Letting Go of People Pleasing to Protect My Sobriety

Guest post by Rosemary

“She’s so amazing.”

“I don’t know how she does it!”

“What a rock star!”

I have known a lot of amazing women. I bet you have, too. I bet you may even be one of those amazing women.

In a previous version of myself, I was a stay-at-home mom who homeschooled my kids, taught at my church, served on committees, taught at two homeschool co-ops, and helped start my church’s first children’s choir and my co-op’s first prom — all while hosting nearly every Thanksgiving, Christmas, St. Patty’s Day, Easter, and Mother’s Day gathering for my big Irish family.

Whew, I am tired just writing that.

I was not just trying to be a good mother, daughter, wife, teacher, and volunteer: I was trying to be perfect.

I may not have been fueled by alcohol in those days (alcohol made its reappearance a few years later, after my mother died), but I was certainly fueled by praise and recognition.

I craved the praise, I craved the validation. I needed the praise, I needed the validation. I think this was my first addiction: praise and validation.

When I first began my recovery in a 12-Step program, a huge surprise was hearing people talk about their perfectionism. Sitting in a meeting full of high-achieving women, listening to their shares, my head cocked like that of a confused dog:

What? Alcoholics are successful? Alcoholics are perfectionists?

This did not resonate with the stereotype of alcoholics struggling to hold down jobs and failing to hold their lives together, but it sure did resonate with my own experience of achievement and perfectionism.

Turns out, many of us in recovery struggle with perfectionism.

For as long as I can remember, I craved words of affirmation and approval. Hearing, “You’re a good girl,” from my parents morphed into a desire to hear, “You’re a good student,“ from my teachers, which evolved into wanting to hear what a good girlfriend, daughter, employee, wife, or mother I was from pretty much anyone who would tell me.

In school, I lived for quizzes, tests, and papers because I was good at them. I got a rush from seeing As, A-pluses, and especially words of praise from my teachers. I can still feel the flutter of excitement upon reading my teachers’ (later, my professors’) praise at the top or bottom or especially in the margin of my term papers.

One of my English professors confessed to me that she wished she had written one of my term papers. I am pretty sure I floated home.

The flip side to this tarnished coin was when I did not earn that A or A-plus.

If I earned anything less than an A (an A-minus? gasp!), I panicked at this evidence that I may not be perfect. I was disappointed in myself and felt like something was missing or wrong with me.

I was that annoying student who went to speak to my teacher after class to ask what I did “wrong” when I did not earn a “perfect” A-plus.

In first grade, I received a checkmark on a handwriting exercise. I realize now that a checkmark meant my work was satisfactory; that it was “okay.” But back then, my perfectionism saw “okay” as not okay!

To me, “okay” equalled bad or mediocre. I wanted, strived for, and on some level needed to achieve what would equal perfection in my own, my teachers’, and of course, my parents’ eyes.

I grabbed that handwriting exercise paper with its sad black pen checkmark, took it home, crumpled it up, and — along with my self-esteem — tossed it in the trash.

I did not want anyone, especially my parents, to see my failure.

Sigh. My sober adult woman self aches for my little perfectionist girl self. She worked so hard.

Over four years into sobriety, and the little girl in me is still working hard at my job, in my family of origin, and in all my relationships, but especially in my relationships with my grown children and in my past romantic relationships.

My perfectionist, people-pleasing self and I are utterly exhausted.

Emotional and physical exhaustion are problems — ones that can put my sobriety at risk. But the biggest problem I have experienced in striving for perfection and people pleasing is the eventual resentment.

Often, such resentment goes both ways: from me towards them, from them towards me. It can become a cycle of expectation and resentment that leads to no one’s happiness.

I, like most people, have to learn my sober and life lessons more than once. This is part of that “being human thing” that is Just. So. Dang. Hard.

My latest lesson from the Universe around this came after one of my daughters got seriously ill over the summer.

In the moment, the way I gave and cared for my daughter felt 100-percent right. The thing to do. For sure. I was certain. Staying with her nearly twenty-four hours a day and sleeping over at the hospital with her for seven nights felt inevitable to me. There was no question in my mind that this was what I was called to do, needed to do, and wanted to do.

Did a (brave) friend tell me that I would get sick? Yes. That I should go home? Yes. Did I listen to said friend? Absolutely not. Did I feel angry and resentful toward my dear friend? Oh, hell yes. Do I now see her speaking up as a kindness and a courageous act of love? Absolutely yes.

I am deeply grateful that my daughter did get better and is now home, doing very well physically.

Our relationship, on the other hand, is not doing very well. It is severely strained. Heartsick-level strained. Hurt-on-both-sides strained.

Would things be different between us had I not felt the need to be so “amazing” and had I taken better care of myself? I believe it would, yes.

We learn in recovery that we cannot undo the past, but we can learn from it and make better decisions as we move forward.

Letting go of people pleasing and perfectionism is one of the hardest things I have worked on in sobriety. It’s not a one-and-done day trip but, rather, a journey that will take a lifetime.

Questions I ask myself to reduce people pleasing and support my sobriety:

1. Why do I want to do something? Do I want to buy the whole office donuts because I want my coworkers to like me? (I am a gluten-free chick and can’t even eat donuts, so it is not my craving for sugar making me want to buy donuts.) It is difficult at times to parse out good intentions from a desire to influence others, and sometimes there is overlap. Sometimes, we just want to do something good because it feels good, dammit, and that is okay.
2. Who or what am I trying to control? Am I trying to win over a cranky colleague? Or earn a friend’s affection? I used to bristle at the idea that I was trying to control anything or anyone. I used to think that meant I was a bad person. Now, I know it is just little me trying to protect big me and get our needs met.
3. Do I have the time/money/energy to do the thing I want or think I need to do? Am I putting that gift on a credit card? Going into debt to “help” someone? Am I so tired that if I bring dinner to a sick friend, I will get sick? If the answer to any of these questions is, “Yes,” then the answer to myself is, “No.”
4. Is this thing I want to do going to put my sobriety at risk? Am I going to end up so broke, stressed, or depleted that I am going to have hard-to-manage feelings, regret, or resentment? If yes, then again, my answer is, “No.” Because a YES to any of these questions might mean a NO to sobriety.

My little girl self and I still work hard for praise and validation, but my grown, sober woman self has an increasing awareness around it, noting old stories it brings up and what messages they are here to tell me.

While my desire for others’ approval has not gone away, I can see it better for what it is: a desire for love and acceptance.

Now, when I feel that “less than” belief creep in, along with its sister urge to “do more,” I tend to my needs and my sobriety by being amazing to myself with my own love and self-care.

Now you.

We’d love for you to share in the comments:

• Do you struggle with people pleasing and wanting to get things “perfect”? What impact does this have on your recovery and sobriety? What impact does it have on your relationships?
• In what ways do you practice putting your recovery and sobriety first?

And if you found this article helpful, please leave a clap or 50. It lets others know there’s something useful here and will help us grow this community.

Rosemary is a recovering perfectionist writing to heal. Rosemary identifies as an anxious BIG feeler, HSP (highly sensitive person), empath, gray area drinker, binge and blackout drinker, and love addict who discovered she has ADHD in her 50s. Rosemary has been doing life sober since January 1st, 2020. You can find her newsletter at: Rosemary Writes & Recovers.

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