My levels of people pleasing are complex and many layered.  I am aware these days that I have options rather than to kill myself at work, work myself into the ground and get ill and lose my voice completely.  I have choices outside of the compulsion.  I can also see how incredibly damaging it was to me to people please in the way I did all my life.  I did not have those resource to give so generously and really what I didn't acknowledge was my generosity didn't mean the same thing to the people I was giving to.  In fact sometimes it didn't mean anything at all.  When I time and time again became aware of that I was always devastated and felt the issue was all about the other party.  The ex A certainly didn't appreciate and cherish the effort, tangible financial help and time I put into helping him start a business. They didn't mean the same thing to him as it did to me.  I went way way to the point of bankruptcy helping him and really it didn't mean much to him at all.  He could really gloss over it in a second.  But my whole world was collapsing if I even thought that my generosity and over involvement was not acknowledged.  In fact the chronic resentment I had about how mean and nasty these people including of course the ex A were was a comfort to me after all I had gone beyond my limits.

Now the universe has presented me with a situation where I can choose taking care of myself or putting everyone else in front of me.  I am sure there have been those sign posts in the past but the obsessed are blind in their resolution that they and they alone have control over everything.  Maybe at some point I will get really clear on when they were and how they were trampled on by me.  I don't have to walk around with the huge chip on my shoulder anymore that people don't appreciate me.  I just have to give them less and myself more!  What a revelation.  These days I weigh carefully what I can give, when I give it and what I expect as a result.  If I have mixed feeling I step back.

I know I was absolutely unaware that I had some part in my total destruction of home, health and ability to function.  That isn't pleasant or something I am proud of.  But that was all I could do at the time in the face of so much.  That was my only defense to give until I had absolutely nothing left.  I am so very grateful to have choices now. I don't have to walk around toxic with resentment because I don't know any other way to be.  I don't have to destroy my health and serenity to contribute at places where they dont even acknowledge I exist on so many levels.  I just have to take care of myself and do it with grace and dignity rather than feel so exposed all the time.

Wow who would believe I would ever get there.

Maresie.

PS Needless to say my animals prefer the me who isn't at her wits end all the time.  They like peace and quiet the best.