Dear Mepina:

You are welcome. You wrote: “I am afraid to make other people sad or angry”- you learned early, as a child, that it is dangerous to make other people sad and angry.

When someone interacting with you is sad and angry with you, you automatically feel that you are in danger, you feel fear, and so, you react to that fear by doing all you can to eliminate the danger: “to try to calm and ease others… make them happy so all are ok”

When an animal feels it is in danger (a predator nearby), all other concerns (eating, mating, playing) are put aside and the danger is attended to. And so, you attend to the danger (another person’s anger, sadness), and all other concerns (“I … neglect my desires and my feelings”) are put aside.

Why was other people’s anger and sadness dangerous to you, I ask. It could be that when a parent was sad and angry with you, that parent punished you in some way- by overt aggression, or covert. Your thoughts/feelings on the matter?

anita