Is it hard to say no, when someone asks you for help? Is it hard to ask others for help, in your darkest moments? Are you afraid people will abandon you if you inconvenience them?

Yeah…me too. I’m a people pleaser. I love being helpful and I never ask anyone for anything…I thought that’s what a good friend does. Then my therapist burst my bubble: these behaviors are common among people with a crippling fear of rejection and abandonment. And that realization messed me up so much I thought I’d share it with you.

Essentially, if you already fear rejection or abandonment, you will look for any action you can take to make those outcomes less likely. You’ll try to be helpful, considerate, and bend over backwards to help people because you want to give them a reason to stick around. You won’t ask them for anything because being an inconvenience might drive them away. If you assume you’re not likable, you have to be useful. Why would they like you? You don’t even like yourself.

That is the north star of our twisted, destructive narrative. Most of us don’t accept ourselves, and that self rejection makes us walk on eggshells around others. People who accept themselves aren’t afraid of rejection like we are, because they don’t mind being on their own. They don’t doubt their self worth, so someone else’s rejection of them doesn’t make them think less of themselves. It sounds nice, but many of us aren’t there yet.

I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to do favors for people just because I’m scared they won’t like me otherwise. I don’t want to suffer through problems alone because I assume no one would want to help me. I don’t want to assume everyone is waiting for an excuse to abandon and reject me. I’m hoping that if I learn to accept myself, I’ll break out of these irrational mental loops.

So if you relate to this, I encourage you to take a look at self-acceptance too. No happy day ever started with assuming you weren’t good enough. These are the tools that worked the best for me, check them out if you want to work on this too.

• The “Waking Up” meditation app: This teaches mindfulness, so when damaging thought patterns pop up you recognize them faster, and can steer yourself back towards safety.
• Self-Compassion by Dr. Kristin Neff: This is a research-based book on the benefits of self compassion, structured methods for learning it, as well as many stories of people and how it helped them accept themselves.