Should you teach your child to share toys? Should I eat a spoonful for my dad? Those same British scientists (and not only them) came to the conclusion that people prone to painful relationships with food have some common character traits, and one of them is pleaserism, that is, a craving for satisfying the needs of others to the detriment of oneself. Going to work with a fever, sacrificing your money, time, strength, etc. - all these are traits of a pleaser. Such a person alienates his needs, that is, the signals of his body, for the sake of other people, day after day, thereby increasingly rejecting his body and his self. Pleaser simply does not feel his value and his “legitimacy” of existence; others are more important. Pleaser is convinced that since he himself has no value, he must earn recognition and the right to exist every minute by pleasing others. When this does not happen, a feeling of guilt appears (one of the most painful and difficult to bear feelings), but if the pleaser nevertheless sacrifices his needs, then, against his will, anger arises in the body, since the needs were rejected (to visualize how this anger is born: heard how does a child scream angrily if he doesn’t get the right thing?) But, according to the laws of pleaser life, anger is not expressed and remains inside. Unhealthy eating behavior is designed to drown out this anger in cases of compulsive overeating (after all, food is the first pleasure) or to support feelings of guilt in cases of food refusal. And sometimes a “circle” scenario appears - anger, guilt, anger, guilt. This is how bulimic spectrum disorders arise. What to do about it: If you are a parent, teach your child to politely but firmly defend their interests; give the right to choose and respect refusal, including food; Don’t push boundaries and don’t break your personality by shouting “I said it!” and similar techniques; teach to take care of yourself and respect yourself as well as other people; help your child meet his uniqueness. If you are a pleaser, find a way to hear your body, face your guilt, anger and work through them, both physically and mentally; become a good parent (like this in the paragraph above); don’t blame yourself for being a pleaser, try to be a pleaser for yourself too.