How do ACoAs get into people-pleasing behaviour?
How do ACoAs get into people-pleasing behaviour?
ACoAs tend to people-please when they low self-esteem, and hence don’t believe they have certain human rights. In an alcoholic family, pleasing the authority figures in a child’s life could mean deflecting any onslaught of criticism or abuse that could be flung your way. Pleasing may have even gotten some love and occasional needs met in return. Pleasing helped when a child needed to survive and was a method for temporarily avoiding abandonment.
Cut to adulthood, that same defence is still being used and at the potential detriment of the adult. Boundaries become hard to set. Resentment and burn-out can ensue. Adult Children may feel they have to mould to their environment to get any needs met– so they may have to slough off certain parts of their identity and chameleon into what the environment is dictating (at work, school or home.)
In therapy and recovery, the work may focus on feeling feelings, sharing them authentically with others in a helpful/skillful way, and understanding personal wants and needs and getting them met. The ACoA can learn to get in touch with themselves, care for themselves and then develop genuine intimacy with others through this place of abundance and authenticity.
