I try to check in with myself on a regular basis. Am I hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? ~ Courage to Change, page 21

Hold on a bloody minute!
You’re pushing, he’s pushing,
they’re pushing, I’m squashed!
I need to please people! It’s addictive,
mandatory, I cringe at the thought
of that shortest sentence, “No.”
But I can’t please everybody
and if I leave someone out,
that person is always ME!
Yet I have the right to be pleased,
to get what I want, what I need.
I’m a person, too, an individual,
a worthy. And If I don’t take care of me
I won’t be cared for because not everyone
is as sick, as addicted to pleasing,
as codependent as I. So when you push,
when I’m pulled between two I want to please
and my own needs as well, I promise from now on
I will HALT! I will consider whether I’m hungry
(really hungry, not craving food, not wanting
my familiar pacifier), whether I’m angry,
whether I’m lonely, whether I’m tired…
And when I HALT, when I think it through,
maybe I can clean my own side of the street
and abandon the need to rescue you. Or him. Or them…