How to Stop Losing Yourself in What Everyone Else Wants

Issue 187, October 2, 2026 ✨ Higher Power Coaching & Consulting ✨

Let’s say someone asks where you’d like to go for dinner, and you immediately start thinking about what everyone else would enjoy. You know who likes which restaurant, who won’t want to drive very far, and who might complain about the menu. By the time you say, ‘Whatever works for everyone,’ you’ve considered every person in the group except yourself.

Maybe you really don’t have a preference on that particular night. Maybe you do. But you’ve already dismissed it because someone else might not like it. It could be that you’re like I used to be and have spent so much of your life organizing your choices around other people’s preferences that you really don’t know what you want anymore.

I know that last experience very well. Before recovery, I could tell you a lot about what other people liked, wanted, and needed. When it came to my own preferences, I often had very little to say. I was so busy figuring out how to fit into their lives that I wasn’t paying attention to whether the life I was living actually fit me.

When I drank alcohol, I didn’t even have my own drink. I changed what I drank based on who I was dating. I watched sports I didn’t care about, became a fan of teams I had no real interest in, and went to restaurants I didn’t particularly want to go to. I used to be proud of being a chameleon. I thought being able to fit in anywhere was a strength.

What I couldn’t see was how much of myself I was giving up to do it. Now I think back on that and say, “A lot of Barb was up for negotiation.” I said yes when I really wanted to say no, and sometimes I didn’t recognize that until much later, when I was resentful about something I’d agreed to.

In one of my first group coaching programs, I joked that my top five rules for setting boundaries were all the same: keep the focus on yourself. We laughed, but it was the thing people remembered. It’s still one of the most important things I teach, and my understanding of what makes it difficult has deepened considerably.

Why Everyone Else’s Preferences Come First

For many of us, paying attention to everyone else became a way to feel safer. We learned to notice a shift in someone’s mood, anticipate what they might need, and adjust ourselves before there was a problem. Being agreeable or helpful may have protected a relationship, prevented conflict, or helped us feel accepted. Our own wants became something to consider later, only if there was any room left.

If that sounds familiar, ‘What do I want?’ can be a surprisingly uncomfortable question. An answer might begin to form, followed immediately by, ‘But she’ll be disappointed,’ or, ‘I don’t want to make things difficult.’ It can be such a knee-jerk reaction that you move quickly into thinking about someone else’s possible reaction, and you never even consider what you want.

This is one reason learning how to stop people pleasing takes more than finding the right words. You need room inside yourself to notice what’s true for you before you start talking yourself out of it. You need practice taking your own experience seriously, even when someone else might have a different experience.

That’s part of what I mean by Internal Safety. I’m learning that I can listen to myself, support myself through discomfort, and get help when I need it. I don’t have to make everyone happy before I’m allowed to acknowledge that something isn’t working for me. Over time, that changes how I make choices and how I participate in relationships.

Your Preferences Deserve a Place in the Decision
 

Keeping the focus on yourself starts with including yourself in the situation. What do I enjoy? What do I have the capacity for? What matters to me here? These questions give you information you need to make a choice. Knowing that you’d prefer a quiet evening doesn’t mean you can never choose to go out with someone you love. It means your need for rest gets considered in that decision.

There’s a meaningful difference between choosing to accommodate someone and automatically removing yourself from consideration. You might gladly go to a restaurant that isn’t your favorite because it’s your friend’s birthday. You can know your preference and still choose something else. The trouble comes when you don’t feel entitled to have a preference in the first place, or when keeping someone happy routinely requires you to override yourself and your own likes and dislikes.

Personal boundaries begin with that awareness. Before you can know what’s okay with you and what isn’t, you need to be able to access your own internal experience about what’s okay and not okay with you. And if you’ve been disconnected from those preferences for years, it makes sense that reconnecting to them will take practice. You’re allowed to start with something as ordinary as what you’d like to eat or how you’d like to spend an hour.

Looking for Your Part Helps You See Your Choices

For me, turning my attention inward also meant noticing how much energy I spent deciding what other people should do. I gave a lot of unsolicited advice. I thought I was helping, but I also wanted people to do things my way, and I got upset when they didn’t. Meanwhile, all that attention to their lives kept me from looking closely at my own.

A useful question became, ‘What’s my part here?’ (thank you step 4 of 12-step recovery!). That might mean noticing that I said yes to something I didn’t have the energy for, or that I was waiting for someone to read my mind and notice a need I hadn’t expressed. Looking for my part in things doesn’t mean I was responsible for their behavior. It means I came to see where I had choices that I didn’t perceive before I looked for my part. As I often say, that’s info, not ammo. It’s something to learn from, not another reason to beat yourself up.

Start With One Small Preference

You can begin this week by noticing one small preference each day before considering anyone else’s. You don’t have to act on every preference you discover. Just give yourself a chance to notice it. If you’d like a quiet morning, acknowledge that. If you’d rather see a different movie, let yourself admit it. If you’re tired, notice how quickly you begin building a case for why you shouldn’t be.

When the answer is ‘I don’t know,’ stay curious. You might know what you don’t want before you know what you do want. That’s just as important. You might notice that a particular plan feels draining, while another leaves you interested or relieved. Those responses are information to explore. You don’t have to turn them into a final decision immediately.

Pay attention to resentment, too. Sometimes it points to an unfair situation or someone repeatedly disregarding you. Sometimes it reveals that you’ve been disregarding yourself and could have used a boundary. Ask, ‘What was I hoping someone would notice? Did I know what I needed? Did I give that need any weight?’ The purpose is to understand what happened well enough to respond differently next time.

Then try one small action that reflects what you’ve learned. Suggest the restaurant you’d actually enjoy. Make room for an activity that restores you. Tell someone you have a preference when you’d normally say you don’t mind. These ordinary choices give you opportunities to practice trusting that your experience deserves a place in your life. And life is made up almost entirely of ordinary choices, so it’s going to have the greatest impact when you start taking charge of your ordinary choices.

You Can Care About Others and Include Yourself

You still get to care about other people (of course!). You still get to receive their care, ask for reassurance, and be affected by what happens between you. Healthy relationships have room for mutual support. What changes is that you’re becoming someone you can count on to remember your needs, too.

That’s where we’re beginning this month’s exploration of personal boundaries. Before the difficult conversation, before figuring out what to say, there’s the practice of hearing yourself clearly enough to know what you want to communicate. Next week, we’ll look at how pausing can help you make room for that awareness when you feel pressure to respond.

For now, consider this: where in your life do you know everyone else’s preferences, but rarely ask about your own? Start there. You don’t have to figure out your whole life today. You can begin by letting yourself matter in one ordinary decision.

If you recognize this pattern and want support changing it, my online self led course, Boundaries That Hold, helps you understand what happens when you override yourself, then practice staying connected to yourself in real life. It’s a place to work on the Internal Safety that supports your choices, including the ones that feel uncomfortable at first. Explore Boundaries That Hold and begin practicing a different way of showing up for yourself.