People-pleasing was survival strategy. When you had to keep caregivers calm, when their mood determined your wellbeing, when your value was in usefulnessâyou developed the ability to read and respond to others before they even knew what they wanted. Now you do it automatically, exhausting yourself meeting needs that were never meant to be yours, sacrificing your own wellbeing to maintain others comfort.
Living to please means disappearing into others preferences, not knowing what you want, being exhausted from giving what you do not have.
Reclaiming yourself means discovering what you want separate from others, learning that your needs matter too, practicing disappointing people.
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Content informed by trauma research, polyvagal theory (Stephen Porges), somatic experiencing (Peter Levine), and nervous system regulation studies. For comprehensive citations and further reading, see Unfiltered Wisdom: The Book.
About the Author
Robert Greene is the author and founder of Unfiltered Wisdom, a US Navy veteran, and a trauma survivor with over 10 years of experience in nervous system regulation and somatic healing. He is certified in Yoga for Meditation from the Yogic School of Mystic Arts (Dharamsala, India, 2016) and affiliated with Holistic Veterans, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving veterans in Santa Cruz, California.