Mental load and people-pleasing sound familiar to you? Then it might help to remind yourself what you are not responsible for.
The older we get, the more responsibility we tend to have. For ourselves, our household, our work, our relationships, our family, possibly our partnership, pets and/or children. This quickly adds up to a whole lot of things and people that we have to take care of. That’s why it’s all the more important to clearly define what we are explicitly not responsible for. Because many of us – especially women – tend to burden ourselves with more and more responsibilities. And also to feel responsible for many things that are neither in their power nor their job. These include these three points.
You are not responsible for these 3 things
1. What others think about you
People pleasers in particular often have an absolute desire to be liked by everyone. This is deeply rooted in us – after all, in prehistoric times, people generally needed the protection of a group in order to survive. And of course, social bonds are still important today so that we are healthy and happy. But people are different, so we will never like every person and want them in our lives. And vice versa, it is just as natural that not everyone likes us and wants to be our friend.
What others think about you, how they find and perceive you – that is absolutely not your responsibility. Of course, on the whole we want and should behave decently and not intentionally hurt anyone or harm others. But if we remain true to ourselves and our personal moral values, the rest is none of our business.
2. How other people feel
As already mentioned, we should of course try not to consciously and negligently hurt other people. Basically, it is always a good guideline to treat others the way we would like them to be treated the other way around. But that’s exactly the crux of the matter: we can only control what we do and say. What exactly our actions trigger in our counterpart is not our responsibility.
Because how people perceive something depends on many factors. Most of them only have to do with that person. With what she has experienced in her life so far, what she feels, how she sees the world and maybe even with how good she had breakfast today. That’s why it’s pointless to feel responsible for other people’s feelings.
3. That the needs of others are met
The same applies to the needs of our fellow human beings. First of all, it is not our duty to guess what our partner or our mother wants. It is the job of every person in a relationship to clearly communicate to the other person what they need and want. But in the next step, we are still far from obligated to meet each of these needs. Especially not when it could potentially harm us.
For example, if your mother wants you to talk to her on the phone for an hour every day, you have the right to clearly say that this is too much for you and that you simply can’t do it. It’s not your responsibility to make other people happy.
Human interaction is a complex interplay of expectations, needs and influences. We can try to do our best to fulfill others’ wishes and to behave fairly and lovingly towards them. But the most important relationship every person will have in their life is with themselves. This brings with it the responsibility to live in a way that feels good to us. What other (adult) people think, feel or desire is not our responsibility – but only what we do ourselves.
Sources used: instagram.com/fittingrightin, psych2go.net, positivemedia.org