There is a well known saying that goes "Tell me who you hang out with and I will tell you who you are" and although there are different opinions about that, such as that a conscious and mature person does not get carried away by what the other person does and so on, I think that what surrounds us, our environment and so on influences a lot d what we are and how we are.
Just as sometimes we adopt as our own some words of our friends, or when visiting a place we may start to speak with the accent of that area, if we surround ourselves with negative people for example who get into trouble in solutions, we may start to do the same. Or also if we surround ourselves with people with anxieties that force them to hold us in a "safe" place, we may also normalize it or even adopt as our own the expectations they have of us.
Other people's fears become our own when we let them affect our lives, stop us from doing things. This is something that happened to me a lot because at least in my case obviously when we love someone we also try to protect them from what causes us anxiety, thinking about that, that it is just a person trying to show love from a mind a bit fractured by traumas or having inherited fears, can make us develop sentimentalism and let others do what they want with us because of course, it is for "love".
All this boils down to the same thing: expectations, these can cause a lot of damage and tie us in tight knots with an imaginary rope. When we live with the burdens of expectations on us, we forget about ourselves, we try to do what others think is right for us, and somehow we convince ourselves that it's okay because that way we won't cause them harm.
The reality is that we are causing a lot of damage to ourselves and also emotionally stunting ourselves in the face of life, little by little we are adapting to that little mold in which we may not have fit, leaving us trapped forever in a place where we do not feel we belong.
I know, because unfortunately I have experienced it, the expectations are not only that you will do great things, but there is an expectation that you will not do them. For example, in the house where I grew up there was a lot of love, but also a lot of anxiety, when I was born there were complications that almost left me lifeless, this trauma made them want to protect me from everything bad that could happen, or even the possibility of it happening.
The anxiety of something happening to me was something I also felt back, in fact, even now I am still a fearful person, you could say, but I don't blame anyone but myself now. As I got older I began to see things from a different point of view, I had to learn to face the world, I had to push myself and dare because if I didn't I wouldn't be able to achieve my goals.
Expectations that I would not dare to do things that could put me at risk, made me try as much as possible to avoid situations (even though they would help me grow as a person) that had a chance of going wrong. But did I miss opportunities? Yes, I did, and only by not setting limits and doing things even with fear, thinking that whether it went well or not, it would always become experience.
I understand that there are situations that lead people to feel anxiety, I myself live with it, but I can only offer understanding and support, since everyone must learn to cope with it and it is not my responsibility to avoid facing life because others feel fear. To be honest sometimes I catch myself trying to repeat the same patterns, starting to instill my own fears in others for "protection", especially with my nephews who are children but I consciously stop doing it when I notice it.
Obviously the way I grew up has a lot of influence on how I am, quite cautious and that I think about things many times before doing it, but although I accept suggestions and advice, I learned that I can not live on the expectations of others, I know that when I decide, I can do what I propose, now I set limits and do not stop doing what I like or what I need to do because others do not want or believe that it can go wrong.
Learning this took a huge burden off my shoulders, one that none of us should live with, because honestly the expectations that others have on us, are not our burdens so it makes no sense to carry them on our backs. The best thing to do is, step by step learn to let go, to live and strive to deal with our own anxieties and let others deal with theirs.
That feeling of being able to live with one less burden is all I need to keep striving to get all that out of my system and try whenever possible to get others to do the same.
-Content entirely of my authorship and inspiration.
-Original text in Spanish, translated at DeepL.
-Personal photographs, taken with my Huawei p30 Lite Phone.
-Banners designed in Canva Pro.
This image belongs to millycf1976 and was manipulated using Canva.
Thank you for reading and appreciating, have a great day too.
You have a lot of insight Jem =)