My people-pleasing ramped up several notches. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone – anyone, really – not liking me, because if I could control how others felt about me, I thought maybe I could control the scary prospect of them walking out of the door and never coming back. It was a form of insecurity, I suppose, and perhaps a form of narcissism too. I got off on others saying and believing nice things about me. And the absurd double-bind of people-pleasing is that you can persuade yourself it’s a selfless act, that your primary goal in life is to think of others, to look after them and
...more
