Sometimes what looks like evidence isn’t really evidence at all.
It’s an observation to which we’ve added a story.
I’ve been thinking about this in relation to myself recently.
There have been times when I’ve enthusiastically said yes to something, committed myself to it and then, further down the road, had to pull back.
From the outside, I can imagine how that might look.
She changes her mind.
She gets enthusiastic about things and doesn’t follow through.
She starts with gusto and never finishes
She’s unreliable.
She’s awkward.
She’s difficult.
Perhaps even: There she goes again.
And if someone already held that opinion of me, my behaviour might look like compelling evidence that they were right.
Except they wouldn’t be seeing what was actually happening.
They’d be seeing the outside of an internal process they knew nothing about.
The need to belong
Many years ago, at the end of an abusive relationship, my abuser said something to me that felt as though I’d been hit square in the solar plexus.
He told me I had been easy to manipulate because I was “so desperate to be loved.”
The words winded me.
Not simply because they were cruel, but because at the time I believed they were true.
And I was deeply ashamed of that.
I heard desperate to be loved and translated it into weakness.
Worthlessness.
Something defective in me that another person had seen clearly enough to exploit.
It took me a long time to understand that differently.
I wasn’t defective because I wanted to be loved.
I was human.
We are relational beings. Belonging matters enormously to us. Being seen, accepted and connected to other people isn’t some embarrassing character flaw.
But when belonging has previously felt uncertain, unsafe or conditional, I think we can become particularly sensitive to its presence — and its apparent withdrawal.
And sometimes that can influence our behaviour without us even realising it.
I understand that much better about myself now.
People-pleasing doesn’t always look like people-pleasing
Sometimes an opportunity doesn’t simply arrive for me as an opportunity.
Somewhere beneath conscious awareness it can also whisper:
They want me.
I’ve been included.
There’s a place for me here.
I’ve found my tribe.
And before I’ve properly asked myself whether I have the time, energy, capacity or even genuine desire to do something, I’ve said yes.
People-pleasing doesn’t always look like people-pleasing.
Sometimes it looks like enthusiasm.
Ambition.
Generosity.
Being helpful.
Taking on another project.
Volunteering.
Working ridiculous hours.
Saying:
“Of course I can.”
And sometimes even I haven’t recognised what was underneath the yes.
Until my body does.
Something starts dragging.
My energy changes.
The enthusiasm disappears.
I begin feeling overwhelmed or resistant.
There’s an incongruence between what I’ve committed myself to externally and what something inside me has been trying to say.
And eventually I have to listen.
Did I actually want this?
Do I have capacity for this?
Does this belong to me?
Or:
Did being asked feel so much like being included that I forgot to ask whether I wanted to say yes?
That last question has taught me a lot about myself.
Sometimes healing disappoints people
Occasionally, getting back into alignment means changing my mind.
Sometimes it means withdrawing from something I’ve already agreed to.
And that can affect other people.
I don’t dismiss that.
I am responsible for the commitments I make, and part of my continued growth is learning to recognise what is happening sooner — preferably before the automatic yes escapes my mouth.
But there is a painful paradox here that I hadn’t previously understood.
To stop people-pleasing, sometimes I have to allow people to be displeased with me.
To stop seeking acceptance, sometimes I have to tolerate somebody not understanding my decision.
To become more congruent, sometimes I have to say something another person doesn’t want to hear.
And when belonging is already a tender place, that can feel enormous.
That’s where the echoes still sometimes appear for me.
Someone isn’t welcoming.
I’m excluded from something.
Someone responds dismissively.
I have to withdraw from a commitment.
I disappoint somebody.
And suddenly an experience happening today can touch something much older.
The old questions can appear remarkably quickly:
What did I do?
Why don’t they like me?
Why don’t I belong?
What’s wrong with me?
I know those questions now.
I know their origins.
That doesn’t mean I never feel them.
It means I’m increasingly able to recognise that an old feeling isn’t necessarily evidence about a present situation.
What we see isn’t necessarily what happened
And that’s why I’ve become increasingly cautious about the stories we construct from other people’s behaviour.
Someone cancels.
Someone withdraws.
Someone becomes quiet.
Someone enthusiastically says yes and subsequently says no.
Someone leaves.
Someone changes their mind.
The behaviour is observable.
The explanation isn’t.
There may be consequences. There may need to be accountability. Understanding someone’s behaviour doesn’t mean pretending its impact doesn’t matter.
But perhaps we can leave a little room between:
“This is what they did.”
and
“Therefore, this is who they are.”
Because human beings are much more complicated than the fragments of behaviour other people get to see.
A different relationship with belonging
These days, my life is very different.
I’ve learned to approve of myself.
I have people in my life whom I love deeply and whose love I genuinely feel.
And yet I can still sometimes hear the echoes of that old struggle with belonging.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve stopped seeing healing as reaching some magical point where nothing from the past ever touches me again.
For me, it’s increasingly about recognising when it does.
I see you.
I know this feeling.
I know where you came from.
But I don’t have to build today’s meaning from yesterday’s pain.
I’m learning to pause before saying yes.
I’m learning to check my capacity.
I’m learning the difference between:
I want to do this
and
I want to be wanted to do this.
I’m learning that I can disappoint somebody without becoming a disappointment.
I can be excluded without being unworthy.
Someone can misunderstand me without their understanding becoming my identity.
And I can belong without abandoning myself to secure my place.
Perhaps that’s what I wish I could tell the younger version of me who was so devastated by those words all those years ago.
Wanting to be loved was never the shameful part.
Losing myself trying to earn it was what hurt me.
And finding my way back to myself has meant learning something very different:
Belonging that requires me to abandon myself isn’t belonging at all.
Sometimes we say yes for the warmth of belonging, only to discover later that saying no awakens the old pain of believing we are a disappointment who doesn’t belong afterall.