Journey of a Thousand Miles

The reason a relationship feels difficult is that the person has become the living embodiment of the voices in your head. She taps into insecurities already roosting within. Her lack of approval or validation triggers a chorus line of inner complaint- it disturbs the little girl in you who uses any excuse to remind you what she deeply believes: If you were just smarter, thinner, prettier, holier or at least a better mother... you'd feel like Somebody. You'd meet with more applause. Your parking ticket would be stamped, and then you could make your way onto the freeway of life with all the other grown-ups. That may sound a bit strong. But honestly, when you peel back the layers of a person you find difficult to love- of a relationship that feels intolerable- this is the white noise in the background of your soul. It's true for all of us. We can be paralyzed by the power we give someone to name us. For a long time, the human tendency is to try harder- to perform o...

People-pleasers, so dependent on being approved and accepted by others, are incapable of validating themselves independent of others’ confirmation. The longing to feel secure, prompting behaviors of compliance and conformity, necessarily had to prevail over the not-quite-so powerful yearning to hold onto their true selves. When people-pleasers grow up, they do so with a fully crystallized program to be good enough they must comply with the wishes and demands of others. As with so many other personality dysfunctions, they're unable to validate themselves from within so must depend on others to confirm their value from without. Not having developed any sense that they're inherently worth caring for--i.e., lovable for themselves --they strive to make themselves lovable by becoming for others whatever they think might be wanted from them. It is a resentment that over time has accumulated so much mass that inevitably it's begun to leak out in the form of passive-ag...