Boundaries, respect and rules of engagement are important parts of the human condition.
To truly know how organised a country is, one only need look at if its people respect rules of queuing at the airport or if the politicians themselves are above criticism.
In interpersonal relationships however, women as a group are denied the right to have our boundaries and safe spaces respected.
Doctrines like submission, modesty and even sexual purity, encourage women and girls to put the needs, opinions and desires of other people above our comfort and even bodily autonomy.
What this has done is create girls who grow up to be women who are expert people pleasers and who find it hard to establish boundaries.
However, some women are taking active steps to rid themselves of the belief that to be a woman means to sacrifice your comfort on the altar of people’s approval.
Urban Woman Magazine recently spoke to some of these women to find out the steps they take to overcome people pleasing.
Read their responses below.
F
This is a very very interesting topic and I do have some personal experience. I grew up a chronic people pleaser and my self esteem was in the tank as you can imagine.
Overcoming it was a journey and it took many blows. At some point I turned to religion and thought the church could help me and even believed that it was helping.
But after a while I realised that I had fallen into the same patterns and it even became almost emotionally abusive with church.
Because sometimes when you mix in certain religious circles, like a predator they can sense those things in you and there’s a way the church or religious organisations behave.
They literally sense those issues and they prey on you because of them and because you are more susceptible to manipulation and all sorts of things if you already have those issues. They can see them and so just religiously manipulate them.
At the end of the day I realised that religion didn’t help me. It took me growing up and just understanding myself and identifying what my issues are and working through them.
It’s a mixture of reading books, to getting therapy and at some point I even had a therapist on Youtube who I was always listening to. Listening to the therapist really helped me understand things about myself from a professional standpoint. I was also determined to ask myself the tough questions and answer those questions no matter how uncomfortable it made me feel. That helped a lot.
I think I became radical at some point. Every decision I made I was always checking in with myself to be sure I was doing it for me and not to please someone else. It even became excessive to the point that my friends noticed.
For my own protection, I’ve learned to say no because saying yes sometimes just means me just trying to make you happy or people please. And then when I go home after doing that and sit with myself, I realise that my answer was actually no.
It took a long time but I think I’m in a safe place now. As for low self esteem, personally understanding God for myself has worked. So religion kind of helps with that. But I had to take myself out of the organised church to get my self esteem back. But yes, God helped and praying helped but without the covering and the hovering and the socalled guidance of religious institutions or religious leaders.
Then just trusting myself and realising that I’m enough. The more I saw that work out for me the better I got.
N
I’m a first born daughter of four and I remember growing up and always having to say yes to a lot of things and something kind of happened.
It was just like an epiphany in my head where I remembered how there was a preferential treatment of my brother from my extended family as opposed to myself.
I remembered in that moment the things that I would do and I would never get away with, were things he would do and get away with.
Or telling him to do certain things because he was “the man of the house” even when he was young and said himself that I could be the one to do them. I remember during that period I would say a lot of yes’s just so I could pacify them or be on their good side.
I was probably seventeen or eighteen and was about to start my internship and someone had said something that would require me going out of my way to please them and it just sparked in my head and I said: “Ahn ahn. No way. I’m not doing that”. And it has been like that since then.
So what I usually would do because again I’m the first born daughter, there are things that I am selective with, things I’ve taken on as my own responsibility and things that I know that I should not have to do because someone else can do it and even if I don’t do it, they’ll be fine.
If it is something that is going to inconvenience me, if it is something that I cannot comfortably do, I cannot afford to go out of my way to inconvenience myself in this very moment to do this, I would definitely not do it. I won’t push myself too hard.
And it’s step by step. Setting boundaries is more of just like communicating really because here and there you are going to make compromises but always just like speak your truth. Just always be vocal about the things you are feeling. If you are starting to feel like you are not happy about something even for friends or family, communicate that.
Learn to say no. Even when it’s so unnecessary. I’m going to be honest, you need to learn how to say no a lot. I’m so deadass because practising a lot of no’s just makes you understand that the world will not end. Like when you say it a lot it helps you realise that other people can figure stuff out on their own and the world did not end.
Angel Nduka-Nwosu is a writer, journalist and editor. She moonlights occasionally as a podcaster on As Angel Was Sayin’. Catch her on all socials @asangelwassayin.