You Don’t Have to Make Yourself Small in Order to be Loved
In my work with clients, I see certain behaviors and beliefs pop up again and again. The belief I want to talk about today might be subconscious, even if it influences how you interact within your relationships.
Many of us learned growing up that if you’re going to be loved, you need to make yourself small. When I say small, I don’t mean physically small, but energetically small. This often looks like contorting yourself by any means necessary to accommodate another person. Don’t take up time, don’t have any needs or wants, and do not in any way be difficult for your caregivers.
As children, our means of communicating what we feel is limited. So, in an effort to communicate a want or a need that isn’t being met, we can come across as “difficult.” Do you feel like your care giver lashed out or punished you for making requests? Maybe you felt that you were “too needy” or that it was your fault for disrupting/annoying your care giver. Responses like these are what form the idea that you are actively harming other’s by having needs.
This experience changes our fundamental view of relationships and our place in them. As we grow up, we can carry these same beliefs into our romantic relationships. Rather than believing it’s okay to take up space and have wants and needs, we’ve learned to think about everyone else’s feelings first. This leads to situations where you can be caught up in other people’s conflicting feelings without any idea of how to solve the issue.
Recently, I had a conversation with a client who was in that exact position. His girlfriend wanted more time with him, but his wife didn’t want to lose any time with him. He felt stuck and didn’t know what to do.
My first question to him was, “What do YOU want?” He couldn’t answer. He hadn’t even THOUGHT about what he wanted. He knew what his girlfriend wanted. He knew what his wife wanted. And he tried to accommodate everyone without looking at the final piece of that equation. His wants.
Just like I told my client, YOUR WANTS MATTER. And they matter independently and as a piece of what other people want or feel. If you’re in the cycle of disregarding your feelings it can be hard to check in with yourself without feeling panic about how other people will react to your needs.
If this is the case, I encourage you to imagine yourself in an ideal world where everyone will accommodate what you want and have no feelings about it whatsoever. Take away all the obstacles that block you from articulating what you truly feel and want.
When I did this with my client, who felt stuck, he was able to determine what he wanted. We were able to work through the process of respectfully and clearly communicating his wants to his girlfriend and wife.
When you use your desires as the foundation for communication, you allow people to make informed decisions about what they want. Together, you can work on a solution that benefits both, or the nature of the relationship might change based on their wants and needs. When you are both listening to each other, you can provide all the information with which to make mutually beneficial decisions about where to allocate your time and energy.
You deserve to be loved AND to take up space with your wants and feelings.
Changing your beliefs and behaviors can sound like intimidating work, but it is worth it to live your most authentic life. Remember, you don’t have to navigate the waters of change alone and you can always utilize a resource like therapy to help guide you through new communication techniques and in managing lingering doubts and anxieties.