The Addiction Beneath People-Pleasing
La adicción detrás de complacer a los demás
A student explores the chronic pattern of people-pleasing in intimate relationships, and the teacher reveals how such dynamics are co-created transactions that reinforce a conditioned worldview, pointing toward a deeper resolution than simply setting boundaries.
The Addiction Beneath People-Pleasing
A student explores the chronic pattern of people-pleasing in intimate relationships, and the teacher reveals how such dynamics are co-created transactions that reinforce a conditioned worldview, pointing toward a deeper resolution than simply setting boundaries.
I've been thinking about this. I feel like there's a people-pleasing thread today with the boundaries and indulging people's energy vampires. I can really relate. It feels chronic in me sometimes, and the worst place it shows up is in intimate relationship, where I feel like I sometimes can't be myself. I have to manage myself more than I want to. My partner is very expressive, and that has provoked a lot of comparison on my part.
Lately I've been getting in touch with a sense of anger and frustration about that, and I think it's not to do with her. I think it's to do with my own crossing of my own boundaries, or maybe not having them to begin with. I'm getting in touch with a sense of self-protection. In one of the earlier questions it was, "Do I stay with the person who's chatting away or do I leave?" I think increasingly in those moments I'm feeling a surge of anger: "This is not okay. I do need to get out of this conversation. I do need to protect my own space."
It generally feels good now. I feel like I'm passing a hump where it's feeling less scary and more like the right thing to do to stand up for myself or to set boundaries. But it also feels scary because I'm not used to being that person. I've noticed there are some people who have really good boundaries. "Oh, thank you for the conversation, goodbye," and they go about their day. Maybe, as you said, they're really in tune with the flow. They know what they want, and it's a quick, easy thing to shut down a situation that's not serving them and move toward what they more deeply desire. I think I'm maybe learning how to do that, but it feels really challenging. It feels like a lot of growing. I don't know exactly what the question is. I was just inspired by your comment that it gets easier. I feel like I'm going through that right now and healing, with some challenge.
This is all very important stuff, even though it seems not that big, or not that important, or very common. Why are we putting so much attention on it? Because it actually has to do with a very radical and deep change in how we relate to other people.
That's important because most of the illusions we have are supported by relationship. We come into contact with relationships and get stuck in forms of relating that reinforce our illusions. You can't have one without the other. You can't have a deep change in awakening and not have a deep change in relationships, and vice versa. You can't have a deep, true change in relationships and not also have a deep change in awakening. These kinds of dynamics go very deep.
The co-created transaction
You're talking about energy vampires. The energy vampire is a co-relationship. It's a co-dependency, a co-dynamic. You could quickly talk about it as if there's somebody who's taking energy and you're the victim of the vampire. But if you end up giving your blood very regularly, there's something you are getting out of it. You are in a sense vampiring off the other, even if it looks like you are giving energy and the other one is taking. There is something you are getting.
One of the tools to resolve what you're describing might be boundaries, which is what you're talking about, and that's hard for you. But a deeper solution will come from understanding what you are getting from that dynamic. What are you getting from that repeating pattern you're starting to sense you don't want, that you're starting to sense is not good for you? There's a friction happening that is not all bad. Something is saying "no" to this. You need to see how to listen to it and how to go deeper.
The key is: what are you getting from it? It's not something you can answer intellectually ("Oh, I'm getting attention, boom, solved"). It has to do with a deeper energetic that you can feel into in the moment when it's happening, where you can see that a transaction is taking place. If that gets resolved, then there won't be any food available. The blood is going to be of a different taste, not very tasty to the vampires.
Shifting the worldview
As a metaphor, some of us are vampire feeders, some of us are vampires. Some are takers, some are givers. If it's coming from an energetic transaction that supports a conditioned worldview, then that's what we're creating. If we are able to and no longer want to live in that conditioned worldview, then when we engage with people, something different happens. A lot of the time it actually shifts others into a less conditioned worldview. Some will simply not want to be with you or relate to you anymore, and some might say, "Wow, I like this."
But what I'm pointing to is that it starts in you, which you are addressing as well. The key is you're not a victim of a thing that's happening to you, needing to set boundaries against these things that are coming at you and getting your blood. You are a participant. What is it that you're getting in exchange for giving your blood?
I'm getting confirmation of my conditioned worldview.
That's the intellectual correct answer right now. What I'm referring to is something you can feel into during the transaction itself, in the moment. "Oh, this feels this way. It gives me a little boost of pleasure, or security, or safety." It's going to be an energetic. That's the thing that will be the addiction, the thing that will then be difficult to wean yourself off of.
That's why, in an earlier conversation, I gave the example of suddenly starting to dance. It's a ridiculous example, but you're breaking with an energetic that shifts the worldview. What is this conversation suddenly, if one of the participants is dancing? It just comes out of nowhere and you can no longer be engaged in the old worldview.
I think right now I'm in the process of weaning myself off and teetering between the security, the sense of attention and acceptance, the things I get from it. There's a part of me that's scared of what will happen if I really look at that as an addiction and wean myself off and come more into truth and integrity. But at the same time, I'm getting a taste for what happens when you actually disrupt the pattern, when you approach life and relationship with more wholeness. That's actually a gift and inspiring to other people. Ultimately, some people will just not want to be around you, but I think a lot of people actually long to have the conversation disrupted by a silly dance. You're setting an example and permitting people to also be themselves. They don't want the addiction any more than I do.
Some people will just not want it. And more often than not, even if at first they say, "Yes, I want this," very few can follow through. That's just how it is. It's not a fixed reality. Hopefully more and more people want a deeper freedom, and I think that's happening, but it's not everybody. It's not everybody that wants it and can follow through in the sense of living what it implies.
It's challenging.
The spiral of deepening freedom
It's very worth it, but it's definitely challenging because the addiction goes deep. The good thing is that we get rewarded at every turn. We free ourselves from an attachment or addiction to something, and we get a very deep, real sense of expansion and release. It makes it so worth it. Then we come to a deeper layer, and there's that back and forth. That's the spiral.
A spiral is a metaphor for a process that goes deeper and deeper, but it's going in circles. It's going over the same things over and over again, just deeper and deeper. On one level, it doesn't go anywhere. It's always the same territory, but it's going deeper.
Something can happen, which is impossible to describe, where in a deep sense the addiction stops. It's experienced as this moment, which is not a moment, but what always is. What always is, is better than anything I can imagine. And it's like that all the time, pretty much consistently. Compare that to how it used to be: this moment sucks, and it's manageable and okay some of the time, and very rarely it's great. I cannot remember moments where I felt that way in the last several years. All the mechanisms of addiction, which are still active in the body and mind, don't get very ignited because they're all in the service of "right here, right now, something's missing." When that experience is no longer real, when that's no longer true, yes, there are moments where something's painful. But it's literally like two moments in the last year where there's an activation of that sense of "this shouldn't be how it is." It's very mild. What I'm describing is just to say there is a possibility that is very real.
At the same time, the spiral process keeps going. There's a deeper and deeper freeing up, creating, exploring, and growing. These two sides are complementary. We can talk about the spiral process, how to relate deeper, how to do all of that work. And then there's the other side, which is pointing directly, right now, to that sense of something missing. There is a deep misunderstanding that creates that sense, a deep false perception that something is missing, that something about what is, is wrong. Something shouldn't be there, or something is absent. If you can get present enough to really see that as a fabrication, that opens you up to the present moment.
Nothing missing, nothing wrong
It works together because the more you see that, the more that when you're engaged in a relationship where that dynamic is playing out, nothing's missing no matter what you do, and what's happening isn't wrong in any way. Then you're free to relate to it in whatever way feels more deeply like what you want. That's where it becomes less obscured, because the dynamic is actually there to support a common worldview that we recreate in relationship: the worldview that something's missing or something's wrong, and that this way of engaging is going to help it.
For example: "I know what's missing for you. I'm going to give it to you. You know what's missing for me. You're going to give it to me." Or: "You're going to take it from me because you know that if I give to you, then what is missing in me is satisfied." It's constantly recreating that sense. But if nothing is missing, that whole dynamic is seen through, and it's hard to keep it up, hard to activate it.
When we see more deeply through self-inquiry the truth of what is (which you can state as: what is, is better than anything you can imagine), then you can go to that relationship and be unattached.
Taking the risk
But it could also go the other way. You can be in that dynamic and try something different, take a risk, where it feels scary, where it feels dangerous, where it feels like you're going toward the very thing you've been trying to control so that it doesn't happen. Do something different that breaks the dynamic and challenges it. Then you can come out on the other side and realize: the thing that would have been horrible if it happened, happened, and it's totally fine. Nothing is really where you thought something was going to be missing. What you thought should not have happened because it would have been terrible, happens, and nothing is really wrong. Nothing broke.
It happens the other way around too. We can work very hard to get what we think we want, and we get it, and nothing's solved. I think that's a big reason why we don't pursue what we deeply want. We procrastinate in the directions we want because if we get it, we'll see it's not really as satisfying.
In a sense, we're going for the superficial desire, because the exercise of going after what you want is on some level a mechanism to get you to see what's in the way.
It's not the full answer. That's why I talk about these two sides. First of all, it is living more deeply and truly. Second, it is facing your fears and pains. And then seeing that even if you get everything you want, something isn't resolved at that level. It can't be resolved there. It can be resolved in this other way.
In the way of recognizing that there's nothing holding you back from experiencing the present moment.
Yes. You could call it self-realization.