The Day I Stopped Trying to Be Liked

I can't tell you the exact day it happened. There wasn't a dramatic moment. No choir of angels. No life-changing revelation on a mountain top. No inspirational quote floating across my social media feed accompanied by a sunset and somebody doing yoga on a paddleboard.

What I can tell you is that somewhere along the way, I became exhausted. Exhausted from trying to be liked. Exhausted from trying to avoid disappointing people. Exhausted from carefully managing how I was perceived. Exhausted from saying "yes" when I meant "no." Exhausted from worrying about whether everyone was happy with me.

The strange thing about people-pleasing is that it often looks like kindness from the outside. People describe you as helpful. Thoughtful. Easy-going. Generous. What they don't see is the running commentary happening underneath.

"Will they be upset if I say no?"

"What if they think I'm selfish?"

"What if they don't like me anymore?"

"What if they get angry?"

For many people, being liked becomes a full-time job. An unpaid one. With terrible benefits. And no retirement plan. The problem is that when your goal is to be liked, you start making decisions that have very little to do with what you actually think, feel or need. You become highly skilled at reading other people. And increasingly disconnected from yourself. You learn to anticipate reactions. Avoid conflict. Keep the peace. Smooth things over.

You become the emotional equivalent of customer service.

"Thank you for your complaint. Your dissatisfaction is important to us."

The trouble is that eventually the bill arrives. Because every time you abandon yourself to keep somebody else comfortable, the cost gets added to your account. A little resentment here. A little frustration there. A little disappointment tucked away for later. Until one day you find yourself irritated by people who have absolutely no idea you've been making sacrifices on their behalf. Which seems unfair. Mainly because it is. After all, they never asked you to volunteer for the role.

One of the things I often explore with clients is this: Many people don't actually want to be liked. Not really. What they want is to feel safe. Being liked is simply the strategy they've learned to achieve it. Somewhere along the line, they discovered that approval reduced risk. Approval reduced criticism. Approval reduced conflict. Approval reduced rejection. And so they became very good at earning it.

The problem is that approval is not the same thing as connection. Approval is conditional. Connection is authentic.

Approval says:

"I'll show you the version of me that keeps you happy."

Connection says:

"I'll show you who I actually am and trust that the relationship can survive it."

Those are very different things. The irony is that the harder we work to be liked, the less known we often become. Because people can only connect with the version of us they are allowed to see. And if we're constantly editing ourselves, filtering ourselves, softening our opinions, hiding our needs and avoiding difficult conversations, then nobody is really meeting us at all. They're meeting our public relations department.

Boundaries are often where this reality becomes painfully obvious. Many people think boundaries are about controlling others. They aren't. Boundaries are simply the point at which you stop taking responsibility for everybody else's emotional experience. Which sounds simple. Until you try it.

The first time you tell someone "No." The first time you disappoint someone. The first time somebody doesn't approve of your decision. The first time somebody thinks you've been unreasonable. It can feel deeply uncomfortable. Almost physically uncomfortable. Not because you've done something wrong. Because you've stopped doing something familiar.

In therapy, we often discover that authenticity comes with a cost. Some people won't like your boundaries. Some people won't like your honesty. Some people won't like the fact that you no longer make their needs your highest priority. And that can be difficult.

But there is another cost that receives far less attention. The cost of never being authentic. The cost of never saying what you think. The cost of constantly adapting yourself to fit other people's expectations. The cost of spending years trying to earn acceptance while quietly abandoning yourself in the process.

Eventually I realised something important. No matter how hard you try, somebody will dislike you. You can be kind. Reasonable. Generous. Patient. Thoughtful. And somebody, somewhere, will still decide you're an idiot.

That's life.

Trying to prevent it is like trying to stop the weather. What changed wasn't that I stopped caring about people. It wasn't that I became selfish. It wasn't that I suddenly enjoyed conflict. I simply stopped treating other people's approval as evidence of my worth.

And that made all the difference.

The day I stopped trying to be liked wasn't really about other people at all. It was about finally giving myself permission to be honest. Honest about what I thought. Honest about what I needed. Honest about what I could and couldn't give. And strangely enough, that's when my relationships became healthier.

Not because everybody liked me.

Because the people who mattered finally got to meet the real person.