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

by Meg Josephson

There are so many ways to tell someone you’re thinking of them, and because of that, there are also so many opportunities to feel forgotten.

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.

Women in particular are conditioned to overextend, overexplain, overapologize. We’re caretakers. Nurturers. Peacekeepers. We’re taught to be good girls, cool girls, to agree with everything and everyone, and to give Uncle Richard a big hug, for goodness’ sake, even if he makes us wildly uncomfortable. 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.

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.

Fawning is unconsciously moving toward, instead of away from, threatening relationships and situations. It’s overlooked in our society because it’s so largely rewarded. We get promotions for being people pleasers. We’re called selfless when we neglect ourselves. We receive affirmation when we anticipate the needs of others and abandon our own. For many people, particularly for many women, the fawn response is learned in childhood and then reinforced by society; we’re taught that our main role in life is to please, appease, and sacrifice our needs for the comfort of other people. Fawning has been a tool for survival, an unconscious way to feel in control in a society that strips power from us.

Fawning isn’t a conscious choice; it’s a genius survival mechanism.

Who am I when I’m not trying to please everyone else?

We learn that the other person’s comfort is more important than our own, that we can’t feel okay until the other person is okay. 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?

the true difference between being nice and being compassionate. Nice is about how we’re being perceived—it’s doing something for the sake of being seen as good. Compassion is about authenticity, doing something because it feels good to be kind.

Being nice is often easier and a way to avoid conflict, but it can create long-term resentment if we’re constantly sacrificing o...

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. Again,

Trauma can be an accumulation of “small,” everyday moments that don’t feel so small to the body. Trauma is about how the nervous system perceives the event or period of time, how the body processes it. (This

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.

Complex trauma also involves what didn’t happen, the support and nurturing that you didn’t receive in the midst of the traumatic situation or in the aftermath.

women have been socialized to fawn. Feeling angry means you’re crazy. Disagreeing means you’re difficult. Being firm means you’re a bitch.

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.

Most people pleasers were “parent pleasers” first.

safety comes from pleasing you. I can’t feel safe until I know you like me.

She learned that the best ways to prevent conflict are to go along with what everyone else wants and to overapologize when conflict does arise. She keeps the peace by staying out of things, remaining neutral, and seeing what others think before she decides what she thinks.

She’s terrified of conflict—scared a disagreement will ruin the whole relationship because when she was growing up, conflict was such a big deal. She struggles with indecision as a result of not knowing what she truly wants and not wanting to piss anyone off.

it’s normal for a fawner to carry a deep sense of shame and to fear that they’re secretly a bad person, a fear that’s held close, in silence.

We come to believe that something is truly, inherently wrong with us. This deep, chronic shame leaves us feeling unworthy, unlovable, and bad at the core.

The Peacekeeper believes: It’s easier to shove my emotions down than to risk upsetting the other person. I need to prove to other people that I’m good because I fear that I’m bad. When people are in a bad mood, it’s my fault. I shape-shift depending on what others are feeling.

Teachers often told Sophie, “You’re so mature for your age!”—and she was, because she had no choice but to grow up quickly. She spent so much of her time and energy meeting her family’s physical and emotional needs that she forgot she had needs of her own.

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 was a parentified child—fulfilling part of the parent role from an early age. Sophie grew up to be a hyperindependent adult: she feels like she has to do everything on her own and struggles to ask for help. She’s the therapist-friend, the person everyone goes to with their problems, but she feels like her problems and emotions are burdens. Sophie got the message that she could receive love and attention by alleviating other people’s stress. But now when she’s stressed or overwhelmed she feels like she needs to hide those feelings. No one ever thinks to check in on her because they assume she always is fine and has it together.

a parentified child, she developed a harsh inner critic, which has served as a necessary stand-in to give her the parenting and guidance she wasn’t able to get while she was busy caring for everyone else. 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.

in order for you to feel safe and secure, you had to put your needs aside from a very young age.

Caretaker believes: I thought that if I cared enough for them, they’d eventually care about me. I need to manage other people’s emotions so that I can feel okay. Other people’s needs are more important than my own. My value is in being helpful and taking care of others.

Emotional neglect can be so confusing to process because it’s about what didn’t happen. It’s not necessarily something we can even point to; we just feel it and internalize it as I’m not lovable, and if I want to be loved, I need to work really hard for it. There aren’t physical markings, such as negative feedback or criticism—emotional neglect just creates a feeling of loneliness, of not being seen or heard.

She never “bothered” her parents with anything, whether she was struggling with a homework assignment or experiencing crippling anxiety as a teenager. She felt safest alone in her room.

As an adult, Alicia isolates. Because she learned that her needs wouldn’t be met, she doesn’t want to burden anyone with hers, leading her to keep her distance in relationships. The closer people want to get to her, the more she fantasizes about being alone, because the possibility of having her needs seen and then rejected once again feels too painful. She’s lonely but craves deep connection and will constantly look outward for approval and validation to soothe the part of her that wants to be seen.

Lone Wolf believes: Love should feel really hard to get. I avoid conflict by never allowing myself to get close to people. It’s unsaf...

Carter adapted by taking on the Perfectionist role. She was the high achiever, the golden girl. She cried in middle school when she got an A on a history paper instead of an A+. She’s a charmer who morphs her personality to match that of whomever she’s with and wants to be liked by everyone—even if that means not always liking herself. She’s terrified of making a mistake, and of having people finding out that she did, because when she was growing up she was heavily criticized whenever she made one,

She feels crippled by any sort of negative feedback because being seen as anything but perfect has felt entirely unsafe. She needs people to think she’s always productive,

She’s very hard on herself and never feels like she’s doing enough; she walks around with a deep sense of shame for not being the perfect person she expects herself to be. She’s scared to try new things and stays within her comfort zone because she’s terrified of being a beginner. 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.

The Perfectionist believes: My emotions are too much, and I’m never doing enough. I need to be 100 percent “on” in order for people to like me and not leave. I need to be perfect to be loved, so I’m constantly trying to impress other people. At my core, something is wrong with me.

The irony is that, in an unconscious attempt to avoid abandonment, we end up abandoning ourselves. For us to appease others to the degree that fawning requires, we have no choice but to fully disconnect from our own emotions, sensations, and needs. We’re forced to withhold expressions of our sadness, fear, and anger to prevent conflict or negative reactions from our caregivers. But as we’ll learn, these emotions, sensations, and needs don’t just disappear—they go inward, toward ourselves, in the form of self-criticism and self-loathing.

It’s letting go of the hope for a childhood, a family, a parent relationship, a sibling relationship that you didn’t have but deeply wanted. This, right here, is a necessary step in the fawner’s healing process. We can’t jump straight to acceptance and compassion without first acknowledging the ways in which it hurts, too.

Like any other aspect of your healing, grief isn’t a checkbox item. It’s a lingering weight that’s always there, constantly changing form as you enter into and move out of different seasons of life.

When love is conditional, achieving is one of the few things a child can control to increase their odds of receiving attention and approval.

the goal of this work isn’t to silence the anxious voice—trying to silence it only makes it louder—but to start becoming aware of it, attaching to it less, and soothing it.

Recurrent thoughts are rooted in the subconscious. Think of this inner voice as a tape recorder storing everything we’ve witnessed and heard from our siblings, bullies, friends, society, the media, and especially our parents. This background noise often comes from the internalized voices of the people who raised us, as the recycled words of our parents speaking out of dysregulation. From the time we are at an early age, these voices become the subconscious beliefs we hold about ourselves.

This change in my perspective hasn’t necessarily shifted anything in the relationship itself; it’s a shift within me, a greater acceptance, a greater ability to lean back and not work so hard to change his mind.

Even when you’re working overtime in an attempt to control how you’re being perceived, the other person is still seeing you through the lens of their own inner world. And by trying to gain control of others’ perceptions, you’re losing something in the process: your sense of self, your precious energy, your peace of mind. Even if you were to do everything “perfectly” for everyone and cater to their exact personality preferences, you still wouldn’t have control over how they perceive you. With fawning, your mind thinks it has control over how people are perceiving you, but this is a false sense of control. The truth is that others’ perceptions were never in your control. People will judge you, misunderstand you, and hold perceptions of you that you don’t agree with. That’s okay.

You are not responsible for the version of you that exists in other people’s minds. You can’t control how others perceive you, but you can manage how much mental space you give their perceptions. You can’t control other people’s behaviors, but you can control your decision to tolerate them or not.

Having an open heart doesn’t mean you need to be friends with everyone.

All we can ever control is our own words and actions and how we respond to other people. As you practice communicating more clearly, it’s not your job to manage other people’s discomfort.

We’re all going to mess up, say things we didn’t mean, misunderstand each other’s needs, miscommunicate our wants. How we repair those moments is what makes relationships even closer.

True intimacy means never having to wonder if someone is mad at you, because the standard for the relationship is honesty.

Boundaries are bridges, not walls, and they create space for sustainable connections to thrive. Boundaries aren’t attempts to change the other person but ways to feel rooted in yourself while being in relationship to others.