Tiny Buddha

Author: Ilene S. Cohen

  • When You Feel Bad About Feeling Sad and Anxious

    When You Feel Bad About Feeling Sad and Anxious

    “You don’t have to be brave all of the time. You are not damaged or defeated. Have patience. Give yourself permission to grieve, to cry, and to heal. Allow a bit of compassion, you’re doing the best you can. We all are.” ~Unknown

    Growing up, I received the message that everything had to look a certain way. It was only okay to feel positive emotions, and any expression of unruly emotions was totally unacceptable.

    It wasn’t that anyone directly said this to me. I wasn’t given a written set of rules to follow. I wasn’t given any speeches or trainings about how to present myself in public. But the message came across.

    It was relayed to me in phrases like “Don’t cry, you’re fine,” “Relax, people are watching,” “Just ignore them,” and “Don’t let things bother you.” It was conveyed to me through subtle criticisms of my reactions, which in my mind translated to “You aren’t good enough if you feel bad.”

    In many ways, I was raised to feel uncomfortable with my emotions. I came to believe that negative emotions were a defect within me rather than a natural and essential part of my being. It wasn’t anything my parents did deliberately to try and hurt me. In fact, they were probably trying to avoid seeing me in pain. They were simply following what most people and parents do.

    We advise others to avoid their pain and upset feelings. To snap back into shape, even after immense tragedy. 

    We hear things like “Your cousin died? Well, he’s in heaven now.” “You had to put your dog to sleep? Well, he’s just crossed the rainbow bridge; and anyway, you can always get another dog.”

    People don’t advise you to sit with uncomfortable emotions. They don’t tell you it’s okay to feel sad, hurt, or scared.

    As a young and impressionable little person, I internalized my parents’ messages and fought against every “negative” emotion I had. That is, until the feelings I was trying so hard to avoid took over my body and manifested themselves as a series of seemingly unexplainable health issues and panic attacks.

    As I got older, I became so anxious that I couldn’t hide it anymore. Once I reached the point of being uncontrollably uncomfortable, I set out on a journey of self-exploration.

    I came to realize that my only choice was to examine what I was feeling and explore what those feelings could tell me about myself. For the first time in my life, I decided to figure out what my emotions were really about. I decided to find out why I was so damn anxious.

    Many of us are embarrassed and ashamed of our own feelings and thoughts. 

    We think our unfavorable emotions make us weak, and we worry that other people would think less of us if they knew how bad we actually felt. If we allow dominant ideas about tough emotions to take over our own thoughts, we can wind up feeling shame for the rest of our lives.

    When we’re emotional, we can feel completely powerless, like we’re never going to gain any kind of control over our thoughts, bodies, or surroundings. It can feel so uncomfortable to be upset that we choose to numb ourselves rather than risk feeling any pain.

    For so many years, I had it all wrong. But once it clicked, everything changed.

    The point of being alive isn’t to numb our feelings; we’re always going to feel something, and sadness is always going to try expressing itself in our lives. That’s a fact of life. We can try to avoid it all we want, but the more we distance ourselves from this reality, the more control it gains over us. 

    Freedom comes when we can feel our tough emotions expressing themselves, but no longer let them rule our lives. 

    The more we try to avoid our true nature, the more whatever we don’t want to feel shows up with a vengeance.

    The more I tried to rid myself of worry, sadness, negative thoughts, and panic attacks, the more they seemed to persist. The more they persisted, the more reactive I got to feeling anxiety. And the more reactive I became, the more power anxiety had over my life.

    When we try to get rid of anything in life, we create resistance; and the more we resist something, the more it shows up. Famous psychologist Carl Jung stated that “what you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” So, the goal here isn’t to get rid of anxiety, panic attacks, or sadness, it’s to work on our intolerance of those feelings. It’s to learn how to manage ourselves through the discomfort of it all.

    We don’t gain comfort, self-compassion, and calm by resisting or wishing things were different; we reach true calm by letting it be okay when we’re sad and anxious, and then letting it go.

    The more you fight it, the more it will show up; the more you let it be, the less power it will have over you.

    This is, of course, easier said than done. It’s a natural instinct to try banishing anything that feels uncomfortable. However, by continuously practicing deep acceptance for what is, we put ourselves in the best position to change it, or even achieve freedom from it, so that we can move past it.

    Here’s what I did to pull myself back from numbing myself and stumble into my new world with tolerance of my emotions:

    1. Know that it’s okay to be anxious and upset.

    Without a doubt, the most important thing to remember is that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed and stressed out. It’s okay to feel lost and unsure. It’s alright to have no idea how you’re going to hold it together sometimes. We put so much pressure on ourselves to be happy all the time. It’s okay to acknowledge when times are tough. It’s alright to feel anxious, even if it’s uncomfortable.

    2. Become an observer of your life.

    Instead of judging and getting angry with myself for feeling a certain way, I decided to be an observer of my emotions and environment. I chose to slow down and watch. I remind myself that when we’re busy judging ourselves for the way we feel, we aren’t honoring ourselves.

    Our emotions are involuntary; we have no control over them. However, what we do have control over is how we decide to respond to those emotions. When we accept our emotions as they come, take ownership of them, and avoid taking them out on the people we love, we train ourselves to manage our emotions from within.

    3. Decide who you want to be.

    I’ve found that it’s much easier to be happy, nice, and upbeat when your life is going well. It’s a lot harder to hold onto yourself when stress and anxiety are high. Knowing this, I work at trying to stay true to who I am, even in unfortunate situations. Even if I’m feeling agitated or upset, I know I can choose to respond in ways that allow me to shine through. Just because I’m not feeling so great, doesn’t mean I need to take it out on anyone I care about.

    4. Know it’s okay to feel strong emotions.

    During hard times our emotions can feel more intense. We may lose hope or be more reactive. Even though it’s totally fine to maintain an optimistic perspective of life, it’s also important to allow ourselves to process and feel the full spectrum of emotions.

    5. Remember that even negative emotions have a place in our lives.

    Sadness, anger, frustration, boredom, anxiety etc. all have a place in our lives. The key is not to avoid or numb these emotions, but to experience them and learn to manage them effectively so they don’t run our lives.

    Unfortunately, many of us don’t know how to manage our negative feelings—in part, because we’ve been taught to repress them. As children, many of us are told not to cry, which leads us to believe that crying is bad.

    As adults, when we experience emotions like depression or anxiety, our natural impulse is usually to mask those feelings. We may have an inner voice telling us to forget about it; we may even turn to drugs, food restriction, or binge eating to distract us from our emotions.

    As human beings, we’re simply incapable of numbing a select set of emotions. So, when we numb sadness, we also numb happiness, joy, and other positive emotions. What’s worse is that as we struggle with our own negative emotions, we may create even more suffering. It’s hard work to deny something we’re truly feeling. It takes energy; it wears us down. So rather than try to ignore our feelings, it better serves us to work on observing them.

    It’s alright to admit that you’re hurting or struggling. We all go through hard times. And maybe we can find a bit of comfort in remembering that we aren’t alone. But first, we must accept what’s happening. Then we can decide how we want to best deal with it.

  • What to Do When Someone You Love is Struggling

    What to Do When Someone You Love is Struggling

    “Sometimes the easiest way to solve a problem is to stop participating in the problem.” ~ Jonathan Mead

    I don’t think I’m alone in having someone in my life whom I wish I could change. Someone I see struggling, who ignores or resents any lifesavers I send their way. I can clearly see how this person contributes to their own struggles, but they remain totally unaware of it. Sometimes, I want to shake some sense into this person; I think, “If only they would get their life together…”

    For many of us, this person is a relative: a sister, brother, parent, or child. For others, it’s a close friend or coworker. A lot of times, it’s someone we want in our lives, even if it’s painful to keep them there. No matter who it is, it certainly isn’t easy to see someone you care about struggle.

    Being in the presence of another’s pain used to provoke a deeply emotional response from me. And I know others feel the same. Sympathy and the desire to help someone in distress are naturally instinctual responses.

    According to Darwin, humans and animals alike take comfort in one another’s company, protecting one another and defending each other against threats.

    I get that. It makes total sense to me. I would have gone to the ends of the earth to see the people I care about happy. I did just about anything to try and change them; I read books and articles, reaching out for experts’ advice on how I could get them to see the light. In fact, I became one of those “experts” myself, and if I’m honest with myself, it’s because I was looking for a way to help the ones I love.

    You see, I didn’t just have one person in my life who was struggling. At one point, it seemed like the majority of my family members were having a tough time. That led me to feel desperate and helpless, unable to live my own life while sensing their pain.

    I always hung on to the hope that the people in my life would somehow change. That something I had overlooked would prove to be the magic bullet to help them live a good and fulfilling life.

    I kept buying more books, reading more articles, and encouraging them to go to therapy, whether they wanted to or not. I reasoned, pleaded, led interventions. Dreamed of my ideal relationships with them, imagined them happy and full of life. Yearned for their smiles and enthusiasm for life. Believed that I couldn’t be happy until they were.

    I made it my life mission to change others, becoming a therapist to help make changes in other people’s lives, fixing what was broken.

    Well, as you can imagine, that never worked. When you have people in your life whom it hurts to love, the only logical solution seems like trying to help them change. But I had to learn the long and hard way, by running into dead ends and facing many disappointments, that you can’t make other people change. You can’t make other people happy. And you can’t rescue another person.

    The only person you can change is yourself. So that’s what I did. I learned to manage my anxiety around other people’s discomfort. I decided that other people’s struggles and journeys were just that: their struggles and journeys. I stopped trying to be helpful and instead decided that I had a right to be happy.

    It’s so important to understand that you can’t make somebody change. You can inspire them to change. You can educate them toward change. You can support them in their change. But you can’t force them to change just so that you can feel more comfortable around them.

    Maybe that sounds like giving up. Maybe that even sounds a bit uncaring. However, I didn’t stop trying to be helpful to those struggling because I stopped loving them. I stopped because I saw it was not only not working, it was also contributing to their problems.

    When I made efforts to take on other people’s problems I would do too much. I relieved them for a moment of their pain; however, I wasn’t providing them with the space they needed to solve their own issues. If I kept jumping in to help them, they would keep relying on me, instead of themselves, which wouldn’t allow them to better deal with life’s many difficulties on their own.

    After years of doing the same things over and over again, with very little result, I decided it was time to change my approach. I was doing the very thing I wanted to see other people stop doing: I was contributing to my own problems. And it was time to stop doing that. It was time to be happy, not only for me, but for those that I cared about. It was time to be less helpful.

    Our efforts to be helpful might be based on good intentions, but those good intentions don’t always yield good results.

    By committing to learning what real help is, I came to understand that if I could manage my anxiety about other people’s problems and invest my time thinking about real solutions, I could change my responses and do something that was legitimately helpful.

    As the first step in this process, I began to define my true beliefs, values, and ideas about helping others.

    I’ve learned that in crisis situations, it’s best for me to calm myself down and respond as wisely as possible—when it’s needed and, of course, when it’s welcomed. The ability to manage my emotions in the highly anxious and emotional presence of another, especially a loved one in pain, is a lifelong mission of mine, because I truly believe it’s what will be helpful.

    If we can all manage ourselves in the face of other people’s problems, we can truly be present and accountable.

    On my journey to find out what it means to be truly helpful, I’ve found some tools I keep in my back pocket when the going gets tough.

    First, stay in touch.

    This isn’t easy to do in the presence of someone who’s very anxious and upset. Some people naturally create distance when anxiety is high. Thinking that you can’t help, or that the situation is too large, can lead you to run in the other direction.

    I try to stay in contact with people I care about, even if their problems are too big for me to solve or aren’t solvable at all, like having an illness. Staying in touch helps me manage myself around the big stuff I can’t solve, and learn to accept people as they are.

    Second, see the person past the problem.

    When I was walking around with a hammer, I was basically seeing everyone in my life as a nail. There was more to them than the issues they were facing, but I wasn’t relating to them as whole people. Now I look for other people’s strengths, and their ability to solve their own issues. People are more resilient than we tend to think.

    Third, respect others’ boundaries and ability to solve their own problems.

    Many people are vulnerable when they face life’s stressors, and some people look to others to solve their problems for them. These days, I try to respect other people enough to let them come up with their own answers.

    Determining how much to say or not say in each situation we face is not an exact science. I respect others’ boundaries by supporting their autonomy, being there for them but staying out of the way when my opinion isn’t needed. I make sure that any ideas for possible solutions come from them. I offer useful information without telling anyone what to do.

    Fourth, know your own limitations.

    It was humbling for me to find out how little control I have over the way others decide to live their lives. I changed my thought process from thinking I knew what’s best for my loved ones, to defining what I really could and couldn’t do; then my responses became clearer.

    I was able to be more open and honest about the reality of my own life and how available I could be for others. I learned the hard way that, most of the time, my limits of time and energy were reached before other people’s needs were met.

    Fifth, become more objective.

    Boy, is it hard to think objectively when it comes to our important relationships. In intense emotional situations, it’s easy to get pulled into it all and feel pressured to do something instead of taking a step back and seeing the bigger picture.

    With each situation I face, I work on getting more objective about it, reflecting on how I can remain calm and not feel the need to solve anything immediately.

    Remaining objective is about seeing the difference between reality and what you feel. So, for example, instead of thinking you need to break your best friend’s unhealthy relationship pattern because it hurts you to see her in the same painful situation over and over again, you might step back and recognize she’s making progress, even if it’s slow, and we all need to learn our own lessons in our own time.

    Sixth, work toward being open and honest.

    We all have a need to feel seen, heard, and understood. However, way too many people aren’t open and honest in their relationships. When we can be open about our vulnerabilities and share our own experiences, it can be healing and calming. We can let others know that we can relate to them. When we’re trying to solve and fix everything, we aren’t connecting with others at a deeper level. We’re acting as if we’re above them.

    —

    By making an effort to stop trying to be helpful, I saw many changes in my life. I no longer felt the pressure I once put on myself to be responsible for other people. I no longer made other people’s struggles about myself. And through all of that, I was able to foster better relationships with the people I care about—relationships based on reality, versus fantasies of who I wished they would be.

    What I describe here is my own personal experience. I share it as a way to get you thinking, but there’s no one-size-fits-all method for determining what real help is.

    The biggest lesson I learned in all of this is that I wasn’t helping anyone when I was swooping in trying to solve every problem without looking at the bigger picture. I understand now that when my “helping” is rooted in anxiety and an urge to smooth things over, it isn’t coming from a genuine place.

    I now know it’s okay to not have all of the answers; it’s okay to take my time to think things over; it’s okay to throw my hands up and say, “This situation really stinks right now, and it’s going to be hard for a while.”

    It’s okay for you to do all those things, too. Not every struggling person needs saving. Knowing that, and accepting it, might be the most helpful thing you can do.

  • Feeling Anxious? People-Pleasing Could Be to Blame

    Feeling Anxious? People-Pleasing Could Be to Blame

    “Living with anxiety is like being followed by a voice. It knows all your insecurities and uses them against you. It gets to the point when it’s the loudest voice in the room. The only one you can hear.” ~Unknown

    White lights flutter before your eyes. Your chest tightens, as if under the weight of a hundred ten-pound bricks. You wonder if your next breath will be your last. Emotions rip through you: fear, glooming dread, hopelessness. Without warning or clear cause, these feelings consume you.

    You start to wonder if you’re going crazy. It’s like you no longer have control over your own body, your own thoughts.

    This is the experience of chronic anxiety. And if you’ve ever encountered it, you know that the presence of it—and the absence of answers or solutions—can make you feel like you’re losing it. It can make everything that was once enjoyable feel like a struggle.

    I know this feeling all too well.

    I used to suffer from periodic anxiety attacks in my early twenties. They left me perplexed and afraid. I felt like I was being possessed. I felt out of control and believed I was dying all the time, with no evidence of a real illness.

    Anxiety stole parts of my life from me, until I decided I wouldn’t let it take away my hope for a better future. One day, embarrassed after having to pull over onto the side of the road in order to breathe, I decided to get help for my anxiety attacks.

    I realized then that people pleasing was causing me anxiety in two ways.

    First, I felt anxiety about being imperfect, making mistakes, and making choices that others didn’t approve of, especially in my family relationships. Then I felt more anxiety because I thought I shouldn’t feel this way. I thought if people knew I was suffering from anxiety that they would reject me.

    Life can be messy, strange, and hard sometimes. And it gets even harder when the faith you once had in yourself is bulldozed by your inability to take a deep breath and calm yourself down.

    It’s hard not to blame yourself. It’s hard to avoid feeling inadequate, like your issues are all your fault. It’s especially hard when you’re a people-pleaser.

    Chronic people-pleasers want to look presentable all the time, like we have it all together and our lives are perfect. Anxiety doesn’t fit into the perfect lives we’ve established for ourselves. So when it hits, we become our harshest and cruelest critics.

    We fail to realize that when we don’t accept our symptoms, we only exacerbate them. We forget that judging things never makes them better. We can’t help but get angry with ourselves.

    Stop Playing Pretend

    Anxiety had its most crippling effects on me when I was in college. I believed I needed to get all A’s on my report card in order to be a good student. I also believed that if I had to study to get good grades, I was somehow intellectually inferior.

    I studied a lot for tests—more than what I thought should be necessary. But when I talked to other people, I pretended like I’d barely studied at all. And whenever I received the occasional B, I beat myself up pretty harshly.

    I didn’t want anyone to know that I didn’t have the best report card. Little did I know at the time it made me appear pretentious and stuck up.

    After graduation, I interned at a university clinic, where I started to see clients. With each client, I was assigned a therapy room. This one time, I accidently used a room that wasn’t assigned to me. When the therapy was over, the clinical supervisor was not very happy with me and did not have trouble showing it.

    Not knowing how to handle disappointing someone, I cried to her and ran off because I could feel a panic attack coming on. Later I felt like a baby, and couldn’t understand why I had such a strong reaction to making a mistake.

    Later I realized I was always anxiously trying to please people because it was difficult for me to deal with disappointing others. I thought somehow making a mistake devalued me as a person, and that made me anxious to think about.

    I would assess my worth on how much I could do right, instead of realizing I had intrinsic worth regardless. This experience helped me understand that my urge to please was based on anxiety and fear more than anything else.

    I spent that time of my life hiding who I was and putting a fake smile on my face.

    In trying to appear perfect, I became rigid and lost my edge and my humor. I resisted my outgoing personality because I thought I would interrupt people too much. I thought I should always let others take center stage while I didn’t ruffle any feathers in the background.

    I pretended everything was great, but it wasn’t. I was suffering from crippling anxiety, feeling disconnected, and often misunderstood. I was hiding my pain, and my frustration with people who were acting rude and selfish.

    I gave advice and ran to the rescue of anyone in despair, and partook in activities that I didn’t necessarily enjoy. I hid my true self by hiding behind other people’s problems. I convinced myself that there was no room for me.

    Through my own experience, I learned that the greatest changes begin when we look at our problems with interest and respect, instead of judgment and denial. When we allow our true thoughts and feelings into awareness, we have the opportunity to learn from them instead of unconsciously reacting to them without knowing why.

    We keep our negative feelings relaxed by not ignoring them, and we increase our awareness of reality by being willing to encounter our personal truths.

    After therapy, I learned that my panic attacks were a reminder that I was a human, not a perfect being. I needed to be acknowledged for who I was, instead of always putting others first or forcing myself to have it all together.

    I needed to know that my worth didn’t depend on what I did for others or what grades appeared on my report card.

    Our bodies have so much wisdom, and sometimes they know more than we realize. Sometimes our anxiety is merely a signal telling us to take a closer look within.

    Anxiety As A Symptom, Not The Disease

    When I first sought therapy for my panic attacks, I thought they were a sign of weakness that needed to be eliminated. What I came to understand is that we can choose to bury our unexpressed emotions and deep thoughts, but they’ll come back later, often in unpleasant ways.

    In my case, they came back as panic attacks. When aspects of ourselves are distanced, denied, or devalued, they’ll always try to make us listen by surfacing as unwanted symptoms.

    Think about what some aspects of your ignored self are trying to tell you. Maybe your symptoms are coming up as chronic anxiety, depression, muscle pain, headaches, feeling lost, etc.

    The analogy of the missing roommate, from Bill O’Hanlon and Bob Bertolino’s book Even from a Broken Web: Brief, Respectful Solution-Orientated Therapy for Sexual Abuse and Trauma, can help clarify the impact of ignoring our inner selves.

    The Missing Roommate

    Imagine that there are a bunch of people living together in a house, and they decide to kick out one of their roommate because they don’t like him. They lock him out and change the locks.

    He comes to the door and tries persistently to get back in, but the roommates tell each other to ignore him, thinking he will go away.

    After a while, he becomes exhausted and slumps against the door. They think he’s gone away and won’t cause any more trouble. For quite a while, it seems to have worked. But he’s really just sleeping outside the door.

    Eventually, something wakes him up, and he decides he wants to get back in the house. He pounds on the door again but gets no response and becomes tired again. Finally, he becomes desperate and crashes through the front window.

    That is what happens when parts of your true self are vanished, unexpectedly. The parts of you that went missing will want to show you who you’re meant to be. They’ll scream, “I want to come back! I am part of you! I will not be ignored!”

    This is how it happened for me. I got so caught up in trying to be who I thought I was supposed to be, I lost who I actually was.

    However, when we devalue parts of ourselves, they develop a mind of their own. They may go away for a while, at the expense of our wellbeing and relationships, but before long they’ll come crashing through the front window.

    We must realize that the experiences we have, even seemly negative ones, are here to teach us, challenge us, and allow us to grow.

    How you see yourself, your life, and your options is shaped by your mindset. If you live with the mindset of a people-pleaser, you’ll constantly feel pressure to fit in, make others happy, be liked, gain acceptance, and seem happy all the time. That’s a lot of pressure. No wonder you feel anxious!

    When I reached out for the help of a therapist, I thought there was something wrong with me because of how sick I’d gotten. I wasn’t able to see that even if I could benefit from making some changes, my anxiety wasn’t my fault. I needed to grow so I could learn to better manage my life and be okay with sometimes disappointing other people in order to take care of myself.

    It’s okay to make mistakes; it’s all right for people not to approve of all your choices; it’s fine to have the occasional issue. In fact, it’s through the pitfalls of life that you can learn and experience who you are.

    I’m thankful for my panic attacks. They allowed me to open my eyes and change my life. I started making myself a priority and embraced my imperfections with open arms.

    —

    Editor’s note: Ilene has generously offered to give away two free copies of her latest book, When It’s Never About You: The People-Pleaser’s Guide to Reclaiming Your Health, Happiness and Personal Freedom. To enter to win one of two free copies, leave a comment below. You don’t have to write anything specific—”Count me in” is sufficient! You can enter until midnight PST on Sunday, December 24th.

    Update: The winners have been chosen. They are Stephen Chavez and Julie.

  • Why People-Pleasers Don’t Get the Love and Respect They Desire

    Why People-Pleasers Don’t Get the Love and Respect They Desire

    “Niceness is the psychological armor of the people-pleaser.” ~Harriet B. Braiker

    I used to think that being kind, gentle, and agreeable was guaranteed to win me love and acceptance from others. I’d tiptoe around destructive people’s behaviors, no matter how uncomfortable I felt about it, believing to my core that if only I could be nice enough to them, they would one day lead a better life.

    I lived my life constantly avoiding anything that might make me look like a bad, imperfect, antagonistic, or unlikeable person. Because as every people-pleaser knows, being disliked or disapproved of feels worse than ignoring your own feelings—at least at first.

    Some people were easy to please; a kind gesture or smile was all it would take. Getting their approval so effortlessly made me happier than a kid at Disney World. But with other people, it seemed the more I tried to please them, the more likely they were to treat me like an old dish rag; and the more this happened, the less I liked myself.

    Eventually, my efforts to please others left me feeling disrespected, violated, and disconnected—from life, from other people, and from myself.

    For many years, I silently endured the ongoing, relentless invalidation of who I was based on how others treated me. When someone close to me was feeling unsatisfied, negative, or in search of someone to blame, there I was, ready to take it.

    But no matter how unhappy I was, I still wanted to make them feel better. I wanted to see them happy, even at my own expense.

    At the core of these one-sided relationships I maintained with some of the perpetually dissatisfied people in my life was an enduring belief that if only I could solve their problems and make them happy, I’d finally receive the love and acceptance I desired all my life.

    I never stopped to think, “But what about me? What will become of me if I keep trying to satisfy people with an unquenchable thirst?” I couldn’t see that no matter what I did, it would never be enough. In fact, it wasn’t about me at all. I didn’t realize that no matter how good I am at solving problems, or how perfectly I can handle things, if someone wants to find fault with me, they will.

    Instead of seeing other people’s dissatisfaction as an issue for them to resolve on their own, I internalized it and interpreted it to mean I wasn’t good enough.

    But one day, I finally started asking myself some important questions: “What will become of me and my self-worth if I keep basing it on unhappy people’s perceptions? Who will love and respect me if I’m not even taking a stand for myself?”

    My conception of who I needed to be in order to gain love and acceptance was slapping me in the face over and over again like a flat tire driving on uneven pavement. But still, I wondered why my formula wasn’t working. I truly believed that living selflessly was a surefire way to get love, appreciation, respect, and lots of hugs in return.

    It took me a while to realize that living this way was actually having the opposite effect. My constant selfless giving and kindness didn’t automatically earn me a pass on the eternal acceptance subway. It actually seemed to be an invitation for people to take advantage of my generosity, allowing them to feel less anxious about their own lives.

    I set myself up to be other people’s emotional dumpster, personal life fixer, and convenient source of blame for their misfortunes.

    What I came to learn the hard way is that pleasing others isn’t the way to win their love and respect. I finally realized that if I kept taking on other people’s anxiety as my own, they would never change. And why would they, after all? They got lots of relief from me stepping in and resolving things. But at what cost?

    All this pleasing had left me feeling inadequate and stressed out as I watched the recipients of my pleasing play out the same problems and drama, over and over again.

    Love At All Costs

    One night I had a dream that I was standing in a field with nothing but the clothes on my back. I felt weak and tired, like I needed someone to come lift me up and ask me how I was doing.

    Slowly, my family and friends started to join me in the field. But they weren’t there to rescue me; they were there to bring me their troubles.

    One by one, they started pulling me in different directions. They wanted me to solve their lives for them, even though I was alone, tired, defeated, and left with nothing.

    The dream was showing me the truth about how I was living. When my life and health started to collapse around me like a burning building, I had to take a hard look at my perspective and decisions. I started to question my beliefs about what it meant to be a truly good person, and what it took to receive the love and respect I so desired.

    That dream helped me understand that my people-pleasing behaviors weren’t getting me what I desired; they were getting me the very experiences I spent my life trying to avoid.

    Back then, it would have been easier for me to blame others for their ungratefulness and neediness; but deep down, I knew that blaming would have been another way to avoid taking a look at myself.

    I was sick of exhausting myself trying to help and change other people, only to find that it didn’t work. I knew I had to change myself and, as cheesy as it may sound, give myself the love and respect I so desired. Because the truth is, no one can give you what you should be giving yourself from within—especially not those people who need the pleasing you so easily offer.

    After much reflection, I came to see that my pleasing behaviors were a way for me to get the validation from others that I wasn’t giving myself. Of course my efforts backfired, because I alone was responsible for my happiness; other people’s happiness wasn’t my responsibility, and just because I was overly nice to someone didn’t mean they had to treat me the same way.

    I was trying to please other people so I could feel worthy of love. In reality, my kindness wasn’t coming from a place of vulnerability, honesty, or acceptance; it was rooted in anxiety and fear.

    In my attempts to make everyone else happy, I lost control of my own identity, and they lost their ability to solve their own problems. By changing myself to become who everyone wanted me to be, I made myself less desirable and implicitly invited people to take me for granted.

    Pleasing Yourself

    Do you find yourself people-pleasing and wonder how you can get the love and respect you desire? Well, the answer is pretty simple, but the actions it takes aren’t quite as simple. The first step involves changing your perceptions. Once that’s done, changing your behaviors will follow naturally. Here are some things to remember:

    1. You aren’t treating yourself with love and respect when you regularly do things for others that they’re avoiding doing for themselves.

    2. You aren’t treating yourself with love and respect when people violate your boundaries, and you don’t speak up about it.

    3. You aren’t treating yourself with love and respect when you say yes to something but really want to say no.

    4. You aren’t treating yourself with love and respect when you internalize others’ dissatisfaction and take it on as your own problem.

    5. You aren’t treating yourself with love and respect when you hurt yourself in order to make others happy.

    Over time, I came to understand that my efforts to make other people happy were like deposits made in a piggy bank with a giant hole at the bottom.

    If you’re stuck in a people-pleasing cycle, chances are you’re subconsciously attaching to people who need you to soothe their discomfort, because they can’t do it for themselves. Since they don’t know how to manage their own emotions, they’ll continue to reach out to you whenever they’re in crisis—and, on the occasions when your pleasing behaviors aren’t sufficient for them, they’ll blame you for their discomfort.

    If you want to make changes in your life, it’s time for you to see this pattern clearly and stop basing your sense of worthiness on other people’s approval of you.

    Change your perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors. Make contributions to a bank that pays interest. Receive the love and respect you so desire by celebrating your freedom from the longing to be accepted by others.

    —

    Editor’s note: Ilene has generously offered to give away two free copies of her latest book, When It’s Never About You: The People-Pleaser’s Guide to Reclaiming Your Health, Happiness and Personal Freedom. To enter to win one of two free copies, leave a comment below. You don’t have to write anything specific—”Count me in” is sufficient! You can enter until midnight PST on Sunday, November 5th.

    UPDATE: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. They are Emma Andmark Shishkin and Mari Toni.

  • What to Do When Your Need to Please Is Ruining Your Life

    What to Do When Your Need to Please Is Ruining Your Life

    “We are captives of our own identities, living in prisons of our own creation.” ~Theodore Bagwell

    Have you ever thought you had to do what other people said or they wouldn’t love you?

    Have you felt selfish for wanting to put your needs first, or guilty for setting limits with the people you care about?

    Have you learned that even when you’ve complied with everyone’s wishes and whims they still weren’t happy, and you weren’t either?

    Welcome to the deception of people-pleasing. Welcome to the story of my life.

    There is no tragedy greater than being alive but not feeling it because you’re numb, aloof, and emotionless. For many years I lived that way, showing all the signs of being alive but never truly living. That’s because I felt a strong desire to give all of myself in order to pay back the world for everything I’d been given.

    You see, I had the American Dream. I was granted many blessings, and by all accounts, I should have been happy. But I didn’t feel a thing—especially not happiness.

    It took me a while to identify the missing piece that kept me from truly experiencing my life: I wasn’t living as the person I really wanted to be. I was living my life to please others, make them happy, and follow society’s rules.

    I thought I was doing the right thing; I truly believed, “Eventually, all this selfless work will bring me the happiness I deserve on a silver platter.” But it never really worked out that way. It seemed the more I did, the less fulfilled I felt.

    My early life experiences shaped me into a people-pleaser. Though I was grateful for everything I was given, I was also aware that I’d been born into difficult family circumstances. Pleasing others was my way of coping with it.

    Like most young children, all I wanted was to gain my parents’ attention and approval. But praise was a scarce resource in my household, and both of my parents readily doled out criticism. I quickly become aware of how my actions affected them, so I acted in approval-seeking ways and suppressed my feelings in order to avoid punishment.

    I didn’t want to be criticized or berated in front of others, so I became the child, teenager, and adult of my parents’ dreams. They still found fault at times—which crushed me—but I ultimately did everything I could to make it up to them.

    This trap I had fallen into got deeper when my parents divorced. I tried to appease both of them by sticking myself in the middle of their marital battle and protecting my siblings from having to bear the brunt of their anger. I became my parents’ mediator, and this form of communication spiraled me into a deep depression that no one knew about but me.

    I lost a lot of weight, my grades dropped in school, and I no longer found any pleasure in activities I once enjoyed. But with a brave face, I trudged along and dealt with it so that my siblings wouldn’t have to. I convinced myself that this was my way of fulfilling my duty as a daughter and avoiding criticism.

    Growing up in these circumstances led me to believe I was responsible for how others felt. I learned to shape my personality, behaviors, and reactions according to what other people wanted or needed from me instead of being authentic to how I truly felt.

    Because of my parents’ often extreme reactions to situations, I came to believe that I needed to change; but the truth is, their reactivity was their responsibility.

    You see, we tend to call people who display this pattern of behavior people-pleasers, doormats, or approval-seekers. We describe them as being selfless. People-pleasers rarely say no, are super responsible, spend most their time doing for others, and are viewed as the nicest kinds of people.

    On the surface, it can seem like being a people-pleaser is the right thing to do; but over time, this identity wears a person down, and all that pleasing turns into an unhealthy pattern of behavior that doesn’t actually end up pleasing anyone in the long run.

    Your Identity

    I used to identify myself as being a good, nice, and selfless person who was always accommodating others.

    When I self-identified as having certain personality attributes, it dictated my actions and led me to believe I needed to act in certain ways to match society’s standard of how a good and nice person behaves.

    Even when my actions weren’t aligned with how I truly wanted to live my life, I found myself complying anyway. I worked hard to avoid looking selfish, unaccommodating, or disagreeable, and I avoided confrontation at all costs.

    I stopped this pattern when I came to realize that being a good person is a lot more complex than just accommodating the needs of others all of the time.

    When I realized that constantly giving in wasn’t as loving as I thought it was, and that the way I was acting didn’t come from a loving place at all but from a place of guilt and inadequacy, that’s when I decided to go from people-pleasing to living life on my own terms.

    That’s when I started to evolve from selfless to self-full. That’s when I deconstructed my identity as a people-pleaser and restructured my life. That’s when I decided that living my own life was more important than my parents’ approval of me.

    If the need to please has been running your life, here are some ideas to support your shift from selfless to self-full.

    1. Understand that other people are responsible for themselves.

    Being a people-pleaser allowed me to overlook one important fact: other people are responsible for themselves and their own problems.

    Somewhere down the road I decided that other people’s problems were my problems. I believed it was my responsibility to make other people feel better. For as long as I can remember, I played the caretaker role in my life; but all it got me was a burdening sense of obligation and crippling anxiety.

    It’s important for you to remember that you aren’t responsible for how others feel or act. If you try to please people because you’re scared of their reactions, that’s a sign that you need to start making a change.

    You see, when you take on other people’s responsibilities, you’re allowing them to continue acting irresponsibly; you’re permitting and promoting their unhealthy patterns.

    The next time you’re inclined to take on someone else’s stuff, ask yourself, Does taking on this person’s responsibilities really make me a good person? Is it actually kind to keep people from taking ownership of their own lives?

    You’re likely to find that the answer is no, and then you can explore how to be supportive without taking over completely.

    2. Stop trying to keep the peace.

    I often used to wonder why I was surrounded by selfish people; from my perspective, everyone else was the problem. But on my journey to self-fullness I realized that they weren’t the problem; I was.

    By trying to keep the peace in my relationships, I was overlooking the ways in which other people were taking advantage of me. I ignored their twisted priorities because I thought I should play nice all the time.

    It’s important to keep in mind that sometimes the better, more loving choice is the more uncomfortable, anxiety provoking one. Truly loving behavior calls for limits, boundaries, and saying no every once in a while.

    Some people will get upset with you or throw a tantrum like a two-year-old, but the cost of ignoring your boundaries is much greater than that. So stop thinking that keeping the peace is better for your relationships. The truth is it’s much better to be honest and upfront.

    3. Know the consequences of seeking approval.

    Living your life through fear of criticism and rejection doesn’t allow you to truly live at all. Constantly censoring yourself doesn’t allow you to see the freedom of choice that you really have. When you’re seeking approval all the time, you aren’t really growing.

    My approval-seeking behavior stemmed from a belief that my mental health depended on my being liked; if people didn’t like me, I didn’t feel worthy. The consequence of this was that my value as a person was totally dependent on what other people thought of me. Any criticism made me feel terrible about myself, so I avoided it by acting in ways that would gain others’ approval.

    I finally broke this pattern by placing more value on seeking approval from myself. By figuring out who I was and what I valued, I was able to create a stronger sense of self. When you know who you are and accept yourself, other people’s criticism doesn’t bother you too much at all.

    4. Become self-full.

    If you’re caught up in the people-pleasing cycle, you probably think it’s selfish to consider your needs first. Once you shift your idea of what it means to be a good person, like I did, you’ll see it isn’t selfish—but rather self-full–to put yourself first.

    Much of my desire to change came from realizing that if I didn’t start valuing myself, my relationships would suffer. Although it might seem counterintuitive, prioritizing your needs and gaining a strong sense of self is actually better for other people, because it serves to strengthen the relationships you have with them.

    It’s for this reason that placing your needs first is self-full rather than selfish. It’s about seeing your value and knowing your worth as a person. When you do this, others can start seeing your value also, and your relationships can start to transform.

    Final Thoughts

    The journey to self-fullness is all about trial and error. It’s about making mistakes, changing your behaviors, and asserting your own decisions.

    I started to feel happy and truly alive when I started to get to know myself, learning when to say no and when to set limits in my relationships. It wasn’t easy. I had to get used to some criticism and disappointment; I had to grow a stronger backbone. However, I can say without hesitation that it was worth it. And I know it will be worth it for you, too.

    Your life should be lived the way you want to live it. No one should have the power over you to dictate how you need to live your life. The more you get to know who you are, and the more boldly you begin to live life on your terms, the better you’ll feel about yourself.

    I no longer make decisions out of fear or wind up washed over with resentment. Now I do things for people because I want to, not because I’ll feel guilty if I don’t. I no longer need other people to make me feel worthy; I give that sense of worthiness to myself by knowing and accepting who I am.

    It will serve you greatly to let go of the idea that people need saving and it’s your responsibility to do it. Somewhere down the road, you internalized the message that you have to be responsible for how others feel. But the truth is, you aren’t responsible for anyone else’s feelings but your own.

    You can’t live a healthy, happy life if you’re too busy managing your feelings and other people’s feelings at the same time. Remember, people can take care of themselves. That idea will leave room for you to take care of yourself, too.