A common result of trauma is being out of touch with your own needs. Putting others first might have been safer in order to survive and so, as a result of that trauma, having had to ignore your own needs, you have become what’s labeled a people-pleaser. Going along to get along, but internally, struggling. How can you break the cycle?
The answer is simple, but not easy. It begins with this: Normalize having needs.
We heal in community, because community provides the space for us to show up wholly, to practice setting boundaries, to learn about ourselves and our needs and communicating them. Willingness to comprimise is an essential, but willingness to compromise ourselves is misery.
Read MoreIt was a coping mechanism, clearly: You know that saying “no” would be regarded as bad, but you want to be good, because you want to be loved, so you abandon the part of you that would authentically say “no”. It’s a form of self-protection to survive. And it’s a trade-off. This trade-off is how trauma shapes you in the long-term, because coping mechanisms become so automatic and ingrained in your behavior, that you can’t even tell where you begin and where the self-abandonment begins. Others begin to consider these as your identity, and you might do so yourself. When in truth, you are so much more than the behaviors you created around your self-protection.
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