Notes From The Smoking Area

You are not a therapist and you must stop talking like one. 

I say this when I find myself pathologising something someone in my life has or hasn’t done. 

It was first pulled into focus when on a train travelling from Florence to Pisa when a very loud American visitor was complaining that one of her friends (Mina/Meena?) was what she would describe as a ‘people pleaser’.

The label ‘people pleaser’ along with many things has lost all meaning due to therapy speak on the internet. 

There was a time that ‘people pleaser’ actually meant something.

Now, if you do one thing that is mildly out of your way for someone, you are describing yourself as a people pleaser with no control over your own actions. 

So now, we let down our friends. We let down our family. We let down our partners. 

All in order not to feel like a people pleaser. 

But we all want to be pleased people, so who’s going to do the pleasing?

Because here is the thing, love is not contorting yourself into someone else’s image of you. 

Love is showing up, even if it means you briefly feeling discomfort. 

“Love is not contorting yourself into someone else’s image of you.” 

Do you think Orla wants to drive to Inverkeithing because I like getting the shorter train?

Do you think Jake wants to do my dishes when I leave them in the sink?

Do you think my mum wants to proof read every essay, text and rambling I write?

Not particularly. 

But they do it anyway. 

Not because they betrayed themselves in order to sooth me.

If anything, I know Jake likes to do my dishes because then I have to do his next. But that’s not really the point. 

The point is, we have become so discomfort averse that we can’t even be there for the people in our lives who mean the most to us. 

Now we don’t kill one another for sport and document our thoughts via cave painting, people have got the time to think about all the things they like and don’t like. What ‘boundaries’ they will put in place to ensure they never have to experience a moment’s discomfort. 

The sad thing is, these people are often the ones who suffer the most because no matter how we try, discomfort is inevitable, yet temporary. 

Sometimes love looks like showing up. Often times actually, love looks like showing up. 

When I look back on my life, as we all know I do a lot. I remember so many of the times that people have shown up for me when I knew they would rather not. Or when a stranger has gone out of their way to offer me a kindness. 

These are the things that have stuck with me. Not what arbitrary boundary I put in place, however fleeting. 

So maybe send that text to your friend. 

Offer to help. 

Go to your friends boyfriend’s bands gig. 

Wash your flat mate’s dishes.

Do something for someone you love. 

I used to describe myself as a pathological people pleaser. Mainly because I heard Taylor Swift use it in a song but because I really believed I was. 

What was really happening? I was confusing over extension with people pleasing. 

I was doing things for people who would never do them back. I don’t mean random acts of kindness. I mean travelling for hours then waiting hours for a boy to show up for our date.

That wasn’t people pleasing, because what people were pleased? He was pissed off I waited because he knew he would have to make it up to me. I was pissed off because I knew I had let myself down. 

“What was really happening, was I was confusing over extension with people pleasing.”

As you will know by now reader, I am a huge fan of being in touch with your emotions. Knowing what you like, what you don’t like. Perhaps even straying into therapy speak at times. But what I am really fascinated by is connection. 

How we make it. How we sustain it. How we break it. 

The connection you have with yourself is important- vital even. 

But I also know that the relationships in my life serve as an anchor. Or a life jacket. Or some other nautical metaphor. 

What I am saying is- the connections I have in my life are worth bending for. 

As I know when I bend one way, the natural order of things will mean they will bend back towards me. 

What you put out you will receive. 

I am not suggesting solely acting in the hopes you will receive something in return, that is a bit shitty. 

But if you are someone who is looking to deepen a connection, let yourself show up for them and watch how the universe will reward you. Each day I am reminded of how beautiful the connections I have in my life are.

Not because they look good on Instagram (they do), not because I sail through life discomfort free. 

Because I know when the discomfort does come, those closest to me will have me and I them. 

That is connection.

That is friendship. 

That is love. 

Well to me anyway, I might post this and discover my dishes are no longer being done…