I’m not even a recovering people pleaser, I’m an addict that has no intention of changing. I still get regularly roasted for this behaviour by people in my life that don’t know why I do it.
It doesn’t take a psychologist to connect the dots here. I’ve been abandoned by so many people in my life, starting with my mother, and several friend groups growing up. This feeling was (and to a lesser degree, still is) the motivation for always trying desperately to put myself in situations where I was impressing or entertaining others. If I stayed interesting, people wouldn’t leave me.
Enter roleplaying. We had a teacher during high school that introduced my group of friends and I to tabletop roleplaying games. It was part acting, part game, and very addictive. And through it, I found a lifelong love, but it also fed into my need to please people. I loved it, and still do, but the role of the entertainer is a mask that we wear to avoid making connections. When all we have is The Game, we aren’t being our authentic selves. All I had was games for a really long time, and somewhere along the way I lost who I was without it.
But hey, at least I have the memories right? So let’s play pretend.
4. Play Pretend
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