People Pleasing and Honesty

It was brought to my attention today that sometimes I worry too much about other people’s feelings. Call me a people pleaser if you will, I don’t want to say or do things that might make other people upset. While this can be a good thing in some ways, in other ways it means I allow myself to be hurt.

For instance, today as therapy was winding down, I let the time slip away and the session went on for too long. I wanted to get out of there to make it to my AA meeting in a timely fashion. I’m usually late to my meeting and I go in each time 10 – 15 minutes late and apologize for being late. Every week. Why? Because I’m too afraid of offending my therapist to say, “Time’s up. I need to leave.” I’m worried about hurting her feelings.

I realized today that if I want to be an honest person and hold fast to my values that I need to speak up when necessary. The funny thing is that by telling my therapist time is up, I’m actually not likely to offend her. It’s actually doing her a favor by helping her keep on time. And, it serves my purpose of getting to my meeting on time. So, today I spoke up, felt guilty, went to my meeting late, and heard an awesome message reminding me that if I’m going to be honest about my feelings, I need to speak up about them.

This is not the only example of when I need to speak up and share from my feelings. Sometimes I worry too much about what others might think if I stated my opinion. I find I often do this with my husband. The man loves me and there’s very little in the way of my opinions that I can speak up about where he will become mad or offended. Yet I worry about it way too often.

I’m not saying I need to say everything that comes to my mind, but much of what I have to say would not offend or harm anyone. I’m just afraid to say anything. So, today, in this post, I’m saying I should not be so afraid of speaking my mind or my opinion. I can even say things that might be hard for other people to hear, if I say them with genuine love and concern. I can definitely state my opinion about many things without being afraid. I need to get over being afraid of saying what I think and feel. Today I grew in my awareness of my people pleasing tendencies and now I can take steps to be more honest with the people in my life.