Once you were at home with your natural self. How you were was fine.
But at some point part of you decided how you were was no longer good enough.
So you started trying harder to become the shinier more perfect, helpful, dutiful, ‘ better’ person you thought you had to be to make up for who you were.
You probably got praise for it. But without meaning to, you had bought into a damaging message: That your natural self was not acceptable and had to be compensated for.
The pattern goes like this:
You feel bad about yourself: Not good enough, not loveable enough, not accepted.
You start working to make up the gap – to become good enough, loveable enough, accepted enough, or get enough things right to get a ‘pass’ into life.
It does not work. Not in the long term. Because now it is you rejecting your natural self. And the harder you dig, the deeper you go. Your natural self gets exiled into an endless tomorrow of disconnection and self alienation.
It is not your fault. It was the only way you knew how.
Using people pleasing and perfectionism to feel OK about yourself are like trying to fill a leaky bucket. However hard you work at pouring new goodness in, it just leaks out again. You need to fix the hole inside. And that’s what this is for. A guide to BOTH healing the hole inside AND filling the bucket.
You will be OK. In fact, you will be better than you have ever been. One day you will finally let go of feeling like you have to ‘make up’ for who you are. You will let go of people pleasing, self sacrifice, codependency and perfectionism and begin to form more secure, rewarding relationships with others and with your self. You will come home to the you you have always been.
It will take gentle persistence and kindness. A flower grows in its own time.
Do you know the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago.
And the second best time to plant a tree? Today.