You Don't Have Problems - You Have People

Part I: The Core Truth

You weren’t born with low confidence, self-doubt, people-pleasing tendencies, or this constant ache to prove yourself. You weren’t born second-guessing every decision, apologizing for your existence, or trying to earn rest through exhaustion. You didn’t arrive in this world with social anxiety, achievement addiction, or an inability to enjoy your own company.

These weren’t your original problems.

They were given to you.

By people.

The aunt who mocked your teeth. The teacher who ignored your questions. The mother who cried to you instead of parenting you. The father who only praised you when you succeeded. The cousin who laughed when you failed. The friend who manipulated your kindness. The lover who cheated and blamed you. The guru who said you’re not ready yet.

You don’t have problems. You have people.

It wasn’t life. It was humans. Not society in abstract, not fate, not karma. It was real people. With faces. Names. Reputations. Good intentions. Bad timing. And devastating impact.

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Part II: Fifty Problems. One Root.

Below are fifty everyday personal problems. Every single one of them, if you trace honestly, leads back to someone.

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Childhood: How They Buried Your Core (1–10)

1. You never learned to say no – Your parents always said "Don't talk back."

2. You always seek approval – Your teacher only praised toppers.

3. You don’t trust your instincts – Your uncle mocked your curiosity.

4. You fear being wrong – Your elder sibling laughed at every mistake.

5. You avoid conflict – Your home was a warzone. Peace felt like survival.

6. You apologise too much – You were blamed for things others did.

7. You avoid attention – A relative said you were "too much" for dressing up.

8. You became a rescuer – Your mother cried to you, made you her therapist.

9. You are terrified of authority – Your principal insulted you publicly.

10. You overprepare everything – Your father never said he was proud unless you overachieved.

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Relationships: How They Turned Love Into a Trap (11–20)

11. You confuse control with love – Your first partner tracked your every move.

12. You chase unavailable people – Your parent was emotionally absent.

13. You can't end toxic friendships – A cousin said, "Real friends fight sometimes."

14. You ghost people – A teacher ghosted you after you failed.

15. You overshare too quickly – No one listened to you as a child.

16. You can’t handle silence – Your house was never quiet, only dramatic.

17. You can’t trust compliments – Your friends always said "just kidding" after praising.

18. You have backup plans in love – Your first partner cheated on you.

19. You stay where you're not respected – Your father stayed in a humiliating job "for the family."

20. You fear marriage – You watched your relatives destroy each other.

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Self-Worth & Achievement: How They Sold You Success (21–30)

21. You feel useless if not productive – Your father said, "What did you even do today?"

22. You hate yourself for resting – Your mother called you lazy for sitting down.

23. You crave praise constantly – Your tutor only noticed you when you topped.

24. You overcommit and regret – Your workplace glorified burnout.

25. You fear starting anything new – Your brother mocked your ideas before they began.

26. You stick to soul-crushing jobs – Relatives warned, "Who else will hire you?"

27. You feel like time is running out – Your cousin said, "You’re 30 and still confused?"

28. You can't define success – Because it was always defined for you.

29. You want to prove your worth – Because your parents compared you to Sharma ji's son.

30. You fear happiness won't last – Because childhood joy always ended in drama.

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Social Life: How They Taught You to Act, Not Live (31–40)

31. You over-explain everything – Class monitor used to report you for no reason.

32. You always laugh with the crowd – You were isolated for speaking your mind.

33. You dress to be invisible – College gang laughed at your look.

34. You hate asking for help – Every favor from relatives came with guilt.

35. You get anxious in groups – School friends made plans without you.

36. You feel drained by socializing – Your friendships are one-sided.

37. You keep fake people around – You were forced to "adjust" with family.

38. You explain jokes – Your humor was always called "weird."

39. You fear being called boring – Your ex said you were too simple.

40. You give more than you get – You were called selfish when you didn’t share.

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Daily Life: How They Trained Your Behaviour (41–50)

41. You can’t sit with your thoughts – You were punished with silent treatment.

42. You keep proving you're not lazy – A coach called you "slow."

43. You can't discard unwanted gifts – Your aunt guilted you for not using hers.

44. You force yourself to attend weddings – Your uncle said you were arrogant if you didn’t.

45. You help everyone, even when tired – Your sibling was praised as "selfless."

46. You don’t allow yourself joy – Someone always warned, "Stay humble."

47. You fear eating alone – Classmates mocked you as "no friends."

48. You never ask for more money – Your father taught you to survive with less.

49. You wear broken shoes – Your mother told you to be grateful for scraps.

50. You never feel done – Your relatives always found something wrong with you.

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Part III: Breaking the Human Chains

Now that you've seen it clearly: You are not broken. You're surrounded.

You need:

Low contact with guilt-tripping relatives

No contact with abusive "friends"

Disbelief in family myths, reputations, and authority

Disobedience to emotional blackmail

Decluttering of humans from your mind, not just your house

Your healing doesn’t need discipline. It needs disconnection from the people who built your cage.

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Part IV: You Were Never The Problem

You don’t have laziness. You had overcriticism. You don’t have trust issues. You had betrayers. You don’t have low self-worth. You had comparison predators. You don’t have people-pleasing. You had emotional hostages.

Take away these people — your "personality flaws" begin to evaporate.

You don’t have problems. You have people.

And now, you don’t have to keep them.

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Part V: The Next Chapter – Now That You See It

So what do you do after the realization hits?

You may feel anger. You may feel grief. You may feel guilty for blaming the people who raised you, loved you, educated you, befriended you. That guilt is part of the training too.

Here is your next step:

1. Withdraw your belief – Stop believing everything they told you about who you are.

2. Audit your circle – If someone made you shrink, doubt, or suffer—name them. Then reduce their access.

3. Rethink family – Family is not blood. It’s safety. It’s those who don’t twist your core.

4. Rebuild rules – Create your own definitions of success, rest, love, kindness, and respect.

5. Practice saying no – Especially to people who trained you to say yes to pain.

6. Stop rescuing – The one who trained you to rescue them will not drown if you leave.

7. Find your new tribe – People who don’t laugh when you bloom.

This is not revenge. This is not rebellion. This is recovery.

Now that you know the source, you don’t have to carry the consequences.

You can begin again, with fewer people—and fewer problems.

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Part VI: They Won’t Like Your Healing

Let this be your warning:

They will not applaud you for seeing the damage. They will not clap when you take your life back. They will not thank you for breaking the cycle.

They will say:

"You’re being ungrateful."

"That’s not how it happened."

"You’re making it up."

"You’ve changed."

Yes. You’ve changed. Because you’ve stopped worshipping the people who wounded you and called it love.

You will lose people. Not because you are wrong. But because they were never supposed to stay. They were only there to teach you what not to become.

They won’t like your healing. But that’s how you’ll know you’re doing it right.

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A HEALING DIALOGUE

A Healing Dialogue: You Don't Have Problems – You Have People

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Characters:

Madhukar: A quiet, grounded natural healer in his 50s

Anju: His 10-year-old daughter, sharp and innocent

Meena: A government school teacher, 38, recently burnt out

Lalitha: A pediatrician, 41, skeptical but open

Ravi: An engineer, 44, successful but anxious and disconnected

Setting: Early morning, under a neem tree beside Madhukar's simple house. Castor oil packs are heating on a stone slab. Chickens cluck nearby. The kettle whistles softly.

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Meena: (staring at her tea) I used to think I was the problem. Too sensitive. Too emotional. Too weak.

Madhukar: And now?

Meena: Now I wonder... maybe I was just surrounded. By the wrong people.

Ravi: (nods slowly) I feel that too. Every time I take a step to heal, my family says I’m selfish. My wife says I’m not the man she married. My colleagues think I’ve gone soft.

Anju: (innocently) Appa says you don’t need to be liked by people who don’t like the real you.

Lalitha: (raises an eyebrow) But isn’t that dangerous? To just cut people off?

Madhukar: Not cutting, Lalitha. Rebalancing. You don’t need a machete. You need clarity.

Meena: But they raised me. They educated me. I owe them.

Madhukar: Yes. Gratitude for the act. But not blind loyalty to their harm. A snake can give you a ride across the river. But when it bites, do you still bow?

Ravi: I spent 20 years seeking praise from my boss. He retired and didn’t remember my name.

Lalitha: That’s brutal.

Madhukar: No. That’s routine.

Anju: Amma says most people are nice until you stop doing what they want.

Meena: I cry when I say no.

Madhukar: You were trained that way. Every time you said no, someone made you feel cruel. So now your nervous system protests.

Lalitha: How do you fix it?

Madhukar: You don’t fix. You remember. You were not born guilty. You were made guilty. That means you can unlearn it. Like warm water dissolving dried blood.

Ravi: What about the damage already done?

Madhukar: You carry it until one day, your body can’t. Then it gives it to you as disease, depression, fatigue. Your belly stores unspoken boundaries. Your back holds decades of suppression. Your breath shortens in their presence.

Anju: So castor oil helps?

Madhukar: (smiles) It slows you down. It brings things up. It lets your body speak before your mouth is ready.

Meena: I used to think I had low self-worth. But when I made a list... it was all voices. All faces. People who trained me to shrink.

Lalitha: This is hard. It feels disloyal.

Madhukar: That's what keeps them powerful. Your loyalty to their dysfunction. Your silence is their shelter.

Ravi: My therapist told me to reframe everything positively. But I feel like I need to rage first. To name them. To stop protecting them.

Madhukar: Exactly. You can’t heal what you’re still lying to yourself about. Compassion without clarity is codependency.

Meena: I wish someone told me this at 18.

Anju: I'm 10. I heard it now.

(Everyone smiles. A rooster crows.)

Madhukar: The healing begins not when you feel better, but when you finally stop pretending. When you see clearly. When you say: I don’t have problems. I had people. And I don’t have to keep them.

Lalitha: What if they come back?

Madhukar: Let them knock. Your silence is enough. Your calmness is a new wall. Healing means you don’t open old doors for old ghosts.

Ravi: I think I’ll walk in silence today.

Madhukar: Good. Let the breeze rearrange your truth.

Anju: Appa, can I tell them the poem I made?

Madhukar: Please.

Anju:

“I am not small. I was made to sit small. I am not weak. They fed me weak words. I am not too much. I am just enough For the life that’s now mine.”

(Everyone is silent. Healing sits between them.)

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AFTER 6 MONTHS

Setting: Same neem tree. Slight winter chill. The castor oil slab is warmer now. Everyone looks a little different. Lighter. More rested. A soft breeze carries the smell of tulsi leaves and fresh dosa batter.

Ravi: (placing a notebook on the stone) I logged everything. Every person I let go of. Some were family. Some were mentors. All were noise.

Meena: I stopped rescuing. Two people told me I’m selfish. One friend said I’d changed. But no one actually broke.

Lalitha: I took a sabbatical. Two months. No patients. No screen. Just writing and silence. It scared me how much of my personality was other people’s opinions.

Madhukar: Good. That fear is the exit wound. The infection leaving.

Anju: Amma said you all look like butterflies now.

Meena: (laughs) Is it strange that I don’t miss them? The ones I thought I couldn’t live without?

Ravi: No. You were missing yourself before.

Lalitha: My body changed. I sleep easier. I don’t hold my stomach anymore. The silence doesn’t hurt now.

Madhukar: The body always keeps count. It sighs when you release your jailors.

Meena: I met my mother. She tried the same guilt tricks. I smiled. Didn’t respond. She stopped.

Ravi: My boss offered me a raise. I said no. I wanted time. Not money.

Anju: What if new people come who also want to break you?

Madhukar: Then you’ll know earlier. The first time you feel the twist in your belly, you won’t call it love. You’ll call it what it is.

Lalitha: What is it?

Madhukar: A warning.

Meena: I’m not afraid to be alone anymore.

Ravi: Nor am I.

Madhukar: That means the healing has settled. Not into your mood. Into your bones.

Anju: Will I ever have to do all this when I grow up?

Madhukar: Maybe not. You heard the truth early. You saw what it looks like when people heal instead of please.

Lalitha: What’s next for us?

Madhukar: Keep choosing silence over drama. Space over obligation. Warmth over guilt. Choose the few who see you—not the crowd who shaped you.

Ravi: We don’t have problems anymore.

Meena: Just choices.

Madhukar: And a lot more life left to live—without people who confuse love with power.

(They sit in silence. The tea boils again. Anju runs to fetch cups.)

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YOU DON’T HAVE PROBLEMS — YOU HAVE PEOPLE

(clean, non-poetic version)

they didn’t hit you.

they trained you.

they didn’t say you were useless.

they made you prove your worth every single day.

they didn’t scream.

they sighed, disappointed.

every time you chose differently.

they didn’t stop you.

they made sure you doubted yourself enough to never begin.

you were not born guilty.

they taught you guilt.

they dressed it up as respect, duty, love, culture, sacrifice.

your personality is not yours.

it's what's left of you

after years of other people’s expectations, demands, advice, corrections, emotional blackmail, praise when you pleased them, distance when you didn’t.

you don’t overthink.

you were trained to never trust your own decisions.

you don’t fear love.

you’ve only ever seen love used as a leash.

you don’t struggle with self-worth.

you were measured, compared, dismissed, ignored, until you learned to measure yourself the same way.

you’re not addicted to achievement.

you were only noticed when you achieved.

you’re not a people pleaser.

you were punished for saying no.

you don’t have anger issues.

you’ve just been taught your anger is dangerous, shameful, ungrateful.

you don’t hate rest.

you were taught that your value comes from how exhausted you are.

you are not lazy.

you’re tired from years of pretending to be someone else.

the problem is not you.

it’s the people you weren’t allowed to question.

the teacher who laughed when you failed.

the parent who used fear to control you.

the sibling who compared.

the boss who exploited your silence.

the partner who loved you on a condition.

the relatives who praised your pain and called it strength.

the friends who vanished when you changed.

you are not broken.

you are surrounded.

most people are not cruel.

they are careless, selfish, afraid.

and they will call you selfish

the moment you stop letting them shape you.

you don’t need to forgive them right now.

you don’t need to thank them for the lessons.

you don’t need to smile and rise above.

you need to see it clearly.

this isn’t healing work.

this is cleaning up after damage done by people you still feel guilty about leaving.

stop calling it trauma.

start calling it training.

you were trained to be soft for others and hard on yourself.

trained to smile in discomfort.

trained to earn your place.

trained to expect very little and give very much.

trained to keep connections alive no matter how much they hurt.

enough.

you don’t have to keep them.

you don’t have to explain.

you don’t have to keep proving you’re not selfish.

you don’t need closure.

you need space.

you don’t need better people.

you need fewer people.

you don’t need healing from some abstract “past.”

you need distance from specific humans.

you don’t have problems.

you have people.

and you are allowed to walk away.

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.end.