People-pleasers and the inverted god-complex

She was 9 when her mum ended up in the hospital. They called it chronic stress. She wasn’t sure what that meant but she knew that she had caused it and put her mother in the hospital.

She had asked for new shoes last week and complained about eating the same pasta and sauce for the 1,000,000th time that week. If she hadn’t cried, her mother wouldn’t have had to work so hard or ended up in that hospital bed, groaning from pain.

She stared at the needle plugged into her mother's arm and looked away, shame burning in her belly. She hated needles. They hurt. Now her mum would need a thousand of those because of her.

Later in bed that night, she made a list of promises in her notebook to be quiet and eat everything and not bother anyone else ever again with stupid demands because bad things happen when she asks for things.

The agenda

1. Why inverted god-complex?

2. The cost of continuing on this path

3. The bridge

There are people in this world who have learned to treat other people’s emotional states as their personal responsibility.

They move through the world, constantly adjusting their energy to soothe and prioritise the comfort of others over their own needs. And they are devastatingly good at it. This leaves them chronically exhausted and deeply lonely, surrounded by many but known by none.

I've spent years mapping this pattern in myself and in others, who seem beloved by everyone but can't figure out why they still feel so alone. What I know is this: the way out isn't more willpower or better boundaries or finally getting your stuff together. It's transcendence. It's learning to trust something bigger than your ability to manage everyone's perception of you. This is what we are going to talk about.

Why "inverted" god-complex

I want to be clear about definitions, because calling this an inverted god-complex isn't wordplay or clever talk.

Narcissists have a god-complex, which makes them feel superior and worthy of special treatment. They believe that they deserve to control others because they are fundamentally “above” others and the world revolves around them.

People-pleasers, on the other hand, have an inverted god-complex, which makes them feel inferior and unworthy of consideration. People-pleasers believe that they must control other people's experiences of them by placating and pleasing. This is because they believe that they are a burden that other people tolerate.

Both are delusions of power.

While the narcissist can be an insufferable jerk convinced of their own importance, the people-pleaser’s delusion breaks my heart because they are like someone who keeps lighting themselves on fire to keep everyone else warm.

The cost starts to accumulate in different ways.

Cost of continuing down this path

1. Loneliness

You can be surrounded by people and feel completely alone.

No one understands that truth better than a people-pleaser. A people-pleaser’s self is split into two parts with one part (the helper and listener and all things good) facing the world, while the other part (the curious, authentically real) only coming out when you are alone.

So people only know you as a function you fulfill in their lives which creates a particular kind of loneliness of being surrounded by people who love what you do for them but who don’t really know you in a way that can nourish you in the relationship.

2. Your body keeps the score

If you are familiar with Gabor Maté’s work, you know he talks a lot about how chronic people-pleasing ties in with autoimmune conditions.

When you spend your entire life suppressing your own needs, your body won’t forget about those needs. Instead, it will start attacking itself, trying to get your attention the only way it knows how. Before you know it, you are diagnosed with autoimmune diseases and chronic fatigue.

3. Your relationships suffer

All your people-pleasing is geared towards a singular objective, which is, to maintain relationships.

The cruel irony is that all the hovering and managing of people’s emotions for them is getting in the way of deepening the relationship.

Relationships need to go through some messy natural arcs that include rupture and repair. The more you try to manage people’s emotions, the more you prevent the deepening arcs. This will automatically keep your relationships at the same shallow depth with no intimacy. This is also why you feel lonely even when surrounded by many.

The bridge

You can understand intellectually that people-pleasing is destroying, do all the trauma work and still find yourself right back in the same old pattern.

This is because willpower doesn't work when you are trying to override a survival mechanism.

It just doesn't.

The survival mechanism will win every time because it's wired deeper than your conscious intention.

One thing that can work is transcendence. And I know that word might make you uncomfortable (it made me uncomfortable for years), but stay with me.

The self-help industrial complex wants you to believe you can think your way out of this. It makes you think that you could buy the right book, listen to the right podcast then journal your way to freedom.

Look, I'm not against any of that. But there's this underlying assumption that if you just had the right technique, if you just tried harder, you could fix this yourself, which is just another version of the same delusion. You are still trying to play god and control the outcome through your own effort.

You can't release control until you trust something bigger than you is actually going to catch you. Also, you can't trust yourself (you hold a lot of trauma inside from all the little self-betrayal).

I will let you know that no amount of psychological insight will let you put that burden down until you believe something else is capable of holding it.

Until you believe that you are not, in fact, responsible for holding the universe together with your careful behaviour and cling to the bridge that helps you release the control wounding you inside.

For me, that bridge is God.

These are 2 of my practices to release control. Take what resonates.

a. Breath prayer

When I feel the panic rising to manage someone's emotions, I inhale and say internally: "God, I trust you." Exhale: "This isn't mine to control."

b. Hand release

When I notice I am trying too hard to manage an outcome, I open my hands. I physically release the grip I am holding on my phone, mug, computer mouse or whatever. As I open my hands, I say internally: "I let go."

These practices won't turn you into an overnight queen of boundary-setting.

They will create what I call a moment of pause, a split second of awareness where you can decide with intention what to do next. Whether to go along with things or draw a hard stop with a boundary, even if you have to do it with a shaky voice.

Moving Forward

Imagine you are in that hospital room with the 9-year-old girl. What would you tell her?

Maybe you'd let her know that asking for shoes and complaining about pasta are normal child things, not crimes against humanity.

Maybe you'd stop her from making that list of promises that became a contract she'd carry into every relationship for the rest of her life.

She had nobody to tell her that. Maybe you didn't either.

It's not your fault that you learned this. But it is your responsibility to unlearn it.

Talk soon,

Jumi.

Download the free Energy Vampire Tool Kit. Come find me on Twitter.