“I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a disguise.”

Sometimes, the same thing keeps bobbing up in our awareness, and this is a quote by author Anais Nin that I have come across multiple times recently. Now that we are heading into the holiday season, into a season of giving, it feels especially poignant.

Often, we hear the saying, “It’s more blessed to give than to receive.”

But for habitual overgivers and “recovering people pleasers” like me, I think the opposite is true. We need to strive for something different.

It’s at lea...