Chapter 6: I Thought Being Chosen Meant I Was Safe
When belonging became survival
Hey again,
It’s Michael Mojica. I’m back with Chapter 6 of The People Pleaser’s Way Out, and I just want to say thank you for being here with me. This book is evolving in real time these are unfinished drafts, shaped by what I’m discovering and what you’re reflecting back.
If we haven’t met yet, my background is in attachment repair and nervous system healing. I’ve spent years with people who feel stuck being “the good one,” but this book goes deeper. It looks at people-pleasing as a kind of sophisticated survival intelligence, not just compliance, but rebellion, even full identity absorption.
This chapter is called “I Thought Being Chosen Meant I Was Safe.” It’s the story I couldn’t tell before: getting beaten up in my own house, finding protection through gang ties, and losing myself completely trying to belong.
It gets heavy. Violence. Brainwashing. The cost of shapeshifting for acceptance. But it’s also about honoring the extraordinary social intelligence underneath those adaptations.
If you’ve ever found yourself becoming a different person in different relationships, or felt your body flood with relief when someone powerful picked you, this one might land deep.
Behind the paywall, I’m sharing what I couldn’t say publicly: how that same identity absorption followed me even into healing spaces, how I performed authenticity the same way I performed loyalty, and why neuroscience shows your adaptability is genius, not dysfunction.
No pressure to have it all figured out. Just notice what your body remembers.
With care,
Michael
I spent most of my life in one school system, one circle of friends, one map of belonging.
Then sophomore year, we moved
and everything familiar was gone.
I had to start over.
Nobody knew me.
I didn’t even know myself.
For two and a half years, I was mostly alone.
Before that, I’d had good friends
people who felt like family.
Then all of a sudden, I had no one.
And I didn’t even know how to talk about it.
The silence felt like it swallowed me whole.
By senior year, I’d pieced together a few friendships, stepped into the hip hop dance scene, found a girl whose parents didn’t want her anywhere near me.
There was a part of me that felt seen with her.
But that didn’t last long.
She had connections to one of the most feared martial arts schools in the city.
One day her kuya, a Filipino word for older brother, even though they weren’t blood showed up at my house.
One of their top students.
He shoved me against the wall before he even spoke.
Told me to stay away from her.
I could feel his power through my back, pinned against the garage door.
Later I found out her mom had sent him.
It didn’t even feel personal
like he was just delivering a message.
But it landed like a blade anyway.
After that day, fear lived in my body.
My stomach twisted every morning before I even opened my eyes.
The world felt smaller, like the walls were closing in.
I moved differently
quieter, smaller
trying to stay out of sight,
because it felt like if they found me again,
I might not make it out.
Then one day, about ten cars pulled up.
It was the same guy from before
the one everyone feared, whose name carried stories like warnings.
Whenever I told people what happened, I could see it in their faces
they thought I was done for.
That look in their eyes made it feel even more hopeless,
like there was no way out.
At least thirty guys surrounded me.
I didn’t even register them as separate bodies
it was just one giant wall of threat.
My whole system went tunnel-visioned, frozen,
just present enough to get out.
He told me to leave.
That I should never come back to that spot
the one place where, for a moment, I’d felt like I could belong.
As I drove away, he kicked my car.
And to this day, it still strikes me that he didn’t do worse to me right there
he could have, easily.
But it was like he wanted to send a message first.
The beating would come later.
About a month after that, there was a knock at the door.
A group of boys, dressed up like Mormons, too polite to look real.
They asked if my mom was home.
I told them no.
One of them looked at me
sharp, focused
“ARE YOU MIKE? ARE YOU MIKE?”
I’d just woken up.
My brain was foggy.
I said yes.
And they came pouring through the door.
Six of them.
Fists, feet, rage
all of it.
In my own house.
When it was over, I was on the floor, barely breathing.
My mom came home to find me there.
She told me not to tell my dad
because if he knew,
he might have handled it in a way that would cost me him altogether.
Later on, I found some new people.
I told them what happened
every detail, even the parts that made me sound weak.
They took me in.
I never got jumped in, never had to prove myself with my fists.
But I built bonds anyway
something a people pleaser knows how to do.
I could read the room, adjust, stay useful, stay loyal.
For the first time since moving, I felt chosen.
Protected.
Like I finally mattered to people who could actually do something about it.
But I didn’t see the trap.
Because your body knows this feeling.
That moment someone powerful picks you.
That moment you matter.
That moment you stop being alone.
And your nervous system goes slack for a moment,
your chest loosens,
your lungs fill with air.
Finally. Finally, I’m safe.
But even as relief moves through your blood,
your body is memorizing the rules.
Don’t show fear.
Don’t complain.
Don’t ask for softness.
Don’t make them regret picking you.
Because belonging can vanish in a breath.
And the prayers start, even if you don’t say them out loud:
Please don’t change your mind about me.
Please don’t see my weakness.
Please don’t remember how breakable I am.
Please don’t make me prove it again.
Please, I’ll do anything
Just don’t leave.
My body was still adapting.
Still shapeshifting.
Still calculating exactly what these new people needed
so they’d keep me close.
The rules had only changed:
I couldn’t just be nice — I had to be hard.
I couldn’t just keep the peace — I had to be down for them.
I couldn’t just avoid conflict — I had to survive it.
But the pattern was exactly the same:
I will become what you need me to be,
so you don’t abandon me.
If you’ve read this far, I’m curious
did you even notice?
Notice what happened in your own body?
Maybe you’re holding your breath.
Tensing your shoulders.
Bracing somewhere you can’t even name.
That’s your nervous system, doing what it always does
when belonging feels uncertain:
scanning, calculating, shaping,
trying to figure out what’s required to stay safe.
This is the pattern beneath everything.
The job where you work too hard
because being indispensable feels like safety.
The relationship where you shrink your needs
because conflict feels like abandonment.
The family where you hold everyone’s emotions
because being needed feels like being loved.
The friend group where you mirror every opinion
because difference feels dangerous.
Different places.
Same strategy.
Here’s what your body knows
even if your mind hasn’t caught up yet:
Being chosen is not safety.
It is only temporary relief from the terror of being insignificant.
Real safety doesn’t demand you to stay useful.
Real safety doesn’t dissolve when someone’s mood shifts.
Real safety doesn’t ask you to shrink down to keep it.
Real safety is knowing you can stay yourself
even if someone else decides to walk away.
And when, one day, someone came along
who didn’t ask for toughness,
who didn’t test my loyalty,
who didn’t measure my worth,
I felt something break inside me.
They stayed, even when I was shaking.
They stayed, even when I was scared.
They stayed, even when I fell apart.
And in that moment,
my body started to tremble
not with fear,
but with relief.
The relief of being chosen,
without needing to perform.
The relief of belonging,
without conditions.
The relief of feeling small,
and loved anyway.
And that tremble wasn’t weakness.
It was my body remembering a truth I’d never known:
Real belonging does not vanish when I’m honest.
Right now,
feel your breath moving in your chest.
Feel your ribs expand,
even if just a little.
Notice how you don’t have to prove anything to the air.
It just comes to you,
again and again.
This is what true belonging feels like.
You already have it.
You just forgot.
End of Chapter 6
Next week: Chapter 7 - "What They Call Overreacting Is Just Your Body Remembering" - where we explore why your nervous system's responses contain more wisdom than anyone realizes.
The Part I Couldn't Say in Public
There's something about the gang story I couldn't write openly.
I didn't just adapt to stay chosen. I got brainwashed. I took it on completely.
I started talking about loyalty, about being strong and intimidating, about codes of honor. I genuinely believed people who didn't hold those values were weak. Looking at someone wrong became offensive to me. I carried myself differently. I thought differently.
It wasn't just performance anymore. I had become someone else entirely.
And there's something else I couldn't say publicly: how this pattern followed me years later into what was supposed to be healing spaces. How even when I tried to be "authentic," I was still performing - just performing authenticity instead of toughness.
The body memories of complete identity absorption. Of not knowing where the performance ended and I began.
Because they're too raw. Too specific. Too... familiar.
If Chapter 6 created recognition in your chest, what's behind this paywall will help you understand exactly how deep people-pleasing can go - not just changing behavior, but completely losing yourself in what others need you to be.
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