You’ve ticked all the right boxes, the respectable career, the sensible decisions, the life that makes sense to everyone else. But somewhere along the way, you stopped asking what you actually want. Now you wake up, get ready for a job that looks impressive on paper, but feel like you’re walking into someone else’s life. There’s this quiet voice inside saying this was never actually my dream.
Maybe you’re a nurse because a parent never had that opportunity, and they always told you that you were caring. Maybe anything creative was dismissed as impractical, so you took that safe path. Maybe you married the “right” person, live in the “right” area, and tick every box you were supposed to tick. And maybe, despite all of this, you feel hollow.
This is what living according to other people’s expectations looks like. It’s heavy in a way that’s hard to explain, like carrying a life that was tailored for someone else and trying to make it fit. Clients often say how they ‘shouldn’t be feeling unhappy, look at what I have’.
The expectations might come from parents who wanted security for you, from cultural values about what makes a respectable life, or from a society that measures worth through extrinsic values such as career status and visible success. There’s often pride in meeting these expectations, genuine care behind them. But there’s also confusion, resentment, guilt, and a deep private grief for the life you might have lived if you’d been free to choose.
How Other People’s Dreams Become Yours
From childhood, messages about what’s acceptable, what’s praiseworthy, and what’s shameful start shaping the outline of your life. You learn which dreams get encouraged and which get dismissed. Which versions of yourself are loved and which need hiding away.
Psychologists call this introjection: adopting other people’s beliefs whole and mistaking them for your own. It rarely comes from malice. Parents push certain paths because they love you and fear for your security. Culture emphasises particular milestones because they signal belonging and respectability. Society praises visible achievements because they are easy to measure.
But over time, these external voices become so loud that your own gets lost underneath. You stop asking “What do I actually want?” and start asking “What would disappoint people least?”
Parents often want what they didn’t have. Safety. Status. Respect. Financial security. They push you toward certain careers or away from others based on their own fears and regrets. Without meaning to, they can link love to achievement, making it feel like approval depends on living up to their vision of success.
Culture sets narrow definitions of what counts as a good life. In some communities, marriage and children by a certain age are non-negotiable. In others, constant career advancement is the only acceptable trajectory. Media and social networks amplify this, showing curated versions of success that make anything different feel like failure.
Peers create pressure to conform that doesn’t end after school. You might choose a degree because friends did, maintain a lifestyle you can’t afford to fit in, or hide parts of your identity that might raise eyebrows. Social media intensifies this, turning every choice into a performance for an invisible audience whose approval feels essential.
All of these voices together create a kind of false self, a version of you built to please and to keep the peace. On the outside, this false self might look successful and confident. Inside, your actual self can feel small, unheard, or completely invisible.
What It Costs to Live for Others
The split between who you are and who you’re pretending to be takes enormous energy to maintain. This often shows up as chronic exhaustion, anxiety that won’t shift, or depression that seems to have “no reason.”
You might achieve major milestones and feel nothing, because they reflect other people’s goals rather than your own. You might have everything you were told to want and still feel empty, then blame yourself for being ungrateful. The inner critic becomes relentless because you’re simultaneously trying to be perfect and feeling like an imposter.
Resentment builds toward those whose expectations shaped your life, tangled with guilt for feeling resentful toward people who probably meant well. There’s shame for not finding joy in what others call success. And there’s grief for paths not taken, for parts of yourself that never had room to grow.
Physically, the body keeps score. Headaches, sleep problems, digestive issues, and burnout appear when you can no longer maintain the performance. Relationships suffer because people-pleasing and weak boundaries make an authentic connection impossible.
Your sense of worth becomes conditional, dependent on constantly meeting expectations and never saying no. You measure yourself against external markers of success rather than aligning with your internal values. And the gap between what your life looks like and what it feels like grows wider every year.
The Moment It All Becomes Clear
There’s often a tipping point where you can no longer ignore the gap between the life you’re living and the one you might have chosen.
Sometimes it’s triggered by a crisis: redundancy, illness, relationship breakdown, bereavement. Events that shake the foundations and force you to question what you’ve been building.
Sometimes it’s quieter. You reach a goal you worked toward for years and feel only emptiness. Sunday nights fill you with dread. You look at your life and realise you’ve been following someone else’s map without ever checking if it leads anywhere you actually want to go.
This realisation can be shocking and disorienting. You might fear disappointing people, losing status or security, or discovering that without these roles, you don’t know who you are. But there’s often relief too, because that vague sense that something’s wrong finally has a name.
This space between the old life that no longer fits and the new one that isn’t clear yet is what I work with most. It’s uncomfortable, full of not-knowing and mixed feelings. There’s pressure to rush back to safety, to pick a new path immediately just to calm the anxiety.
But this in-between space, however uncomfortable, is where real clarity becomes possible. It’s where you can finally ask what you actually want rather than what you’re supposed to want.
Grieving the Unlived Life
When you realise you’ve been living according to other people’s expectations, grief often follows. Not grief for a person who’s died, but for the life that never had room to exist.
You grieve your younger self who had to be the “good child.” The artist who never painted. The version of yourself who made different choices. The relationships built on authenticity rather than performance. The years spent becoming who you thought you should be instead of discovering who you are.
This grief can feel confusing because there are no rituals for it and others might not see anything wrong. It’s easy to dismiss with “others have it worse” or “I should be grateful.” But the sadness is real. It covers lost time, missed possibilities, and the exhaustion of maintaining a life that never quite fit.
There’s often anger too. Toward those who pushed their agenda, tangled with love and understanding because they probably thought they were helping. Toward yourself for going along with it, even though at the time it might have felt like the only safe option.
This grief doesn’t move in straight lines. Some days bring hope and clarity. Others bring doubt and regret. Pushing it away usually makes it heavier. Acknowledging it, speaking it aloud in a safe space, having it witnessed and validated, this helps transform it from a quiet ache into insight that can guide what comes next.
In therapy, this grief is treated as important and valid, not as self-indulgence or weakness. It deserves time and attention because it’s pointing toward something essential about who you actually are.
Finding Your Way Back to Yourself
Breaking free from expectations isn’t a sudden leap. It’s a gradual process of sorting through what truly belongs to you and what you’ve been carrying for others.
It starts with asking questions you might have been avoiding: What would I choose if nobody else had an opinion? When do I feel most like myself? What brought me joy before I learned it wasn’t practical or prestigious enough?
These questions can feel enormous or even unanswerable at first. That’s normal when you’ve spent years not asking them. The work is learning to sit with not-knowing rather than rushing to fill the gap with another plan that might just be someone else’s dream in different packaging.
Setting boundaries becomes essential. Saying no to expectations from family or culture can feel like betrayal initially. It might bring guilt or conflict. But boundaries aren’t rejection. They’re protection for what matters most to you. Starting small helps: limiting certain topics with relatives, taking breaks from social media, sharing changes gradually rather than all at once.
Reconnecting with your authentic self takes patience. It might mean revisiting interests you abandoned, trying small experiments without needing them to become big decisions, letting curiosity guide you for a while. It means treating yourself with the compassion you’d offer a friend navigating difficult change.
Create space for your own voice. This might look like journaling, walking without your phone, sitting in silence for a few minutes daily. Regular practice helps you distinguish your thoughts from the noise of everyone else’s opinions.
Find people who welcome your changing. Spend time with those who question conventional paths, who share openly about their own doubts, who support you setting boundaries. Distance from those who need you to stay the same to feel comfortable themselves.
What Therapy Offers
I work with people who feel stuck between an old self that pleased others and a new self that isn’t yet clear. This in-between state often comes with anxiety, low mood, and feeling profoundly lost. Rather than seeing this as a problem to fix quickly, I treat it as meaningful territory worth exploring carefully.
Person-centred therapy offers something many people haven’t experienced: being genuinely accepted without conditions. When you’ve spent years believing your worth depends on meeting expectations, sitting with someone who accepts you as you are can be powerful and disorienting.
Together, we explore which ideas about success, duty, and love were absorbed from others and which feel more like your emerging values. There’s no rush to pick a new path. Instead, the work builds comfort with uncertainty, clarifies boundaries, and strengthens trust in your own internal signals.
I offer counselling sessions in Cornwall and online throughout the UK, with reduced rates for those on lower incomes. The work moves at your pace. For some people, change means major life shifts. For others, it’s subtler adjustments that create space for more authenticity within existing circumstances.
What matters is that you’re learning to include yourself in the equation, to factor your needs and values into decisions instead of only considering what others expect or approve of.
Moving Forward
Recognising you’ve been living according to other people’s expectations rather than your own values is difficult and brave. Many people never pause long enough to notice this, so reaching that awareness is already significant.
It’s normal if this recognition brings grief, fear, or confusion. These feelings don’t mean something’s wrong with you. They show how much you care about living in a way that feels real and true.
Choosing to move toward a life shaped by your own aspirations rather than inherited expectations is rarely simple. There will be difficult conversations, setbacks, and days when old patterns pull strongly. But the possibility of finally feeling at home in your own life can make this work deeply meaningful.
You don’t have to navigate this alone. Support from someone who understands these transitions and holds space for uncertainty can offer grounding when everything else feels unstable.
If this article reflects your experience, I’m here. Not with another script about who you should be, but with a genuine interest in who you actually are beneath all those expectations.
A different way of living is possible. One where other people’s dreams don’t dictate your choices, and your own path can slowly come into view.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if I’m living according to others’ expectations or my own desires?
Signs include feeling empty even when life looks successful, making choices based primarily on how others will react rather than how you feel, difficulty answering “What do I want?” without mentioning other people’s opinions, and achieving goals that bring no satisfaction. Therapy offers a calm space to untangle which parts of your life feel chosen and which feel inherited.
Is it selfish to prioritise my own aspirations over family expectations?
Many people fear that this is selfish, especially with strong family expectations. In reality, ignoring your own needs long-term usually creates resentment and emotional distance. When you listen to yourself with care, you can meet others with honesty instead of quiet bitterness. Therapy helps work through guilt and find balance between caring for others and caring for yourself.
What if I’ve already invested years or decades in a path that doesn’t feel right?
Changing direction after significant investment feels daunting. It’s natural to grieve the time and energy given to a path that no longer fits. But that doesn’t mean you must stay. Skills, relationships, and insights from your past don’t vanish when you shift course. In therapy, you can recognise what that path gave you, feel the grief for what it cost, and explore fresh options for a more genuine future.
How can therapy help me find my authentic self?
Therapy provides a steady, confidential space to question old stories about who you “should” be. In person-centred counselling work, you’re met with genuine acceptance rather than more expectations, which challenges beliefs that love must be earned through achievement. Together, we explore where pressure came from, how it shows up emotionally and physically, and what feels different when you listen to your own needs rather than inherited scripts.
What if people are disappointed or angry when I start making different choices?
Some people probably will be disappointed, especially if they’re invested in you staying the same. This is painful but often necessary for authentic change. Not everyone will understand or support your journey, and that’s their limitation, not yours. Therapy helps you navigate these relationships, communicate boundaries clearly, and cope with others’ reactions without abandoning yourself again.
