The plight of the people pleaser

[Voyager]

All throughout history, you read about those persons who have done great things in their lives but they had a mental illness or were extremely, painfully shy and introverted or had some type of social-impairment.

I have always felt this way. Not that I am really great or mentally-ill or anything like that, but I can relate with people who are sensitive and creative. I can so relate with them. Here's why:

Why do they work so hard to please others? It is because they cannot please themselves. That is the catch-22 that comes from being abandonded. What is being abandoned? If it losing a parent? Or, is it just not being wanted? Or maybe it's just that you came at the wrong time. Yes, that's it. Why did you show up at such an inopportune time? Didn't you know that was a no-no?

There is always a void in you that cannot be filled. That's the bond that we share. We tried to fill that void with a church - and we got burned. That's why we are here. Some of you may be here for other reasons. If so, please don't feel left-out. Regardless of how you got involved in a bad church, we were all duped one way or another.

:cool:

[ex-shep]

Describes me to a tee. And it is so addicting too.

I have evolved to a point where I just do my job, share at meetings, post because I want to and everyone is happy. I no longer have to prove myself, just be myself.

Good thoughtful post. Thanks for your insight.

[Sheep]

Oh, this struck a nerve in me today! The first church I attended as a new believer ended up just being another "performance-based family" for me to get attached to! Maybe I thought, "Oh, here are some Christian people that will love and accept me just the way I am." WRONG! It was very legalistic and lots of hoop-jumping (never been good at that)! Ended up leaving a grace-filled church after six years of growth to attend one closer to our home after we had our first child - big regret! Just jumped right into another legalistic church "family"! Am in the middle of trying to understand why I survived falling out of that car at the tender age of two - knowing in my head that it was God that helped me survive and had plans for my life, but in my heart aching so deeply and feeling so abandoned even by God at times. I have even felt regret lately for not dying after falling out of the car and being abandoned. Trying to sort through and get rid of the bad messages of "not being important"; minimizing my own pain (emotional and physical) as I wasn't brought to a hospital or physician after that traumatic experience; believing that I need to take care of myself and can't rely on others to help me; and the list continues growing. Sorry, this is about spiritual abuse, but I guess my childhood abuse sort of "set me up" so to speak to choose the couple of abusive churches that I've attended in my life. Yep - tried to fill that void with a church and got hurt very deeply...

Sheep

[Theodora]

Oh, this struck a nerve in me today! The first church I attended as a new believer ended up just being another "performance-based family" for me to get attached to! Maybe I thought, "Oh, here are some Christian people that will love and accept me just the way I am." WRONG! It was very legalistic and lots of hoop-jumping (never been good at that)! Ended up leaving a grace-filled church after six years of growth to attend one closer to our home after we had our first child - big regret! Just jumped right into another legalistic church "family"! Am in the middle of trying to understand why I survived falling out of that car at the tender age of two - knowing in my head that it was God that helped me survive and had plans for my life, but in my heart aching so deeply and feeling so abandoned even by God at times. I have even felt regret lately for not dying after falling out of the car and being abandoned. Trying to sort through and get rid of the bad messages of "not being important"; minimizing my own pain (emotional and physical) as I wasn't brought to a hospital or physician after that traumatic experience; believing that I need to take care of myself and can't rely on others to help me; and the list continues growing. Sorry, this is about spiritual abuse, but I guess my childhood abuse sort of "set me up" so to speak to choose the couple of abusive churches that I've attended in my life. Yep - tried to fill that void with a church and got hurt very deeply...

Sheep

DEAR one---- Thanks for your courage in posting. I will continue to pray for you and yours that you may truly find deep healing and a better life for yourself and your family. And yes....I'd guess that your background is VERY much a part of where and how your choices in the church were not as "healthy" as they might have been. A quandary I have is how you possibly can guess at such things ahead of time! (If interested, part of that musing was posted on NACR yesterday re my research on a new term for me, e.g. "emerging church." See http://www.christianrecovery.com/vb/showthread.php?p=6237#post6237 )

Grace and peace to you and yours this day!

Theodora

[Sheep]

I have evolved to a point where I just do my job, share at meetings, post because I want to and everyone is happy. I no longer have to prove myself, just be myself.


ex-shep,

Awesome growth!!!!

Sheep :)

[jane]

Why do they work so hard to please others?



I am also guilty :o



and the hoops to jump through, gosh why are they always moving? You never know where they are or why they keep getting higher and smaller!


the irony is I don't want to jump through them anymore but alas, I find myself doing it. Is it because I love to see the smiles? or to keep the peace? :p

yikes!

Jane

[Voyager]

Is it because I love to see the smiles? or to keep the peace?
Probably both. For me it's just a normal reaction. Sometimes I find myself being agreeable just to keep the peace, and then turning disagreeable after I see my mistake. I'm trying to find some middle ground, but it's not easy when you were programmed to be a people-pleaser. My dysfunctional church only fueled this weakness in me. An abusive church feels like home for a people-pleaser. The performance-based-acceptance principle makes you feel like you can earn your keep - which is a great feeling for a people-pleaser. However, once you realize that the only thing ensuring your acceptance is your performance, the roller coaster ride is over and you want to get off.

:cool:

[jane]

You described my husband to a tee. He says that he sometimes does not realize it is about people pleasing. Sometimes it takes him longer to figure out what the person was just saying. He has a wait and see attitude. Sometimes he gives people the benefit of the doubt; some people have bad days; some people don't know what they are speaking into. Then when a long time passes; he explodes. He has been told by so many people, it is not what you say but how you say it. He is almost always right, but how he says it is not.

For example, there was this woman (we'll call her Jenny) who was in charge of the prayer requests for the church body. We would enter prayer requests in to a locked box then she would lead a prayer group on Tuesday nights.

In the last 3-4 years we have been through a lot. My husband had an infection on his leg that almost cost him his life, and later one on his arm. He had the leg infection from a birth defect in his lymph system. While in the hospital he contracted skin mirsa so a few months later his harm swelled up with an infection that was not treatable by antibiotics. We were praying and waiting for the infection not to reach his organs. Then we were going through MRIs, cat scans and what not because our son Caleb's head stopped growing. (think I wrote some of this already) then we got into (and are still in it) a property line battle with the local power utilities. They basically want to put up power lines on our property with out compensating for the land; they claim it is their's. We bought and are taxed on 2.5 acres (which we bought for Hannah's Haven) and they say we only own 1.2 acres. Try coming up with enough money to fight the only electric power company in New England. Plus 2 miscarriages and other things. ALL IN A SHORT TIME FRAME. So we kept giving it to the prayer box.

What that woman would say to us! I will probably be writing it over the next few months, it was so hurtful. We stopped giving her prayer requests after talking to her a few times. She really believed that we were going through stuff because God's favor was no longer with us. Then we had other leaders tell us we were going through stuff because we were in God's favor and Satan would not hear of it. Talk about mixed messages.

So after we are ready to leave the church, the Pastor wants a meeting with us and this woman. We schedule it. Before it takes place, she lovingly tells my husband that she is not going to pray for healing for us as God has shown her it is our lack of faith. That is now the issue and not healing. He told her, "Turn around Jenny I don't want to talk to you."

He said it with such a pent up rage that she thought he said, "I hate you." So now he was in trouble with everyone. She had a 20 year old son that was going to "beat him up" for making his mother cry. She told everyone in the church, "and I prayed for him to think he would turn on me with such hate, it is demons." She told them our personal business which she prayed for!
When we finally had the meeting my husband was the one repenting to her and later to her son. Explain that one????????? Anyway the pastor and his wife confronted her too but it was awful.

They told us had he not said anything we would have had higher ground in the meeting.


Talk about dysfunctional! We even felt bad watching her be yelled at by them. They told her they were going to tear down her ministry in seconds flat if she didn't "get it"; apparently other people were complaining about her prophecies. I kept looking at how she was being shamed and knew this was not God's heart either. She was wrong but man so was the way they handled it.


sorry it is so long,

thanks for writing,
Jane

[Voyager]

Jane,

Did you win your fight with the utility company?

What a crock about the prayer leader! Seems like there is one (or more) in every abusive church. They learn how to get the favor of the pastor by brown-nosing and then try to rule the church.

:cool:

[jane]

we have to give them an answer early Monday morning about an agreement.

I would love to hear everyone's opinion.

It is a long, long story so I will try to keep it short.


We bought the land 2.5 acres with woods surrounding us for many reasons. 1) children with behavioral problems need to have the space to work things out without neighbors calling the police on them. 2)we intend to use animals as a way to foster trusting relationships with the children as well as to teach responsibility. 3) we intend to plant an organic garden for the kids to grow food and sell it (Caleb's Cart, produce from the promise land). We needed the 6 bedrooms this house has. We needed to get a mortgage on one income, the price was right.


One day I woke up from a dream. Men in orange vests were clear cutting the trees in our yard to build an apartment complex, on our land. We negotiated the sale of a peice of property that gave us money to finish the renovations of our house. Then we moved out. When I woke up from the dream I was shook up and told it to my husband.

I kid you not, a month later, men were tagging trees on our property. We thought they were going to cut them down. A long process of research revealed to us that the power company was putting up a new row of power lines. They intended to clear cut the land (our land!) and put up huge poles that may or may not be cancer causing for children (depending on which reports you believe).

We tried to contact them to get them off of our property. They ignored us until we started showing up at public hearings and testifying that they were stealing our land. We had a deed that said 2.5 acres.

We paid a surveyor to do a partial survey and based on the power company's survey in 1964 we only owned 1.2 acres of land! Our house was built in 1962.

After showing up at more hearings, they contacted us and offered to pay for an survey. We hired our own surveyor and they picked up the tab, over $3000.00.


The survey showed (after my husband walked a mile in 3 feet of snow at 5:30 in the morning to find a rock wall coming out of a swamp that yes he fell in.) That a rock wall divided our property off of theirs first. They were already encroached on our land with a current pole and access road.


They have offered us land south of us that would make our land 2.3 acres. The land is actually better than what we owned because through this process we found out it was "wetland protected" (can't build a barn on it or clear cut it). The new land is not.
A piece of that land is fenced in by our neighbor (who is an attorney). Because it has been fenced in for 7 years it is understood by real estate law that it belongs to our neighbor. We would be taxed on it, liable by insurance for it and unable to use it.(a small sliver of land, .07 acre).

We offered them a counter offer:

We asked them to pay our attorney bill ( a mere $500) and the original survey bill of $400. We asked them to extend the land to make it a full 2.5 acres, starting at the neighbor's fence so that we could avoid that headache.

They responded yesterday,

NO. Take our first deal and ASAP or it is off the table.


We have until Monday early am.


Are we being selfish? We want the land that we paid for and have been taxed on!
They are so in the wrong. If we fight them they can tie it up in court for years just because they have so much more money. They just drained 16 towns financially in this area of money for the last two years about putting up these lines. It is really a VERY long story. If it is tied up in court, we pay taxes on land that we may or may not own and we can not build on it or do anything!

The bottom line for us is, do we take what they are giving us? It at least is more than what they have done for everyone else in this battle.

Our attorney is this INCREDIBLE man, a christian with 6 kids and was already fighting the power company in another town because they are taking a little league park. He lives in that town. He has told us that if they don't pay him, we have no bill with him in the name of Christ.

We have until Monday to decide. We are ready to sell what keeps us going is the belief that we really are supposed to be here. When I did property searches at city hall, our land was once part of 60 acres named "CALEB'S LOT"; our son's name is Caleb. We thought that was kind of cool :cool: Now we are just exhausted, emotionally, spiritually and financially drained because of everything in the last 4 years.

So maybe you can see why trusting God is not exactly where we are at these days. More so my husband. When people say these things are a test for us by God, he looks at them like they are insane. He says if this is GOD doing this then he is sadistic.

thanks again for letting me write.

We are open to anyone's ideas and prayers......

Jane

[ex-shep]

ex-shep,

Awesome growth!!!!

Sheep :)


Thanks I needed that. Made my day :)

[Voyager]

Jane,

I can relate to your husband's resistance when people tell him "This is a test from God". Try telling that to the tsunami survivors. Think of the small children who lost all their parents, relatives, and friends. Is that a test from God? I think comments like that are a slap in the face. People attribute a whole lot more to God than I think He is responsible for.

I wish I had an answer for you on the utility company dilemma. I can understand why you would be concerned about the big power lines and the possibility of contracting cancer. Like you said, their are a lot of reports that seem to prove that the possibility of getting cancer by being close to those kind of power lines is greater than if you didn't live by them, but the reports seem to be inconclusive.

If I had to make a business decision, I would say take the deal and then consider selling the property and finding something better. If you want to fight it on a matter of principle, you could end up in a long protracted court battle that may drain your finances, stress you out, and there is still no guarantee that you will win.

I have owned several businesses in my lifetime. Once I had a printing business and I ran into a zoning problem. When I first moved my printing business into a building, the zoning officer told me it was okay. Then after I spent $10,000.00 upgrading the facility to accommodate my business, he came back and said that it wasn't zoned for printing and I had to move it. I decided to fight city hall.

I went to a lawyer and he asked me if I wanted to base my decision to fight city hall on a sound business decision or on a matter of principle. He said he would be glad to take my money, but informed me that he had another client who had already spent $100,000.00 with him on a matter of principle. He said the guy was on his third appeal and was probably going to lose.

After that, I just decided to give up and move my business. Looking back, I think I made the right decision. Anyway, I thought I'd share that with you.

:cool:

[jane]

Thank you Voyager,

That is the way my husband and I were leaning. He just read your post and that is what he was thinking. It helped to have someone else besides our attorney voice a similar view. We are probably going to sign this contract on Monday.

The older we get the less principals we have to prove. We prefer to keep principle in our own hands.... :D

We just want them to start our property line after our neighbor's fence. We don't want to own land to pay taxes and liability that we can not use. It would also be more complicated to sell it with boundary issues.

We figure we will keep fixing it up, whether we leave or stay it has to be done.


The power lines may put the lines underground, or on higher poles; we'll wait and see. We have not decided to stay or sell. Property values around here just went crazy. Small 2 bedroom ranches with no land are going for around $300,000.00 We worry about being able to buy anything big enough for our dream. Even if we sell this for that price it is hard to find something with lots of bedroom space and land all around us. We don't want to go into retirement with a mortgage, if we buy like the people around here are doing (40 year mortgages) we will be doing just that.


but child hood leukemia.....big price to pay. Even if it is not linked to the powerlines, watching my children play in the backyard with those ugly things looming over them will make me worry.....



Jane

[Voyager]

Small 2 bedroom ranches with no land are going for around $300,000.00
Wow! You could get a nice 10-year-old 3-BR ranch with a few acres around here for about $200,000.00. Or a real nice brand-new 4-BR ranch in a newer subdivision for around $250,000.00.

:confused:

[Willow]

I'm really relating to the topic of people pleasing. Why... just yesterday I paid for hay a second time because the person I owed said she never got the money that I placed in the barn where she instructed. Is it my responsibility to pay twice for the hay? I doubt it. Am I protecting our friendship by paying twice? Most definitely. Not sure how many people do things like that, but peace is so important to me I will pay cash for it. *sigh*

[Jerry]

Dear Jane,,,
I think your lawyer might say to take the deal,because unless I am wrong,Power Companys have "Eminant Domain". Trust me them Skumbags can outspend you in Litigation.That "Eminant Domain" law really sucks :mad:
Love Jerry

[Jerry]

I'm really relating to the topic of people pleasing. Why... just yesterday I paid for hay a second time because the person I owed said she never got the money that I placed in the barn where she instructed. Is it my responsibility to pay twice for the hay? I doubt it. Am I protecting our friendship by paying twice? Most definitely. Not sure how many people do things like that, but peace is so important to me I will pay cash for it. *sigh*
Dear Willow
Thats not necessarly wrong,,,,,it depends on how much,what it is worth to you,and your ability to pay the extra.We always must ask,,,"How important is it???"If it isn't an unreasonable stress on you,and not very important,,,,,maybe it is better to be kind than to be right.Sometimes being "Right" ain't all it's cracked up to be :D
Love Jerry

[Kerrin]

Jane,

Did you win your fight with the utility company?

What a crock about the prayer leader! Seems like there is one (or more) in every abusive church. They learn how to get the favor of the pastor by brown-nosing and then try to rule the church.

:cool:

These prayer "lines" are really GOSSIP lines. (In my experience).
A good way for the leadrship, and "others" to keep track of you; then strategically attack you
Just my two cents,
Kerrin :rolleyes:

[jane]

Jerry,
Power Companys have "Eminant Domain".

yes, this is true, they have eminant domain power. The problem that we have is that they were not even claiming eminant domain as that would give us some financial reimbursement (if not much).

they are just simply saying our land is already their land.


We would love for them to claim eminant domain over our property, the value of houses in this area is so high compared to what we paid for it. Here people are compensated fair market value if eminant domain is used.


anyway, we are probably going to agree to it in the morning. We just have to speak to our neighbor tonight.


Jane

[jane]

voyager,

maybe we'll come to Illinois and set up house. lol

with our luck the taxes will be twice as high so it will all equal out in the long run.

jane