Are You a Doormat?

Stop Letting Them Walk All Over You

Are you a doormat? If you let everyone walk all over you and take and take without giving you anything in return, then the answer might be yes, you are a doormat. People who are doormats support everyone else, but feel lost or rejected when no one supports them. Doormats also lend others money and never get paid back. Don’t you wish everyone were as giving and friendly as you?

Well no one is going to change as long as you are giving them a free ride. If you want to make things better, you are the one who is going to have to change. Start by taking an inventory of the people in your life and then ask yourself where your emotions and energy are expended most.

I recently had a call with a happy California Psychics client who had wonderful news to share. I had predicted she would be in a new and better relationship and while that did happen, my client was most excited about the change in focus that led to her new and healthy relationship. After her initial call with me, she quit enabling her friends, family and boyfriend (now her ex). I didn’t tell her to cut anyone out of her life. I just showed her how to set boundaries. It’s amazing how when people set boundaries, their so-called good friends drift away. If you do everything to maintain a relationship with someone, there’s a good chance they’ll go away once you set boundaries. But that’s okay. If you have to do all the work, it’s not the right relationship for you anyway.

Hungry for Love 

It is no fun to be so hungry for love that we are tempted to lower our standards so much and tolerate a very negative or emotionally unhealthy person. When you’re a doormat, that behavior actually competes with the wisdom of your higher self. I had a client who was a people-pleaser and giver to the point of being a royal doormat. She would frequently call up her friends (many rather self-absorbed) to make sure they were emotionally okay and that they weren’t mad at her. For some reason she chose to read anyone’s moodiness as a belief that they were mad at her. I worked with her to recognize her impulsive need to feel okay by over-giving to everyone else and neglecting her own needs.

So what happened to make her want to change? She got hurt. She got rejected. She got the message big time that she wasn’t important to her friends and the only time they had connection was when she was there for them, and not the other way around. She woke up one morning and heard a thought in her head: “I deserve better.”

Your Deserve Better

After acknowledging that she deserved better, she didn’t turn into an entitled princess. She came to realize her doormat impulses and found that the reason she was trying to make sure everyone was pleased and not mad at her was because that is how she was creating her sense of safety. It turned out that one of her parents exhibited a lot of rage and of course, it scared her, so my client developed the impulse to make sure everyone around her was happy because she needed to feel safe.

The next step to healing was to learn how to create safety in a different way. I worked with my client to connect with her higher self and learn the wisdom of how to feel safe, yet not be a doormat.

For instance, my client finally said no to helping a friend of hers move for a second time away from her cheating boyfriend after helping her the first time. The friend was so upset and at first my client felt guilty about saying no, but eventually she realized it was the right thing to do. When your responses come from your higher-self impulse rather than fear and insecurity, unique things can happen.