Why you need to disappoint others to avoid disappointing yourself

Do you have a fear of disappointing others? And, to avoid this fear, do you let yourself down instead?

You may not consciously decide to choose others over yourself, but that’s what happens. This self-abandonment keeps you stuck in a pattern of overgiving and unexpressed resentment.

Keep reading to find out why we might prioritize strangers and loved ones alike over and above ourselves. And how we can overcome this irrational fear so we can finally lay claim to the lives we deserve.

Why you fear disappointing others

The fear of disappointing others causes problems in our lives because it keeps us perpetually focused on pleasing people. There are a number of reasons we avoid letting others down while letting ourselves down instead.

Childhood conditioning

If you grew up in a dysfunctional home with a narcissistic mother, you were conditioned to believe that her needs came before yours.

You were trained to believe your purpose in life was to keep her happy and help regulate her emotions. But that is the parent’s job.

So, you encountered an extreme role reversal where all the caretaking and attention that should have been given to you was given to her instead.

She focused on her own need for supply and you had to provide that supply without regard for what you needed.

And if you disappointed her in any way (which would have been frequent and nonsensical), you felt rejected and abandoned. These are life-threatening states for a dependent child to find herself in.

So, you did whatever you could to stay in her good books without regard for yourself. To survive, you learned to disconnect from your own desires and remain hyper-focused on hers instead.

This survival strategy of keeping mother happy extrapolates to keeping everyone happy. Because trauma gets stored in the body, you feel that same threat to your survival when anyone is unhappy with you.

Whether it is your boss at work, a friend, or a stranger, having anyone displeased with you feels intolerable. You will do whatever it takes to get them happy again by sacrificing your own happiness.

Codependency

Childhood conditioning leads to codependency with other adults. That means your self-worth is tied to how others, not just your mother, perceive you. 

You have been set up to prioritize others’ needs in all relationships, ensuring yours don’t get fulfilled. You will not know how to ask to have your needs met because you were prevented from doing so since childhood. 

You may resort to manipulation to get what you want or feel resentful when people don’t “read your mind” and give you what you want. Partners and friends may take for granted that you are there for them to lean on because you have given so much and asked for so little.

You don’t know how to ask for help and become hyper self-sufficient. You may take the blame for things that aren’t your fault and take on tasks that aren’t yours to take on to avoid conflict and keep the peace.

Inner child wounding

When your needs are met in childhood, you explore your environment with a sense of curiosity, openness and playfulness. That’s because you felt safe and secure knowing your parents had your back. 

When you grow up in a narcissistic home, however, you have no such protection. Instead of protecting you, your mother is the source of your danger. 

The wounded inner child develops to try and take care of your unmet needs. But she only has her survival tools to help you, so she uses methods that hurt you in the long run.

For example, to try and win love and acceptance she will use people pleasing because that worked with mother. The unhealed inner child doesn’t realize that these methods that worked in childhood no longer work in adulthood.

They hold you back from the life you desire because they are a short-term fix for a long-term problem. The dopamine hit of having someone pleased with you is nothing in the face of an inauthentic life where none of your own needs get met.

How to overcome fear of disappointing others

Understand the impact of childhood trauma

Educate yourself on the adult outcomes of narcissistic abuse and other forms of childhood trauma. The ACES study from 1995 proved without a doubt that repeated traumas in childhood, including emotional abuse, affects us deeply as adults.

The impact of this unhealed trauma can shorten our life span by twenty years. And it creates self-sabotage that is unconscious and therefore difficult to stop.

My book It’s Not Your Fault: The Subconscious Reasons We Self-Sabotage and How to Stop deals with this topic directly. It combines my own story of healing from childhood trauma with practical research-backed steps to overcoming your own self-sabotage.

Learn to set boundaries

We’ve already learned that fear of rejection feels life-threatening when you grew up in a narcissistic home with a mother who rejected you constantly. You’ve been conditioned to feel guilty anytime you stand up for yourself, and  trained to take on the role of her emotional caretaker and sacrificial lamb.

Part of the work of setting boundaries is to protect yourself and your nervous system. Mainstream self-help tends to focus on scripts and strategies when setting boundaries, and ignores feelings in your body related to trauma. 

It also fails to prepare you for the pushback you inevitably receive when dealing with toxic people like narcissists. Many survivors of childhood trauma will try to set a boundary without preparing themselves for pushback or caring for their nervous system, and suffer setbacks as a result.

You must expect that toxic people will not respect your boundaries regardless of how artfully you express them.  You then have consequences when they don’t adhere to your boundary.

The consequence is for your protection, not a punishment for them. Your boundary is also an expression of your standards as a human being:

“I am a person who ends the conversation when someone raises their voice at me.”

“I do not answer the phone or text after 9 pm (that’s who I am).”

Heal the inner child

Assure your inner child she's not in charge anymore. Let her know she can relax and you'll take care of her because you're the adult now.

Healing the inner child means giving yourself the love and care you never received. It means choosing long-term benefits to your life above short-term fixes that hurt you.

Inner child healing includes self-discipline such as healthy routines. And it encompasses self-compassion which involves acceptance of all your emotions instead of judgment and avoidance.

Allow yourself to play and explore in ways you should have been allowed to back then. Indulge in simple pleasures that you deny yourself because you’ve been taught to believe you don’t matter.

Finally, thank your inner child for taking care of you the best way she knew how. She is a part of you that is on your side and her goal has been to keep you safe, even when her methods lacked maturity.

NEXT STEPS

Now that you know why you’ve been wracked with fear over disappointing others, you can take the steps to overcome.

Understanding the role of childhood conditioning, setting boundaries, and healing the inner child, are all essential steps on the road to self-fulfillment.

Disappointing others will become an expected and everyday occurrence in your life. You will realize it as the inevitable outcome of refusing to disappoint or abandon yourself.

To learn more about these and other proven ways of healing self-abandonment, watch my free masterclass.