Is being a good girl a syndrome?
The good girl adapts to please others, to meet other people’s expectations to the point that she forgets about herself. Technically it is called overadaptation syndrome.
Is adapting a problem?
It is if the needs of others are more important than yours, if you seek to please to feel valid, because that leads you to instability, to nothing motivating you and to feeling exhausted.
Does overadaptation damage self-esteem?
A lot, because in the end what is prioritized is the vision and needs of the other and you become a secondary character in your own life.
Is living for others a mistake?
It damages the relationship with oneself and with others, because in the end unbalanced relationships are generated. When you live for others it is not unusual to feel dissatisfaction with life.
Define life dissatisfaction.
A feeling of emptiness, of having no purpose, because by focusing so much on other people, you stop listening to yourself and, therefore, you stop introspecting, knowing where you want to direct your life and even knowing what you want to do today.
What is the profile of the good girl?
It is difficult for him to make decisions, due to what others may think, and he usually establishes very superficial or very conflictive relationships, because there is an ambivalence between overadapting to the other and rebelling.
And what about that unexpressed anger?
That moves: one day a disproportionate anger appears for something absurd, but in reality you are feeling anger for other situations to which you are subjecting yourself.
How to regulate it?
Setting limits on others; If you don’t do it, that repressed anger can become somatized and appear with physical symptoms and a lot of anxiety.
Is there a sociodemographic profile?
Especially girls between 20 and 40 years old with a high educational profile linked to self-demand with academic merits and who have probably lived since they were children.
Does it come from childhood?
Yes, for example if your family has established your worth in what you are capable of achieving. And it has a lot to do with gender mandates towards women. We have been taught that to be good we must be fragile, docile, sweet, correct, generous… perfect.
I believed that with the empowerment of women, liberation…
Sometimes it is that mandate of liberation that is behind the good girl. Now you have to have a good feminist card, and many times this self-demand ends up being a noose around your neck.
Doesn’t it happen to boys?
It also happens to them, but not as much, and it has to do with the fact that they have acquired more feminized roles throughout their lives, as caregivers for their siblings, their mother or their father.
Tell me more strategies that the good girl uses to feel validated.
Saving the other, which happens a lot in couples, especially heterosexuals. Save the conflictive boy or one who has a complicated life, and who is stuck in the role of victim.
And does the good girl put up with it?
Yes, because it depends on his own dependence on her; bases the relationship only on trying to save that person from a possible fatal fate. And so he gets into a pattern of intermittent reinforcement.
Explain to me.
For example, sex between a couple is very pleasant, but there is a conflict and the girl is not able to get out of the relationship, she maintains the connection even though the relationship is harmful.
What should be worked on to overcome this syndrome?
Self-listening, learning to take care of ourselves even in the most basic things; and self-esteem, which will allow us to work on relationships and break those that are reinforcing the syndrome.
Does the good girl end up depending on a reward that never comes?
Indeed, and it doesn’t come because no one will ever be able to fill that void that only oneself can cover.
What is the most painful?
The self-fulfilling prophecy. By being so aware of the needs of others, you do not connect with your own and you do not express them. By not expressing them, the other does not see them, therefore, they do not attend to them, and in the end you end up feeling abandoned. That is the self-fulfilling prophecy: what you feared is fulfilled.
What else is there to flee from?
Of toxic positivity. One of the basic beliefs of good girls is that if you are good and do good things, good things will also happen to you.
Limits are essential.
Love is not unconditional as they say, it requires conditions, which are those limits: what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. And that is what allows us to take care of the bond.
