Escaping the Likability Cage

Boys and girls are frequently conditioned to behave in specific ways, but more traditionally for many, young girls are taught to be selfless — to want for others instead of themselves. Psychotherapist, author, interfaith minister, and Esalen workshop faculty Nancy Colier on showing up with your truth and letting your real self out.

Do you find yourself frequently adjusting, sweetening, and doctoring your truth, managing yourself in an effort to be liked — to give other people a positive experience with you? As women, we do this all the time without even realizing it; we shapeshift ourselves to be liked by people we like and don’t like, by those we respect and those we don’t, and even the ones we’ll never see again. We are equal-opportunity likability-chasers.

Trying to be liked is the background program running behind so much of what we say and do, but how does this happen? How does likability become the end goal for so many strong, confident, and wise women? 

When it comes to conditioning, both boys and girls are taught to behave in specific ways, but young girls are saddled with a particularly challenging expectation and demand: we’re taught to be selfless. Girls are taught that we should want for others but not for ourselves. Girls learn that taking care of other people is what they should want and also what earns them love, respect, and approval. A girl discovers that her value is intrinsically linked to her ability to make others happy.

A time comes in a girl’s life, often in her tweens, when she makes a kind of deal with the devil: She has to choose between being authentic and being likable. “Real” comes with the risk of being rejected at a time in life when her need for inclusion far outweighs her need for authenticity. To be likable and part of the “herd” is tantamount to survival. The problem is that this split continues for many women into their twenties, thirties, forties, and the rest of their lives. Being in relationship with other people remains more important than being in an honest relationship with ourselves. As a result, abandoning ourselves continues as the best strategy for taking care of ourselves. 

We might not realize we’re living from inside this likability cage until we experience the exhaustion, dissatisfaction, and inauthenticity that comes with it — until the gap between who we are on the inside and outside becomes too wide to ignore or bear. Living from inside the cage drains and stymies our fundamental vitality: mental, emotional, physical, and sexual. It disconnects us from our own wanting, truth, and voice — leaves us weary from the effort required to be who everyone else needs us to be.

Like any change process, liberating yourself from the likability cage begins with baby steps, over and over again; you didn’t choose likability as your North Star overnight, and you won’t give it up overnight. Try respectfully sending the food back that you didn’t order, saying out loud that you’re not okay (when you’re not okay), and admitting that you may not want what others think you should want. Shifting your driving question from “What do they think of me?” to “What do I think of me?” From “What do they want from me?” to “What do I want for me?”  

It’s counter-intuitive and goes against everything we’ve learned about being successful in life, but changing a core paradigm or habitual behavior usually requires doing the very thing we think makes the least sense. You can make it a conscious practice to not offer everyone a great experience with you, which may mean saying less, saying more, or saying different things. Dare yourself to disappoint others in small ways, and notice if it brings the dire consequences you have imagined. 

Without question, it’s scary to not be so likable in our society. Being liked “works” in many ways and nets us real cash and prizes. When we stop trying to manage everyone else’s perception of us, we risk being labeled selfish, difficult, demanding, controlling, bossy, hysterical, needy, high-maintenance, angry, and all the other judgments we encounter when we say what’s true rather than what will net us the best results.

It takes courage to show up with our truth, in our own shoes, but the payoffs are profound and give us the courage to keep going. Eventually, being real, regardless of how it’s perceived, becomes an empowering, self-affirming, and self-loving choice, like coming home to yourself after a long journey. We experience the mountain-like strength and immeasurable self-confidence and clarity that come with choosing authenticity over likability. Ask yourself, your own still small voice, How do you want to live your life?  Open the door to the likability cage and let yourself out.