I low-key starting hating people
A number of years ago, I noticed a slow-burning resentment growing in the interactions I had with my husband, my team, and a handful of friends.
On the surface, the interactions seemed fine – a normal level of care and interest.
Inside my mind, however, I found myself grumbling that they didn’t really care about me. Didn’t they *know* I would want x or y? Why didn’t they care enough to anticipate my needs or pay more attention to me?
Of course, I didn’t say this out loud because even with this growing resentment, I knew my expectations were unreasonable.
With my ‘intellect’ on, I could see that everyone was being their normal level of careful and considerate and kind.
But my emotions were screaming ‘Neglect! Nobody cares about you!’
Neglect! Nobody cares about you!
Why were my emotions raging if I logically knew there was nothing wrong here?
As often happens, I just happened to stumble across the right post at the right time.
A woman was explaining how she’d been feeling this exact same way – feeling forgotten and uncared for by her friends and family.
Her therapists asked her which activities made her feel like she was caring for herself.
A nightly skincare routine was important to her, but for months she’d scrolled on her phone so late that it felt ‘too late’ to do it.
The therapist recommended she make a commitment to do this ritual every night, even if it seemed trivial, no matter how late it ended up being.
She did this, and after a week or two, all her friends magically became more considerate and caring.
(What actually happened is her feelings of being neglected subsided.)
As I read this story, I realised I had dropped almost all forms of showing myself I cared about myself.
If I needed to wash, it was a quick shower because I’d somehow decided I wasn’t worth the time of having a bath.
I had piles of books to read but never gave myself time to read them.
I rarely ate lunch and ended up getting convenient food I didn’t really like because it felt like too much effort to make myself a meal that I actually enjoyed.
Basically, I was treating myself like shit.
After reading that post, I starting making an effort with all the “trivial” and inexpensive things I liked that I could do for myself.
I started painting my nails and giving myself a weekly sheet mask facial.
I took the time to have long baths and made sure I chose a delicious lunch I could make for myself (as much as I still hated taking time out of my day to prepare it).
I picked up my books again and escaped to magical worlds with dragons that turned into moons and weird age gap relationships between grumpy fae and secret queens.
then, magically, everyone around me became more considerate
Of course, I don’t think they did (although, it’s possible – I was happier so it was probably easier to be nice to me).
I stopped expecting other people to provide the care I could and should have been providing for myself.
We all have a responsibility to act like we love ourselves, like we think we’re worth taking care of.*
Too often we’ve been conditioned to take care of everyone else either instead of or at the expense of ourselves.
When people don’t turn around and prioritise our care the way we prioritise theirs, we can become resentful.
Yes, we should be helping each other: we all need community and we all need to support each other.
There’s a difference between asking for help and expecting people to step in and take up the burden of care that is both our responsibility and within our capacity to meet.
* The Nuance
A couple things I want to make clear here.
When I talk about resentment building up, I’m not talking about when people are actually treating you badly, neglecting you, abusing you, or using you.
This is not about internalising responsibility for other people’s bad behaviour. If you’re in a relationship where any of those things are taking place, resentment is an understandable emotion and you probably need to do something about the relationship, not about yourself.
What I’m talking about here is when we’re not taking care of the things within our realm of responsibility, so we start having excessive and unreasonable expectations on someone else.
The other thing to be clear on is of course there is a level of reciprocity and respect and care that should be in every relationship. This isn’t about taking care of everything you need yourself.
This is where the logic/intellect part of the conversation has to come in, to identify whether there is a gap in the relationship, or bad behaviour, or if it’s a perception issue.
If you’re not sure about the ‘logical’ side of it, you may need to sense-check yourself with a friend you can trust.
Even if there’s an external problem that needs to be addressed with another person, if you’re feeling resentment, it may be worth taking stock of yourself and trying to figure out if YOU are neglecting yourself (assuming you’re safe).
If you can see areas where you can improve taking care of yourself and treating yourself like you’re worth the effort and the time, it will become clearer more quickly whether there’s something in the relationship that needs fixing (or ending).
You’ll have proven to yourself that you’re worth a higher level of care by the effort you’ve put into yourself.
Finally, in the case of clinical depression we can lose the ability to care for ourselves, and that’s not what I’m referring to here.
feeling resistance and need help?
If you start making an effort to take care of yourself, you may notice some internal resistance.
It may be obvious, like you feel like your body is trying to avoid doing the thing you want to do.
It may be less obvious, like a vague sense of guilt or unsettledness when you do things for yourself.
Or, it may be that for some reason you just never “find the time” to work on yourself even though you’re able to get everything else for everyone else done.
If you’re having trouble spending the time on yourself, it might be that you’re carrying something in your body that’s creating resistance.
This is where having a relationship with and talking to your body can be helpful. Your body can show you where to look and what you’re carrying that contributes to that resistance.
If you haven’t tried my body connecting audio yet, you can click here to download it and try connecting to your body yourself.
Or, if you’re feeling like you’d like support with connecting to your body, you can try my initial session.
Have questions? I also have a free 20-minute consultation call to answer questions and see if working with me feels like your right next step.
your turn:
If this piece resonates with you, choose a couple of things you can start doing to demonstrate care for yourself.
Let me know in the comments what you choose, and come back once you’ve done it for a couple weeks and let me know how you go.
