WHEN I WAS 26, SOMETHING SUDDENLY HIT ME… 

I'd become a puppet, and everyone else was holding the strings...

I realised that I felt no sense of connection with who I actually was. I had been living my life for everyone else but myself.

I had no clue what I even wanted for myself, and I felt completely lost in my identity…​

I was under the control and power of others, and DIDN’T FEEL WORTHY ENOUGH TO CLAIM IT BACK.

👉🏼 I was an OVER-GIVER.

I would offer up to give my time and energy to help others, when in fact I felt totally depleted myself…

👉🏼 I was a PEOPLE-PLEASER.

I would say ‘YES’ to every request, when I really wanted to say ’NO’.

👉🏼 I feared setting BOUNDARIES.

Out of GUILT & FEAR that I would be seen as UNKIND or SELFISH.

I just wanted to be liked and ACCEPTED.

Does that sound like you?

I had become so completely absorbed into the needs and expectations of others, that I had no connection to my own needs or self-worth.

If I tried to assert myself, I got gaslighted:

🗣 “I do so much for you and I get nothing in return!”

🗣 “You’re so selfish!”

And so the answer for me was to just do as they wanted, in aim to avoid drama and confrontation.

“It’ll be easier that way…” I told myself.

The truth is that I was always the person that everyone came to for everything, and they didn’t expect me to say ‘no’.

I was very sensitive, and always had a deep sense of empathy.

I even FELT THEIR PAIN SO DEEPLY, that I just wanted to fix it for them… So I focused so much of my attention on them, that I neglected myself. I’d convinced myself that boundaries didn’t work, when in reality, there was no consistency.

So in that moment of realisation, I decided to start asking for help. I was quite literally TIRED of giving up my life for others…

So for years after that, I became a “therapist hopper”… Until I began to realise that no one really had the answers I was looking for.

It was only when I tried and tested various methods of my own to finally break those patterns of over giving and people-pleasing, that it all suddenly began to click…​

and it took me 7 YEARS to get there!