As a Hypnotherapist, NLP Trainer and Energy worker, I see many clients who are seeking stress relief from pleasing other people.

One of my clients, Mary was searching desperately for stress relief but all she could see was more and more stress. So I asked Mary what she did during the week to find this elusive stress relief?

Here are her answers:

I merely fed the answers back to Mary, to give her a different perspective on stress relief.

1. Visited a friend in the hospital to get stress relief instead of going to her regular weekly meditation class.

2. Bought a membership to a health club expecting to get stress relief from making other people happy.

3. When she receives genuine compliments instead of enjoying the stress relief of the compliment, she has difficulty accepting them.

4. Ignoring stress relief by not listening to her children.

5.Ignoring stress relief by not listening to her partner.

6.Not allowing herself to enjoy stress relief by attempting to stop her children from growing up and getting some bruises (always wanting to protect them).

7.Giving her opinion of stress relief when it was not solicited.

In every one of the above situations Mary was doing something to please somebody. Mary could not believe what she saw on paper ( I actually wrote out my interpretation of her responses to which Mary agreed.)

You have probably heard that you need to do things to please yourself and enjoy stress relief. However this concept has the stigma attached, that to please yourself is selfish.

Let's examine this misconception for a moment. In Mary's case I am going to use the first thing she said she did to find stress relief.

She visited a friend in the hospital to get stress relief instead of going to her regular weekly meditation class.

Now Mary could have gone to the hospital another day and visited her friend. I have checked with Mary a week later and her friend is still alive and making progress. However when Mary left the hospital, she felt drained. Mary goes home to her children and partner feeling tired and she has no time for them because she is exhausted.

It makes her partner and her children wonder how she has so much time for her friend and so little time for them (her family).

In order not to get attached to the stigma of being selfish, Mary followed her understanding (stigma of being selfish) and went to the hospital to find stress relief. So what are her consequences?

Mary came home drained instead of all relaxed. If she had attended her meditation class she would have gone home relaxed and prepared to deal with her family.

Mary had no time for her family and the feeling of stress relief.

Mary has no time for herself and stress relief.

Mary now understands the havoc she has been creating in attempting to find stress relief by pleasing other people most of her life.

So what is the moral of the story?

You will notice you are truly happy when you first please yourself. When you feel good with yourself and your idiosyncrasies and someone says that they do not like some aspect of you, it does not matter because you have already accepted yourself as you are, with all your unique gifts.