Self Worth: Why Do Some People Only Feel worthy When They Are Pleasing Others?

While some people feel accepted for who they are, there are other people who only feel accepted when they are pleasing other people. This could be something they are consciously aware of, or it could be something they are completely oblivious to.

But there are going to be clear distinctions in how each person behaves. When one feels accepted for who they are, they are not going to have the need to please others people. At times they might do what other people want, but this will be a choice and not something they have no control over.

Their value will not be based on whether other people accept them or not, it will be something they define.

Pleasing Others

Whereas when one only feels accepted when they are pleasing others, they are going to have do what other people want or what they think they want in order to feel valuable.

Through doing this, they will believe that other people will accept them, and at times this may work. But this means that their value is defined by other people and is not something they have control over.

They are giving their power away and allowing other people to control their life. This is not going to make one feel empowered and they are only going to suffer.

Normal

But even though behaving on this way is not enhancing ones wellbeing, it can be what is normal. One could have done this for their whole life or for most of it; it is then something they do without thinking.

And while not pleasing others could cause one to feel worthless and that they have no value, when they do please others, it is likely to make them feel good. Their sense of self worth will rise and everything in their life could be fine for a while.

Short Lived

Even if one constantly does what other people want, they are still going to have moments when they feel worthless; simply because it is not possible to always please others. What pleases another person at one point in time could displease them at another.

Human beings are changeable and therefore what they want and need is going to change from one moment to the next. So if one is constantly looking towards other people to define how valuable they are, they are not going to be standing on stable ground.

Their emotional state could be all over the place and yet, this is to be expected. The ideal would be for someone to define their own worth and not to let other people define it.

Value

What one person classes as valuable is not necessarily the same as what another person does. For example, one person might come to the conclusion that what another person does is valuable. If someone else was to come across the same person, they might say that what they do has no value.

These views are going to be subjective in nature, and will depend on what each person values and/or what their current needs and wants are. But just because another person doesn’t believe in the value that one has, it doesn’t mean that that they have no value.

The only thing it means is that they value something else, and as each and every one of us different, this is not much a surprise. What this shows is that it is not possible for one to be perceived as valuable by everyone.

What happened?

While letting other people defines one’s self worth might be normal, it didn’t just happen. There is a reason that one looks to other people and this is likely to be due to what happened in their childhood years.

During these years, there is the chance that one’s caregivers only offered them conditional love. This means that they were not loved for who they were; they were loved for what they did.

It wasn’t possible for them to just be and to feel valuable through doing nothing; they had to do things in order to feel lovable.

Affirmation

At this age, what one needed was for their caregiver’s to affirm their value. To show one that their value is not based on what they do or what they achieve, it is an inherent part of who they are.

And through being affirmed in this way, one wouldn’t have the need to please others in order to feel worthy. It would be something that exists within them and not something they need to attain from anyone else.

Awareness

So if one only feels valuable when they are pleasing others, it will be important for them to reach out for support. As a result of what happened as a child and what has continued to happen throughout ones adult years, one might have trapped emotions in their body that need to be released, and certain beliefs that need to be changed.

This can be done with the assistance of a therapist or a healer. They can also provide the mirroring and attunement that one didn’t receive as a child and through this, one can start to realise their self worth.

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Oliver J R Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk/