The Fear of Letting Others Down.
I am losing myself trying to meet your expectations.
I think it’s high time we discussed how the PEDESTALS people put us on can be quite damaging to our identity as a person. It all starts with being admired for something you did or always do, to people expecting more from you ALL THE TIME.
Everybody including:
- family
- friends
- co-workers
- classmates
- colleagues
- and even strangers
ALL HAVE AN EXPECTATION FROM US.
Expectations are quite normal, but when they become unhealthy, they can trigger our anxiety beyond normal and cause us so much emotional and mental fatigue. I will explain what I mean below.
Anxiety
It’s unbelievable how praise from people who admire us can keep us going, but they can also be our greatest source of anxiety when they start to put us on a pedestal we never asked for.
“To be human is not to be one hundred percent perfect, but pedestals expect the opposite and strip us of our identity instead.”
The unhealthy expectations could be from loved ones, particularly our parents. You grew up pleasing them all your life, but the expectations never end. Every day, you keep making conscious efforts to please them so you can remain the “good’ child they want you to be at the expense of your desires. You maintain an image that is not yours so you do not disappoint them. And the moment you decide to live on your terms, you suddenly become the good child that turned bad overnight.
I can go on and on about the unnecessary pressure the people in our lives put on us, but that is not the main focus of this article.
I want to talk about the people who know us only from afar yet put us on a pedestal based on how they perceive us. Their unhealthy expectations could manifest in many ways, but I will give just a few examples.
- Someone who adores you from afar creates an image of you in their head. They fantasize about this ideal version of you in their head even before getting to know you. After meeting you, they start to expect so much from you, and as a people pleaser, you give into the pressure of being their ideal person until you can’t do it anymore. When you stop living up to this perfect version of yourself that never existed in the first place, their admiration for you starts turning into resentment.
- You always ace your exams in school; now, everyone expects flawless grades from you every time. The one time you failed a test, everyone expressed their disappointment in you rather than care enough to ask what could have gone wrong or what you could be going through. Now, every exam coming next has you sleeping one hour every day, taking caffeine to stay awake all night to read, and losing your mind so you do not let them down once again.
- You love to play sports, and you always end up winning medals. Now, everyone at school expects you to always win in all competitions. These sports and games that used to be your hobbies are now anxiety-driven activities for you because you must live up to people's expectations.
- You grew up with many talents, and your high school teachers told you you were special. You feel like a failure in adulthood because it doesn’t reflect what they said you would be. Now, you avoid any gatherings that would make you run into any old high school friends, and you avoid hanging out with them because you haven’t achieved enough things to make them proud of you.
- You are known for your kind heart and soft-spokenness. But the day you lashed out at someone for the first time, you suddenly got labeled as the bad person who was only pretending all these while to be a good person.
- You published the best-selling novel, and now everyone expects the same standard for all your subsequent novels. Now, you have so many doubts about your next book launch that you delay launching your book because you fear you might not meet people’s expectations.
I do not want to live my life always to meet people’s expectations, talkless of those who do not even know me.
I want to enjoy the things I love doing without setting unrealistic goals.
I want only to form close relationships with people who want to get to know me and not those who have already created an image of how I should be in their heads.
I want to receive praise from people who understand that it is only sometimes I will win because, apart from hard work, luck, and many other factors contribute to the results seen.
I do not want to achieve something in the time frame a random person has set for me but in the realistic ones I have set for myself.
Now, let’s talk about the role empathy has to play in all of this.
We human beings, as a whole, need to practice empathy. We need to take our time to understand people more and their feelings.
If you have a little empathy, you will understand that the beautiful lady you expect to be married by twenty-five is afraid of motherhood.
If you practice a little empathy, you will know the straight-A student in class is also trying to make ends meet to sponsor himself in school, and at some point, his grades might drop.
Maybe if you put yourself in other people’s shoes, you will understand how tough it is to carry the weight of other people’s expectations.
We would not stop having expectations from people, as that is also unrealistic. People of all kinds would always expect from you, and you would also expect from people. This is quite normal.
My whole point is, in all that we do, let us put ourselves in the shoes of those we put on a pedestal and know when we are beginning to take things far with our expectations.
I hope you found my article helpful. Which part resonated with you the most?
