u/hairyemmie

i’ve commented here about it before, but i am seriously at the end of my rope with hairdressing because my schedule is so packed with a waitlist of complainers.

i have very serious catholic guilt people pleasing and i almost cannot tell anyone no. i don’t want to do evenings or so many saturdays but every time i take them off, there are teary-eyed clients staring at me to invent a new day of the week when i don’t have the time and then my waitlist for other evenings/saturdays explodes.

i don’t have a good sense of self, which means i am not connected to the value of my work. who am i to charge $300 for a foil? or $150 for a haircut thats just gonna need done again in 3 months anyway? (yes that is the going rate for an in-demand haircutter where i live). i am listed at being $105/hour but i only end up charging about $75/hr or less because of emotional discounting. and then im bitter because people younger and less talented than me are charging more and not working saturdays and loving life. oh, and they also didn’t have to slave under a mean boomer or gen x-er, either.

i try to get mental health help and therapy but its SO HARD in america. i am on waitlists for things but they involve constant supervision which im too burned out to do.

for the mentally ill chronic people pleasers out there, how do i do it? how do i look people in the face and say “okay i know you’re used to $125 for this foil but i actually should have been charging you $250 the last year and actually when correctly adjusted for my skill level it’s going to be $300 next appointment, good luck POORIE” i’m at the point where im ready to have myself committed just to get out of work bc i could never just “take time off”. i don’t know what to do about any of it.