Are you a DOORMAT? Let’s hope not! I’ll admit, I used to have doormat-like tendencies before I started my healing and recovery journey. Today, I can say, I am learning how NOT to be a doormat in every area of my life.
A doormat is a tool; a rug that we use on the front door of our homes to keep dirty shoes from traipsing mud onto our floors. We don’t think about the doormat, we just walk on it, leaving our dirt all over it.
People are also called doormats. These are the folks that everyone takes advantage of. They can’t say no, and they do everything asked of them. It’s obvious to people who are not doormats that people who are doormats think they’re worthless.
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.