You always have a choice, always.

It will not always feel like it, but there is always a choice and it is always yours and only yours to make.

Take your time. Make space to think, decide and respond how you wish to respond.

Make choices that serve your highest intentions. Always remember that people pleasing is a trauma response.

Your mindset is a choice in and of itself.

For some matters you may want to seek outside counsel, advice or expertise these things are all often welcomed and encouraged. Seeking outside advice is lovely, but it ultimately still leaves you with the decision to make. What to do with the advice given by counsel.

Many people get stuck here, and often times it is because the advice they sought came through a transfer case of the other persons personal flavour of limitations, and apply those to their own creating more stuckness feelings from having your own stuff muddled up with someone else’s.

Often times we end up taking on the beliefs of someone else and favouring with what they advised over what we intuitively might be feeling; we do this without realizing it as an underlying response pattern. I most certainly replicated beliefs that weren’t mine to hold on to or to try to embody.

I am a recovering people pleaser, and I always have a choice!

The compound trauma response patterns that stem from being conditioned in the ways that I was as a child affected my brain, literally causing minor brain damage, swelling and inflammation cycles that wreak havoc on my body to this day. This is what cultivated the illness my body struggles with today my traumatic childhood combined with never being loved without conditions, as a result I created self-sabotage habits that compounded over time right alongside my undiagnosed complex trauma. They fed off of eachother.

The antidote to trauma I had decided was closeness, kindness and affection. And when I couldn’t find those things to get what I needed I looked for them in the self sabotaging forms- but low level because my ego wouldn’t allow me to be an alcoholic, and I couldn’t be a prescription drug addict my vanity and ego wouldn’t allow me to step to that level. It’s probably the shame I would have endured that kept me away.

My big heart used to take shame right in, that’s how I was abused for a long time! Shame was a punishment in our home, and I was a delinquent.

Emotional connection was not available to me until I figured out how to navigate it for myself by failing at love in the toxic relationships I found myself in along the way.

I found that people never loved me for me, they loved me for people pleasing me ONLY.

That’s when I made the choice to stop people pleasing and be authentic!

I had to slough off so much expectation of myself on behalf of other people.

I had to start moving in patterns that confused people to start breaking free of my old ones.

When I stopped people pleasing the connections that I had in my life as a result of my behaviour were shot out of the sky… and carnage of decades of “love” were left at the rock bottom, and that was my reality.

I was abandoned for refusing to accept being actively abused by people who claim to love me. Who shamed and judged me for how I am achieving my goals on my way to post traumatic growth for myself.

I was abandoned for doing the work, lacking control and grace along the way, and I am okay with it, that is a choice that I made;to be imperfect and authentic.

I choose to be okay with whomever can not accept my journey, they don’t have to!

The bonus part that I learned as a recovering people pleaser is that I don’t have to care about what other people think of me anymore.

If we choose to acknowledge our own needs, alongside someone else acknowledging their own needs it turns any relationship into a beautiful space to hold space for eachother without judgement, jealousy, a desire to adjust an “ism” of the other persons. There is simply space for each person to authentically exist within healthy boundaries.

I don’t know if this makes sense for anyone except those who cope with people pleasing like I did, but I do know that I encounter people who don’t see their choices all the time.

If you begin to release yourself from the invisible obligations that you create, and actually take some time to consider what might make sense for you on a higher level you begin to think in post traumatic growth patterns by looking for choices.

Decide. Choose. Live Authentically. Repeat.

-B.💋