Overly Selfless Girls

[RAFox]

Hey there,

One of my favorite pastimes is studying human behavior and things correlated to it. What makes us tick the way we do? What are the motivators for people who display behavior most unusual?

One type of girl I'm intrigued by is the overly selfless one. She is fixated on helping everyone in any way they can, too often putting them before herself. A relative of mine would do this up to exhaustion. She would get sick and still do things for people instead of taking care of herself.

What do you think drives such people? Have you ever encountered such a person? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Dale Carnegie said that the prime motivator for anyone is the craving for appreciation. If there isn't any more to it than that, I basically answered my own question.

 

[Smith]

I'm recently reading "No more Mr Nice Guy" by Robert Glover. I think the overly selfless girls are just the girl version of Mr Nice Guy. I could be wrong, and she could be unconditionally giving and that's awesome, but when you said she puts everyone before herself, then it's a sign that she has no boundaries and has "nice girl syndrome".
One interesting thing I learn from the book is that people unconsciously create their childhood experience. Like Nice Guys, she's fixated on fixing other people's situation thinking that if she makes other people happy, then she's happy. This behaviour comes from not getting her needs met when she was a child. Remember, a child thinks the world revolves around him/her. When a child didn't get her/his needs met in time, she's going to think it's her fault and she'll develop survival mechanism, such as being "nice", in order to get her needs met. Maybe she was ignored when she was a child but whenever she "fix" or help her parent out, her parent gives her love. This kind of conditioning carried on into her adulthood, and it's the way she knew she how to get people to give her any kind of love. What Nice Guys/Girls don't realize is that people can actually love them for who they are, but since they were conditioned to believe they can't be who they are, they're not living as happy as they should be.

 

[RAFox]

Very insightful, Smith. Perhaps I'll try the book
Thank you!