If a man spends most of his life doing what he can to please others and his mother in particular, it means that he is primarily focused on what happens without him. What’s going on inside rarely, if ever, goes to anything he’s aware of.
This is likely to mean that the needs of others will be seen as your needs; he won’t know the difference. And, if the needs of others are seen as his needs, it is to be expected that he will feel compelled to satisfy them.
playing a role
So even though you will be a separate individual who has your own needs and feelings, you will act as if you are here to serve others. In general, it can create the impression that it is unnecessary.
Being this way, it likely means that you will receive a fair amount of positive feedback. However, the attention, acceptance and approval you receive from others, the love of the ego, will not allow you to live a life that is deeply satisfying.
internal guide
Still, you could do what you can to ignore how you really feel and what your life is really like and carry on as normal. Therefore, feedback that would shed light on the fact that he is going against himself will be discarded.
There may be times when you consciously deny how you really feel and times when this happens unconsciously. Either way, he will not be willing to be with what is happening to him.
a great fight
Keeping how he really feels in check will take a lot of his energy, and a lot of his energy will end up being held deep within him. The reason for this is that the emotional pain that he denies will also be made up of energy.
With this in mind, the longer you behave in this way, the more difficult it becomes for you to behave in the same way. As a result of this, there could come a time when you will break down and will no longer be able to be there for others.
“Wake up”
Ideally, he could change his life before reaching this point. What could play a role in this is if she ends up getting into a relationship, as her partner could point out that she is not taking care of her own needs.
She could see that he spends a lot of time being there for others and for his mother in particular. This does not mean that he will just accept what she has to say, as he might get defensive and deny what she says at first.
Matter of time
But, with the passage of time and if you reflect on what has been said, little by little you could come to see that you are unbalanced. He could see that when he is around other people, who he is usually doesn’t show up.
When this happens, you will lose contact with your feelings and needs, with your body, and you will distance yourself from yourself. Then he will act as if he is an extension of others and his true self will not see the light of day.
malnourished
When you play your role of being there for others and live on the surface of yourself, your physical self will be seen but your inner self will not be seen. Because of this, regardless of how much time he spends with others, he is likely to feel invisible and ignored.
For this to change, you will need to express your needs and how you really feel when you are around others. Revealing what goes on inside him and making other people see these parts of himself; your true self will be able to receive the nutrients it needs to feel full and alive.
a strange scene
What this boils down to is that he is an interdependent human being; he needs others. In addition to recognizing his own needs and feelings; he will need other people to do the same.
Given this, if you need to be in touch with yourself and express yourself to live a full life, and this part of you needs to receive proper nourishment from others, why would you spend so much time disconnected from yourself? To understand this, it will be necessary to take a closer look at his early years.
going deeper
During this stage of his life, his mother may have used him to meet some of her unmet adult and childhood needs. This would have meant that most, if not all, of her developmental needs would have been overlooked.
Not only would this have been incredibly painful, it would have made him believe that his needs and his self were inherently evil. In order to receive her mother’s attention and conditional love from her, instead of being disapproved, punished and/or abandoned, she had to be who she wanted her to be and do what she wanted.
Changing roles
Instead of seeing him as a separate being who needed her love and care to grow and develop, she would have unconsciously seen him as an extension of herself. She would have had to adapt to what was happening by losing contact with her true self, her needs and feelings, and creating a false self that would allow her to survive; she would not have been able to say ‘no’ or escape.
The problem is that because he was self-centered, he would not have been able to see that there was nothing wrong with his needs or with himself. Being seen, expressing his needs and feelings, at this stage in his life would have been a threat to his very survival and now that he is an adult, he will still be seen as something that would harm and/or abandon him. .
Awareness
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If a man can relate to this and is ready to turn his life around, he may need to seek outside support. This is something that can be provided with the help of a therapist or healer.
