In the bottom of this hole

Has it been that long?

Have you ever gotten a glimpse of reality that disagreed with whatever truth you thought was real?

I feel like I have been surrounded by darkness, gaslighting myself into believing it was the weather. The climate. Where I lived.

I didn’t realize how long it had been since I saw the sun. You’d think I would have noticed. Why didn’t I?

The darkness I think I see is the Earth around me.

Dirt.

Soil.

Surrounded.

Deep in the ground.

Isolated.

I’m not in the world I thought I was in.

I am under it.

Outside of it.

Without it.

For half my life, I have served others. I am neglecting myself. Starving my soul from sunlight. Gaslighting myself into thinking it is just the weather.

A champion people-pleaser. The ultimate codependent. Unable to prioritize Self over Other.

My senses weakened. Diminished. Starved.

My neurodivergent hypersensitivity is no longer directed inward, I have exhausted my resources being witness to other people’s needs.

I know how I ‘got here’, but how did I ‘get here’?

Many of us grow up believing our needs don’t matter. Kids figure out quickly when caregivers prioritize their own needs over ours. They are stressed out when we cry. They roll their eyes if we whine. They hit us if we are angry.

Many of us learn to suppress our needs. Because many of us are also intelligent, empathic, and hyper-aware, we then learn that we can find the love we are denied by trying to please the ones who deny us.

Yeah, I know, it sounds pathetic.

Eventually, the only accolades come when we precisely match others’ needs with our behavior. We can BE the things other people want. Then they love us. How could they not?

It’s an amazing system. A short-term acclimation to an unsafe environment. Children find the love they need in being the things other people want. It gets us through the day. It band-aids the pain we feel from being unseen.

It makes us invisible.

This Robin Williams quote has been running around in my head lately:

I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.

That whole ‘lonely in a group of people’ thing . . . It’s very sad. And very much a consequence of too much people-pleasing.

And I get it. It isn’t the people making me feel alone. It’s the attachment to an old belief that says

Iam unlovable. To be loved I must be the person that the people I want to love me will love.

That’s it, isn’t it?

The strategy is to mask up and be what other people want. Then it will be impossible for them not to love us.

To be visible we must mask up.

The process of masking is simultaneously genius and incredibly selfish. We mask, of course, to meet our most basic needs.

To feel safe.

To belong.

To be a part of.

To ‘un-otherize’ ourselves.

Nothing could be more understandable.

Yet, at the same time, it is so incredibly manipulative. And inauthentic. And dishonest. It makes me feel gross to admit any of this, as I’m sure it does any people-pleasing, hypervigilant masker.

So we ‘get here’ because we have to go somewhere.

Any port in a storm, amirite?

We can’t stand the feeling of aloneness. Of otherness. Of not belonging. Of being unloved.

Though we may love ourselves dearly, it all breaks down when we interact with and desire love from others.

I don’t know how regular people do it, but I get the people-pleasing strategy. We learn how to do it before we understand what we’re doing.

All we know is it solved the problem.

Being unseen. Unvalidated. Separate. These things are maladaptive and dangerous.

At some level, these are the most basic human needs. Without them, we are nothing. I can’t think of a better example of obligate connectedness. In the most Buddhist and Ecological sense possible.

We need to belong.

We need to be seen.

We need permission to be ourselves.

Absent those things, we will do whatever it takes to get them.

If you think about it, this also explains addiction. In the absence of belonging, we seek the feeling of belonging, which can be found in so many chemicals. In food. Sex.

Any port in a storm.

When the storm is over, do we even know?

If a people-pleaser in the woods is seen for their true selves, do they even recognize what real love is?

So the problem is, we don’t know what regular life is. We don’t know what reality looks like. We can’t tell the matrix from the room full of pods.

Which is why I thought the hole I was in was simply a cloudy day. I don’t know the difference anymore.

Eventually, the people-pleasing strategy becomes maladaptive. Sure, it helped us meet our basic needs when we were at our worst. But what, next? What about when we grow up and have the capacity to develop new strategies? When we learn confidence and find love for ourselves. Why do we struggle to let go of our old habits?

Old habits die hard.

Ain’t that the truth?

It’s hard to quit heroin. And so it is hard to not be a people-pleaser.

Somewhere down in the well, we can’t let go. We can’t detach from what has worked for us in the past.

No amount of learning, understanding, or acceptance can replace the trust we have in our drug of choice. People-pleasing will get us where we need to be, so we continue to do it. It is automatic. Ingrained at the chromosomal level. We are unable to manipulate the strategy from launching.

Unlearning.

Many of us have learned about ourselves and how we navigate our worlds. We realize what we do and wish we didn’t.

We want to quit smoking.

We want to leave the abuser.

We want to get a new job.

But we don’t. And, contrary to what many online self-help gurus will tell you, it’s not because we’re weak.

It’s because we’re strong.

We strongly attach to the habit because it worked. When nothing else did.

Sure, it doesn’t work anymore. At least not like it used to. But we’re always chasing that high. It felt so good to feel safe. Please, work again.

But we have to let that shit go. We have to figure out how to want to quit. We already accept that the drug no longer gets us high or protects us, but the habit remains. People-pleasing is our automatic go-to.

Faster than a speeding bullet.

Faster than our nervous systems.

Faster than we can possibly control.

Awareness, meditation, and ??

Awareness is the first step. Admit you have a problem. For me, this came from years of therapy, counseling, and coaching. I get it.

Next is meditation. The only thing I have found that allows me to pause is meditation. I now have a moment — just before the automatic insertion of the habit — where I realize what is happening. Now I have a choice.

Third? Well, I’m not sure, yet. Now that I realize I am in a hole and my reality is not actually as I see it, I can implement a new strategy. Having a choice is freedom, but not knowing what to do next is paralyzing.

There is still much training to let go of. So many implementations of people-pleasing behavior that my mind thinks worked.

Do I have to relive those moments and tell myself I was wrong? How do I accept — and believe — that people-pleasing (or heroin, or sex, or food) does not give me the protection I seek?

How do we unbelieve?