People-pleasing

People-pleasing is a long term disease in the women of my family. It can also be called martyrdom. It's all about predicting someone else's needs, trying to meet them at the expense of one's own, and then being angry when the person is not happy with the results. There are several problems with this activity. Often, we can't predict someone else's needs very accurately. We are denying the other individual from learning the much useful skill of asking for help. They might not even need or want the help we are providing. Finally, we believe we are being so self-less in the process but we are actually seeking praise and gratitude for our efforts, or some other particular outcome that is self-serving, so it's all a lie.
This behaviour is so innate, that I cannot control it. I do not always have a choice as to whether or not I will engage with someone this way. It is my default. If anything triggers me, of which there are many possibilities for this, I will begin to people-please. It is a lifelong effort for me to recognize it coming up, and make new choices.
It was actually a real 'light bulb' moment for me to recognize that helping others made me feel good and was self-serving. This allowed me to start receiving help with more ease, because why deny people that good-givin' feeling! It also allowed me to turn down help when I don't want it, which sometimes can feel pretty awkward because particular people are aggressive about wanting to help. They just can't stop themselves. I can empathize, which also leads to it being triggering and then falling into my own people-pleasing default mode...
What do you get when you put 2 people-pleasers into a room together?
I'll leave the answer up to your imagination and I'm not feeling so witting atm.
People-pleasing can be disguised as politeness and refusing it can be disguised as 'being rude'. I fucking abhor politeness for this very reason, especially as a woman I feel this intense pressure to 'fall in line' because it would otherwise be impolite. Do you have any idea what it feels like to bite your tongue and accept someone's "help" even thought it stresses you the fuck out and you feel that have no choice? *head explodes*
It's all about control. People-pleasers want to control what's happening around them, not because they're being malicious, but because they don't feel safe. Having grown up in an emotional abusive home, I understand completely. We create all these nonsensical rules to try to feel some semblance of control over what's going on around us, and even though it doesn't work, we pretend that it does because the only kind of safety we have access to is our imagination.
A lot of people continue to live in these imaginary worlds well into adulthood. The problem is that it can be hard to connect with others that aren't grounded in reality. Then there's all these minefields to navigate that they don't warn you about because they're not aware they're in a fantasy world and they have all these expectations that your actions will reinforce the fantasy, but how can you know you don't have access to it.
These fantasies are beautiful works of art. Beautiful, painstakingly detailed worlds. Folks have spent years creating them and they are magical 'safe' places. We spend a lot of time maintaining them. We spend a lot of time defending them. We feel like we will die if we forfeit them. It's a brave act to slowly release aspects of this world. It's hard to see the hands reaching out for help behind the walls. It's worth it though.