The unfortunate reality is that some people have been conditioned to believe that relying on others makes them a burden. The truth is that people are social animals. We all need other people from time to time. It is a rare person who can exist totally in a vacuum on their own, taking up no space other than that which is directly around them.
Easing these guilty feelings can be more difficult than just amending a couple of behaviors. Mental health experts inform us that these feelings are often rooted in trauma, social expectations, and past experiences. Emotional neglect or trauma in childhood often plays a role, as the child is taught that they are a burden by the bad actions of the adults in their life.
Still, if you want to stop feeling like a burden, identifying the following behaviors is a good place to start, and points to a need for talk therapy to address the issue further.
1. You avoid asking for help.
Why would anyone avoid asking for help? Well, it’s because they were likely made to feel like a burden or incompetent when they asked in the past. It may have earned them physical, mental, or emotional abuse to bother their adult, so they came to associate those negative feelings with asking for help.
Furthermore, these feelings can be conditioned by another person making promises and failing to show up for them. Why bother asking for help when they aren’t going to do it, anyway? Why bother asking for help when you’re just going to be let down and have to do it yourself, anyway?
As an adult, unhealthy relationships can foster this kind of conditioning, too. For example, because one partner just doesn’t follow through on things, real or imagined. They may practice “weaponized incompetence,” where they pretend they are incapable of learning or doing things. At some point, it causes the other partner to just throw up their hands and do it themselves.
2. You downplay your emotions and needs.
Everyone needs help and support sometimes, but those who feel guilty often avoid wanting to take up any emotional space. They may have low self-esteem or low self-worth, feeling as though they don’t deserve to have their emotions and needs taken care of like anyone else. Instead of being a problem, they try to make themselves “easy” by minimizing what they need.
In turn, that causes them to enter into unhealthy relationships with people who genuinely don’t care about their emotions and needs because they like the fact that they’re “low maintenance.” That lack of boundary communicates they are willing to be treated like a doormat, won’t stand up for themselves, and will accept bad behavior and emotional neglect because they don’t feel they’re important.
A dear friend of mine, “Jenny,” discovered this about herself on her own journey of self-discovery. She spent years making herself the emotional workhorse for everyone else because she just didn’t feel worthy of anyone’s time or consideration. It took therapy and addressing her trauma to understand she was worthy and how to be okay with asking for and accepting help.
3. You self-isolate.
Self-isolation is a maladaptive and self-destructive coping skill that people use to avoid feeling as though they are a burden. A person who feels emotionally raw and sensitive may not feel as though they can keep their emotions under wraps, so they self-isolate so that others can’t tell. That way, they can avoid the feeling of imposing themselves on others.
Of course, this behavior is unhealthy and disruptive to healthy relationships. Yes, there are people out there who will be glad not to have to help anyone else. The real question is whether you want to be around those people or not.
In a healthy relationship or friendship, both people support one another when they really need it. Sometimes you need to pick up the other person, other times they will need to pick you up. Anyone who makes you feel unworthy or like a burden is not someone you should want to have a close relationship with.
4. You over-apologize often.
Therapist Millie Huckabee, LCPC, writes that people with low self-esteem or self-worth often over-apologize because they’re afraid that their existence is inconveniencing other people. They don’t want to take up any space, but that’s just not a reasonable goal. Anyone who is acting in a healthy way is going to take up space. That’s just how relationships work.
Excessive apologizing is another maladaptive coping skill used to self-soothe feelings of guilt. A person using it doesn’t want the other person to feel like they need to make any room for them, consider their feelings, or deal with anything negative that they may be responsible for. Of course, that’s an entirely unreasonable, unhealthy expectation.
5. You are a people pleaser.
People with low self-esteem often people-please because they feel they are unworthy of receiving affection or attention. They feel like they need to provide value transactionally so that other people will want to be around them. It makes them uncomfortable to just receive something without giving something back.
People-pleasing is a behavior centered around currying favor. The idea being, “If I do more for this person, they will like me more and want me to be around.” Unfortunately, all that actually does is make you vulnerable to people who want to take advantage of you.
People with healthy boundaries don’t want to take advantage of you. They value you for more than what you can do for them.
6. You frequently seek reassurance.
You may find that you frequently check in with the people around you to make sure they aren’t upset with you, or that you aren’t annoying them despite there being no reason for it. People who feel like a burden want to make sure they’re not taking up the space of the people close to them. They ask so they can take preemptive action rather than waiting for someone to say something.
Yes, it is true that sometimes we can be annoying or overbearing. Everyone is sometimes. However, the healthy approach is to let other people be the judge of how they feel and voice their own discomfort. It’s just stressful and unkind to yourself to try to stay on top of guessing and asking when you feel like you’re being too much.
Everyone has different tolerances. If you don’t feel good about yourself, then your tolerance for what you feel other people should accept is going to be much lower than what it actually is, and you’ll be seeking excessive reassurance as a result.
7. You talk yourself down.
Self-deprecating talk and jokes are often a thinly veiled mask for low self-esteem. Yes, self-deprecating jokes can sometimes be funny. However, people who don’t feel good about themselves often go too far with this humor or take it into uncomfortable areas.
Many people don’t realize that self-deprecating talk can also be a way to subconsciously reinforce their own negative feelings about themselves. They tell themselves that they aren’t smart, or good, or good-looking, or whatever it is, because they don’t feel like they deserve better.
That way, they can essentially use self-deprecating humor to punish themselves for being a burden, but there is a level of plausible deniability there that they can use if someone else steps in to say, “Hey. That’s not true. Be kinder to yourself.”
8. You overthink social interactions.
You may find that you overthink and ruminate on old conversations, replaying moments where you think you may have been or said too much to make other people uncomfortable. There may be no evidence of that, so you instead create that evidence yourself.
Furthermore, you go into present and future social interactions with your mind on how to avoid being “too much,” even though it’s not really for you to decide. As I’ve said, everyone has different tolerances. Even if you are too much for someone else, that doesn’t mean it’s a you problem. It may just be a them problem.
Final thoughts…
These behaviors point to a lack of self-worth and self-esteem. They are indicative that a person thinks less of themselves for reasons that may not be relevant or meaningful. In fact, the behaviors may instead be rooted in childhood trauma or abusive relationships where you were made to feel like you were unworthy.
It’s not an accurate reflection of reality. Instead, it’s a difficult pattern of behavior that needs to be examined to be broken so that you can feel safe, happy, and secure in your own skin. You are allowed to take up space. It’s something that everyone does from time to time.
