I’d like to start this off by saying that I am not a mental health professional, nor the OG type of spirit with decades under my belt. I haven’t been studying the science of people and their interpersonal relationships at all on an academic level. I say the following, with my chest and from good ol’ life experience.
Last night, (still in burnout recovery) I lay facing up in my bed. My comforter is white with bold maroon stripes; my pillows don’t match, instead, they’re a solid bright firey red. Both windows were open, they’re the kind you unlock with a hinge and wind out, kind of like a book. They’re on the wall to the left of my bed, the openings are facing each other so, unfortunately, I’m not catching one bit of breeze. I had a fan blowing on the right side of my room. It’s the long upright kind that does too much while you sleep and too little when you’re awake.
My boyfriend and I were on face time; we had spent the last few days together not totally on purpose but more so out of necessity— sometimes it’s hard for me to be alone with my thoughts. While I fought to upturn my mood, he found himself in a decline of sorts. Anxiety has a way of creeping up, especially when you’re not ready for it, much like an unwelcome houseguest. The air was dense, and I was too tired to hold my phone, so it lay face up beside me, the camera facing the ceiling.
We had a passionate conversation; part venting, part listening, part question and answer, part problem-solving. For narrative’s sake, I am paraphrasing the dialogue, as my memory isn’t great, but the ideas remain the same and I will do my best to relay them to you:
“Do you ever get scared— or feel like your life will be meaningless? Like you won’t be remembered or eventually forgotten?” I tilted my head down to look at the cellphone screen. I see the corner of his face, eyes to the side, black hair, only slightly shaggy from the day: he takes good care of it. I look up again and think for a moment.
“Well no.” I pause. “This might be a dark thought but I think that if I were to die today, there’d be lots of people at my funeral— or at least I would hope there would be. I do my best to be kind to those in my life; the people I work with, my friends, those I love, and my family. I think they’d all come together and celebrate my life. People would get to connect with each other through ways I might have touched their lives somehow; maybe small, maybe big. The energy I shared, the things I might have said, the advice I might have given. Then I live on in their memory and they move on with their lives. I mean, I’m no Beyonce, but that’s more than enough for me.” I was glad I said it but afraid to have sounded egotistical.
There’s a context here; my boyfriend is injured at the moment. Aside from the regular bouts of anxiety, he has carpel tunnel and or nerve sensitivity in both of his arms, and it holds him back from being able to do certain actions for long periods of time. As a creative person that’s detrimental; the laptop? ruled out. He’s also teaching himself guitar, training his voice (which luckily doesn’t require his arms), trying to improve his drumming, AND is mixing and mastering my album which is on course to release next year. Then here he was, asking me about the possible meaninglessness of his life. Feeling like the work he’s doing might be meaningless as well— these are things we shoot back and forth about often. We are emotional artists, to say the least, but still, his question is jarring.
It’s very easy to mistakenly align your work output with your value. That’s part of the reason why burnout feels like dying. This is a material world, if we aren’t producing some type of work, what are we? What is our purpose? But I digress, the topic of this [non-traditional] essay is people pleasing, not burnout, and so the conversation continued.
“I know thinking like this isn’t helpful to me,” He replied. “but it’s hard to turn that part of my brain off. Sometimes I feel like I need validation from others to feel like I’m doing the right thing. To feel like I’m truly making progress— but I know thinking like this isn’t helpful to me, it’s like people pleasing.”
“Well, is this how you see your relationships with people in your life?” He moved to speak but held back to ruminate.
“It’s certain people in my life that I need that validation from; people who I look up to, whose work I respect,” he affirmed. I challenged his thought.
“Sometimes I feel bold to assume some of those around me have everything together in the way that I imagine it in my head because I simply don’t know what’s going on in their personal lives” he rebutted,
“But some people do have it together more than others, whether it be learned or just natural for them.”
“That’s true”. In agreeance, we both sat for a minute.
“Even playing with you at The Drake is something I want to do, but I can’t fight this feeling that I’m not doing enough. I still have to mix your project, which I’m still on break from because of my arms; I’m practicing guitar every day, but only until my arms hurt—there’s always something more you can do, that’s what you were saying before.” He was referring to my emotional outbursts leading up to my burnout.
“Well sure, you could always say that though.” We were silent. My body relaxed and I blinked my eyes slowly, fighting to keep them open. I got up and put the fan on a lower setting; I swear all it was doing was blowing the warm air back at me. I nestled in my spot and looked down at my phone screen again. I could still see the corner of his head.
Inside of me is a hustler, but she’s the one that burnt me out. I speak now from a place that considers my spirit first. The healer holds the talking stick;
“I say this to reassure you, you know, you are doing great.”
“Thanks.” He says well, I can hear the smile in his voice.
“From my observations of you, you do do a lot for someone with an injury like yours. There’s so much you want to accomplish that you physically can’t work towards right now, but still, you act with reason and intention. Playing in a band is only a small fraction of what you would be up to had you not been injured. You have an artistic vision and goal for yourself that isn’t easy to achieve, it won’t happen overnight. It’s that instant gratification we all want but won’t get pursuing art— or really pursuing anything.
You’re honing your skills so you can translate your creative ideas into the art itself, and you do get better day by day,” I reassure. “People pleasing is a difficult cycle to break, it’s a byproduct of feelings of inadequacy, and is fuelled more by feelings of anxiousness. If you have an active thinking mind that is hyper-aware of how you’re being perceived, whether consciously or subconsciously, you change your behavior in an effort to control the perception others have of you. And then your anxious mind grabs hold of this process and runs wild with it; it becomes all you can think about.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with Ray once, while we location scouted; he said something like ‘I want to be around people I can be myself with. Whether I’m happy or sad, doing well or not.”’ He wants to show up as himself. And how can you be yourself, how can you be fully you, while constantly taking into consideration how others view you? You just can’t!” I focused my eyes on the specs of the popcorn ceiling. “I know you can’t just turn those parts of your brain off, I mean, if you could, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” He let my words simmer.
My point about people pleasing is that you lose yourself in the act of doing it (whether you’re in control or not). Although it is a learned trait, engrained deeply in some of us through social conditioning, trauma or chemical imbalances, trying to control how we are perceived by others chips away at your true identity, and replaces it with one that exists purely to satisfy the tastes of those you surround yourself with. And so because you can only try to perceive the opinions of others but never truly know them, no matter what you do, you are left with a deep feeling of inadequacy (which is common in artists and creative people).
A life lived through the perception of others is one empty of soul and of self. And so, before this blog post becomes a book, I’ll leave you with a quote from Letters to a Young Poet;
“Trust yourself and your own feelings, every time, over any of these explications, discussions, or introductions. If it turns out you’re wrong, the natural growth of your inner life will eventually lead you to new insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, has to come from deep within and cannot be forced or hurried by anything else. Everything is gestation, then giving birth. Letting every impression and every seed of feeling come to completion entirely on its own— in the dark, the inexpressible, the unconscious, where your intelligence cannot reach— and awaiting with deep humility and patience the moment when a new clarity shall be born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist, in understanding as well as creating.” (Rilke 15)
It’s important to be honest and discuss things that make us uncomfortable. That is how we learn and grow. In me sharing this conversation, I hope to open up the way you think about things you struggle with; to see them as opportunities to understand yourself better so you can extend yourself true kindness. Breaking a cycle, just like anything you wish to accomplish in life takes time. So in matters of the mind, know that you are not alone and that the journey to healing and self-awareness never truly ends, and can begin anywhere and anytime.