The Direct Message
Tension: The funniest person in a friend group is often the one carrying the most unacknowledged pain, because their humor creates an illusion of resilience that prevents anyone from checking on them.
Noise: Society classifies humor as a ‘mature’ defense mechanism and celebrates those who wield it, conflating comedic skill with emotional well-being and rewarding the performance that keeps the real person invisible.
Direct Message: The joke was never about making people laugh — it was about making sure they stayed. And the only person who knows the difference between genuine resilience and skilled deflection is the one who can’t stop performing.
Every DMNews article follows The Direct Message methodology.
Picture someone standing in front of an open menu at a restaurant, genuinely unable to choose. Not because everything looks good, but because they’ve spent so long ordering based on what would make the least fuss, cost the least money, or please whoever they’re with that the question “what do you want?” feels like it’s being asked in a language they no longer speak.
They end up ordering the special because at least that’s a decision made for them.
I saw this pattern repeatedly during my twelve years in clinical practice. These weren’t people with decision-making disorders. They were individuals who had become so expertly attuned to everyone else’s needs that their own internal compass had gone quiet. The technical term is “chronic other-focus,” but what it really means is that somewhere along the way, these people traded their wants for their worth.
1) They answer “what do you want?” with what works for everyone else
Ask them where they want to go for dinner, and they’ll tell you what’s convenient for you. Ask about vacation preferences, and they’ll list places others have mentioned. Press them for their actual preference, and you’ll watch something uncomfortable happen: a kind of mental scrambling, like they’re searching for a file that’s been deleted.
This isn’t politeness. People who are simply being polite can still tell you their preference even if they’re willing to compromise. This is something else entirely. It’s what happens when someone has spent so long translating their needs through the filter of other people’s comfort that they’ve lost the original language.
2) They feel guilty for having preferences at all
When they do identify something they want, it comes wrapped in guilt. They’ll preface it with apologies or immediately offer alternatives. “I was thinking maybe Italian food, but really, anywhere is fine. Actually, you choose.”
The guilt isn’t about being selfish. It’s deeper than that. It’s the feeling that having a preference at all is somehow taking up too much space. In attachment theory, we call this a form of preoccupied attachment, where the person’s sense of safety depends on minimizing their own needs to maintain connection.
3) Their life story is told through other people’s milestones
Ask about their twenties, and they’ll tell you about their sister’s wedding, their friend’s crisis, their parent’s illness. Their own story becomes a supporting narrative to everyone else’s main events. They were there, certainly, but always in the role of the helper, the supporter, the one who made things easier for everyone else.
I remember working with a client who couldn’t tell me a single achievement from their thirties that wasn’t about facilitating someone else’s success. When I pointed this out, they looked genuinely puzzled. “But those were the important things that happened,” they said. The idea that their own milestones might matter hadn’t occurred to them.
4) They have physical symptoms with no clear cause
The body keeps score, as van der Kolk reminds us, and bodies that have been in chronic service to others often develop mysterious symptoms. Unexplained fatigue. Headaches that appear when they finally have free time. Anxiety that surfaces only when no one needs them.
These aren’t psychosomatic in the dismissive sense. They’re the body’s way of signaling that something fundamental is out of balance. When we suppress our own needs long enough, the body starts speaking for us, usually in a language of exhaustion and unease.
5) They feel empty when no one needs them
Weekends alone feel threatening. Completed responsibilities leave them anxious rather than relieved. When caregiving roles end, they experience something closer to an identity crisis than empty nest syndrome.
This emptiness isn’t depression, exactly. It’s the absence of a organizing principle. When your entire sense of self has been built around meeting others’ needs, the absence of those needs doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels like disappearing.
6) They rationalize away their own disappointments
“It’s fine, I didn’t really want to go anyway.” “That promotion would have been too stressful.” “I’m happier with less responsibility.” They’ve become experts at talking themselves out of wanting things, usually before they’ve fully admitted to wanting them in the first place.
This isn’t healthy acceptance or Buddhist non-attachment. It’s a protective mechanism that kicks in before desire can fully form. If you never really wanted something, you can’t be disappointed when you don’t get it. More importantly, you can’t disappoint others by pursuing it.
7) They attract people who need a lot of support
Their relationships follow a pattern: they’re always the stable one, the understanding one, the one who has it together. They attract people in crisis, people working through things, people who need a steady presence. And they excel in this role, until they don’t.
The pattern isn’t accidental. When someone organizes their identity around caregiving, they unconsciously seek out relationships that confirm this identity. It’s not that they like drama or broken people. It’s that being needed feels like being loved, and being loved feels like having purpose.
8) They have a complicated relationship with the word “selfish”
Call them selfless and they’ll accept the compliment. But the word “selfish” makes them physically uncomfortable, even when used about someone else. They’ve spent so long avoiding any behavior that could be labeled selfish that the word itself becomes radioactive.
This isn’t about healthy boundaries or reasonable self-care. This is about a fundamental belief, usually installed in childhood, that their needs are inherently excessive and their wants are inherently suspect. My mother lived this way for thirty years, managing undiagnosed anxiety while everyone called her “just a worrier,” never once suggesting she deserved help for something that was consuming her from the inside out.
Finding the way back
The path back to knowing what you want isn’t about becoming selfish or abandoning everyone who needs you. It’s about recognizing that chronic self-abandonment isn’t actually generous. It’s a trauma response dressed up as virtue.
Start small. Notice when you deflect questions about your preferences. Pay attention to the guilt that surfaces when you have an opinion. Consider that maybe, just maybe, wanting something doesn’t make you dangerous or excessive or too much.
The truth is, people who genuinely no longer know what they want aren’t usually surrounded by grateful, fulfilled people. They’re surrounded by people who have learned to take their self-sacrifice for granted. Because that’s what happens when we teach others that our needs don’t matter: eventually, everyone believes us.
Recovery starts with the radical act of having a preference and stating it, even if it’s just about dinner. It’s not comfortable at first. But comfort, for someone who has spent their life in service to others, was never really the point anyway.
