Do you suffer from Human Giver Syndrome? Symptoms include • believing you have a moral obligation—that is, you owe it to your partner, your family, the world, or even to yourself—to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others; • believing that any failure to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive makes you a failure as a person; • believing that your “failure” means you deserve punishment—even going so far as to beat yourself up; and • believing these are not symptoms, but normal and true ideas.
