It's Okay Not to Sacrifice.
You Need to Know Yourself First
There will always come a time in life when you feel alone. Counseling is a good way to better understand yourself. You shouldn't try to find all the causes of problems in your current relationships. A past experience might have triggered emotions that you can't handle, and those emotions may unconsciously affect your current relationships. Everyone hopes that an intimate relationship will heal the wounds of past experiences and fill the emptiness they could never recover from, no matter how hard they try. However, the more you try to fill that emptiness through someone else, the more unbalanced the relationship can become. There is also a risk of forcing affection that is difficult to satisfy.
Sacrificial Relationships Should Not Become a Habit
Optimistic endings are rare in sacrificial relationships. Those who have made self-sacrifice a habit often experience a huge shock when the relationship ends, making recovery difficult. If you keep sacrificing, you become someone who unconditionally follows what the other person wants. You end up forgetting your own worth and meaning.
If you have countless suppressed experiences from childhood, your emotional ups and downs as an adult may be severe. When you are attacked as a child, feelings of anger may develop inside you. However, emotions that have been suppressed are never easily erased. When anger that cannot be expressed builds up, it can eventually turn inward, leading to self-blame or self-hatred. Unresolved anger erodes self-esteem. For instance, a client's negative values related to their worth may arise from a mother's authoritarian attitude, leading them to believe they need to be recognized as useful by others.
Sometimes It's Okay to Be Selfish
People often tell themselves to love and take care of themselves, but they may doubt who will love them if they act selfishly. The conflict between the need to care for themselves and the desire not to be selfish can be difficult to navigate, especially during childhood, when it’s harder to act selfishly. This is because they want to live up to the perfect image that adults have of a child. It’s important to change your perspective and think about what you truly want and how you feel.
You are valuable just as you are. You don’t need to have value to be loved. Every person has their unique value from the moment they are born. We can always fill our self-esteem ourselves.
People with low self-esteem often find it hard to feel respected, recognized, or cared for in everyday life. However, as they grow closer to someone and share mutual care and respect, their hearts can become richer. Someone who doesn’t know how to cherish themselves may become obsessed when they feel love through their relationships with others. Relationships last longer when both parties support and complement each other.
