Marcia Sirota's Blog

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Test Article July 2025

The main photo is of a lioness and her cubs. They are not cut off. This is a test blog post for July 30, 2025. This is a test and only a test. Testing, testing 1, 2, 3. Today is July 30th and it is a Wednesday. Here is a test blog post for July 30, 2025. This is a test and only a test. Testing, testing 1, 2, 3. Today is July 30th and it is a Wednesday. This is the end sentence for this post. The picture below should have none of the blue area cut off.

Photographer: Karsten Winegeart | Source: UnsplashTesting, Testing, 1, 2, 3!

Here is some more text for this test blog. It is slightly different. Here is a test blog post for July 30, 2025. This is a test and only a test. Testing, testing 1, 2, 3. Today is July 30th and it is a Wednesday. The image below should not be cut off but should show two panes of glass on the bar window from her head height up. Her body and the easel should be in frame.

Photographer: Vitaly Gariev | Source: UnsplashThis is the final heading for this test blog

This is the final section for testing this blog post. Hopefully the pics above were not cut off. Here is a test blog post for July 30, 2025. This is a test and only a test. Testing, testing 1, 2, 3. Today is July 30th and it is a Wednesday. Here is a test blog post for July 30, 2025. This is a test and only a test. Testing, testing 1, 2, 3. Today is July 30th and it is a Wednesday. Here is a test blog post for July 30, 2025. This is a test and only a test. Testing, testing 1, 2, 3. Today is July 30th and it is a Wednesday.

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Canada is United in Giving the Finger to the Bully to the South

Bullies are usually insecure, inadequate individuals who need to dominate, control, oppress, and abuse others in order to feel better about themselves. They puff themselves up and make themselves look big and scary, when really, they’re just scared, confused, and overwhelmed, deep down inside.

Bullies exist in every walk of life

Bullies exist in every sphere of life. They’re in our families, our workplaces, our schools, and in the political arena.

Because they feel so weak and helpless on the inside, they’re constantly trying to compensate by pushing others around. Because of their chronic and profound sense of vulnerability, they can cause a lot of harm, trying to prove that they’re strong, powerful, and invincible.

Bullying is a form of oppression. It can cause the person on the receiving end to become anxious, depressed, angry, or overwhelmed. It can lead to sleep disturbances, problems with focus and concentration, social withdrawal, and poor performance at school or at work.

Right now, Canada is being forced to confront a horrible bully in the form of the current US president. For reasons that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, this individual has been threatening to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian goods.

After decades of enjoying a special relationship with our neighbour to the south, the US president is throwing it all away and acting like our adversary. This action has the potential to undermine our economy and create terrible hardships for Canadians.

The bully to the south keeps threatening then delaying these tariffs. This tactic serves to increase our anxiety because we don’t know what to expect. It’s a pure bully move, designed to destabilize us, but we are holding fast, regardless.

Canadians across the country are worrying about the implications of these tariffs and the US president’s threats to make our country the 51st state. We’re exhausted by his constant changes in policy. But, we’re not acting like helpless victims. We’re standing up to the bully.

Canadians are not tolerating the bullying

What is inspiring is that Canadians aren’t taking this sitting down. We’re responding to the bullying, as private citizens and as companies; as politicians from the municipal, provincial, and federal levels, and across all parties.

There’s a huge upsurge in Canadian patriotism, with Canadians choosing to buy locally and boycott American products. Our leaders from every party and at every level are inspiring us and giving us hope through their speeches about confronting the bully with strength, courage, and persistence.

The only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to them. When we cower, they feel empowered, but when we push back against them, they recognize our strength and they back off. I have great faith in the strength of my fellow Canadians. We might be kind, polite, respectful people, but we’re not pushovers and we’re not doormats. We’re not going to let ourselves be bullied and we’re not going to back away from this fight.

Oh, Canada? You bet!

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On Valentine’s Day 2025, Fall in Love With Yourself

For this Valentine’s Day, while many people are deciding where to go for dinner and what special things to do for their partner, some people have other plans. They’re going to focus on self-love.

While traditionally, Valentine’s Day is a day to celebrate romantic love within a relationship, sometimes it’s important to break from tradition. Why not take Valentine’s Day 2025 as a time to fall in love with yourself?

Self-love is not self-indulgence

People often misunderstand the meaning of self-love. They see it as self-indulgence or selfishness or letting ourselves off the hook for bad behaviour. They don’t recognize that what it really means is self-acceptance and self-compassion.

The world we live in makes it easy for us to be hard on ourselves. There’s so much pressure that we’re under, and there are so many people who are constantly scrutinizing and judging us. It’s easy for us to take in all the negativity and start to believe it.

Unfortunately, all this negativity increases our stress and causes us to feel bad about ourselves. It affects our mood, our sleep, and our habits. It makes us irritable and impatient with those around us, and it makes us more distractible and forgetful in our personal lives and at work.

Self-love is not about self-indulgence; it’s about being okay with who we are. And when we’re okay with who we are, it’s easier for us to be okay with other people; to be less judgmental and less critical toward others.

Paradoxically, when we lack self-love, it’s harder for us to grow and change. That’s because the self-criticism is so strong that any self-reflection is accompanied by a lot of negativity toward ourself.

On the other hand when we have self-love, it’s easier to grow and change because we can look at ourselves honestly without feeling bad about ourselves. We can see the behaviours that are problematic or the choices that aren’t productive and recognize that things need to change, without beating ourselves up over what we see.

Self-love enables personal growth

I’ve always found that personal growth is only possible with an attitude of self-love. The compassion we have for ourselves enables us to see the truth about our choices or our actions without feeling like we’re bad, stupid, or somehow defective.

With self-love, we’re empowered to face the truth about our past, and about the way it has affected us. We can see the connection between our current behaviours and the things that happened to us when we were younger.

Instead of blaming ourselves for the choices we’ve been making, we can reflect on how the hurts we’ve experienced in the past have caused us to engage in certain problematic patterns of thinking or acting today.

Instead of being self-critical, we can forgive ourselves for the bad choices we’ve made and understand that these choices were driven by hurts we experienced in the past and our subsequent reactions to these hurts.

With self-love, our insights aren’t associated with self-criticism, so it’s easier to see things about ourselves that we’d like to change. If we want to grow and develop and be the best version of ourselves, self-love really is the fertile ground for this change.

The challenge of building self-love

Some people find it challenging to build self-love. That’s because they absorbed negative messages from the people around them when they were growing up. Maybe they had critical or dismissive parents; maybe they had teachers, coaches, or clergy who were hurtful to them. Maybe they were bullied by their peers at school.

Whatever happened, these negative experiences have convinced them that they’re not good enough. When they think of self-love today, they don’t feel like it’s possible, or that they deserve it.

It doesn’t help that our media is full of messages that make us feel inadequate. Whether we’re watching a TV show or scrolling through social media, there’s so much out there that is designed to make us feel bad about ourselves. We become convinced that self-love is impossible.

The truth is that self-love is available to everyone, and everyone deserves it. And the paradox is that the more we love ourselves, the more likely it is that we’ll behave in positive and constructive ways.

People who have self-hatred and anger at themselves tend to be destructive, both toward themselves and others, whereas people who have self-love tend to be kind, caring, generous, and tolerant toward themselves and others.

As I mentioned above, the more we love ourselves, the better we feel, and the better we feel, the easier it is to be loving toward others. Self-love is a real win-win proposition.

So, this Valentine’s Day, why not take the day to fall in love with yourself. Whether you’re in a relationship or you’re flying solo, you can always benefit from building your self-love. It will make you happier and it will make you a nicer person. And then, if there’s anything that you want to work on within yourself, it’ll make it that much easier to do so.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

—-

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Test-How to Make New Year’s Resolutions That Stick

As we move into the New Year, many of us have made resolutions. Unfortunately, most of us will have abandoned these resolutions by the end of January. Research has shown that up to 80% of people who make resolutions don’t keep them.

When we make resolutions, it’s because we want to change something about ourselves; something that’s making us unhappy. It’s sad, then, that so many of us fail to keep these resolutions. The good news is that there’s a way we can make resolutions that stick.

First, we need to understand why our resolutions fail. They fail because many of our resolutions aren’t what we really want but are changes that we think we should make. They fail because anytime we tell ourselves that we “should” do something, there’s an immediate pushback. Human beings tend to resist being pushed around and we resist anything that feels like an imposition.

So, if we want to make resolutions that succeed, we need to get in touch with what we really want and make changes that are meaningful to us and that really matter. We can’t impose changes on ourselves and we can’t force ourselves to do things. When changes are meaningful and integral to our true wishes and goals, they’re much more likely to stick.

Change is hard and won’t happen unless it’s meaningful

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How to Make New Year’s Resolutions That Stick

As we move into the New Year, many of us have made resolutions. Unfortunately, most of us will have abandoned these resolutions by the end of January. Research has shown that up to 80% of people who make resolutions don’t keep them.

When we make resolutions, it’s because we want to change something about ourselves; something that’s making us unhappy. It’s sad, then, that so many of us fail to keep these resolutions. The good news is that there’s a way we can make resolutions that stick.

First, we need to understand why our resolutions fail. They fail because many of our resolutions aren’t what we really want but are changes that we think we should make. They fail because anytime we tell ourselves that we “should” do something, there’s an immediate pushback. Human beings tend to resist being pushed around and we resist anything that feels like an imposition.

So, if we want to make resolutions that succeed, we need to get in touch with what we really want and make changes that are meaningful to us and that really matter. We can’t impose changes on ourselves and we can’t force ourselves to do things. When changes are meaningful and integral to our true wishes and goals, they’re much more likely to stick.

Change is hard and won’t happen unless it’s meaningful

The thing to understand is that change is hard. It takes work, sacrifice, and perseverance. If it’s not something that really matters to us, we’re not going to be willing to stick with it. On the other hand, if the change is something that we really believe in, we’ll be willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen.

A lot of the time, we try to make changes because of external pressure. Someone in our family, a friend, or a social media influencer tells us that we should change something about ourselves. Even if the change is a positive one, it’s not coming from within ourselves, so it’s not likely to stick.

The only way for our New Year’s resolutions to stick is to tune out all the external noise and tune in to what we really want. If we’re going to make real and lasting changes in our lives, they can’t be things that other people want for us. They have to be what we truly want for ourselves.

There are ways to make resolutions that stick

When we’re approaching a New Year’s resolution, there are a couple of things we need to do in order to be successful.

First, we have to ask ourselves the important question: why do I want to make these changes? For example, if we’re just trying to lose weight because someone we know or someone online has told us that we’re not good enough at the weight we’re at, it’s not going to work because it’s a superficial, external “should” and not a meaningful want.

On the other hand, if we realize that we really want to be healthier because we want to be around for our grandchildren, we’re more likely to succeed because that is a deeper want and not based on something superficial or on some “should.”

Second, we have to set ourselves up for success. We have to create the circumstances that make it easiest for us to pursue the changes we want to make. For example, if we want to eat healthier, we need to find a grocery store nearby that sells good food and we need to set aside the time to prepare and eat the food. Otherwise, the change won’t happen. These simple and practical steps can make all the difference in creating change that sticks.

When I think about New Year’s resolutions, I like to envision the year ahead of me and focus on a few important goals. Then I try to break down some of the steps that would lead to achieving these goals. A New Year’s resolution is not always a simple thing, and we have to appreciate that it could be a long-term process. We need to be prepared to put in the time, effort, and energy. For that reason, it has to be worth it, and it has to be something that we really care about.

Ruthless Compassion helps to make lasting resolutions

In approaching New Year’s resolutions, I like to bring the concept of Ruthless Compassion into the mix. Ruthless Compassion is a philosophy that combines three important concepts: curiosity, clarity, and kindness.

1. Curiosity: When making a resolution, our curiosity leads us to ask ourselves why we’re making this choice. Is it something that we want or something that we’re being told to do? Is it something meaningful to us or is it driven by superficial things like greed or vanity? When we ask ourselves these questions, we create the circumstances for successful resolutions.

2. Clarity: Our sense of clarity enables us to face the truth about what has been driving the behaviours that we want to change. Superficial solutions to behaviours that are addictive or compulsive (like drinking too much, eating too much, spending too much, or being on our devices too much) don’t work because they’re simplistic and miss the point. Our behaviours have meaning and if we don’t understand what’s driving them, we won’t be able to change them. Imposing some “should” won’t make any difference.

Our clarity enables us to look at our past, present, and future, and see what our behaviours mean. We can explore what traumas from our past might be driving our present-day addictive or compulsive behaviours. We can look at how our behaviour today is affecting us and the people around us, and we can look forward into the future and imagine how this behaviour will affect us and the people around us in days to come. This kind of clarity is what’s needed for meaningful and lasting change.

3. Kindness: Our kindness makes everything possible. Many people avoid self-reflection because they’re afraid that they’re going to see things about themselves that they won’t like and then they will feel bad about themselves. Kindness is important because it enables us to look at our addictive or compulsive behaviours and see that we’re not “bad” for engaging in them. Kindness enables us to see that there’s always a reason for our behaviour, even if on the surface, we don’t know what it is.

Making resolutions that stick is possible

With Ruthless Compassion, we can have curiosity about our behaviour without self-judgment; we can see things clearly without self-criticism, and we can make changes from a place of true want as opposed to any “shoulds.”

In order to make New Year’s resolutions that stick, then, we need to understand why we’re making them, tune out the “shoulds,” and bring Ruthless Compassion into the process. In this way, we won’t be among the group whose resolutions are abandoned by the end of January. We’ll be the ones who create positive change for ourselves.

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Sign up here for my free bi-weekly wellness newsletter that brings you fresh, thought-provoking content.

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel where you’ll learn simple tips for taking the best care of yourself and your loved ones.

Tune in to my Ruthless Compassion Podcast where I go in-depth about topics like mental health, trauma, and loneliness.

Tune in to my Reel Mental Podcast where I host lively discussions with film critics and explore how mental health is portrayed on-screen.

Complete our Audience Listening Survey here.

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When Politics Divide: Navigating Family Dynamics During the Holidays

This holiday season is slightly different from ones in the recent past. On the one hand, families are able to get together in person again, but on the other hand, in light of the recent American elections and other global events, it might be more awkward than ever for them to sit together around the holiday table.

Political Polarization Can Split Families Apart

It’s not uncommon for there to be members of varying political stripes at one holiday dinner. This can create a certain degree of tension at the family dinner. This year, especially, it’s more difficult because emotions are running high. Political polarization has never been greater and people have extremely strong feelings about their own candidates, and those from the other side.

According to an article in the National Post, political polarization in Canada is slowly catching up to that of the United States. This article discussed how, in 2022, “one-in-five Americans said that political disagreements had a negative impact on their friendships and family relationships.”

How do we handle it, then, when members of our family have political opinions that are vastly different from our own? How do we deal with a relative who wants to talk incessantly or aggressively about their views when we find these views to be upsetting or even reprehensible?

new imageHow We Handle Political Differences Depends on Our Personal Relationships

I think that in part, it depends on the relationships we already have with one-another, aside from our political differences. If there’s basic trust and respect between us, it’s easier to be understanding and tolerant regarding each other’s political views, and it’s also easier to express our differences of opinion without creating defensiveness or hurt feelings.

However, if we already have difficult relationships with someone in the family, it can add an additional layer of stress to the family gathering. If a family member has always been cold, hostile, critical, or condescending toward us, it can be that much harder to tolerate them going on about views which we find to be incorrect or offensive.

It’s clear that our relatives’ political views must be seen in the context of the overall relationship we have with them. When the relationship is sour, hearing them spout political views that are upsetting or offensive to us is like rubbing salt in the wounds of an already painful interaction.

When we have a good relationship with a relative whose views differ from ours, it’s usually pretty comfortable to speak out and express our own opinions, knowing that at worst, it will lead to a lively discussion.

If we already have a difficult or challenging relationship with a relative, and we know that their political views are very different from our own, we then have to decide how to deal with the holiday season.

Six Ways to Deal with Political Polarization in the Family During the Holidays:

1. We might choose to avoid family gatherings altogether. This is a rather drastic option which needs to be well-thought-out in advance. We don’t want to deprive ourselves of connecting with all of our loved ones just because we find it awkward or unpleasant to be around one or more challenging people.

If we’re going to stay away from our family over the holidays, we should make sure that the benefits of avoiding everyone outweigh the disadvantages of missing out on the holiday season with our entire family; not to mention potentially hurting people‘s feelings and/or making everybody wonder why we’ve disappeared.

2. If the family member who has very different political views is a bully and wants to shove their opinions down everyone’s throat; and most especially those who disagree with their views, we might try to avoid only those gatherings in which they’re included.

If they’re included in every gathering, we might choose to sit at the opposite end of the table or hang out in a different room. We might get up and casually wander off when they start ranting and in general, steer clear of them. This way, we can engage in conversation with the people whose company we enjoy and appreciate.

3. Depending on our family’s overall tolerance for conflict, we may or may not decide to say something when one of our family members expresses an opinion that we find ridiculous or offensive. We have to decide whether it’s worth it to speak out and whether or not this will make things better for us and for those around us.

We have to take the temperature of the room. If the majority of our family members have different political opinions than we do, and we want to spend the holidays with them regardless, we might choose to remain quiet while they’re speaking about politics and then subtly try to steer the topic of conversation onto something less contentious.

We should only do this, however, if we’re comfortable with remaining silent. If someone says something that is intolerable, and we’re comfortable risking a confrontation, then we can speak out and express our point of view as clearly and respectfully as possible.

It Hurts When People We Love Endorse Political Views That We Hate

4. When it comes to differing political views, it can be painful for some of us to realize that people who we love are capable of thinking so differently about things that matter so much to us. We can feel hurt and disappointed with these individuals. We can harbour a powerful hope that they could change their views, and we might be tempted to try to “make them see reason.” Instead of this, it might be a good idea to ask them what makes them think this way. Showing curiosity rather than anger could potentially initiate a more meaningful conversation about our political differences.

Even though it’s upsetting to see the people who we love expressing opinions that we hate, part of being a family member is accepting each other for who we are, even when we think that the other person is terribly misguided. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we suppress our own voice when we feel that it’s important to speak out.

5. If we find that approximately half of our family is on one side of the political spectrum and half is on the other, or if there are just a few very loud and aggressive people who say things that are offensive or provocative, we might decide as a family not to bring up politics at family gatherings.

6. Regardless of the season, we always have to prioritize our own mental health and wellness. So, if most or all of these options aren’t possible and we feel that we just can’t attend our family gatherings over the holidays, we can instead, spend time on an individual basis with those loved ones who we enjoy the most, and with whom we can have respectful and non-contentious conversations, no matter how much we agree or disagree politically.

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Sign up here for my free bi-weekly wellness newsletter that brings you fresh, thought-provoking content.

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel where you’ll learn simple tips for taking the best care of yourself and your loved ones.

Tune in to my Ruthless Compassion Podcast where I go in-depth about topics like mental health, trauma, and loneliness.

Tune in to my Reel Mental Podcast where I host lively discussions with film critics and explore how mental health is portrayed on-screen.

Complete our Audience Listening Survey here.

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Breaking Free from People-Pleasing: Finding True Connection Over the Holidays

Being a people-pleaser can make life difficult, but when the holiday season arrives, it can be that much worse. The tendency to do too much for loved ones and never set limits can get us into all sorts of trouble, both financial and emotional.

People-Pleasing: A Misguided Attempt to Gain Approval

I’ve seen people spend money they didn’t have on unnecessary presents, racking up debt that took them the rest of the year to pay off. The worst part is that those on the receiving end didn’t care, one way or the other, about these things. The people-pleaser was so convinced that they had to purchase these expensive, over-the-top gifts, but it was all in their head.

I’ve written extensively about people- pleasing in the past, but just to refresh: People-pleasing is a behaviour in which we do too much for others and in which we don’t say “no” to things that upset us or hurt us. We go along with situations that make us unhappy, and we never stand up for ourselves for what we need or push back against behaviours that are hurtful, unacceptable, or inappropriate. We tolerate disrespect and exploitation and we give and give, even when it exhausts and depletes us.

We never express our displeasure for fear of offending, and we don’t dare voice our own opinions, needs, or feelings out of the fear of being rejected or abandoned.

People-pleasing comes from a place of insecurity and low self-esteem. People-pleasers believe that we have to behave this way in order to earn the love and attention of those around us.

The Pressure to Overperform During the Holidays

During the holidays, people-pleasing can really get out of hand. People can spend hours, even days, preparing elaborate meals for friends and family, who would be happy to eat something simple and just enjoy their company. People-pleasers will go overboard with holiday decorations that nobody needs or cares about. They will bake multiple desserts and multiple batches of cookies and treats when their loved ones would be satisfied with far less.

The pleaser is convinced that they have to do this because otherwise, people would be disappointed with them. They are doing this in order to ensure that they will win the approval of their friends and family members. It’s not what they want to do, but it’s what they believe they must do, even if it exhausts them and drains their finances.

The difference between a people pleaser and someone who is happy to do these things is that the former does it out of a fear of rejection and a need for approval whereas the latter does it because they sincerely enjoy it and it makes them happy to do it.

People-Pleasing Leads to Resentment and Addiction

The problem with people pleasing is that it’s not authentic. Nobody is always so agreeable, tolerant, understanding, or accepting of other people‘s behavior. Nobody is comfortable always saying “yes” to things that they don’t want and never pushing back against behaviours that make them feel bad. When we engage in people-pleasing, the natural result is for us to gradually build up more and more resentment.

We resent how much we’re doing for everyone else and how it leaves no time for us to take care of ourselves. We resent how we go along with things that we don’t want to go along with and how we tolerate bad behaviour from those around us. We resent always being the one who makes that extra effort and who works that much harder. Even though, on the surface we’re smiling, inside, we’re seething.

This resentment becomes very anxiety- provoking to us, because as people-pleasers, the last thing we want is to upset anyone. So, we have to push it down and try our best not to express it.

But, when we repress our natural resentment, two things can happen: the first is that the resentment fights our attempts to suppress it. So, we have to use some type of behaviour to push it down. We can overeat, drink alcohol to excess, use drugs, gamble, spend more money, or play video games for hours on end, all to keep our resentment at bay.

And because all these behaviours aren’t really that good at keeping our resentment down, we have to do more and more of them, or several different types of them, in order to keep shoving the resentment back down so that it won’t ever be expressed. This creates a pattern of compulsive behavior, which can even turn into addictive behavior, and then the addiction can take on a life of its own.

The Dark Side of People-Pleasing: Anger and Unhappiness

The other thing that happens is that even though we’re trying to suppress it, the feelings can still leak out in passive aggressive behaviours or in small, angry outbursts: little mini-explosions of rage that we instantly regret. When we have an outburst, our anxiety goes through the roof and we feel that much more worried about being rejected. So we work that much harder to repress our resentment about all the people-pleasing we’ve been doing.

And if we’ve been successful in avoiding leaking the anger in small or larger outbursts, there are still consequences for our passive-aggressive behavior. People tend to get angry when those around them are behaving passive-aggressively. If the people around us are reacting negatively to our passive-aggressive behavior, this makes us more anxious and we want to repress our resentment even more, which could then leads to engaging in compulsive or addictive behaviour.

The Paradox of People-Pleasing: How it Creates Loneliness and Disconnection

Why do we become resentful when we’re people-pleasers? It’s because everyone needs to be authentic. We all need to be simply who we are. When we have to pretend, there are two problems: One, we feel alienated from ourselves because we don’t know who we are or because we can’t be who we are. In both scenarios, we feel lost and miserable.

Two, we feel alienated from others. When we aren’t being genuine, no one knows who we are. We’re only showing them a version of ourselves that’s meant to please so they never know the real person behind the pleasing mask. It’s deeply lonely to be interacting with people, but to never feel seen or known. Intimacy is defined as “seeing and being seen,” and the tragic irony of the people–pleaser is that intimacy isn’t possible for them, even though it’s what they want the most.

Another problem with people-pleasing is that, deep down inside, we know that we’re not being loved for who we are. Any attention, affection, or positive regard that we receive because of the people-pleasing doesn’t make us feel good. We can’t appreciate it because we know that we had to pretend in order to get it.

When we have to perform in order to get love or attention, we know that the love isn’t for our real self and we feel the disconnect inside ourselves. We feel sad, lonely, and empty because we’re working so hard to gain love and attention, but the love we’re receiving doesn’t truly satisfy us.

If we’re being loved for a false, pleasing persona, we know that we’re not being loved for our true, authentic self. The approval we receive feels like empty calories that don’t nourish us, deep down inside. In fact, the emptiness we feel leads us to crave more attention or other forms of soothing.

Because people-pleasing isn’t satisfying, it can lead to feelings of emptiness which we then need to fill with food or shopping, numb with alcohol or drugs, or distract with gambling or video games.

During the holidays, the pressure to connect is greater than ever. Many of us feel the need to prove to ourselves that we’re loved and that we have people to love. For people-pleasers, who are already insecure about their attachments, the urge to do too much and to tolerate too much can become overwhelming.

People-Pleasing Creates More Problems Than it Solves

The people-pleaser can end up in debt, unable to pay their rent, their tuition, or their bills. And all because they had to buy presents that most people didn’t really want or need.

On the emotional level, the people-pleaser is desperate to feel that sense of belonging with their friends and family members, but the more they please others, the more alienated and disconnected they feel, and the more likely it is that they’ll turn to addiction to self-soothe.

So, what’s the answer? We need to see that love can’t be earned or bought. Love is given freely or not at all. We need to understand that if people love us it’s because they’re capable of loving us and not because of something that we’ve done to please them.

Of course, we can’t behave like a jerk and expect everyone to be happy with us. But if we’re our normal, pleasant selves, there will always be people who are capable of caring about us. We just have to trust this.

People-Pleasers Often Fall Prey to Users and Abusers

Ironically, people-pleasers tend to attract users who like being spoiled and pampered. The people-pleaser can become habituated to this type of person and start thinking that everyone is a user. The people-pleaser needs to see that there are kind, caring people out there who are happy just to be with them and who aren’t there to take advantage of them.

The worst part of it is that because they attracted users, the people-pleaser is often treated worse than the average person. The paradox of people-pleasing is that these individuals attract exactly the opposite kind of person to whom they wish to be around.

Although the temptation to be a people-pleaser is greatest over the holidays, we have to resist the urge, and understand that the only way to get through the holidays emotionally and financially intact is to be authentic and to let people know who we really are. Instead of doing too much and becoming exhausted and resentful, and possibly having an angry outburst or indulging in compulsive behaviour to compensate, we can do just what feels right and that can be enough.

Giving Up People-Pleasing and Finding True Connection

If we can be authentic and do only as much as we’re comfortable with we can have true closeness with those people who choose to be around us. We can trust that there are people out there who really do care about us and aren’t just around to take advantage of us. Obviously, these relationships are a lot more meaningful and fulfilling for everyone.

When we’re not resentful of having to be someone that we’re not and of having to do more than we’re comfortable with doing, and when we’re not feeling empty because we’re draining ourselves financially and and emotionally, we can sit back and enjoy the holidays with the people who like us for who we are, and with whom we can have authentic and satisfying connections.

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