Mental Health: People Pleaser

It’s Katie, back for our weekly mental health discussion. I’ve shared before, I have obsessive compulsive disorder. One of my obsessions is the fear of disappointing people. I also hate making people feel obligated, hurt, inconvenienced, or angry. I am a people pleaser to the nth degree. We addressed this topic in my therapy at the OCD and Anxiety Treatment Center this summer and set up a plan to tackle this facet of my OCD through ERP. Exposure Response Prevention is a form of therapy that targets an OCD patient’s obsessive fears by exposing him/her to them. The therapist guides the patient to eliminate the compulsions (or neutralizers, as the clinic calls them) he/she performs to reduce anxiety. The exposures are repeated until the anxiety level decreases significantly. My therapist and I started simply. One of the exposures I had to perform was offering gum to people. Before coming to therapy, I avoided offering mints, gum, food, etc. to people because I was afraid they would feel awkward if they didn’t want any. I felt rude never offering anything, but I was too afraid of bothering them or putting them (and me) in an awkward situation. My therapist gave me a pack of gum and I had to offer a piece over and over to the people around me. The more I did it, the easier it became and the less anxious it made me. Once I could do it without major feelings of anxiety, we moved on to other exposures that were more difficult to perform. The most intense exposure I did addressing this issue was when I went through a drive-thru, ordered only water (which is free), and asked them AFTER they gave it to me if I could have it with no ice. I did this 5-6 times at different drive-thrus around town. It was insane. Who does that? But it was eye opening to realize I didn’t die and neither did the person waiting on me at the drive-thru. What felt like a huge threat to me turned out to be not a big deal. Refusing to dwell on the feelings of annoyance or frustration someone MIGHT feel over my actions was so liberating. So who wants a piece of gum?