Do People Like Me?
Ivy Griffin
What's interesting is that even in our worry about whether or not we belong--we belong. All people have these concerns. All people want to be accepted and understood and precisely because it matters so much, it will sometimes keep us up at night. We will cry out in the depths of our loneliness, "Do people like me?"
But I suspect being liked is different from a deep sense of belonging. I think many of us are liked but not all feel deeply accepted for who we are. We've experienced painful rejection, ridicule, and abandonment which echoes through our lives and leads us to feel, at times, as though we are deeply wrong or out of place. Instead of thinking about what led our rejectors' sensitivity, empathy, or tolerance for difference to fail so miserably, we blame ourselves. Imagining ourselves to be responsible for our abandonment is a wish for control--"If I am responsible, I have the power to change things."
This self-blame is also a form of protection from the reality that we cannot control how others feel about us or how they treat us. We cannot MAKE others accept us. Acceptance is a capacity that springs from within. This leads me to what I feel is a very powerful fact -- we can only control how we respond to ourselves; and practicing acceptance and appreciation for ourselves adds to the amount of acceptance in the world.
When we begin to build empathy and compassion for ourselves, we experience an increase in compassion for others. We begin to understand that our own rejections and abandonments were caused by the very same pain in our rejectors. Acceptance creates space for many experiences; when we don't have enough space, we push ourselves and others away. People who are rejecting or judgmental are saying, "How can I have room for you when I don't have room for myself?"
As we practice accepting ourselves when we experience pain, we create space for ourselves to exist and no longer need to push ourselves away. How do we do this? Slow breathing (try to make your breath sound like the ocean, gently coming in and out), singing, walking, baking, painting, calming music--pretty much anything that helps us feel more settled--all help us create this internal space. We can also practice telling ourselves things like, "You're not experiencing this pain because you're flawed, you're experiencing it because you're human." And breathe.
Slowly, our internal environment begins to expand and soften. We begin to feel more at home in ourselves. Others' rejections still hurt, but we've created a soft place to fall and we understand that they must be hurting too, even when they're pretending they don't. We also might start to notice that our increased self-acceptance increases the quality of our interactions with others. We show up more authentically and have the ability to accept others as they are.
Increasing self-acceptance is lifelong work and can be very challenging. Therapy can offer an external space of acceptance to work on our internal space. If you'd like some support, please reach out.
All my best,
Ileana Arganda-Stevens, LMFT #129032
Thrive Therapist and Program Manager
https://thrivetherapyandcounseling.com/ileana-arganda
https://thrivetherapyandcounseling.com/new-clients