She stopped mid-sentence. Looked at me. And said the thing she says every single week:
"Am I being selfish?"
And I watched her face when she said it. The way her eyes dropped. The way her shoulders pulled inward. The way her voice went small — like she was asking permission to exist.
She wasn't asking me if she was selfish. She was asking me if she was allowed to have needs.
I've heard that question hundreds of times. Almost always from the person in the room who gives the most and asks for the least.
The Approval Trap
The approval trap works like this: you grew up learning that your worth was tied to what you did. Not who you were. What you did. How you performed. How little trouble you caused. How much you helped.
And somewhere deep down — deeper than your conscious mind — you internalised this: if I stop performing, I stop being worthy of love.
So you perform. At everything. At work, you're the reliable one. In friendships, the listener. In your family, the one who holds it all together. In relationships, the one who adjusts.
And when someone asks how you're doing, you say "fine." Because the truth feels too dangerous.
The research is clear. Mary Ainsworth's studies on attachment showed that when love is conditional — when affection is based on what you do rather than who you are — you develop a self-monitoring system. Constantly scanning: Am I good enough? Am I doing enough? Will they still love me if I stop?
And that system never switches off. It's running right now. Even while you read this, a part of you is monitoring.
Lao Tzu wrote: "There is no illusion greater than fear."
The illusion is that you need to earn love. That's the fear talking. That's the five-year-old who learned that being good meant being loved, and being yourself meant being rejected.
But you're not five any more. And the rules that kept you safe then are the ones destroying you now.
The Lock on the Cage
There's one question that keeps people trapped in the approval trap for years. Six words:
"Am I being selfish?"
Am I being selfish for wanting time to myself? Am I being selfish for saying no? Am I being selfish for putting my needs first? Am I being selfish for spending money on myself?
And this question — this innocent-sounding question — is the lock on the cage. Because as long as you're asking "am I being selfish?" you will never put yourself first. The question is designed to keep you in the performance. It's the approval trap's security system.
Here's the replacement. What if the question isn't "am I being selfish?" What if the question is:
"When did I learn that having needs made me a bad person?"
Having needs isn't selfish. Having boundaries isn't selfish. Taking up space isn't selfish. But if you grew up where your needs were an inconvenience — where being "good" meant being invisible — of course you think it's selfish. That's not a character flaw. That's a survival adaptation.
What Happens When You Stop
So here's the big question. The one that terrifies people. The one that keeps the whole performance going:
What would happen if you stopped?
If you stopped saying yes to everything. Stopped managing everyone's feelings. Stopped being the person everyone expects you to be.
The fear says: people will leave. They'll be angry. They won't love you any more.
And I want to be honest — some of that might happen. Some relationships are built entirely on your performance. And when the performance stops, those relationships don't survive.
But here's what also happens: the relationships that survive get deeper. Realer. More intimate. Because for the first time, people are actually meeting you. Not the version. You.
And the energy that comes back — the energy you reclaim from not performing — is extraordinary. It's like you've been running a marathon with a backpack full of rocks and someone finally says: you can put that down now.
I've watched this happen hundreds of times. She stops performing. The fear says it'll be a disaster. And instead, something cracks open. The relationships that were real get deeper. The ones that weren't fall away. And the energy she gets back is the energy she's been looking for her entire life. It was never missing. It was just being used to maintain the disguise.
The Energy Audit
I want to give you something practical you can do tonight.
Before bed, take five minutes. Write down every interaction you had today. And next to each one, mark whether you were the real you — or a version.
You'll start to see where the energy goes. Which rooms cost you. Which relationships require a performance. And which ones don't.
That awareness — not the judgement, just the awareness — is the first step. Because you can't stop a performance you can't see.
And here's what you'll notice: the interactions where you were the real you? You won't feel drained after those. That's the evidence. That's your body showing you the difference.
You Are Not Lazy
You are not lazy. You are exhausted from a performance that was installed in childhood and has been running every day since.
The question "am I being selfish?" is the lock on the cage. The real question is: when did you learn that having needs made you a bad person?
Some relationships won't survive you stopping. The ones that do will be the realest thing you've ever had.
And the energy on the other side of this? The energy you get back when you stop performing? That's the energy you've been looking for. It was never missing. It was just being used to maintain the disguise.
"New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings." — Lao Tzu
AWAKEN starts tomorrow. Three days — the 6th, 7th, 8th of March. A space where the only person you need to be is the one you already are. Doors close tonight at midnight. [Get your ticket here →]
[Watch the full video here →]
Dylan Ayaloo works with women whose bodies are telling a story their minds haven't heard yet. Through AWAKEN live events and the Inner Circle, he facilitates body-based transformation for people who've done all the head work and are ready for something different.