How to Reconnect with Yourself After a Lifetime of People-Pleasing
An invitation back to yourself
If you've spent years putting everyone else first, reconnecting with yourself can feel like wading into unfamiliar water. For women who've been shaped by people-pleasing - the chronic other-focus, the quiet self-erasure - the inner world can feel almost foreign. This is an invitation back. An embodiment practice for coming home to yourself.
One of the things I do is teach women to re-inhabit themselves after a lifetime of estrangement - estrangement that comes from being so outwardly oriented, so attuned to everyone else's needs, that contact with their own inner life has quietly slipped away.
I support them to bring their awareness into their bodies and begin to really listen, really feel, what's moving and present in them.
The ocean within
I often frame this process as entering the vast ocean of our being, and encountering the ancient yet unfamiliar creatures there.
Creatures that are shy. Creatures who have lived their whole lives in the darkness, who have developed complex defence strategies. Creatures that are wondrous and strange.
The quality of awareness we bring to these parts of ourselves needs to be one of quiet consistency, deep patience, curiosity, wonder, and awe.
Why we struggle to turn inward
So often when we turn towards ourselves, we arrive with agendas - a desire to change, control, own, possess. We want to fix what we find. We want to finally sort ourselves out.
And yet this rich inner world is vast and untameable. If we are lucky, and if we approach with reverence, we are allowed a brief glimpse. The opportunity to experience moments of inhabitation through which we are enriched and sustained.
This is not a project. It is a relationship.
The quality of approach
I think often of My Octopus Teacher, the documentary about a diver who returns, day after day, to the same kelp forest off the South African coast, building a relationship with a wild octopus over the course of a year.
What strikes me is the manner of his approach. His gentleness. His commitment. His limerence. His awe. He never grasps. He never rushes. He simply shows up, with patience, and waits to be allowed in.
These are the qualities with which we must return to ourselves.
What reconnecting with yourself actually feels like
At first, there is trepidation. Even fear - just as there would be entering the real ocean. So much unknown. It can feel frightening to begin to sink below the surface and into this mysterious realm.
We fear the wildness. The lack of solidity. The great beasts that may roam there.
We fear our ocean may be empty.
"What if there's nothing there?" I hear this often.
We wade in slowly. It is always teeming with life.
Coming home to your inner world
What I most wish for the women I work with is this: that they know their own rich inner worlds. That they are able to re-inhabit them, and draw nourishment from them - not through extraction, but through mutual enjoyment and delight.
Not mining themselves for productivity or proof of worth. But dwelling there. Swimming freely.
So much of what keeps ambitious, sensitive women exhausted is not the work itself - it's the years spent standing at the edge of their own shores, looking in but never quite entering.
Your inner world has not abandoned you. It has simply been waiting, patiently, for you to return.
An invitation to swim deep
Reconnecting with yourself after people-pleasing is not a single act. It is a practice of returning - gently, consistently, with as little agenda as possible.
If you're ready to begin, start small. A few minutes of stillness. A hand on your heart. The question: what's actually here right now?
Not to fix it. Not to change it. Just to let it be known.
You might be surprised by what you find.
I wish for you to swim deep.
Want to go deeper?
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