If you are anything like me, you will experience the limits of talk therapy, yet talking it out in therapy seems to be the go-to solution for anyone with mental health challenges.
I was a people pleaser. Most women are, but I’ve also dated many men who thought the most important thing in life was keeping his mom happy. He followed her advice and did what she wanted because he was a mommy’s boy.
With one man I dated, his mom would sit on the floor at his feet and look up at him as she talked, rather than on the couch beside him. When I discovered his narcissistic streak, it was easy to trace its origins.
I should have known that this was a glaring red flag, but the women’s magazines told me to evaluate a boy by how he treated his mother. To me, it looked like he treated her golden, but no. He treated her like his master. This means in his priority system, I would never be first.
Maybe after her death, but sometimes, death doesn’t free anyone.
After all, after someone dies, it is very difficult to negotiate with them, reason with them, argue with them, or discuss how your values and ideas might be very different from theirs, but it doesn’t mean that they are wrong. If yours are different, it doesn’t mean you are wrong.
You don’t need talk therapy to validate that your desires, ideas, and feelings have merit. However, that might have been what I took away from my first sessions.
I have merit. I matter as a human. Whatever I need, that should be met. These were all lessons I needed to learn, because I learned to shut up, do what you are told, and don’t complain.
When You Aim to Please
A little people pleaser. How was I supposed to go into talk therapy when everything that came out of my mouth was aimed at making the other party happy? When everything I did was a warped attempt to be obedient, warped by my desire to rebel?
No, the first time I ended up in talk therapy, there was an old white man and I in a little room. Old white men scare the shit out of me, so there was no way I was going to open up to him. Instead, I spent the hour simply sitting there with tears rolling down my face.
Afterward, he told my dad, “I can’t help her if she won’t talk.” So that was the end of that. No search for someone less scary, because I wasn’t even asked, “Why didn’t you talk?”
When you aim to please, find someone who knows you have that tendency because they will be able to remove themselves from the equation, if they have adequate training and maturity. Don’t just take the person that your corporate benefits provide; look for a provider you can trust.
For me, after that man, there was another man. I ended my time with him when I decided what was wrong with my life was everything, so I quit my job, left my boyfriend, left my house, left my town, and started again. He was shocked and unsupportive, telling me I needed to get to the root cause of all the choices I was making. I knew he was right, but why stay in situations that weren’t serving me? First, I’ll jump, then I will inquire.
The Need to Inquire
After jumping a few more times, I finally found a woman who had a different type of therapy. Not just talk to discover and try to change poor thinking patterns, but a system to identify my patterns and untangle them.
A few weeks later, I was toe-to-toe with a cop and holding my own. Twice. As I was walking home from work, he pulled over and wanted to see my identification. Randomly. I thought, fuck you, this is Canada, and I’m walking on a sidewalk doing nothing wrong.
“Why?” I spit this word at him, with my hands on my hips and my feet spread, making myself as big as possible.
With that, he got out of his car, and proceeded to try to block my way with his body. According to his tale, someone had called to report that someone leaving my workplace wearing a black jacket with a black backpack and red hair was about to go commit suicide.
Everyone at my workplace has a black backpack. They are issued to all employees.
“That’s not me, so you better go find her.” With that, I pushed past him and continued on my way.
On my way to the grocery store before heading home. Just as I was about to walk into the grocery store, he sped across the parking lot and cut me off with his car. Dangerously.
He gets out and says again, “Just show me your ID. You fit the description, so I’m not letting you go.”
“What’s the description?” I make him tell all the shoppers around me.
“Red hair,” he says.
“Is my hair fucking red?” I scream it loudly. Some people laugh. Many scurry away from the scene.
Standing Up to Power
Anyone with eyes can see I’m a brunette, and that’s the way I would be described, no matter the highlights that come out when the sun hits my curls.
“I’m about to go buy groceries. No one buys milk right before they kill themselves. Get out of my face, and go do your job.”
I hate cops. I go inside the store, remove my coat and shove it in my backpack.
Some random man tells me, “That was incredible.” I see total intimidation on his face.
My therapist was thrilled with my ability to stand up for myself. People pleaser dead. Yay.
Now, it’s my time.
Everyone orients their life to make someone happy.
I tried to make my dad happy when I realized that my mom was a lost cause. I’m so glad that all the men I loved never wanted to marry me because I would have sacrificed myself for their happiness. I would have sacrificed my body to give them children; I would have thrown away my career to raise those kids, and then I would be bitter, angry, and alone and still working.
Wondering why I’d made all those sacrifices, just like my mother, so that’s the best lesson she gave me. Her sacrifice taught me just how huge it is, while I was also able to see that my dad’s sacrifices were merely financial, and he brought that on himself.
I’ve heard men say, “I’m so rich my wife doesn’t have to work.” A few years later, “I wish she’d get a job.” What changed? I can tell you that she doesn’t have a career anymore; she’ll only have jobs.
Men ruin women, and we women let them. It’s the most terrible thing.
Orienting On Yourself
When are you going to orient your happiness on yourself first, and then on everyone else? Like they say on the airplane, put your own mask on first, and then you can help everyone else.
When I go to run my errands, and I take my happiest self with me, it’s the best time ever. Random people tell me I’m gorgeous, and they mean my energy, because I am standing as tall and proud as ever, with my shoulders back and my face beaming. I make eye contact and smile at people, who always seem surprised and a little delighted to be noticed. I make sure to pass compliments to anyone I interact with, and ensure their day is a little brighter for having had me in it. Spread a little joy when I spread a little money.
When I am not my happiest self, no one notices me, and I interact little with anyone else. When I am not my happiest self, I try to stay home and get to the root of it first.
Clearly, life is better as my happiest self, so how do I maintain this state?
First, be ruthless about who you let into your life. Second, be ruthless about the way you speak to yourself.
Don’t let meanies into your life, and don’t say mean things to yourself. They likely aren’t true, but remnants left by some meanie that was in your life at some point. People are mean; it makes them feel better when they aren’t enlightened enough to manage their own pain. People who are hurting tend to hurt others when they aren’t getting the help they need.
Do you blame them? Some people do.
Getting Good and Timely Help
I left my last house in the city because my neighbours needed good, timely help and weren’t getting it.
Unfortunately, the woman next door told me her husband told her she needed to contribute to the household income. She told me she’s going to adopt because it comes with an income.
Oh fuck, I thought, she just connected raising troubled kids to making money.
That’s a problem.
The problem showed up when she hired me to babysit and then didn’t pay me. Worse, I had to drive her kid to school, so it actually cost me. Then her kid kicked the shit out of my rain barrel, ending my gardening dreams. (Water was too expensive out of the tap.)
In that second, I decided to move. She called the cops on me, and while I readied my landscaping for sale, I told him what was really going on. She’s a fucking bully, trying to get the cops on her side, but at least the cops understand facts.
Her life got extremely difficult, but at least those kids got some help.
It’s so difficult to get help at all, let alone when you need it. Call the cops because someone is hurting and behaving out of their hurt, and the cops tend to show up and shoot that person dead, as if they are the vulnerable ones. What?
Cops have the training, the tools, the physicality, the power, and that’s what they do. They kill them.
I asked that cop, “Are you going to help now, or wait until they turn 18 so you can throw them in jail?”
With that question, no one could argue what the next ten years would look like without intervention.
I didn’t stick around to find out.
Leave a Reply