One year, when I was in middle school, I was trying to figure out what to be for Halloween. My mom told me that when she was in grade school, she once went as a “candy store” – she just taped candy all over herself and gave it to other kids throughout the day – and for a day, she was the most popular kid in school!

I was a quirky kid, and all I wanted was to belong. But I thought that all I wanted was to be popular, so when she told me this story, my eyes lit up. “The most popular kid in school.” My absolute dream. I was sold.

On Halloween day, my mom spent an hour helping me tape candy all over myself – down my legs, on the front of my shirt, on the back of my jacket, onto a hat. Head to toe. And sure enough, when I walked into school, I was swarmed by other kids wanting some of what I had to offer. Every time someone came up to me, I gave them a piece of candy. They were thrilled! And for a flicker of a moment each time, I felt pretty good too.

But by recess, I’d given all I had brought. The other kids, hopped up on sugar and the excitement of the holiday, barely remembered where they’d gotten the candy. I, bereft of anything else to offer, sat on my own, eating my snack, wearing a frumpy white jacket covered in little torn pieces of scotch tape.

Did it make me “popular” for a day? If popular means “swarmed by people who want something from me” then, well, yes.

Did I feel gratified? No.

This is a lesson that I keep having to learn.

As I’ve grown older, this phenomenon persists. It’s gotten less desperate, and also sneakier and less tangible. Some of this is maturity and wisdom; some is that I have circles where I genuinely feel a sense of belonging without the hustle. But here’s what it looks like as an adult:

  • volunteering for things that don’t feel fulfilling
  • offering to bring something when I don’t really want to
  • working hard to get the perfect gift for someone who may not even have me on their list
  • saying yes when I want to say no
  • hustling for a gold star in friendship with people who are merely acquaintances – a thing which, as the internet loves to say, is “both normal to want and possible to achieve”

In other words, people pleasing.

Any time I find myself defaulting to this, it leaves me feeling depleted, overwhelmed, and irritable.

This is where the difference between fitting in and belonging applies.

I see this in myself, but I also see it in my clients.

It’s so easy to believe that if we overextend ourselves enough, we will finally be loved, embraced, needed. But what’s on the other side of that is feeling used instead of wanted. What’s on the other side of that is resentment that other people don’t show up for us the way we show up for them.

Brené Brown writes about the difference between fitting in and belonging. Fitting in, as she describes it, is contorting yourself to match what you think other people want. Belonging is being embraced for who you authentically are.

This is so important. If we chameleon ourselves into the person we think others want, we lose ourselves in the process. If we try to buy our way into friendships with our money, our time, our candy, we will live in constant fear that when we run out of things to give, we’ll be all alone. If we become someone else to gain approval, we will spend all of our time waiting our friends to discover our imposter status.

When I put on that candy store costume (and a thousand other times in my youth when I shelved what I wanted for what I thought someone else wanted from me), I was trying to fit in.

Perhaps the important question, when I told my mom I didn’t know what I wanted to be for Halloween, was not “what do you think I should be, Mom?” but rather “how have I grown so disconnected from myself that I don’t even know what my interests are?” And then, of course, “how do I reconnect to what I like and who I authentically am?”

The work of the recovering people pleaser

For people who have learned to find safety in people pleasing, these are the questions to ask, every single day. In her book “Are You Mad at Me?”, Meg Josephson reminds us that people pleasing is not a personality trait, or an archetype, or a destiny. Rather, it’s a survival mechanism that we developed to cope with a set of circumstances. It’s also something we can come back from.

Awareness of it helps. Mindfulness meditation helps. Pausing before you say yes to something that’s your no helps. Being intentional about making choices that are for you and not for what you think others want helps. And finding people who make you go, “hey, I’m messy, and I feel safe showing up as me here” also really helps.