It drives me crazy when people don't like me

[LittleBirdy]

I guess you could say I'm a people pleaser, it's a symptom I've been fighting. When someone doesn't like me, I obsess over them. In my childhood, I would try so hard to get people who clearly did not like me to be my friend. Obviously, that never ended well. It usually lead me to get bullied and then wonder why everyone hated me. I don't do that anymore. Now, if someone doesn't like me, I just sit around and wonder why. It bothers me so much. I also don't handle it well when friendships don't work out, more specifically when their mental illness gets the best of them. I feel like I've lost one too many friends this way in my young adult years already and it makes me really sad.

[Three Roses]

This is something I feel I'm recovering from also, although at times when I'm in an EF or just feeling overwhelmed, I can still slip back into the endless obsessive thoughts - if only, if only, if only...if I did this thing, or that thing, or... or... or....

On good days, I know that just as I do not like everyone enough to be pursue a friendship with them, so also am I not going to be "friend material" for everyone in the world. 😊

[Oscen]

Hi Little Birdy, I'm a recovering people pleaser too, although I was never actually that pleasing! Just tried waaaay too  hard.

I remember getting a bit obsessive over a colleague who was quite outgoing and cool but basically snubbed me from her first day.
She was so confident though, I desperately craved her approval despite disliking her intensely.
For some reason, I just  wasn't able to make the judgment that she was not important to me, and therefore I only needed to be civil.
Winning her approval took on this huge significance for me; the conflicting emotions I felt were so intense, over this person I barely knew!

I think she must have reminded me in some ways of my sister, who made me hustle for her approval all through our childhood.
My sister dominated me so much that I was unable to actually make judgments for myself; I was so reliant on my sister interpreting and labelling the world for me.
Not only was I then attracted to more dominant people, but I was unable to judge situations for myself and respond accordingly.

Are you a fawn type? I'm more of a freeze type usually, but in the workplace, I get overwhelmed and I think I can be pretty erratic in how I respond.
I think I tend to fawn in the face of perceived potential rejection, with icky results.

[LittleBirdy]

Hi Little Birdy, I'm a recovering people pleaser too, although I was never actually that pleasing! Just tried waaaay too  hard.

I remember getting a bit obsessive over a colleague who was quite outgoing and cool but basically snubbed me from her first day.
She was so confident though, I desperately craved her approval despite disliking her intensely.
For some reason, I just  wasn't able to make the judgment that she was not important to me, and therefore I only needed to be civil.
Winning her approval took on this huge significance for me; the conflicting emotions I felt were so intense, over this person I barely knew!

I think she must have reminded me in some ways of my sister, who made me hustle for her approval all through our childhood.
My sister dominated me so much that I was unable to actually make judgments for myself; I was so reliant on my sister interpreting and labelling the world for me.
Not only was I then attracted to more dominant people, but I was unable to judge situations for myself and respond accordingly.

Are you a fawn type? I'm more of a freeze type usually, but in the workplace, I get overwhelmed and I think I can be pretty erratic in how I respond.
I think I tend to fawn in the face of perceived potential rejection, with icky results.

I am unfamiliar as to what these terms mean. Yeah, idk who these people remind me of, perhaps I should think on it a bit.

[Oscen]

Sorry, "fawn" and "freeze" are two of the response types to stress.

The four response types are fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
They are in Pete Walker's book, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving.
Here's a link to his website that gives some info:
http://pete-walker.com/fourFs_TraumaTypologyComplexPTSD.htm

They are considered maladaptive responses to stress if you cannot flexibly select the best option for the situation; this is what generally happens if you have C-PTSD.
For example, people pleasers tend to be stuck on fawn when actually giving up (freeze) or standing up for yourself (fight) or even walking away (flight) would be better.

This is a nice, easy to read explanation of the four Fs:
https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/trauma/fight-flight-freeze-how-to-recognize-it-and-what-to-do-when-it-happens/

[ellachimera]

Been there. I re-organised my priorities though, started opening up to healthy emotions generated by people who consistently and unconditionally loved me (while still asking that I accelerate my recovery, though, for my own sake, as I am starting to move towards my older days now and still wasting time on disadaptative emotional reactions).

One day I simply realised I didn't care anymore if people who were unessential to my life - liked me or not. That is, I didn't take them liking me too seriously as well as not suffering if they didn't. It's a process and I am not completely healed but now, if I feel too worried by someone not liking me or too excited by someone liking me - I just think of my family and picture in my head what really is important.

I guess it was important to notice that every coin has two sides: if you want to stop being bothered that people who are not yet important  in your life don't liek you, you have to also refrain from giving too much importance to those who do.

Important people prove themselves through test of time and events, I guess. I am just learning to not give my trusting behaviours away so mindlessly - while not *really* having trusted anyone before I met my husband nor after, besides my abusive M - , the same way I learnt not to occupy my mind with other peoples' perceived feelings towards me.

Wow, this post got so complicated. Sorry.

[woodsgnome]

I tend to run the other way from people. Which includes not just distrust of others, but hearing any good towards myself tends only to inflame my self-doubts in horrible ways, not justified but I still do it.

Even when I do accept good vibes, I -- or my 'inner critic'-- tend to belittle myself as still coming up short, that I don't feel wholly deserving, that I need stupid 'pep talks' to feel okay about myself. In the end I don't matter and am never good enough to deserve even a simple thank you. Awful but also too true, and doubly hard to find new ways of being, these old scripts are so embedded.

So it's another of those conundrums with answers that are wildly elusive. That's okay, for a while; and what can be expected, given the circumstances from which we're trying to rebuild meaningful lives and not feel so lost anymore. Maybe a huge part of this is to get past the notion of perfectionism, and all the self-critique we agonize over en route to that other fantastic notion -- of peace with ourselves, and our honest attempts to finally just be the best humans we can.