People pleasing feels so good, until it doesn’t
Photo and story by Stacey Warde
For much of my adult life, I’ve felt like the local pool boy, convenient to have around, but not of much use otherwise. I’ve worked grunt jobs, and also held roles in what others might consider the “professions.”
I’ve had experience as a pool cleaner, ranch hand, commercial blueberry grower, window washer, salesman, and flockster (raising chickens and selling farm-fresh eggs in the local market), as well as in landscape installation and maintenance, mostly laborer occupations. I’ve encountered invading squirrels, rats, bobcats, coyotes, rattle snakes, vicious dogs, and threatening bosses and angry paying customers, and received plenty of scoldings, cuts, and bruises, including a dog bite in the ass resulting in a trip to the doctor; all this in the dirty grunt business of producing food, and servicing people’s homes.
I’ve also worked as a writer, editor, and publisher, and got into spats with local government officials, readers who hated my guts and threatened to burn down the building where I worked, a bishop who fired me for writing an opinion piece about favorable interfaith dialog with pagans, and I took bites all over, resulting in sessions with a therapist.
I once even had one of the area’s best female dermatologists, an attractive associate of one leading dermatologist who taught classes for aspiring skin doctors at UCI hundreds of miles away, lift my ball sack, inspect every inch of my body, for signs of skin cancer and when she found something suspicious on my right lower leg, she snipped it out and sent it to the lab. I’d already had a Stage 2 melanoma removed from my back years earlier.
When the lab results came back positive for a second melanoma, she called me at work while I was in the midst of a pressing deadline, of putting the paper to bed, a critical moment in the publishing business where all the pieces must come together and go to press, as we would say. A late fee of $400 (in the early 2000s) would be imposed for every 15 minutes we missed our deadline for which, I’d been taught, there was no excuse.
“You need to come to my office right now,” the doctor said at 2 p.m.
“I can’t come right now!” I said, exasperated, looking at the clock, with a 4 p.m. deadline. “I can’t get out of here until at least 4:30.”
Okay, she said, “I’ll see you then!” And she hung up. Serious business, I thought.
“Four-thirty, fuck!” I said to myself and arranged to have a friend pick me up from the doctor’s office. Then, I went back to work.
When the doctor was done removing the cancer, I caught a glimpse of the specimen on the tray. It looked like a small slab of veal with hair on it. I gasped. She was so deft and careful, I had no idea what she had removed. My wound healed quickly and there was virtually no scar, not like the one left years earlier on my back by a surgeon who seemed nice but had a heavy hand while tugging on my back.
In all, I was very eager to please, not realizing what harm I might be doing to myself and others. I failed to embrace my own true colors while attempting to “help” others find theirs. My dermatologist did more than remove cancer from my leg; she helped me understand how important self-care can be, especially when the threat to life is real.
As one committed to my job and my boss, and failing to account for my own needs, I gave what I could to be a “good” guy, a team player willing to sacrifice everything, and perhaps more than I should have, just to wear the team jersey. But that’s what Americans do, that’s what we were taught to do. We all work hard and perhaps more than we ought, more than what is humanly healthy. In the end, we might hope for some kind of reward, as I have, only to find that some individuals have far more than they should while others have virtually nothing.
Thirty years ago, the bookkeeper where I was then working as a sales associate for an extreme video producer and distributor (featuring such filmmakers as ski buff Warren Miller and ice climber Austin Hearst, grandson of William Randolph Hearst) asked me to step outside after observing my interactions with the boss.
“Are you familiar with codependency?” she asked. Cody who? Melody Beattie had recently published “Codependent No More,” which was then all the rage.
I’d heard the term and, not being a fan of what’s trendy, I dismissed the bookkeeper’s suggestion that I could benefit from some insights into what has turned out to be one of my leading toxic behaviors, so eager to please, even those who could give two shits about me, setting aside what’s best for me in order to make others happy. What a waste of time and energy! I now realize. But, how to break the habit?
I still do it; this is a very hard habit to break. Where did it begin? Probably in light of the ideal that the best life is the sacrificial life, where we endeavor to give ourselves over to the well-being and happiness of others, even to the point where it hurts and is harmful. But, who knew? Who knew that this sort of sacrifice could be so toxic? What greater way to avoid personal responsibility than to assume responsibilities that are not mine?
I wish I’d been less skeptical and paid closer attention to the bookkeeper’s concern. I might have avoided the heartache of giving in to people who pretend friendship and seek little more than to be appeased, praised, or flattered, who haven’t any real personal interest in me beyond what I can do for them, with little to no commitment to mutuality on their part.
This, I’ve learned, is a type of trauma bond, of which I’m quite familiar, having tried to establish relationships with people who were perhaps not as interested in me as I was in them. And, as so often happens when laser focusing on someone else, we hurt more than help one another. My goal now is to avoid these unhealthy bonds as much as possible, and to associate with others who aren’t afraid of intimacy and conversation, and to expend as much good energy upon myself as I try to give to others.
Giving until it hurts felt so right, until it didn’t.
Stacey Warde lives mostly in solitude, which suits him well, yet he still loves a good conversation. This essay appeared originally on Medium.
