People-pleasing or a healthy need for people?

Today, my time limit isn't a library computer timer; it is the light outside.

Because my car decided it needed a rest. An expensive rest, but cheap and fast enough that I wont ditch the car (as if I could afford a new-to-me one now, let alone repairs).

So I've been accepting rides and asking for help and such things that are hard for me to do, but easier when I don't have so much choice in the matter. (Oh, and biking 5 miles one way to work is an option, but I'd rather accept a ride from a friend.)

Seeing my counselor again yesterday, I was relieved that I was the one bringing up EMDR, not her. She suggested it, but I don't think she'll push for it much (unless I really go down hill).

One interesting thing that came up in our session was this; the issue of people pleasing with a surprising other perspective (i.e., something other than how it is idolatry).

Someone in my life was careful to pass on that people-pleasing was a trap. True, when carried to an unhealthy conclusion

But on the other hand, my counselor brought up, there is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. And Love and Belonging are in there as pretty important (she said most important, but Wikipedia's picture has it in the middle. I'll put it back in my mind as close to most important, because I think it is pretty important. With depression, for example, it just might be essential for life).

I think that this person in my life sees people-pleasing as a trap and a sin because 1) in its extreme, it is a trap and unhealthy, 2) according to this person's strict religious perspective, it is idolatry because it puts people as more important than God, and 3) because if you don't need people, maybe it wont hurt so much when they let you down or back stab you.

But when my counselor was talking, I started seeing another perspective. Pardon my religious terminology (or skip my post; that is really okay, too). But I thought of it like this; God made us people to need each other. Like my counselor says, we try for that belonging and love by trying to be "as good a person as we can be." You can jump all over that and call it legalism and conditional love and on and on. Or we can set that aside and remove extreme thinking from it (ha!) and think, our living pleasantly with people makes it easier for them to live pleasantly with us. It facilitates the process of all of us belonging and loving and being loved. I don't mean door-mat pleasant - that doesn't work out so well. But not calling people names, being polite, being real, and so on and so forth, is it wrong to do that, hoping to fit better in the community? Okay, trying to get this too detailed isn't working.

But basically, I don't have to judge myself for wanting friends, for even feeling like I need them. Just because someone important to me had a worldview that made them something of an island (depending
"ultimately" on God to meet these people-met needs - which is technically correct, if you see it as God meeting our needs through people but don't use it to separate yourself from needing people), anyway, just because that is someone else's view whose view means a lot to me, doesn't mean I have to see it that way.

So, friends, who have extended love to me and helped me feel like I belonged in this OCD blog community, I'm gonna try and embrace needing people and depending on people. Hopefully not to an unhealthy extreme. But just maybe I need to risk that extreme so that I can quit falling off my current side of the bridge and come back onto the bridge where the people who I need to be with are.