Mental Health Awareness Month Day 19.
We all want everyone to be happy, so we all people please to some degree.
I thought that I was aggressive and assertive, but the more I have thought about what kind of person I am and how I react to others and different situations, I have realized I’m actually quite passive. But all those years of being passive, of not using my voice, just built layers and layers of resentment. The only one to blame is myself.
There are innumerable reasons I chose to please and remain silent. I think the underlying motive in every case was fear. Fear of not being accepted. Fear of being hurt. Fear of being hated. Fear of not belonging. Fear of letting others down. Fear of being rejected. Fear of not being loved. Fear of losing friends. Fear of not having a purpose. Fear of authority. Fear of men. Fear of the unknown. But what about me and what I wanted?
People pleasing only gets us so far. At the end of the day, we have to live with ourselves and our decisions. We’ll never be able to make everyone content. So why do we try? Because it’s comfortable, it’s easy. It’s hard to disappoint people. It’s hard to voice how we actually feel and what we actually want. And of course, there are times when it is appropriate to appease others. It can’t always be about our own agenda. But not honoring ourselves and what we need and want will do more harm than good.
After my first year at BYU-I, I was suspended because of low grades. I had been a good student until my senior year of high school. (I almost didn’t graduate high school because of failing a class that year.) I was dealing with a mental illness. Although I knew I had depression, I didn’t really recognize how not okay I was. I moved back to San Diego and took some classes at a junior college so I could return to BYU-I. I continued to struggle in college the entire time I was enrolled at BYU-I.
Everyone expected me to go to school and get a degree. It wasn’t until fall of 2012 that I finally put my foot down and dropped out of school. That was not what I had planned for myself. But I came to realize that school wasn’t for me. I stopped forcing myself to do something just because everyone else expected me to.
To this day, I still wish I had my bachelor’s degree or even an associate’s. But I don’t. I am trying not to beat myself up over it and to be okay with not finishing school. When people ask me what I graduated from school in, it’s still tough to say I didn’t graduate. It hurts my heart. Because if you didn’t graduate from college, people tend to make assumptions and judge you. I do not regret leaving BYU-I. And I know my worth isn’t based on whether or not I received a piece of paper. But it’s hard because graduating college is the norm.
We can live a fuller and happier life by worrying less about what others think and focusing more on what we think. We don’t need to fit a mold or prove ourselves to anyone. We are allowed to live “untamed” as Glennon Doyle would describe it. We don’t need to quiet our roar to make others feel comfortable. We need to be unapologetically ourselves. #heber #peoplepleasing #speakyourtruth #raiseyourvoice #liveuntamed #glennondoyle #beyourself #stopfearingothers #beassertive #whatdoyouwant #mentalillness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthawarenessmonth #mentalhealthinthetimeofcorona #coronavirus #covid19 #corona2020 #letsbereal #31in31at31 #agamutofgrey #lifeisbeautiful #may2020 5.19.20
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