News
People-Pleasing and Hyper-Independence: Two Ways We Abandon Ourselves
People-pleasing and hyper-independence look like opposites. The people-pleaser says, “I’ll do anything to keep you close.” The fiercely self-sufficient person says, “I don’t need you at all.” One moves toward connection by surrendering the self. The other protects the self by keeping connection at a safe distance. Yet beneath these opposite-looking strategies lies the same … Read more
You Don’t Have to Forgive to Heal
You may have been told that you must forgive in order to heal. Perhaps a pastor, spiritual teacher, therapist, or well-meaning friend told you that holding on to anger would poison you. That forgiveness is something you do for yourself, not for the other person. That unless you forgive, you will never be free. Some … Read more
Why Insight Isn’t Enough to Stop People-Pleasing
You understand your patterns. You know you are a people-pleaser. You may even know exactly where it began. So why are you still apologizing, backing down, overexplaining, or disappearing whenever someone is upset with you? The answer is that insight isn’t enough to change a pattern rooted in unconscious beliefs and predictions about what will … Read more
The Dark Side of People-Pleasing: Rage, Shame, and the Shadow
People-pleasing looks nice from the outside. You are agreeable. Accommodating. Helpful. You anticipate what other people need. You avoid unnecessary conflict. You learn to read the room and adjust yourself accordingly. But there is a dark side of people-pleasing that we don’t talk about nearly enough. Underneath all that niceness there may be feelings that … Read more
The Christmas Story Is About You: You Were Born Legitimate
What if the Christmas story is about you? I don’t mean that you are Jesus. I mean that perhaps we have made the Christmas story too small by treating it only as the story of one miraculous incarnation two thousand years ago. What if it is also an archetypal story about incarnation itself? A human … Read more