You Cannot Make Someone Happy And Here’s Why

If you’ve ever felt a jolt of panic when someone is upset and your first thought is “What did I do wrong?”, this conversation is for you. I’m Dr. Donna, and I’m naming a belief that quietly runs relationships, families and workplaces: the idea that you’re responsible for other people’s happiness. It sounds like being caring, but it often turns into people pleasing, overgiving, fawning and walking on eggshells until you’re drained and unsure of who you even are anymore. 

We dig into what actually creates happiness and why you can’t manufacture it for someone else. Happiness is internal, shaped by emotional regulation, perception and the meaning a person assigns to their life. That means you can be kind, supportive and thoughtful, yet still be unable to regulate someone else’s nervous system or solve their internal conflict. I also talk about the “if I do enough” myth, why it produces short-term relief instead of real emotional stability, and how this cycle can become exhausting and even enable unhealthy or abusive dynamics. 

Then we get practical and clear about your real role in relationships: being accountable for your behaviour, communicating directly, holding boundaries and regulating your own emotions. When you stop trying to carry another person’s mood, you become more honest, your boundaries strengthen, and your relationships reveal who can meet you with mutual effort. If this resonates, subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the boundary you’re ready to set next.

Transcript

Why This Belief Runs Your Life

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Hello, it's Dr. Donna and welcome to another episode of my podcast, Soul Talk and Psychic Advice. Today we're talking about something that can quietly run your life if you're not aware of it. And a lot of people aren't, yeah, you know, they don't even realize what they're doing. And that belief is that you are responsible for other people's happiness. A lot of people feel this way. And it comes up in many different ways, right? This shows up in subtle ways like trying to say the right thing, avoiding conflict, not wanting people to be mad at you, not wanting to upset people, over explaining yourself, and adjusting your behavior so that others feel okay. So we know that people pleasing, overgiving, and the fawning um comes into this, right? And if you are intuitive, empathic are mostly aware, this tendency is often stronger because being an empath is often rooted in childhood trauma, right? Because you can feel what other people are feeling. So healers, intuitives, empaths, psychics, right? You're gonna really feel other people's stuff, and that's why it's so important to do your own, you know, nervous system work and somatic exercises so that you know what's their stuff and what's yours, and you could catch yourself if you're people pleasing. That is important, but you know, feeling someone is not the same as being responsible for them, but they get tied into each other, right? So today we're going to break down why you cannot make other people happy, what actually determines someone's emotional state. That is important to know and understand why this pattern forms in the first place, and what changes when you stop carrying that responsibility, right? It's important to know. So if you feel responsible on some level for other people's happiness, pleasing your parents, your partner, your friends, you know, co-workers, boss, you know, not wanting people to be mad at you or disappointed in you, this will be a good podcast to listen to. Let's talk about what actually creates happiness. Okay? Let's start with clarity. Happiness is not something that is given to someone from the outside, and people really think it's external, but it's always internal, and happiness is a choice that we have to make despite what's going on in our life. A lot of people think that everything has to be lined up and perfect in order to feel happy, and so they're equating happiness with safety, and that isn't what happiness is, it is internally generated, it comes from how someone interprets their life, how they regulate their emotions, and how they process experiences, and what meaning they assign to situations. Two people can experience the same event and feel completely different. That happens all the time, right? We all have different experiences, and even if you grew up in a household with siblings, you can ha and had the same parents all the way through. You can have different perceptions of what took place and how it affected you. And this is how you know siblings end up having a conflict, right, over who's right and who's wrong and what really happened, but really it's just different perception of two people or many people experiencing the same thing. So, why does this happen? Because their internal world is different, right? Everybody has a different filter. So when you try to make someone happy, you're trying to control something that is not externally controlled, it can't come from the outside. You can be kind, you can be supportive, and you can be thoughtful. Okay, those are great qualities, right? To be kind, supportive, and thoughtful, but you cannot regulate their nervous system for them. You cannot. And if you're with a partner who constantly forces you to make them happy, you're gonna be working over time, and they'll never be happy and never be enough, and you'll be working harder and harder, and they will just love seeing you work harder and harder. It becomes abusive. Um, you cannot resolve their internal conflicts, they have to do their own work, and us fixers love to fix things for people and make them feel good, and you cannot create lasting emotional stability for them. You cannot. That is an inside job that they must do. You cannot do this for them, no matter how hard you try, it is virtually impossible. And I see people beating themselves up because they don't understand their patterns and why they're trying so hard to make someone happy. And haven't you ever thought of someone where you try to make happy and it was never enough, they're never satisfied, you just felt mistreated, and you felt like, do they care? Do they see what I'm doing? Do they love me? And it's because it is an inside job that they must fix, and you can't, no matter how much you love them. You can't even do it for your own kids, right? You could create conditions for them, but they have to find their happiness. Let's talk about the myth of if I do enough, and it is a myth. Many people operate from the belief if I just do enough, they'll feel better, right? So you try saying the right words, fixing problems, being more patient, giving more time, more energy, and more understanding. Right? Being more understanding. So many people do that and they think that's a virtue, but it can also be a problem. And sometimes it works temporarily. They feel better for a moment, but then it fades. And you're back in the same position. Because what you're doing is creating temporary emotional relief, not actual happiness. Relief looks like a distraction, right? Reassurance and comfort. And it's just temporary. But relief is not the same as emotional stability. So you end up in this cycle of give, you give temporary improvement to the situation. So you're giving, you can be people pleasing, funny, overgiving, right? And then you get a temporary improvement, and then an emotional drop, and it's like, oh my god, I gotta give more, I gotta give more. So you're working harder to help somebody else feel better, and it just doesn't work. And over time, guess what happens? That becomes very exhausting because that's a hard thing to keep up. And for any of you who have been in that cycle, you know it doesn't work, even though if you have a parent that you're trying to make happy, you were raised to do that. So you were raised to exhaust yourself. Even people who will take care of a abusive parent because they're still trying to get that approval and still trying to make the parent happy, and nothing works. And so you end up exhausting yourself and losing yourself, and you become unhappy, and then they're not happy, so both of you guys are unhappy. That's what usually happens. So let's talk about why impasse, intuitives, and just kind loving people struggle with this. If you are highly perceptive, you notice tone shifts, right? If you're an empath, especially, energy changes, and emotional comfort, right? You can feel when something is off. And your nervous system may interpret it that as something needs to be fixed, right? For us fixers. It's like what needs to be fixed, let's just get on it, right? So you step in, you try to smooth things over, you try to help. You try to bring things back into balance and you can try and try and try. But here's the problem. And this is the problem. You're responding to someone else's internal state as if it is your responsibility, right? You are really trying so hard to make somebody who has their own issues, they may have their own demons, their own trauma, their own whatever going on. And you're trying from the outside to fix their inside, especially if you love them and you just want to see them happy, because also for us fixers, we settle down, we feel regulated when everything's calm, but it's not the right type of regulation, you know, to do that. It's not, it's actually dysregulation. If you need everybody else settled, and then you could be happy. That and that's a lot of work because we don't know what's really going on with somebody on the inside, why they're upset, why they feel what they feel. And so this often comes from early conditioning around keeping the peace. You learn this at a young age. You're you're a kid with adult responsibilities, walking on eggshells, trying not to upset your parents, your caretakers, you know, being a fixer in the family. You learn that young. And sadly a lot of kids have adult roles in their home. And the parents put it on them. It's like parents forget that, you know, they're children and their brains don't fully form until age twenty-five, and they put this pressure and this guilt on them, and it's a lot. And so you learn that can connections required emotional management. You learned if you were gonna feel a connection with someone, that you had to manage their emotions, keep them happy, prevent them from being upset. And if you gotta walk on eggshells or overgive or people please or fond to do it, you will. And this comes from only feeling valued when you were helpful. That's why you see the helpers, I just want to help. You know, a lot of times that's where it comes from. And it looks like, oh, they're just a nice, kind, good person. They can very well be, of course. They probably still are, but that excess needing to help, that's what it's about. So your identity becomes tied to being the one who stabilizes others. But that role has a cost. It's a huge cost when you're trying to stabilize others. You're losing yourself and you're setting off your triggers and your issues, and you're gonna struggle. When you take responsibility, right, for other people's happiness, you you you lose clarity about your own needs, right? This is what happens to the people pleasers, the overgivers, they lose themselves in taking care of others. And they think it's a good thing, but it really isn't. And you end up having to get sick in order to prioritize yourself or something bad happened, and seeing that no one's there for you after you've been there for everyone else. And so when you take responsibility for other people's happiness, you lose clarity about your own needs. You may start to ignore your own boundaries. You just kind of forget to have them. They just kind of evaporate and they no longer matter. So you're you you're losing clarity about your own needs, and people will take as much as you are willing to give. It's just how it is. And you you know, if you're willing to give it, somebody will take it. And you tolerate things that don't feel good because you're trying to keep other people happy. And that need to keep other people happy, it becomes little, right? And it happens in relationships. And what happens is with your partner, you start letting the partner get away with some little disrespect and some little mistreatments because you want to keep them happy, because your triggers have come in, your trauma has come in, and they're taking advantage of that. And so there you are, you you've lost your boundaries and you're tolerating things that don't feel good, and you overextend yourself emotionally when you're trying to keep people happy. It's like, where did you go? Who are you? You lose yourself, and you feel drained in your relationships, whether they're with family, friends, romantic partner, co-workers, etc. You just aren't yourself, you lose yourself, and you feel drained and you don't want to be around anybody, or it makes you sick or stressed or upset to really be around other people because you are giving so much of yourself and you've lost your boundaries and you're tolerating um mistreatment and you're so emotionally overextended. You also begin to measure yourself by how they feel. If they're upset, you feel like you did something wrong. And I've heard that from people, they're like, Oh, they're they're upset, what did I do wrong? How can I fix it? Are they mad at me? They gotta be mad at me. And even if I say no, they're like, But they're upset, it's gotta be at me. And I tell them, No, it's not about you. But and they feel it so deeply, so they really associate that person being upset with being their fault. And I tell them, No, you may feel that because of a past experience, but it's not related to this one. But people get very triggered when they feel like someone is upset with them and they start thinking, I did something wrong, how do I fix it? And it and you could just feel the sadness and the fear and the triggers, and they really try to turn it around. And then if they're happy, you feel like you did something right. Look at me. You know, I'm able to make someone happy, and that's a huge responsibility to have to try to make someone happy. That creates a fragile sense of self. It really does. Because now your stability is dependent on someone else's emotions and you're gonna react to how they're acting. And so if they're not happy, you won't be. If they're happy you will be and so when are you your authentic self? Do you know what really makes you happy or sad? Do you know? And since you cannot control those emotions, because you cannot, you'll you'll end up feeling anxious, getting anxiety. One way to get anxiety, responsible, and never fully settled. You never get to settle into your connections with people or know when to walk away. You don't know. Let's talk about what is actually your role. It's very important to understand this. Let's define your role in relationships. You are responsible for your behavior, how you act, how you carry yourself, are you taking accountability for your feelings, your actions, your emotions? You are responsible for your behavior, you're responsible for your communication that you can mean you communicate clearly. You want your needs, wants, your expectations, your boundaries, everything. Clear communication. But if you want to make other people happy, you're probably not communicating clearly because you don't want to upset them. But that is your responsibility, and you're responsible for your boundaries, okay? Your boundaries that you have set and for them to be honored. Just don't expect that if people care about you, they treat you right because we all have different boundaries, and we have to communicate that. And you're responsible for your emotional regulation. Yes, you are. So definitely remember that. You're not responsible for how someone interprets you. That's their filter. You can't control that, and people try. They try to control how people perceive them and think about them. You can't because people have their own filter, and you cannot control how someone processes their feelings. They process how they process, and whether someone chooses happiness. Happiness is a choice, and some people have everything that should make them happy and they're not because of something else. Or we don't know what people need to be happy. They gotta figure it out. And you can't be responsible for if they choose happiness, because happiness isn't isn't a thing where I be happy when when I get the job, when I have the relationship, when I lose weight, when I get money, when I everything's perfect, because that things are always gonna be messy, right? There's always gonna be something to deal with. Happiness is a choice that you have to choose every day and find the small little things in life. And that's what I learned you you know throughout life when I had tough moments. You you know, just the little wins is how you say, okay, this is something to be happy about, and then being thankful and grateful and tying that in will make you happy. And even when I was going through the worst part of grief, I just found little things like oh, I get to walk my dog, and this is the dog that my son gave me, and you you know, just things like that. You have to choose happiness, it won't come otherwise. You'll be waiting your whole life to feel happy, and some people just won't feel happy because they don't know what it's supposed to feel like. But once you realize it's a choice, you realize it's not about cafetti or peace all the time, it's about choosing happiness no matter what. And that's what happiness is. You can contribute to a relationship by doing your part, but you cannot carry it emotionally for the other person. They have to do their part. Healthy connection looks like two people, each responsible for their own internal state, coming together with mutual effort. Not one person regulating both, no, because you can't. So let's talk about what changes when you let go. When you stop trying to make people happy, several things happen. First, you become more honest, you stop performing and start relating. Second, your boundaries strengthen. Yes. When you stop trying to make other people happy, you no longer overextend just to keep things smooth because that's not your job. Third, your relationships become clearer because now you can see who takes responsibility for themselves and who expects you to carry their emotional weight. You want to step back and so you can observe and see who everybody is in your life, and finally you experience more internal stability. More inner peace and less stress because your sense of self is no longer tied to someone else's emotional state. This is actually a big, big talk topic. I can really just spend time going in how somebody ends up being a a people pleaser trying to make other people happy. And you know, I've done that in some podcasts, and I do it more and I plan to talk just about the fun response soon. But I'm gonna close this out because I feel like just one little digestible piece at a time with the topic is better. That's why I keep my podcast, you know, no more than twenty-five minutes, so that it's just one thing to process. So closing this out, you cannot make other people happy. You cannot. And it won't make someone stay or go, they have to choose that. Not because you don't care, and not because you're not capable, but because happiness is not something you can create for someone else. You can show up with integrity, offer care, be present. That's what you can do, those three things. Show up with integrity, offer care and be present. But what they do with their inner world is theirs and their choice. And when you release that responsibility, you don't become disconnected. You don't, you become grounded, and from that place your relationships become more real, more balanced, and more sustainable. And that's the key with this all. So hopefully this gives you something to think on. And I want to thank you for listening. Have a great day, and I will see you in the next episode.