Stop accepting the responsibility to reduce others’ frustrations, stress and inconveniences.

Sounds simple enough huh? I mean, how many times have you heard someone say, “It’s not “my” problem.” Among some, this phrase is used to escape being held responsible for your own actions or more aptly defined, the results of your actions. For others, it is a statement that needs to be said, on a daily basis to remind us that, “I am not responsible for your happiness”

Happiness, true happiness is an individual achievement that only the person seeking it is able to bask in the delights of it. However, some people rely on others to provide happiness to them. This is usually accomplished at the expense of the happiness giver. This is because being the provider of someone else’s happiness is a sacrifice to your happiness, to your self.

How many times, in order to make someone else happy, have you done something or gone somewhere you really didn’t want to do or go? For me, the answer is too many. I give and give, trying to help my partner, friends and family feel less stressed, frustrated or even inconvenienced. I am an intimate people pleaser. Meaning, I give of myself to those I care about until there is just no more to give. That’s when the resentment starts coming into play and is usually the start of the end of the relationship.

Determined to find this answer of why I have this deep seeded belief that it is my responsibility to relieve the anxieties of others, I started traveling through my memories. I came up with a memory from when I was four or five years old. I was at the next-door neighbors house playing with my friend. She had to use the bathroom and I went with her. She was on the toilet and I was sitting on the edge of the tub and we were having a conversation about us both being in the bathroom and giggling about it like only children do. All of a sudden, movement in the window above the tub caught my eye. I asked my friend if she had seen it and when she looked at the window to see what I was talking about, there it was. Someone was looking in the window at us. We both began screaming and trying to hide next to the tub, but whenever we looked up at the window, we could still see him. We ran out of the bathroom, she ran to her mom and I ran home to mine.

For weeks after that, I would not use the bathroom without my mom standing at the door watching, making sure no one looked in the window at me. One day, my dad took me out to the front yard and told me, “I’m tired of you insisting that Mom stand guard while you use the bathroom. So, I want you to climb up there and look through the window.” I climbed up on the brick planter box and looked into the window. It was a glass window with bubbles in it and seeing through the window was not possible. When I told my dad that I could not see into the bathroom through the window, he told me that if I can’t anyone else can’t either. “This is the bathroom you use.”

I felt really bad about inconveniencing my mom, kind of guilty for being a bother, but at that time, I was too young to understand the feelings, I just remember the feeling. The emotional imprint had been made. Traveling from that memory forward, connecting the memory dots through my life, I recalled other memories that elicited the same emotion.

Although the behavior corrections were a part of growing up, the delivery of the lesson was always presented as, “This is causing a problem for (insert name), therefore you have to do this.” Which taught me that it was my responsibility to ease others anxieties. This belief has created a self-imposed prison of giving of my self to make other lives easier and more enjoyable for them. As I sentenced myself to this prison, time and time again, I usually find myself desperately trying to plan my escape, yet at the same time assisting my “captor” in building taller and stronger walls. In retrospect, running away did not solve the problem, just buried it until the next time. Which is now.

So, now that I know what I am doing that causes my anxieties, it is time to change it. Time to set some emotional boundaries and get my self back. Time to adjust the emotions of memories to delete the imprint and create a more productive one.

Assisting someone in achieving happiness is not necessarily a bad thing; the thing that turns these good intentions into self-destruction is lack of balance. I’m not talking about the balance of, “I did this for you, now you have to do this for me.” I’m talking about the balance of self. Knowing the boundary of giving and keeping; giving to another because you want to, not because you feel obligated to and keeping your self alive instead of ignoring your self while giving to others.