Awakening to Your Sleep Reality

image from Pinterest– link HERE

A great percentage of your life is spent sleeping. This feels like a waste of precious time to some people. To others it is a escape  from an otherwise unbearable existence. 

We try to find ways to avoid sleep, in order to get things done that we deem more important. Or we self medicate ourselves by sleeping, and think of it as an escape from being in reality. But sleep is a reality all its own, that it intertwined with our waking reality.

 The sleep states are a natural part of our existence. There are different stages of sleep that each serve important functions.

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image from Pinterest – link HERE

The subconscious awakens and exists in a different way during sleep, than it does when you are awake. The processes that the subconscious parts of the brain need to do, are an important part of your maintaining your emotional, mental, and spiritual balance.

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Sleep deprivation will cause deterioration in your mental state, your emotional state, memory, and cognitive functions. It effects your ability to have a clear continuity from one day to the next. Over time, sleep deprivation can cause a breakdown of your mental state, resulting in mental illness.

image from pinterest – HERE

Sleep can be affected by various things. If you are unable to sleep straight through for 8 or 9 hours, then it is critical to your mental health that you make up the missing sleep hours at another time of the day.

This is not laziness. You are not being unproductive when you are sleeping. Lack of proper sleep will cause decreased productivity and poor efficiency. You will have memory problems, especially related to spatial and time memory.

The sleep states are a part of our reality. Your subconscious brain exists just as much as your conscious brain does.

Your core beliefs, your memories, your perceptions of reality, and your emotions are all functions of your subconscious brain.

Your conscious awake state cannot exist separately from your subconscious reality.

Sleep is critical to make sure all these realities, and the different parts of your brain are working both together…and independently… in a way that best supports you.

image from Pinterest – link HERE

Spirituality… higher consciousness …and your perceptions about the nature of your reality…are all intertwined with what happens in the brain while you sleep.

Your mental and emotional health are dependent upon your getting proper sleep.  This is also true about  your immune system and your physical health.

Your spiritual health has to do with believing in, and perceiving something beyond the reality of the five senses.

Spirituality gives you a greater perspective about your existence.

Being able to perceive your higher consciousness… and spiritual realities… is also intertwined with your brain being able to experience the sleep states. Your spiritual health is dependent upon letting your conscious brain  rest, so the other senses can awaken.

You are not wasting time by sleeping. You are allowing an important part of your reality to exist. You are increasing your brain’s ability to function well during your waking hours.

We are more than drones or robots. We need more to our existence than just survival. …something more to living than just paying the bills.

Treat your body’s need to sleep with thoughtfulness.  The sleep states are the interconnecting path between realities and levels of consciousness.

What happens when you are awake affects your dreams, and what happens in your dreams affects your consciousness.   🌷

Sleep well tonight,

Annie 💕

 

 

Depression C-PTSD and PTSD – How to get Your energy Back

I just finished giving a guitar lesson to my teenage niece. It is nice to spend time with her. I have been giving her lessons for a few months now, about every other week.

Before her father had asked me if I was interested in doing guitar lessons with her, I had not been doing much with guitar at all. 

I used to play all the time. Depression has a way of making you lose interest in the things you once used to love to do. After back to back abusive situations with partners and family members, I lost my will to do anything that I liked to do. 

Since I have started my life coaching business I have been feeling that life force coming back. Once people suck your will out of you, it takes time to be able to self generate that energy again. 

It takes doing something that you are passionate about. Since I have been working with other abuse victim, I have felt a purpose in my life that means something special to me. So this is having the effect of generating some of that will power back again.

I still feel the weight of depression pressing down on me as I try to push it off. I am learning that you cannot push it off at all. It is more a matter of accepting without judgement of yourself. 

Then allowing the feelings to come and sitting with them in a way that is nurturing. Showing yourself compassion when the people closest to you cannot show you any compassion is not easy. But you can do it once you learn that the perceptions others have about you do not have to frame your reality. 

Anyway, I was thinking of putting new strings on my guitar so that it would sound better. The old strings have a very thumpy, dull sound. I know that I would be pleased to hear the sound of new strings and I would be more likely to play for enjoyment. 

I might learn a new song or write one of my own. Baby steps are sometimes the way to make great changes in your perceptions. It is the change in perception that will create change in your behavior. 

Perceptions control your emotions. Emotions are underneath of all behaviors. Once you can begin to change behaviors and have more control over getting some momentum, then you can begin to enjoy your path as you are creating it under your feet. 

Touch is a fundamental communication between people. It allows us to communicate compassion better that words or facial expression.

Touch is the most important element of bonding and compassion between humans.

There are neurochemical effects of skin to skin touch. Compassionate touch is critical for the brain and the body to be healthy. We need human touch to be well.

We need  human touch in order to have good mental health. People who are touch deprived can develop mental illness.

People with mental illness can become worse from a lack of pleasant  physical touch.

Compassionate touch reduces stress hormones, including cortisol. When someone touches your skin in a pleasant way, it makes you feel calmer and safer. Anxious feelings  can be reduced and your nervous system can be calmed. 

People deprived of pleasant physical touch  can develop high levels of stress hormones.

High levels of stress hormones on a regular basis will cause a condition of severe anxiety disorder. Depression is often a condition that goes hand in hand with anxiety disorders.

“When a person receives a pleasing touch, the hormone oxytocin is released in the brain. Oxytocin is linked with human bonding, socializing and maternal instincts. It helps alleviate anxiety and fear and is critical in trust-building. There is even a specialized part of the nervous system in our skin, known as tactile C fibers, that is specialized to pick up compassionate touch.” Pracha Touch

Physical touch can promote healing in the body and reduce the likelihood for disease and illnesses.

This includes both physical and mental illnesses. Insomnia can be relieved by the hormone balancing effect of skin to skin touch that is pleasant.

Some people with mental illness may have been touch deprived as infants and as children.

There is research about the necessity of touch for proper development and growth.

There was research by John Bowlby and Renee Spitz, during WW II, about the effect of touch on infants. Infants that were orphans, living in institutional settings were not held by the caregivers.

The lack of compassionate touch caused a 75% mortality rate. Also, the infants had a lower weight and length than infants of the same age. They did not develop properly due to the lack of being comforted. The compassionate touch of the mother is comforting to an infant and reduces fear and anxiety of the baby.

Babies need to have their nervous systems regulated by the mother. Infants do not  have the capacity to regulate their own nervous systems. Infants even regulate their breathing with their mother’s breathing. Babies that sleep with their mother have a dramatically lower incidence of infant death syndrome.

If the baby forgets to take a breath, the mothers breath on the baby’s face will cause the baby to draw in a breath. The baby will be calmed by the sound of its mother’s heartbeat.

“In some of the most dramatic new findings, premature infants who were massaged for 15 minutes three times a day gained weight 47 percent faster than others who were left alone in their incubators – the usual practice in the past. The massaged infants also showed signs that the nervous system was maturing more rapidly: they became more active than the other babies and more responsive to such things as a face or a rattle.” Daniel Goleman New York Times

The United States is one of the most touch deprived countries in the world. In studies, we come up second to England

In the 1960s, psychologist Sidney Jourard, studied the conversations of friends in different parts of the world. He observed friends as they spent time together in a café.

In England, the two friends touched each other zero times. In the United States, there was an average of 2 touches during the conversation. But in France, the frequency of touch was 110 times per hour. And in Puerto Rico, the friends touched each other an average of 180 times!

It is possible that the mental health crisis in the US has something to do with the fact that we are a “No-touch” culture.

Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents

Low self esteem.

Lack of being able to self generate feelings of self worth.

Fear of doing things that make other people upset, angry or disappointed.

Difficulty prioritizing oneself.

Trouble feeling motivated to get ahead in life. 

These are some of the symptoms of C-PTSD from growing up with a narcissistic parent. Your subconscious brain is programmed very early about your identity, and  your role in the family and your place in the world. 

Associations are deep in the subconscious.

If you do not comply with the other person, there will be consequences to pay. If you cause someone to become upset , you will pay dearly. 

People from more health families learn to look out for themselves. You learned that in order to protect yourself, you have to look out for others. 

People from functional families were taught to be in touch with their own feelings and to love themselves.

 If you were the child of a narcissist, you were taught to defend against the wrath f the narcissist by not expressing your own feelings. Eventually you began to have trouble identifying what you want at all. 

As an adult this wiring in your brain keeps you from taking care of yourself properly.

You still have that hyper-vigilance that there is a threat of danger when someone near you is not getting their way. 

You may have a fear of being abandoned by the people you love, if you consider your own needs to be equal to theirs. The longer you cater to the desires of other people, in a relationship, the more they come to expect that treatment from you. 

People around you can become conditioned to expect you to always agree, always go along with them, and never challenge them. 

One of the many problems of this “people pleaser” behavior is that it attracts narcissists and predators. Narcissists and psychopaths want easy prey or at least a victim that had obvious emotional wounds that they can use to use against you. 

If you have never practiced standing up for yourself, then you have no idea how to do this, and you fear the consequences of doing so. What would happen to your relationships if you said “no” to someone? 

What would happen to your world of you began to prioritize your own needs? What consequences would follow if you believed that your needs and ideas were just as valuable as those of the people in your life?

Well, you can see the people in the world who are not afraid to say “no.” You interact with them all the time. They say “no” to you all the time. These people are not all in the same category. 

There are people who do what they want all the time. They never let people cross their boundaries. In fact, they cross over into your world and stomp all over your rights and invade your boundaries all the time. 

These are the narcissists. You may have a fear of becoming like that. You do not want to become the parent that emotionally abused you. The very person that caused much of your difficulty in getting what you want out of life. 

But there is another category of people who stand up for themselves. These are people that have healthy boundaries but still respect the rights of other people. They do not exploit and manipulate others. 

They express their feelings and let people know what they want. They go after the things they want out of life and they consider their personal dreams, desires and emotions to be a high priority. 

 These are not narcissists. They do not use aggressive, emotionally manipulative communication. They do not covertly try to get emotional reactions from you, in order to exploit and control you. 

There is a line between assertive and aggressive. You are being assertive when you express what you do and do not want.

You are being aggressive when you make it clear that you do not care what the other person wants. You undermine, lie to, and gaslight people to get your way. 

Being assertive and having healthy boundaries does not have to injure other people.

You are not a bad person for looking out for yourself.

You are not a narcissist if you care about your own feelings and needs. You are a normal human being. 

I will write about this topic again in the future. Please leave comments below about a specific question or particular problem that you have.

Give me some ideas about problems of having C-PTSD  (complex PTSD) that you are dealing with. 

I want to hear from adult children of narcissistic parents. Also from anyone that grew up under the heavy cloud of a narcissist in some capacity. It is not always a parent. 

Also, if you feel that your ability to move forward and get momentum in life has been affected by narcissistic abuse, either during childhood or as an adult, please leave me any ideas about questions I can address in a future post. 

 

 

 

Toxic People Spew Poison

People that care about you…and care about others in general, do not use bullying tactics to get their agenda met. They do not intentionally overblow, contort, and reframe events.

Caring people do not have a ridiculously overblown reaction to a little thing that you did “wrong” ( against their personal rules) and then tell all of your friends, family or co-workers that you victimized them.

Someone who wants to be your friend does not refuse to hear your side of a disagreement, shift blame for their over reaction onto you and then put malicious words in your mouth that you never said.

Toxic people pretend to be your friend until they feel threatened by you, have no more use for you, or you refuse to agree with everything they say…and do everything they want.

Narcissists see themselves as more entitled than you to everything , whether you deserve it more or not.

Narcissists want you to admire their greatness and submit to being their minion.

If you stop catering to their ever-changing whims, they will gather their other minions to turn against you….and destroy things you care about…..friendships, your reputation, your job, your marriage, your business, your self esteem, or your ability to move forward with your life.

They won’t change, even if they tell you they will. If they turned against you or discarded you once …they will do it again…and harder.

Once you begin to feel your self esteem go down every time you talk with someone, it is time to back away.

Once you begin to notice that every time you have a conversation with them you have to go back over the entire thing in your head to figure out what the hell just happened….it is time to back away….or run if you can..

Relationships should involve two people…..

Two different sets of opinions that are respected

Two different sets of personal boundaries that are respected

Two sets of ideals and thoughts that are respected

Two different schedules that are respected

Two different ways of feeling about situations that are respected

Two different sets of dreams , skills, talents and aspirations that are supported and respected

Two different individual people that are respected

Get the idea?

Narcissists are poisonous.

Run.

 

 

 

 

 

You are Beautiful Just as You are Right Now !

You have innate self worth and you are beautiful right now.

You can make changes, learn new things and progress towards a goal any way you desire to, but your innate beauty and self worth are fully in tact right now at this minute.

Other creatures like bunnies are beautiful just the way they are and they do not need to change or grow or do anything in particular in order for us to see the beauty and value in them.

image from pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/pin/311803974180733994/

The trees are beautiful just as they are at any stage of growth. Their special value is in their beauty and their unique presence.

image from pinterest  https://www.pinterest.com/pin/244601823485308118/

image from pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/pin/311803974180733961/

Babies are born and they are beautiful.

They cannot do anything to contribute to the household other than just to be there. They cannot do anything for people but strangers come up to them in the store and want to see them.

There is an innate beauty in life and in living things because of the spiritual nature of life itself.  The possibilities for the new baby are endless. 

People sometimes feel they envy the baby and the endless possibilities it has to become anything it wants to become. But you can still become anything you want to become. Your possibilities are still available to you of you can see reality as less rigid than the matrix you perceive it to be. 

You have an inner beauty as well as an outer beauty. There is no path you can take which will add or subtract from the spiritual being that you are. 

You can follow whatever values that you have and your beliefs can change along the path as you need them to better serve you.

 It does not change the fact that you are beautiful right now, and your self worth in perfect, even more than you can imagine. 

Imagine what wonderful things you can do once you accept your value and see the wonderful qualities in yourself !

Be Yourself and Know You are Significant in the World

Scam School YouTube Video – Magic Tricks and Fun Stuff to Mess with People’s Heads

This video is really fun. They have these little tricks that you can make from common objects that you would have in your house or in your purse. They set up the trick and ask people to try to figure out the method. Then the people have fun trying to figure out the trick to it.

After a few tries and the people cannot figure it out, then the guy shows them the trick and you can see how it is done.

I like watching things like this. They are a great distraction from anxiety and stress that you may be experiencing. It kind of takes you out of your head and into something else that is fun.

This particular one sets up a trick that uses a matchbook with the wooden matches and an Altoid mint candy.

Here is another video from Scam School. This one teaches you a couple of super cool magic tricks that you can perform for people. They are easy but they look hard when you do them.

The first one used a newspaper and the magician has you choose where he cuts a strip from the paper. It ends up that he predicts what the words will be where the paper gets cut with the scissors. You have to watch it to see how this works. Super cool !

If you have social anxiety, these little tricks might help you to break the ice with people. You can do them at home or at a restaurant or a bar.

These kinds of things are great for increasing the plasticity of your brain. Any kind of re-wiring work you are doing will work better if your brain plasticity is better. Learning new things like can actually help with your recovery  and healing from C-PTSD and PTSD.

Because the brain is stuck in a certain loop of thought patterns,  you want to break up the thought patterns that have been programmed into you by other people.

Here is one with coin tricks.

Triggers, Emotional Flashbacks and PTSD

Triggers suck.

For people into NLP triggers are called NLP anchors. The difference is that NLP anchors can be good or bad. They might be pre- existing from a past trauma or created to ease the effects of trauma.

They can be put into your mind intentionally to bring about a certain mood or mental state. This is a functional or a therapeutical use for them.

Back in the days of Pavlov, triggers were discovered as a tool for behavioral modification. You know…Pavlov’s dog.

Every time Pavlov fed the dog, he rang a bell first. After a while the dog salivated at the sound of the bell even without the food being presented.

This is how our minds create associations between certain triggers and a corresponding emotional response.

I have ring tones that I hate the sound of. There are songs I cannot listen to.

Certain animals are disturbing to me. Certain situations make me have an anxiety attack.

Some triggers are related to incidents and some are related to specific poem. Some triggers are related to time periods or ongoing abuse. Others are related to break ups from our ex.

There are some triggers that we are well aware of where they come. Other ones may be related to trauma from our past from when we were very young or even infants.

There may be triggers that create emotional flashbacks for you that are from periods of time that you have blacked out from your mind…or I should say that your brain blocked them out in order to protect you.

Triggers can come out of nowhere unexpectedly. We can try to avoid certain known triggers such as my not using certain alarms and ring tones on my phone.

Although every so often I am out somewhere and a stranger’s phone rings with the very ring tone that is now taboo on my cell phone.

There are times when we suddenly feel severe anxiety and have no idea what caused the onset. This can sometimes be an emotional flashback to a trigger we are unaware of.

That is a very tricky one to figure out. You would have to write down all the sights, smells and circumstances that were around at the time of the anxiety attack.

You would have to keep a log of those things each time you had an unexpected, unexplainable anxiety attack. Then look for anything in common between them that was never part of your environment when you are calm.

To make it even more complex, triggers can have more than one component to them. It might not be candlelight or the smell of roses individually that triggers you. It could be the combination of the two of them that does it.

Certain emotional triggers can be healed or at least the effect can be lessened through NLP techniques. Other ones may be harder to deal with than others.

The ones that we cannot identify or do not know what they were caused by are the worst ones in a way. At least as far as there being any hope for treatment.

The more severe the trauma, the more severe the pain from being triggered.

I know many other people deal with this on a day to day basis. For some people certain dates or times of the year are triggers for emotional pain, depression and anxiety.

If you have triggers like I have described here then you have some form of PTSD. It could be straight PTSD or Complex PTSD.  People often have both.

Talking about your triggers or unexplained emotional brain attacks is the first step to healing or at least lessoning the feeling of alienation or isolation due to PTSD or Complex PTSD.

Know you are not alone. There are others of us that understand.

Learn How to Draw Boundaries with Manipulative People

Drawing boundaries is difficult for people that have People Pleaser Syndrome because we were never taught how to draw our own boundaries. Personal boundaries were constantly crossed by one or both parents.

People from abusive backgrounds were brought up to keep our feelings and opinions to ourselves and to cater to the feelings of others. If you have people pleaser syndrome then you have some (not necessarily all) of the following characteristics.

1. Difficulty saying no, especially when the other person does not want to accept “no” for an answer.

2.  Extreme anxiety during any confrontations.

3. Extreme anxiety when people are disappointed in you, or they are  not happy with your actions.

4. DIfficulty standing your ground, when you do not agree with someone.

5. Get taken advantage of easily or often.

6. Other people get more time to make their case during arguments. You end up feeling intimidated to say what your side is.

7. The need for people to approve of you.

8. Seek validation about yourself from other people

9. Get talked into doing things that you do not want to do. (like working extra shifts at work)

10. Have trouble telling people when they are crossing a boundary with you.

Usually people with People Pleaser Syndrome grew up in some sort of abusive situation during childhood.  Abuse does not necessarily have to involve physical abuse. If you were expected to take on a parent’s problems and feelings as your own, and be responsible for their feelings, then that is abusive.

If you felt you had to act in certain ways, in order to keep a parent from becoming angry, then your focus was on the parents feelings all the time. You were not able to act according to your own feelings, because in order to survive, you had to constantly monitor the moods of the parent.

As a child and as you grew into teenage years, you were supposed to be taught how to be an individual. You should have been allowed to draw boundaries that were reasonable and those boundaries should have been respected by your parents.

Boundaries that are often violated in abusive households

1. Personal space. Teenagers should have had the right to personal space, such as their bedroom drawers  not being gone through. They should be allowed to have the door closed, and not have the parent just opening the door without knocking. The knocking on a closed  bedroom door, is a basic courtesy that is often violated in abusive families. The right to personal letters, diaries and other items is important.

There are even narcissists that will violate this boundary with other adults.

( when I was first married my mother in law used to go through everything in  my apt from bedroom drawers to my trash. This was such a violation to me. I asked her not to but narcissistic people do not respect boundaries and she just did it when I was not home…my kids used to tell me she was going through drawers when I left for work)

2. The Right to have feelings. Children should have a right to feel what they feel. In some  abusive households, children are often scolded for crying or expressing feelings that they have about situations. They are taught to feel what they are told to feel. As adults we have trouble identifying what it is that we actually feel, because we are conditioned to feel what others want us to feel.

( I used to try to tell  my mother when I was upset or sad, but it made her angry. I could not talk about my feelings when my parents were divorced or when she decided to stop letting me have visitation with my father. I could not ask her to spend some of her days off with me instead of all of her free nights going on dates. I never saw her. She was at work or on a date. She called me selfish if I mentioned it)

3. The Right to choices and opinions.  In some  abusive households the child or teenager is not given the right to make choices and have opinions. Parents are supposed to be reasonable with their children and teenagers, as they express their desires and opinions.

If you were not allowed to express an opinion that was different from your parent then you probably grew up feeling like you have to keep any opposing opinions to yourself. You will have a hard time speaking about your opinion and you may even have trouble accessing your opinion at all.

People with toxic personalities will prey on those that have People Pleaser Syndrome. They know how to recognize you. They know that they can take advantage of you, in a variety of ways.

My  last boyfriend spent weeks just listening to me talk about my abusive past and how it left me with difficulty standing up for myself. He knew I was a perfect target.

Some things you can do to protect yourself. There are a few things that can help. I will talk about one of them here to start with. Then I will post some follow up posts with more ideas for you to work on. 

 Practice identifying what you are feeling and thinking.  You may know that you are feeling anxiety or discomfort, but practice trying to take a minute and be able to identify your emotions more specifically. In your mind you want to be able to say 

“You are making me feel like my feelings do not matter. You are making me feel like I do not matter.”

“I feel like my schedule does not matter to them and they do not think I have important things to do”

“I feel like I am being taken advantage and they are asking things that are not reasonable”

“I feel frustrated that they keep asking me to do something after I already said no”

“They are intentionally not listening to what I am saying, in order to get their way”

When you can identify exactly how you are feeling, then you can allow yourself to feel that way, rather than shoving your emotions down. It will give you some words to use during the communication or at least validate to yourself how the person is making you feel.

Some toxic personalities will counter your right to feel what you feel. They may use techniques to confuse you about what you are feeling. They will also try to put the fault on you that you are feeling that way.

They might say…

“You really should work on your anger issues”

“You get upset about everything”

“We have to work together” (are they working together with you, or using you?)

“Your mental illness is causing you to think or feel that way” (my ex used to do this. Any time I was upset with him, he would say that it was my mental illness )

“You are projecting another experience on me” (my ex used to say I was thinking of ex boyfriends when I thought he was being unkind to me. He said I was projecting their behavior onto him )

“I am not doing anything to make you feel bad”

“I would never do anything to make you feel low self esteem or feel bad” (my ex used to say this to me)

“You are responsible for your own feelings. There is nothing I can do to make you feel bad, unless you want to feel bad. (that was my ex husband)

One time I was trying to talk to my ex about the lack of time he was spending being intimate with me. We had not been intimate in over a month. He said “There are 12 step groups for sex addiction. Maybe you should go.”

I am sure you can add to the list, from your own experiences. Feel free to add one in the comments.

Just because someone says they are not doing something, does not mean they are not doing it. A toxic personality will tell you outright that they are not doing what they are doing.

I had a boss one time who was very narcissistic and always had to have her way. She would become enraged if anyone did anything that she felt crossed her in any way. She would rage at you behind the closed door of her office.

Out in the main areas she would brag about the fact that she was a very understanding manager. She said that she was a great manager because she respected and listened to the opinions and feelings of the people under her. She was all smile in the lobby and I could hardly recognize her as the same person who had become all red faced and screaming at me in her office.

The other tactic people will use on you is guilt. They will make you feel guilty for saying no. They might say. My family used these kinds of guilt manipulations all the time on me.

1. Well, I was hoping to have a daughter in law that would be part of our family. Being part of the family means going to all family functions, no matter what else you had planned. ( this is my ex mother in law)

2. A good daughter would...(my father has used this one to get me to go back into the line of fire with my abusive mother many times)

3. As the oldest sister you are responsible to...(my father has said this to me many times, in order to get me to forgive my sister for being abusive to me)

4. Didn’t I do you a favor last month? (The favor was something you did not ask for and probably was not helpful.) –  this was my ex boyfriend. He would pay my $60 phone bill and then expect me to 20 hours of work for him every week.

5. We really need your help. Everyone else is busy. (your time is less important that the other people who said no / they have more of a right to say “no” than you do)

6. But I lent you  money. ( so you are now an indentured servant until the debt is paid off, which will never happen because they keep adding interest on it) – my ex inlaws used to use our debt to them against us

7. I thought you cared about me (as if saying “no” to this one thing will prove you do not love them) – my ex mother in law still does this to me

8. I thought you cared about the family (as if saying “no” to this one thing is a severe violation of loyalty)

I am sure you can add to list, from your own experiences. Feel free to leave one in the comments.

More ideas in Part 2. I am working through this process of overcoming People Pleaser Syndrome myself. It can be done. It is a matter of retraining our brains, and getting the things that we missed developmentally during childhood.