by all this family scrapbook work in the first place!  Figuring...and understanding...and (hopefully!) continuing to break some of those old chains that have bound I and my cousins to one heck of a family tree for generations!
Nobody becomes a better person just because time has passed by.  There are lessons in everything you've experienced...and in what your family has experienced before you.  But if nobody stops to take a long-enough look and find out what those lessons actually are, then nobody will get better.  So start looking.