Are You Mad at Me?: How to Stop Focusing on What Others Think and Start Living for You

by Meg Josephson

therapist would tell me what was “wrong” with me and provide me with a three-step solution, a goodie bag, and a 2.0 version of myself.

while I was no longer living at home, in some ways it felt like I was still there.

I was now analyzing what it could mean when my friend texted with a period at the end of the sentence instead of an exclamation point.

felt like I was split in two: the younger part of me that was living in fear, and the wiser “parent” part of me that knew a better, more peaceful existence was possible. I just didn’t know where to start.

People-pleasing is the behavior we engage in when we fear that we’re disappointing someone, that we’re in trouble, that we feel unsafe in some way. It’s the behavior that falsely soothes the queasy feeling that we’ve done something wrong.

We’re taught to be good girls, cool girls, to agree with everything

We’re taught to not be too much or want too much, so we learn to get used to being unsatisfied with our lives. We’re taught to meet everyone else’s needs before our own, and along the way we lose the opportunity to get to know who we really are, what we need, what we like and prefer.

releasing the belief that we need to neglect ourselves for the comfort of other people.

Because once we stop focusing so much on what others think, we can remember who we are.

was hyper-attuned to what was happening around me. I felt deeply and cried easily, about both pain and beauty, and I didn’t get why that was so wrong.

Was I “too sensitive,” or did I learn to be superalert to people’s emotions and mood shifts because my dad’s rage could flip on like a switch at any moment?

Our brains’ primary job is to keep us safe, plain and simple.

the fawn response is about becoming more appealing to the threat, being liked by the threat, satisfying the threat, being helpful and agreeable to the threat—so that you can feel safe.

We’re called selfless when we neglect ourselves.

we’re taught that our main role in life is to please, appease, and sacrifice our needs for the comfort of other people.

So, as an alternative survival strategy, the child “learns to fawn [their] way into the relative safety of becoming helpful.”

Yet for so many, a chronic fawn response is as natural as breathing.

I was simply a cool girl who didn’t have many preferences or opinions.

damn why is this me?

Honestly, it was just easier to make sure he was happy than deal with what would happen if he wasn’t.

Am I even real? Or am I just a medley of other people’s personalities and preferences? Who am I when I’m not trying to please everyone else?

When am I fawning, and when am I just being a nice person?

We learn that, in order for us to feel safe, we need to keep the peace, whatever it takes. And as a result, we’re disconnected from questions such as What do I need? What do I think? What do I want?

Being nice is often easier and a way to avoid conflict, but it can create long-term resentment if we’re constantly sacrificing our needs to make someone else happy.

Motivation matters. Why am I doing this? Am I saying yes because I want to or because I’m scared this person will be upset if I say no? Am I complimenting this person because I mean it or because I’m trying to make them like me? When we can pause before engaging in habitual behavior, we can get clear on the motivation behind it.

This hypervigilance carries over into emotional monitoring, which means we’re constantly scanning other people’s emotional states to gauge what they may be feeling so that we can adapt.

ruminating for days on why your friends, who clearly saw your Instagram story, haven’t responded to your text.

Anxiety is like an alarm system in that sense. Your body has wisely learned to look out for certain cues that set off the alarm (e.g., mood changes, body language), and when it notices them, the alarm starts blaring whether or not the threat is there.

sometimes I wish something ‘big’ had happened to me, so at least then I could feel like I had a ‘real’ reason to feel this way. Then maybe people would believe me, and I’d believe myself.”

Trauma is what happens internally as a result of what happened to you.

When we’re often left to feel unsafe, unheard, unloved, or unseen by those who are supposed to make us feel safe, the effect is called complex trauma.

Since complex trauma often derives from prolonged exposure to these events, it can be confusing to process, because for so long it just felt “normal.” It was all you knew.

Feeling angry means you’re crazy. Disagreeing means you’re difficult. Being firm means you’re a bitch.

The child who’s called “dramatic” is made to feel like they’re the problem, but really, they’re often just the one communicating the problem that others aren’t willing to look at.

There was volatility and emotional neglect and addiction, but my dad painted my room pink for me the summer I turned twelve, and he let me wear his oversize flannel shirt to bed, and my parents would watch me perform Hannah Montana’s “Nobody’s Perfect”

There can be parts that were loving and other parts that hurt, and the loving parts don’t negate the reality of the hurtful parts and the hurtful parts don’t negate the love.

The point is to see that your parents’ actions and reactions weren’t your fault; they were reflections of your parents’ own unprocessed pain—their own inner children who were aching. This certainly doesn’t excuse any behavior, but it helps us to understand it.

I had succeeded up until that point with all the checkboxes marked that a parent could hope for.

was an adult and I was still walking around with a constant feeling that I was about to get into trouble. I was an adult and I still assumed other people’s bad moods were automatically my fault, and that I was personally responsible for managing and “fixing” their emotions.

Most people pleasers were “parent pleasers” first.

your current experience of neglecting yourself as an unconscious way of trying to protect yourself.

When someone isn’t responding to me, it’s because I’ve done something terribly wrong. When someone is mad at me, I need to immediately apologize in order for things to get better.

She constantly feels like a burden and downplays her issues out of fear of being considered too “dramatic” or “sensitive,”

It’s so much safer to believe that we’re bad than to think that our parents can’t take care of themselves and therefore maybe can’t fully take care of us.

As an adult, Sophie overextends herself and then feels secretly resentful. She struggles to set boundaries and gets all her feeling of value from being nurturing and helpful.

She also finds herself being critical of people who aren’t as self-sufficient as she is, in part because she’s envious that they didn’t have to grow up so quickly.

She feels crippled by any sort of negative feedback because being seen as anything but perfect has felt entirely unsafe.

She often feels like she’s putting up a front so people won’t see the messiness underneath. As a result, she feels like people don’t know the “real” her. She learned: I need to be perfect to be loved.

it can look like putting all your energy and attention into pleasing the abuser, spending more time with them, defending them, doing anything in your control to make them happy.

Constantly worrying what people think of you, if they like you, if they’re mad at you

Avoiding conflict at all costs