The trap of wanting to please everyone

On a day-to-day basis it is difficult to reach all the objectives that one sets for oneself. However, it is even more difficult to make our needs compatible with what others constantly demand of us. That is to say, offer that version of ourselves that others expect.

It is clear that being there to support others is positive, but sometimes, we internalize that dynamic of pleasing others so much everyone that we end up sacrificing a good part of our lives in order to make others feel a little more comfortable. Knowing how to establish a balance between what is given and what is received is more complicated than it seems.

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Being there for others does not imply enslaving oneself

Some time ago she knew a person who, at a certain point in her life, she decided guide her actions through a very clear mission: to please others.

This person, whom we will call Tania, did not have strong religious beliefs nor, in conversation, did she appear to see herself as a self-sacrificing advocate of good. She was a very normal person, with little tendency to be self-righteous or to judge people, and she had her fears and concerns about her. The only difference between Tania and the majority of the population is that she, in practice, acted as if she owed everyone something. She lived to please her neighbor, and she could not deny it.

So, week after week, Tania gave dozens of reasons to be appreciated by others thanks to those efforts, milder or more moderate, that she made to make the people around her a little more happy. In exchange for this, she wasted dozens of opportunities to say no to certain requests and to dedicate time to take care of herself, rest or simply, and do what she would have wanted to do at that moment.

At first, it all seemed very much like a simple transaction; after all, it is said that whoever is richer is the one who learns to give what he has without feeling the loss. Seeing the happiness and well-being of those we appreciate also has a positive impact on us. However, what Tania did not realize is that the dynamic of personal relationships in which she entered was not a matter of profit and loss; those sacrifices that she made of her did not play in her favor; in fact, they enslaved her even more.

Three months after having formally proposed to always support others in everything and help in any way she could, Tania stated that she was very happy. But a few weeks after the above, she suffered her first anxiety crisis. What had happened?

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The Eternal Pleaser Trap

During the months in which Tania decided to work hard for her friends and family, she learned a culture of effort that she had been oblivious to for most of her life. However, in this process there was another learning that penetrated deeper into her way of thinking, although in a much more subtle and unconscious way. This learning was the habit of interpret any personal wishes as an excuse not to strive for the rest.

But that feeling of guilt that is born out of nowhere, that makes some people enter into a dynamic of asking for forgiveness for continuing. existing, it becomes, curiously, something we use to evade the most important responsibility: deciding what to do with the own life. And it is that, oddly enough, always meeting the demands of the rest can become a patch that we put on so as not to have to see our own needs that scare us. In Tania's case, a failed relationship had left her the self-esteem so damaged that she didn't seem in the mood to take herself seriously. In such a situation, becoming a workforce to polish the finishes of the lives of others It may seem like a demanding option, but at least it is something simple, something that can be done. mechanically.

The worst thing was not that Tania began to judge herself more cruelly for no apparent reason; The worst thing was that the people around her also "caught" this idea and began to assume that they deserved have all the attention and efforts of the one who was her friend, her daughter, her sister or her partner, depending on the case.

A small community had formed that, at the same time, asked to be attended individually by a woman who he could refuse practically nothing. Gone was the possibility of doing anything other than constantly giving in. At first it would have been much easier for him to get out of that dynamic, but once everyone had internalized those image of Tania as an "always helpful person", she became a trap from which she could only get out with the help of therapy.

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To always please the other is to please no one

Always sacrificing for others is a double loss. On the one hand, we lose ourselves, because we treat our own body as if it were a machine that it must work until it breaks, and on the other, we lose the ability to decide if we want to act and how we want do it; simply, we are forced to always opt for the option that apparently benefits the other more, although later we try to make up the situation by inventing supposed advantages for ourselves.

However, If those people knew what's really going on in our headsThey would prefer everything to go back to normal. That no one had decided to bet everything on the card of self-sacrifice.

And it is that in the long run, betting everything on the need to satisfy the rest consists of creating a false image of expectations that others place in us so that, based on our actions, we can make those expectations come true little by little. bit.

After all, whoever acts as if she felt guilty about something, it is possible that she really should be blamed for something and, therefore, that we should demand more of her. On the other hand, those who get used to always acting like a martyr end up believing the original sin, something you must pay for forever Regardless of whether it really happened or not.

Training assertiveness and you will learn to respect yourself is the only way to avoid blurring the line between acceptable sacrifices and those that are not. The true sacrifices, the most honest, are those that are taken from the freedom that comes from being able to say “No”.