Big Cause of Anxiety: Responsibility for Others’ Happiness

Taking responsibility for others’ happiness is a big cause of anxiety. People who are highly sensitive, caring individuals naturally want the people in their lives to be happy, to experience wellbeing. Caring for others is a character strength. However, it can easily morph into something unhealthy, where rather than wanting to contribute to others’ happiness and wellbeing, we find ourselves being people-pleasers in order to make them happy. Feeling as though we have sole responsibility for others’ happiness causes anxiety.

How Taking Responsibility for Others’ Happiness Causes Anxiety

It often begins innocently enough: for myriad reasons, we care, and we want others to be happy. Either way, this responsibility for others’ happiness ultimately causes anxiety.

• We believe the responsibility for others’ happiness rests on our shoulders.
• We do everything we can think of to make sure others are happy.
• Others aren’t always happy because that’s just the way life is.
• We feel a sense of guilt when others aren’t fully happy, as if we have failed them.
• We feel anxious because we’ve failed.
• We almost feel a sense of perfectionism about this, that others must not only be happy but be perfectly happy because we did our happiness job perfectly. This impossible standard increases our anxiety.
• Often, we believe that if we cater to what everyone wants, they’ll be happy and we can avoid unpleasant conflict. Conflict increases anxiety, but ironically, trying hard to please others in order to avoid conflict actually causes greater anxiety.
• We worry about others, and we blame ourselves for their unhappiness. We come to fear the imagined consequences of this, and we increase our fear and worry with an endless stream of “what-ifs.” This causes more anxiety.

And so the cycle goes. Feeling solely responsible for the happiness of others, no matter how well-intended, causes anxiety.

Stopping the Anxiety-Causing Feeling of Responsibility for Others’ Happiness

Feeling responsible for others’ happiness is a complex relationship of interrelated thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), an approach that focuses on our thoughts and actions, is effective in reducing the anxiety caused by responsibility for others’ happiness.

• Start tuning in to your actions. Notice when you are catering to the needs of others. (A clue that you’re doing this is your neglecting your own needs and desires.) At first, all you have to do is notice and increase your awareness.
• Pay attention to what you’re thinking. A great time to do this is when you’re feeling anxious and worried about someone’s mental state. Again, just notice thoughts to become more attuned to them.
• Challenge your thoughts. Once you’ve noticed your anxious thoughts, question them. Are they realistic? Are your worries completely justified?
• Replace your thoughts with more realistic ones that help you internalize the fact that you can’t be fully responsible for someone else’s happiness and that worrying won’t change this.
• Use your newly forming beliefs to shift your actions away from people-pleasing and more toward people-supporting (and you are a “people” to support, too).

Taking responsibility for others’ happiness causes anxiety. Shifting your thoughts and actions reduces anxiety. Give it a try. You just might create inner peace.

Let’s connect. I blog here. Find me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. My mental health novels, including one about severe anxiety, are here.

from Anxiety-Schmanxiety Blog http://ift.tt/24sXmX6