Why You Should Not Fall Into The Trap Of Wanting To Please Everyone

On a day-to-day basis it is difficult to achieve all the goals 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 everyone so much 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.

Being there for others does not mean enslaving yourself

Some time ago I knew a person who, from a certain point in his life, decided guide your actions through a very clear mission: 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 selfless defender of good. She was a very normal and ordinary person, with little tendency towards moralism or judging people, and she had her fears and concerns. 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 couldn’t refuse that.

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

At first, everything seemed very similar to a simple transaction; After all, it is said that the one who is richest 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 personal relationship dynamic she entered into was not a matter of profit and loss; Those sacrifices he made did not work in his favor ; in fact, they enslaved her even more.

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

The trap of eternal pleasing others

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 had a deeper impact on her way of thinking, although in a much more subtle and unconscious way. This learning was the habit of interpret any personal desire as an excuse not to make an effort for the rest

But that feeling of guilt that arises out of nowhere, that which makes some people enter into a dynamic of asking for forgiveness for continuing to exist, becomes, curiously, something that we use to evade the most important responsibility: deciding what to do with the own life. And, although it may seem like a lie, always meeting the demands of others can become a patch that we put on so we don’t have to see our own needs that scare us. In Tania’s case, a failed relationship had left her self-esteem so damaged that She didn’t seem in the mood to take herself seriously In a situation like this, becoming a labor force to polish the finishes of others’ lives 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 them also “came into this idea” and began to assume that they deserved all the attention and efforts of their friend, their daughter, their sister or their partner. depending on the case.

A small community had been formed that, at the same time, asked to be attended to individually by a woman who couldn’t refuse practically anything The possibility of doing anything other than constantly giving in was gone. At first it would have been much easier for her to get out of that dynamic, but once everyone had internalized that image of Tania as an “always helpful person”, it became a trap from which she could only get out with the help of therapy.

Always satisfying others is not satisfying anyone.

Always sacrificing yourself 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 must work until it breaks, and on the other, we lose the ability to decide if we want to act and how we want to do it; simply, We are forced to always opt for the option that apparently benefits the other the most although then we try to disguise the situation by inventing supposed advantages for ourselves.

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

And in the long run, betting everything on the need to satisfy others consists of creating a false image of the expectations that others place on us in order, based on our actions, to make those expectations become reality little by little.

After all, someone who acts as if they feel guilty about something may really need to be blamed for something and, therefore, we should demand more from them. On the other hand, those who get used to always acting like a martyr end up believing in original sin, something you have to pay for forever regardless of whether it really happened or not.

Training assertiveness and learning to respect yourself is the only way to prevent the boundary between acceptable sacrifices and those that are not from being blurred. The true sacrifices, the most honest, are those that are made from the freedom that comes from being able to say “No.”