When is it my turn?

When Is It My Turn? The People-Pleaser's Real Relationship with Self-Love

I was in my graduate program, sitting in a room full of 250 people, when it happened.

The instructor was talking about self-love and I felt the rage welling up inside me. I raised my hand and with exhaustion, rage, and tears streaming down my face I said, "When is it my turn?! When is it my turn to receive?" I had heard for years that in order to truly love another, you have to love yourself. For a people-pleaser, that never registered — because I knew how to love people. Really well. And that love was genuine. But what I didn't know how to do was feel loved. All my loving never seemed to equate to me actually feeling loved — at least not for very long. It was incredibly lonely. Why does everyone else get it? Why do I constantly feel so deprived and desperate?

The Substitutes We Convinced Ourselves Were Enough

I loved people so well. I was generous, kind, open, empathetic. I constantly considered them in all I did — I often put their needs before my own. I made people feel special. For a while, that felt like enough. I felt so good in how I made people feel. I felt special in my ability to make them feel special.

Until I didn't. I would start to have needs or get my feelings hurt, and suddenly the other person was nowhere to be found. Or worse, they would accuse me of being too sensitive, wanting too much, reading into things. I was confused at first, then resentful. I would double down on my loving behaviors, trying to get my needs met, trying to get them to show up differently — but what started out as genuine slowly became performative, just to keep the trickle of warmth I was receiving.

And those needs and hurts? I would question them, minimize them, spiritualize them away. I would try to take responsibility and forgive and get closure on my own, again and again. I thought I could do it all — in order to keep the connection alive, even if it was unfulfilling.

What I didn't realize is that the needs that were going unmet were relational needs. Needs that actually require another person. I desperately wanted to be so independent, so autonomous that I didn't need anything from anyone — I would study spiritual masters who seemed to have accomplished that and ache that I couldn't reach their level of non-attachment. It seemed like the answer. My expectations were just too high.

I feel so sad now, looking back at the way I used spirituality to talk myself out of realistic, genuine relational needs just to keep the peace. Waiting for the other person to show up seemed unevolved. I told myself that real love was about giving. Give away what you most want to receive. That's what I had been told. And that's exactly what fed my dysfunction.

What I Was Really Trying to Give Myself

When I took care of someone else, what I was really trying to give myself was a feeling of worthiness and value. See? I'm worth loving. Look how much I have to offer. I was trying to show the other person that I was worth loving back — in the same way I was loving them. But I was so busy loving them, so busy trying to make them feel loved, that I abandoned myself entirely.

It was like having a young child alone in a room who needed comfort and care — and instead of going to her, I would run out of the room, working and searching for other people to comfort and care for her. Meanwhile I left her alone. Alone in the room, alone in her feelings. All she ever needed was for me to turn toward her. And instead I said, "I'll go find someone to make you feel better. I'll be right back." I never came back.

The Grief of Something You Never Had

Here's what's disorienting about grieving an absence: there's no clear before and after. Nothing died. There's no moment you can point to and say that's when I lost it. Just a quiet hollow that was always there. I was constantly chasing something and pushing it away simultaneously. I'd work hard for it, receive warmth or accolades that rewarded the behavior, affirm that usefulness was my value — and then I'd have needs, express hurt, and the other person wouldn't show up. In fact, they would make my needs or pain wrong. And I would think it was my wanting that was the problem, so I would double down on giving. I would end up in low-capacity relationships that only affirmed this cycle because that's what I knew.

What I had to stop waiting for before I could actually grieve was the little girl receiving what she didn't get back then. I needed to let that be what it was. The limitations weren't personal — although the pain felt deeply personal. She was alone in it. And as I kept trying to get it from others now, I kept leaving her alone in it all over again. I had to stop waiting for people with limited capacity to decide I was worth the effort of overcoming their limitations. I needed to stop letting their limitations dictate my own — my own limitation being the inability to actually show up for and care for myself directly.

The Moment the Anger Shifted

I was so exhausted from trying to get water out of dry wells — and then being told I needed to solve my own thirst. What did they think I was doing??? But then I realized something. I had been trying to take care of myself the whole time. Just in the wrong way. I was trying. I was working so hard. And when I finally let myself fully grieve that I couldn't go back and give the young part of me a different experience — when I stopped chasing her healing by trying to create something new in the present — the anger began to loosen. I hadn't realized I was inadvertently recreating the same wounding by choosing relationships with limited emotional capacity. Instead of resolving her pain, I just kept recreating it.

The shift came when I realized: if I stopped trying to get water out of dry wells, I could look around for the spring that was naturally flowing nearby. I was just too busy trying to quench my thirst the same way I had to out of necessity as a child. It was such a huge moment of realization, grief, and relief — all at once.

I didn't just start loving myself instantly. But I started showing up for myself in new ways — with care, compassion, and a generosity I had only ever extended outward. And slowly, I stopped pouring energy into dry wells and calling that a spring.

What Self-Love Actually Looks Like

Here's what I've come to understand: as a people-pleaser, I took care of others as a way to indirectly take care of myself. Self-love is learning how to do it directly. The first time I showed up for myself inside the pain — not to fix it, just to be there — the ache didn't go away. But suddenly I didn't feel so alone in it. I was still hurting, but I wasn't hurting alone. I saw myself. I told myself my feelings made sense, that someone was right there with her. There was still pain, and there was also such relief.

I think about a conversation I had with a friend — someone I adored, someone I spoke to weekly, someone who filled my life with depth and laughter. In one conversation, she began comparing me unfavorably to herself and her daughter when it came to my strength in a hard relationship I'd been navigating. The judgments were palpable. I got off the phone feeling horrible. And then I saw what had happened: her words had tapped directly into my shame about feeling weak in a place where I longed to feel stronger. In that moment, I felt compassion for myself. The shame couldn't stay when the compassion surfaced.

After sitting with it for a week or two, I called her back. I told her I appreciated her care. I also told her that I'd shame-spiraled under the weight of her judgment — that it had actually been an important experience for me in terms of seeing it and coming out from under it, but that the judgment itself had been hard to receive. She got defensive. The call unraveled. It was the last time we spoke.

I felt sad — genuinely sad, because outside of that conversation I adored our friendship. But I also felt okay. I was proud of myself for speaking up. And based on how she responded, I was okay to not have her in my life. She wasn't a safe person in conflict. That was self-love. Not a bath and a journal. Not a mantra. Staying centered in my own experience, in my own truth — even as someone I cared about tried to rewrite it.

Coming Home

I used to think that growing up as an emotionally attuned person in a home with severe emotional limitations was simply devastating. It caused me to feel deeply lonely, unseen, and unmeetable for a long time. Now I understand it differently. This was the experience that launched me on the journey of belonging to myself.

In my story, belonging to myself was never going to come easily. It was going to have to be found, lost, and refound again and again. Earned. Hard fought. And all mine. My needs were always okay. Realistic, even. I was just in an environment that couldn't meet them. It wasn't anyone's fault — not theirs, not mine. It just was. And it was always going to be the thing I had to move through in order to return home to myself.

The hero doesn't get the easy path. But the hero gets the story. And this one is mine.

What part of this resonates for you? Have you ever been given the "just love yourself" prescription and felt more angry than helped? I'd love to know where you are in this.