Cristina Galafate
Updated Friday, March 15, 2024-02:26
Patri Psychologist: "The best advice to live with serenity is to stop running everywhere"
Elsa Punset: "Our brain looks for, exaggerates and memorizes the negative better than the positive"
In the same way that all mothers sometimes say "drink the juice, your vitamins will go away", every daughter has also heard the reprimand
"you sure look stupid"
.
But there is as much truth in neither of the two idioms as is believed.
Neither vitamins run out of the glass and disappear instantly nor is the concept of kindness a
submission in which you give yourself to others
while forgetting about yourself.
It is the thesis from which
Marta Martínez Novoa
(Sanxenxo, August 28, 1993), graduated in Psychology from the University of Santiago de Compostela and has a master's degree in General Health Psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid, begins in her new book
The syndrome of the good girl
(Ed. Zenith).
"You learn that in order to be smart you have to forget about being good, but you want to be because it makes you feel valid and that's how we are educated. However, socially it is frowned upon because it is a quality that makes you fragile. So we are facing a crossroads," he explains.
See this post on Instagram
Women are burdened by this role as caregiver in an evolutionary and historical way, and socially they are considered empathetic, but why did you want to feminize your book and present the girl as the one affected by this syndrome? Society understands itself through constructs.
Men and women are granted certain attributes for the mere fact of being men.
Femininity is associated with complacency, sweetness, correction, fragility... And masculinity with strength, intelligence, success, lack of vulnerability... That is why
we are more susceptible
when it comes to fall into this syndrome.
It seemed fair to give it a feminine title, although of course I also have affected men in consultation, which usually coincides with those who have had very feminized roles.
For example, taking care of siblings from a very young age or a sick mother or grandmother.
Now there is a lot of talk about learning to say no and setting limits, but how do we identify that we are crossing that fine line of what is acceptable? There are some general characteristics that usually begin by
putting the needs of others before our own
, even if that harms you. enormously.
It also has a lot to do with demand, perfectionism, hyper responsibility and believing that enough is never enough and you must do more to feel valid.
Sometimes there is also difficulty in making decisions, especially the most everyday ones.
That is, you hesitate when you change jobs but also when buying some pants.
And that happens because we define ourselves through those decisions and none of them are going to be good enough.
And finally, there is a repression of emotions such as anger.
Pay attention to whether every time someone tells you something that could cause you to enter into conflict, you allow yourself to discuss it in a conciliatory tone or if you suffer panic. In the book he talks about how in childhood certain behaviors are internalized that cause us problems in adulthood but we cannot blame it on everything.
What are they and how can we change? It has a lot to do with the fact that the main caregivers have demanded a lot from us because they have understood that X career brings value to you as a person.
For example: they expect you to be a doctor because it is a prestigious profession and that will give you an image and projection of an important person.
There are many parents who do not demand you directly, but have
very high expectations of you.
.
They believe in your potential and push you to move forward.
And if you have a standard temperament that makes you push yourself, that can be an explosive cocktail to develop this syndrome.
As you say, we cannot blame past generations who have not had emotional education.
But it is important to know it to have an explanation.
We assume that our parents did the best they could with what they had. The social environment invites us to endless productivity where one exploits oneself believing that one is achieving oneself.
Is it a perfect breeding ground for this syndrome?
Absolutely.
The most difficult thing about the good girl syndrome is identifying it, because
it is no longer a normalized pattern, but rather it is socially reinforced
.
There is a generalized idea of meritocracy but especially towards women there is pressure to be the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect worker... But be careful, don't stand out either because then you are ambitious and arrogant.
If you are a very good mother, it means that you have put aside your professional career, but if you take care of yourself, you are a very bad mother... Here is the catch.
A spiraling self-demand that has no end.
It is impossible to be what they expect of you, because what others think will never be homogeneous
.
This profile has a hard time getting out of a toxic relationship, he writes in his book.
What tools would you give him to cut things off? The breakup is still a conflict.
Talking about your limits and prioritizing yourself looks bad socially, although in official discourse we tell everyone that they can ask for help, but when they do, if that means ending some privileges, I no longer like it.
The collective ideology when you leave someone is that you are the bad one
.
Furthermore, women often assume the role of savior, for example, with a partner who has had a very conflictive past.
And a victim who is needing you is more difficult to leave.
There are vulnerable profiles that many people take advantage of.
There are numerous examples, such as app scammers.
What can they do to avoid being manipulated? They have to protect themselves and for that
psychoeducation and working hard on self-esteem
are very important .
If necessary, with therapy or the help of books to begin to identify the most basic self-care and listen to yourself.
You are worthy of a relationship in which you are a principal and, through this, we must recognize the red flags of what is not a secure relationship. It also points out that many times we enter a loop from which it becomes difficult to get out.
How to break this vicious circle? The first thing of all is
to redefine the concept of kindness
, understand that there has to be a balance.
Society does not allow us to stop for a moment to analyze if I am okay with myself and the life I lead.
And it is essential to have those moments of doing nothing to ask yourself questions. Sometimes a little glass fills up and suddenly overflows and it seems that nothing has ever been done for anyone.
How do you deal with this situation?
Learning to regulate emotions
.
Good girls have a hard time understanding her anger because they associate it with a bad image and tend to repress it because of what people will say.
They give a lot of importance to what others think.
The interesting thing is to understand your needs in order to meet them.
Through this regulation there will not be those brutal explosions that later make you feel more guilty.
Does the good girl get pigeonholed? This happens.
Even with people who may love you in a very healthy way.
They get used to the fact that you always say yes to everything, you always adapt, you have a passive role... Then the others feel very comfortable.
We have to work a little as a society so that
when someone says no, we are taking care of ourselves
and even protecting the bond so that there is no wear and tear on the relationship.
It's not necessarily punishing us.
How can that good girl express her emotions?
Is there a way for her to start letting the rest of her slip away to take the reins of her life? The image that others make of us is a drawing that is not even close to reality.
Each person does it in their own way, and we cannot control that charcoal to make a line.
Others can think what they want that this is out of our reach.
So, if it is uncontrollable, why spend so much energy trying to fit into a mold that is not homogeneous?
You can't be everything the world expects of you.
And it wouldn't make any sense either, because you wouldn't live connected to yourself and you wouldn't have well-being.
To look bad with others is to be able to look good to yourself many times, that is, to be able to give you what you need, which in the end is what is really important to be able to feel good.
THE PHRASES THAT FORGE THE SYNDROME
How mature you are for your age!
"This is a very common mechanism of manipulation and hooking in relationships in which the man is much older than the woman," explains the psychologist.
Shut up, you're prettier
or
How good this girl is, she never bothers!
"We see how kindness is associated with disappearance, with not disturbing, with making oneself small."
This girl has a very well-equipped head.
"
Reinforcing the characteristics related to containment so much, other equally or more important ones related to expression are no longer reinforced: fears, doubts, anger, shame, etc."
If you are good, good things will happen to you
or
Be good so they will bring you gifts.
"It is quite dangerous to grow up with the ironclad and reinforced belief that, if you adapt to being what is expected of you, you will be happy and good things will happen to you."
The good girl syndrome.
Stop pleasing everyone and start thinking about yourself
is published by Zenith and can be purchased here