Self-submission: What is it and How Can I Avoid It?

Submission is what prevents us from letting what we are, what we want, what we think or feel emerge, to become what we believe someone else wants us to be.

What exactly is self-submission?

Self-submission is when a person decides or chooses to submit to the values ​​of another, or to the opinions or directives of another person without the need for this person to ask or claim it. We are going to refer to this situation, self-submission that we can define when someone, man or woman, chooses for themselves to live a life with restrictions. This happens when a person resists following their own ideas or impulses and tries to satisfy the opinions of others. It occurs with people who have a need to please others, constantly seeking the approval of others and avoiding a supposed conflict.

They may have difficulty making decisions for themselves and/or may feel uncomfortable expressing their own opinions and desires. What is the degree of freedom that people have to choose? and from the degree of freedom arises the central concept that is autonomy.

The degree of freedom and autonomy are fundamental components when thinking about the degree of well-being that people experience with respect to what we feel and think about ourselves the decisions we make and the degree of acceptance we receive within the framework of the construction of our life script.

The life script or personal narrative is closely related to the parenting style during the first years of life. What kind of empowerment have parents or significant others given us to express emotions and then, as adults, be able to express and manage them appropriately?

To the extent that emotional externalizations during the first years of life were criticized or questioned, internal narratives with negative characteristics about ourselves began to take shape. Over the years, that narrative (or our inner story) becomes a voice that expresses discomfort with how we are and how we respond or not to various everyday situations and as a consequence they distance us more and more from making contact with our emotions, recognizing them, putting them into words and integrating them into our script to know how to resolve situations and what strategies we put into play when moving forward.

All these confusing narratives have been transformed into limiting beliefs, leading us on numerous occasions to self-submission due to not knowing what we are like, what we need, and above all, having the feeling that what others think of us and their thoughts and values ​​are more important than our own. own.

What can I do to avoid it?

It is important to note that excessive self-submission can lead to a lack of autonomy, low self-esteem, and a feeling of personal dissatisfaction. Many times, it is possible to detect that the origin of submission is related to what we learned, to what we were breathing in our home.

And this leads us to a question. Do I prefer to choose or be chosen? Which can surely lead us to another: am I not doing the same thing with a topic, with a question? In this case, I am not playing for my opinion to be valid…it is much less “dangerous” in the imagination of many, to take the opinion of a leader…or someone that I consider as such. Self-submission is when the restriction(s) are imposed from within oneself.

Some of the great questions we can ask ourselves are “Am I happy?”, “Am I truly happy with myself?”. We can define happy or happiness as the coherence of feeling, thinking and acting or being available to accept discrepancy. Many times, instead of answering these questions, we believe that our happiness depends on accepting the tastes, values, beliefs of another (or other people). The fantasy is that, from my submission to those criteria of another, my true happiness can arise.

It is believed that this has to do with a probably childhood issue from when we thought it was important that our behaviors adjusted to what was required by elders in order to be more loved, more taken into account. And the real question is: what do I need to be happy? I probably need to be myself…and not do what I’m supposed to do, what others expect me to do, I need to be connected to myself. And self submission is when the other is not there. But we still live with the restriction, with the difficulty, with the prohibition.

Authors: Marcelo Sitnisky and Dr. Alejandra Apice Vidal