When You Put Your Needs Second to Others
For most people pleasers, they’ve learned how to sideline their own needs to put other peoples’ first. This is one of the hallmark features of people pleasing behavior.
Your Growing Up
For many people pleasers, growing up learning how to meet others’ needs became an art, and a skill. For nice guys, we had to learn how to “read” people to make sure that they we’re upset or angry. We had to make sure that our parent (in many cases) wasn’t upset with us, so we would modify our actions and behaviors to fall in line with what we perceived as the “program,” or the series of steps we needed to take to make sure other’s weren’t upset. This usually entailed us to discard our own original thoughts, feelings and behaviors, to swap them out with what we thought others wanted from us instead.
This “swapping out” may have worked to quell our parent’s anger or fury, but we unconsciously forgot to let those go over time. It’s those outdated belief systems and behaviors that continue to drive us today.
Your Relationships Today
Fast forward to intimate relationships, we project the same kind of “program” onto our mates in romantic relationships. Unconsciously, we modify our behavior, including shutting our needs, wants and desires down, because we think that if they surface, and we give a name to them, that they will end up alienating or putting off our mate, and that they might get upset with us and reject us.
Now, you may be thinking that this is a lot of suggestion, but I think most of this happens on an unconscious level, beyond our daily awareness. The feelings sit there, under the surface, stew, and form into resentment, which needs expression at some point.
Often times, this expression is unhealthy. It often times gets flipped onto oneself in the form of self-abuse, self-criticism or other destructive behaviors against oneself. Or, it comes out passive=aggressively, in sarcasm, biting humor, or under the influence of alcohol or drugs. One way or another, it has to come out. Without healthy expression of this energy, it will inevitably end up alienating your partner, which was not the intention to begin with. Conflict avoidance is a surefire way of creating conflict, funny enough.
Getting your needs means identifying them first, and starting to give support and a voice to them. No one else can do this for you. If you don’t know what this means, or don’t know where to start, therapy is a great way to begin this journey.
We also have to find out what’s getting in the way of meeting our needs. Specifically, the “program” or games that we learned to play as young children need to be examined and changed, so that you can learn how to unblock yourself and communicate properly as to get your needs met.
What Needs Might I Have That Are Not Expressed?
You may need more respect, more love, more relationship balance, or less criticism from your partner or others. You might need to learn how to give yourself respect, or love yourself, before you expect that others can do that for you.
You may need more care from others, or from yourself (self-care). You might need to do more for yourself, like exercise more, look for a different job or career, or deepen or fix relationships that have been neglected. You may need to feel more in control of your life in several ways. Does any of this speak to you?
You may need to learn that you even have needs in the first place. Your growing up may have dictated that you shut them down, or forgo them, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have them. If you’re human, you have them. It’s just a matter of realizing them and giving healthy expression to them.
When you recognize your needs, you then have to figure out how to meet them yourself, or identify the barriers to communicating with others to help you meet those needs. That’s typically where the work begins in therapy, because we can work together to identify those blocks, which are often unconscious or not developed enough to help you significantly.
To find out more about our nice guy/people pleasing counseling, click here.
