Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes explores how insecurity and the need to be liked often stem from beliefs that your worth depends on others' approval. She separates disliking a person from disliking their behavior, and traces insecurity to projection and past trauma, suggesting therapy and inner-child work as paths forward.
Hey there, everybody. Welcome to this brief video on confronting insecurity and letting go of the need to be liked. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. I had somebody ask me the other day, how do I go about letting go of the need to be liked? And my first response was, well, let's examine what beliefs you have that tell you you're only safe if. If you are liked by others. You're only acceptable, you're only okay if you are liked by others all the time. And we know that all the time is not possible even in some of your closest relationships. I feel pretty comfortable saying, nobody is going to like you all the time. There are going to be times where there's some fallout, there's some discord, and that's okay. It's important to separate somebody not liking you from not liking your behaviors because a lot of times when people get angry with us or we get angry with others, it's not that we dislike the person, it's that we dislike what they did. But not everybody's going to like you. You may not be everybody's cup of tea, and that can be because you are gregarious and they're more reserved or there can be a lot of reasons for it, but those are their reasons. It's not a good fit. It's like trying to make cookies using sugar cookies and onions. It's just not a good fit. They're both great foods, but you don't put them together. It's important to recognize, too, that in relationships, sometimes you might remind somebody of someone from their past that they didn't like very much. And in psychology, we call this projection. But they are reacting to their feelings about that person from the past. When you, when they see you, you remind them of those unpleasant interactions. So it elicits a feeling of dislike towards you. Is it completely rational? Well, no, but most of this happens on a subconscious level when people stop and go, okay, let me look at the facts for and against disliking this person or their behaviors in the present context. What's going on? But I digress. So recognizing just because somebody, quote, doesn't like you may maybe their stuff. It may be that they don't like a behavior that you're doing and it's not you. And when you recognize that nobody is going to like everybody all the time, it's very liberating because you're able to say, well, if I'm not their cup of tea, their loss. Recognizing your value and worth as a person, recognizing and paying attention to the people who do love you, who do like you, who do want to spend time with you, and embracing that fact, embracing that fact that if you are different and this person over here liked you, the people that already like you and love you may not want to spend as much time with you. You know, it's. It's a matter of finding those puzzle pieces. And if you change too much, you may not fit, if you will. And yes, I recognize if we have healthy boundaries and in a perfect world, we can all respect each other's right to agree to disagree and be different and stuff. But. But that's really just not. Is what is happening right now maybe eventually recognizing what being liked means to you. And for some people, this may mean reflecting back on a wounded inner child that got bullied or that was all alone all the time and they didn't feel like they were likable or lovable. In that case, it's going to be important to nurture that inner child and to look at the facts in the present context. Are you alone and abandoned in the current context, or are you still feeling the effects of that abandonment and rejection from childhood? And then process that. There are a lot of things that can contribute to insecurity and a need to be liked. A lot of them are trauma related. So if you find that you're having difficulty accepting people's right to not want to be in your life, then that's something that you may try processing with a therapist to try to figure out where's that coming from and why is this person who doesn't want me in their life, why are they so important to me? Why do I have to control this situation versus finding somebody else?
