how do I overcome the need for being liked?

[Viking]

I think I had some self esteem issues when I was younger. maybe theyre still there but not in my conscious mind.

the need for being liked is largely unconscious for me, I understand intellectually I think that being liked will never fulfill me but I notice patterns in my behavior that seem to orient me towards being liked.

I also dont value love at all (maybe because i havent loved much in my life), but when I think about someone loving me I get uncomfortable.

how do I work on it?

[Huginn]

My intuition says, you don't love yourself and your life, therefore you mentally try to make everyone else love you to fill the void. But when they love you, it doesn't align with the image of yourself as unlovable. One easy insightful book I read recently is Loving what is, by Byron Katie. It might help you stop trying to have others love you and instead accept yourself and the world as is.

[WaterfallMachine]

I also had the same confusion around this before. Why did I understand intellectually that wanting to be liked doesn’t help and doesn’t really matter but for some reason still emotionally affects me?

Turns out the culprit was a lack of awareness.

Hear me out. It’s likely that when you understand something intellectually, it means you only understand it abstractly. As an idea, not an experience. One of the reasons human beings are so irrational is that they when they understand an idea like say, “What other people think don’t matter”, they can’t find this idea specifically in their everyday life.

It’s hard to be aware on being able to catch the thoughts you have throughout life. The specific reasons, past events and intentions you might have around this fear are often buried in the depths of your consciousness — to be aware of it one time is easy, to be aware of these constantly throughout every moment of life is difficult.

Another is experimentation. If a belief is hard for you to believe, try to do something to see for yourself. Then work to reflect on these new changes and gain new beliefs. You can start with something small first.

[Shin]

Let yourself be uncomfortable, and just watch that feeling.

It's the only thing you have to do.

[Atic]

"how do I overcome the need of being liked?"

I'm guessing you are stuck on the belief level of what love is. The more you desire of being liked, the more you feed your ego. Well, for me meditation and contemplation works.

[pluto]

Quit or Disable social conditioning.

[Nahm]

@Viking Loving your self is the ultimate ironic point. You are God, doing this person. We use Qm’s, retreats, practices, psychedelics, etc, et, etc. JUst to remove the barriers to loving ourselves. Love is reality. It’s so simple, we climb mountains to understand it. LOL.  

[YellowButterfly]

I noticed a difference with me having to do with personal boundaries as well as fully accepting myself and loving myself enough to take my own guidance. I had some personal conditioning that made me not trust myself or my own internal guidance system and rather outsourcing it to others. Being told the way one thinks or is is somehow inherently just plain wrong by others because they don't do things that way and try to force you to do things their way and BELIEVING it was pretty bad juju for me. Turning to others thinking they knew better than myself, not to say one can't learn from others, of course people can and should, but I think it definitely increased my need for being liked. The more I saw that others worth was not inherently any greater or less than my own and focused more on my own learning and understanding and trusting it I found I needed people to like me much less. It was no longer posing that detriment of always worrying about it. Being told to love yourself can seem somewhat cliché, but it is very true.

[Barbarian Number 8]

@Viking  You are designed to be that way.

That is how your genetics have survived all those generations.

If not liked, tribe kick you out, no shared resourses and protection. Big sabertooth tiger eat you ass. End of line.

 

Maybe you should just roll withit? Likeble people are nice people to have around.

[John Iverson]

Changes is not easy.. working out for yourself is hard.. but time can tell.. to change that learn to take a little step.. a single step get you there  smileee drop the " you want to be like" haha can you? That's why little step is better smileeeee.. me too i'm working my self out  .. we can do this

[Shin]

15 hours ago, Barbarian Number 8 said:

@Viking 

 

Maybe you should just roll withit? Likeble people are nice people to have around.

There is still a fine line to draw here.

You could want to be likeable to EVERYONE, by being extremely neurotics and unauthentic (a lot of people are this way).

Or you can be likeable as much as you can by being authentic and constantly working on yourself in the area that you truely want to progress.

We still have a distinct personality, and a lot of people just don't (want to) understand that and tries to change you to match their line of thinking (which is relative and biased for the most part).

Edited February 7, 2018 by Shin

[Joseph Maynor]

Start to dismantle the self-image aka Ego.

[Faceless]

See why one wants to be liked. What compels the self to seek approval from others. 

Is it the need to become psychological secure through means of measure. You feel insecure so you create an image that has been conditioned by society, culture, and so on of being accepted by others which soothes that image. This is a way to capture a sense of security psychologically. But when that image is not met then comes the pain, sorrow, conflict, suffering?

Instead of trying to end this conflict of approval maybe learn about why “you” seek it at all. Why do we do this? 

 

 

Edited February 7, 2018 by Faceless

[Barbarian Number 8]

8 hours ago, Shin said:

There is still a fine line to draw here.

You could want to be likeable to EVERYONE, by being extremely neurotics and unauthentic (a lot of people are this way).

Or you can be likeable as much as you can by being authentic and constantly working on yourself in the area that you truely want to progress.

We still have a distinct personality, and a lot of people just don't (want to) understand that and tries to change you to match their line of thinking (which is relative and biased for the most part).

Ja, one destinction would be a person that is comfortable with having a pleasant personality and being liked, versus somebody who pretends to be likable in order to get something.

Abundance vs. scarcity mindset I guess.

I know this can be changed. I also know that it cannot be changed.

The determant for what causes change seems to be awareness and desire to improve. Mr. @Viking seems to have both.

That is something positive. Something that might be negativ would be the weight he gives "likability" in order to achive "fullfilment". I believe the focus should be changed towards innercore development and some of the other problems will partly autocorrect and loose their significants.

The "loveissue" is a whole other chapter.

 

You, @Shin , open up a very interesting discussion about "a distinct personality".

Consider an actualizing development......how will that effect the "distinct personality"?

 

 

[Shin]

5 minutes ago, Barbarian Number 8 said:

Ja, one destinction would be a person that is comfortable with having a pleasant personality and being liked, versus somebody who pretends to be likable in order to get something.

Abundance vs. scarcity mindset I guess.

I know this can be changed. I also know that it cannot be changed.

The determant for what causes change seems to be awareness and desire to improve. Mr. @Viking seems to have both.

That is something positive. Something that might be negativ would be the weight he gives "likability" in order to achive "fullfilment". I believe the focus should be changed towards innercore development and some of the other problems will partly autocorrect and loose their significants.

The "loveissue" is a whole other chapter.

 

The loveissue and the likability is the same problem at its core.

It's feeling a sense of lack that you want to fill with either approval, or love, which is the same thing, just different in intensity and context.

He needs to center itself inwards, then he won't need that anymore (ideally, but it can take a lot of time).

Quote

 

You, @Shin , open up a very interesting discussion about "a distinct personality".

Consider an actualizing development......how will that effect the "distinct personality"?

 

What do you mean by that ?

[Soulbass]

face yourself, brutal honesty

[Omario]

do affirmationss heavy. I've been doing them for a month now. and the results are almost magical.

You have to commit to doing them daily. 

In your case:

I am independent of the good or bad opinion of others.

[GrowingUp]

Often our thoughts/feelings are based on a simple misunderstanding. For example, if someone likes me = I'm likable. So we look outside of ourselves for proof of our worthiness. Bob likes me = I'm a good person, I'm worthy, I'm likable. Mary doesn't like me = I'm a worm, I'm unworthy, I'm unlikable.

So we're up and down all over the place when we look outside of ourselves for approval. 

And here's the EXTRA challenge - we have our own viewpoint of our likeability based on experience with others, socialization, school, parents, etc. And we believe that our likeability is also based on what WE feel. "Since I feel like a worm, I must be a worm" ... or "Since I feel unlovable, I must be unlovable". (Emotional reasoning... "Since I feel it, it must be true")

The reality is that YOU are an object of people's (including your own) thoughts and feelings.

But let's take YOU out of it for a moment to explain...

Let's say there's a red rose blooming. On a scale of 1 to 10, Bob loves that rose at a level 10+. He's infatuated with roses and they're his favorite flower. Mary, on the other hand, HATES roses. She thinks they're a waste of space and she hates them at a -8,000 on a scale of 1 to 10. And Fred - well, Fred is neutral about the rose. He doesn't care one way or another. Fred prefers cake over flowers.

How much the rose is loved has zero to do with the rose itself. The rose is just the OBJECT of other people's thoughts and feelings. The rose has maximum loveability. You can either love the rose completely - or hate the rose completely - but it has zero to do with the rose and everything to do with the person perceiving the rose itself. How much a rose is loved has everything to do with the person LOOKING AT the rose - and nothing to do with the rose itself. The rose is merely the object of love or no love.

When we add ourselves back into this equation, we complicate this a bit - because we take those "love" or "no love" messages we get from others and instead of seeing them as each person's individual preference - we adopt them as a truth about ourselves. ("Since Mary hates me, I must be a worm.")

So the key is to see how other people like/love us as about them, not our own actual loveability - and even seeing how we love ourselves simply about our own thoughts/feelings about our loveability - not actual fact.

You see, like the rose, whether we love ourselves fully or not at all has nothing really to do with our loveability. Our loveability is infinite. We may choose NOT to love ourselves very much - but that's not due to reality. That's due to our simply choosing to love ourselves at a level we think (incorrectly) is accurate. But honestly, we're just the object of our own love/no love. Just like the rose is an object of how other people love it. You are the object of your own love - and it's based on your thoughts/feelings - not fact.

When you realize this game, you can drop the need for getting people to like you - and decide to love yourself at whatever amount you wish - because it's all made up. Bob, Mary, Fred, You - you all have different mental opinions of your loveability. All made up by each of your minds - and none of it "true". Just a story. So when you see it like that - you can let it go - let people live in their own stories about you and the world - and you can pick your own story about how lovable/likable you are. It's all a story anyway - might as well pick one you like.