Embracing My Inner Truth: A Journey of Self-Awareness and Recovering from People-Pleasing

Navigating relationships and personal beliefs can often feel like walking a tightrope. We are constantly balancing our own needs and preferences with the expectations of those around us. During emotionally vulnerable times, this balance can tip, leading us to make decisions that betray our true selves. This blog post explores a personal experience during the pandemic that highlighted my struggle with people-pleasing and the journey towards embracing my inner truth.

During the pandemic, I was having dinner (at home) with my on-again-off-again/it’s-complicated boyfriend at the time. He was preparing duck and duck fat sweet potato fries. Sounds delicious, right? The only issue was that I had been pescatarian for about a decade.

While I was (at the time) and still remain pescatarian, I was also at a point in my life where I had deeply internalized external narratives of being a “difficult” person. I had mapped other people’s ideas of me, on to my own identity and believed that being “difficult” was the reason for the inconsistency in the relationship that I was in.

I decided, in that moment, that my eating preferences were an extension of being “difficult”. And so I chose to “go with the flow,” which meant betraying myself and going with his flow, to keep external peace. I chose to prioritize external peace over internal peace. And so, I ate duck.

We’ve all been here at some point in life, right?

This experience brought me back to a time in my life when I was around 15 years old. I had a crush on a boy, who was a Wu-Tang Clan fan. I was not a fan. However, in order to get his attention, I began wearing Wu-Tang Clan branded t-shirts and even went as far as purchasing and wearing a Wu-Tang Clan chain. This is by far one of the most comical stories among my childhood friends and I…as I knew nothing about Wu-Tang. I could not rap one verse of their music and t-shirts were never really a part of my personal style story. It was actually like I was trying on someone else’s identity…which is a part of normal adolescent development. This Wu-Tang Clan stage was a very brief moment in time, because I felt completely out of alignment, and that feeling was too uncomfortable to maintain for a long stretch of time. My style expression (through my clothes and jewelry) did not match my authentic self, and I could no longer keep up the charade.

Interestingly enough, a few years later, I began dating the guy I had previously had the crush on. He did not notice me while I made efforts to be noticed, by portraying myself as someone that I simply was not. He noticed and pursued dating me when I was showing up as myself. This was one of my most important life lessons about authenticity.

It was an interesting ride, journeying back to this moment in time, as an adult. This time, Wu-Tang was duck.

Surprisingly after eating the duck, I did not feel any physiological changes—only the psychological harm caused by self-betrayal. This experience illuminated a part of myself that I thought I had long ago addressed: people-pleasing. I was reminded that this part of me still manifests during times of emotional turmoil. I began to believe that I must show up the way others expect me to, or I am not worthy.

I recently reflected on this experience while chatting with one of my closest friends. He began laughing hysterically and said, “Danielle, I can’t believe you did that! You do not eat meat!” He laughed because I don’t present as a perfectionist or people-pleaser. In fact, I present as a bit of a disruptor—comfortable in the things that make me different and unique. We both had a good laugh as I explained to him that when I am in a state of emotional vulnerability, I get further and further away from my authentic self and map other people’s ideas of who I am or should be, on to me.

It’s a part of myself that I feel a lot of shame around, so I rarely share this struggle outside of my work with my therapist. This is why my close friend had no idea. At the time, I was healing from the emotional pain of my on-again-off-again relationship, the death of my aunt, a recent diagnosis of my cousin’s aggressive form of breast cancer, and the loneliness and isolation of COVID lockdown. Life felt really hard. But when I engaged in self-betrayal by eating duck to seem less “difficult” to someone else, I realized it was time to turn inward.

People-pleasing as an attempt to appear “less difficult” is a silent struggle that I am always managing. It takes form in small ways that often go unnoticed. For example, if I go to dinner with friends, I rarely make a suggestion on where to dine; I try to “go with the flow.”

I recently read Whoopi Goldberg’s memoir, and in it, she shares that as a kid, when she would ask her mom deep existential questions about concepts like spirituality, her mother would ask her, “Why do you want to know? Are you asking to form your own opinion?” I think this is such a brilliant way to foster a child’s ability to listen to their voice within and to have confidence in their own thoughts and opinions.

Going with the flow always clouds my inner voice and stifles my confidence in my thoughts and opinions. Practicing self-awareness helps me identify when I am straying away from myself by going with the flow of others, and against the flow of myself. When I feel this incongruency, I realize that it’s time to focus on myself. Focusing on myself provides me with the internal clarity I need to make the proper adjustments to my life, in support of my emotional well-being. This can take on many forms like therapy, mindfulness and meditation practices, solo dinners, intellectual stimulation through reading and podcasts, daily movement, and getting creative (new project, new hobby).

Living in the awareness of the constant truth within, requires consistent self-reflection and self-care. It’s about recognizing the moments when we compromise our values and understanding why we do so. By turning inward and prioritizing our inner peace, we can better navigate our relationships and life challenges. This journey of self-awareness is ongoing, but it’s essential for maintaining our emotional health and staying true to who we are.