Hi zenith,

Yeah may be I would expect a little bit of appreciation in return. I always feel unlove and feels like I am nobody’s priority. I get so anxious when people do this to me.

The fact that you get so anxious and lose sleep over it (this event has affected to an extent that that I am unable to sleep) is probably a sign that it’s a core wound, something that originates in your childhood.

My husband is a people pleaser. He was willing to go my friends home the one who gossiped about me after that drama had happened. He doesn’t care if others disrespect me/him. He will forgive everyone easily.

Yeah, that’s unfortunate that he doesn’t respect himself enough, and isn’t protective of neither himself nor you. But this means you’ll have to stand up for yourself on your own. Even if he is a people pleaser, don’t let his skewed attitude affect how you deal with people. You need to respect yourself. But for that, you may need to heal some core wounds from your childhood…

Dear zenith,

what are those core wounds ?

It’s the false core beliefs we hold about ourselves, e.g. I am not good enough, I am worthless, I don’t matter, something is fundamentally wrong with me. That kind of thinking. It’s often subconscious, we’re not aware that we’re thinking like that, but it is underneath everything.

So if you get very anxious and can’t sleep because your friend didn’t appreciate your offering, you can ask yourself: what does it say about me? If you go deep enough, it may reveal that the core belief is e.g. “I am worthless”, or “I am unlovable”, or something like that.

There are more ways to heal it. One is with the inner child, where you tell your inner child that you are worthy and precious and special etc – like a good parent would tell to their child.

I don’t know if you’ve heard about the concept of the inner child?

I will stick to my words no matter what my husband says.

Good! I understand you are angry that he is not supportive of you in those conflicts and is a people pleaser. But I think you’d first need to learn how to be less dependent on getting appreciation/validation from others, i.e. to heal that core wound. And then you can talk to your husband (in fact, you can talk to him already now) and explain why it hurts you when others disrespect you, and why you don’t want to be a people pleaser and a doormat. And how this stance hurts him too in his relationships. Do you think he’d be receptive to your point of view?

Dear zenith,

I went back and read through your previous posts. What caught my attention is what you wrote about your mother-in-law when she was visiting last year. You expressed that you feel judged by her, that she has expectations on how a woman/wife should behave, and that you don’t meet those expectations. And that’s why you felt subtly criticized by her.

I think that’s true – she is probably judging you by her own standards, standards of the culture she grew up in, and prefers a different type of woman: a woman who is submissive to her husband and elders, who does everything they say, who takes care of the household all by herself, and takes care of the children and has a job as well.

She has sexist views of women. While you were still not working, she told you that you shouldn’t have a say in important decisions since you’re not making any money: Once she directly told me that my husband only should always take the decision as he is the sole bread winner of the family.

I understand why you feel repelled by her views and don’t want to be that kind of woman. I totally support you in not wanting to be a submissive, oppressed, silenced woman. Where I see a problem though is that you believe you need to please her and make her happy. Her judgments of you hurt you and you feel not good enough and unworthy because of that:

I dont want to be somebody else. I want to be myself. But the way they judge me indirectly for being myself hurts.

I feel so guilty for not being able to make her happy.

I dont want to live my life thinking about how others judge me or make them happy.

I think you care too much about her judgments – they affect how you see yourself, they affect your self-esteem. If you could let go of the need to be liked by her, it would be much easier for you.

You DON’T NEED to be someone else. You can be yourself. But you are telling yourself that you need to please your mother-in-law, and that you need to make yourself into someone you are not. Do you see that?

A part of you is judging yourself for not being able to fit into the traditional role expected from women in India. Another part of you feels oppressed by that role and doesn’t want to fit in, but a part of you is judging yourself and wants to be liked by those who expect you to fit into that role.

You can only be free if you stop judging yourself for not fitting in. For being yourself.

The title of your thread is “How to accept my flaws and be myself?” The answer, in my opinion, is: stop judging yourself for being who you are. Stop wanting to please those who don’t like who you are and who are judging you for being who you are.

What do you say?

Dear zenith,

you are very welcome.

I should stop pleasing others. But its really hard for me to shake off this behavior.

Actually I am not even talking about people pleasing behavior, but primarily about your desire to be liked by your mother-in-law. Because you wrote last year that she wasn’t necessarily openly criticizing you, she was just mentioning examples of “perfect” women, in her opinion (e.g. your sister-in-law), and you felt very upset by it. You felt criticized and judged and it made you angry. So your internal reaction to her remarks is the main problem, i.e. the feeling that such remarks produce in you. Which I think is the sense of unworthiness and not being good enough. Would you agree with that?

If you had more self-esteem, you wouldn’t be so triggered by those veiled critical remarks. You might even be able to express your views and opinions on certain topics, it wouldn’t be so charged for you. But like this, you get very hurt and upset, and you basically stop talking and withdraw. And you suffer on the inside.

So what I am suggesting is to first heal that hurt inside, so you can have a different reaction (both internal and external) to such remarks.

And to solve the hurt, you’d need to accept yourself the way you are (an emancipated, free woman), and stop expecting validation and approval from the representatives of the traditional values, such as your mother-in-law.

Love and accept yourself without judgment, so that you don’t have that inner battle with yourself. And then you can decide how you want to behave on the outside, i.e. how to react to situations like this.

Because it may be that sometimes the best reaction is to ignore such remarks and not engage in conflicts with someone who will never change their position. Maybe sometimes the best reaction is to stay silent, and yet do things according to your own liking and your own value system – undisturbed by what your mil or others will say.

You see what I mean? That your internal reaction and internal feeling is key. Once you have peace and clarity inside, you can decide how to react on the outside, e.g. when to confront people and when to stay silent.

It takes lot strength to ignore these judgements and be yourself at the same time.

Yes it does, because you’ve been judged all your childhood, you were never accepted for who you are. The system was like that, that was unfortunately a part of your culture, and became a part of your identity. Now you’d need to shake it off and value and appreciate yourself. You are good enough, you are worthy – even if some of the people around you tell you differently.

Dear zenith,

you’re welcome. I think it’s great that you’re doing therapy for OCD, and that it’s giving results. Maybe at the moment you don’t need another kind of therapy, which would deal with the root cause.

For me, the best therapy, which I partially did on my own, was to work with my inner child. The inner child is the part of us that feels small, unloved, unwanted, unworthy, helpless etc. It’s a vulnerable and wounded part of us. Whenever you tell yourself things like “no one likes me”, or “I don’t matter to anyone”, that’s the inner child speaking.

The inner child is constantly under the attack of our inner critic, who is telling us things like “You’re so stupid”, “You’re so lazy”, “You’re a bad person”, “No wonder no one likes you”. The inner critic is the internalized judgmental voices of our parents, grandparents and the environment we grew up in.

What we need to do to heal is counter the voice of the inner critic with the voice of a good, loving parent, who will tell positive, reassuring things to the inner child. Basically, we need to be the loving parent to our inner child. We need to metaphorically take our inner child under our wing, and tell her that we love her, that she is precious and special, and that we will always be there for her.

You can use a doll or a fluffy animal to represent your inner child, and you can put it on your lap and talk to it. Or you can have a photo of yourself as a child, and tell those loving, supportive things to the photo, if that works better for you.

The point is to get in touch with your inner child, with the little girl you were, and become a loving, supporting parent to her – something that she didn’t have while growing up.

How does this sound?