I'm making myself sick with this!

[eden_leah]

I have recently discovered that I have a serious problem with making other people happy, I know that sounds odd but but I have a 3 year old girl and a 7 month old baby girl, and a fiance that I love more then life.  Well all three I love more then life, I'm only 22 years old, and I discovered last night that I do everything for them, that I bend over backwards to make them happy, and do nothing for myself, I don't go anywhere unless its somewhere like Lowes when my fiance asks me to go with him, or to the park when my 3 year old wants to go play.  I cant tell you the last time I did something for myself.  I sometimes go all day without eating because I'm trying to do stuff to make them happy, and when I do eat I eat one time a day and Im fine, I wont even get hungry again but my fiance is getting mad over that too.  I have no idea how to stop this I don't know how to stop trying so hard to make them happy, like litterly I spend my whole day doing stuff for them, and when one of them gets upset with me it breaks my heart and brings me tears and I beg and plead for their forgiveness just so their happy again, honestly its even affecting mine and my fiance's sex life Im so worried about whether Im doing it the way he wants me to or the way he likes that I dont enjoy it at all anymore. I have no clue what to do anymore, it may not sound bad but it really is, I know a lot of moms lose themselves when they have kids but I think this is more then losing myself, I keep having nervous breakdowns, I think Im just going to go crazy, Please help me!...

[Jason Greenberg, Ph.D.]

Thank you for your post.  You seem to be struggling with what many people struggle with, albeit to a greater degree – the main way that you feel good about yourself is to make others feel good.  When they don't feel happy, you may take this as an indictment of yourself, that you are not a good person.  I think that there is nothing wrong with wanting to make others happy or help others; the problem may lie in your dependence on it to feel good about yourself.  Something to start with then, is the following: what do I want from others for myself?  If you are aware of what you'd like from others (or independent of them), what makes it so difficult to ask for it or advocate for yourself?  Often, people are afraid that their needs will be “too much” for others, that others will either not like them or will abandon them.  

If you find that in answering these questions, you remain stuck in the pattern you described, you may want to consider seeking someone outside your family for help with this.

[wishforchange]

Well you are doing the right thing seeing this as a problem.  If your main and only drive in life is to make your nearest and dearest happy then you becoming ill or crazy from starvation or exhaustion is going to make them likely very unhappy.
This is something you need to get to the bottom of, and it sounds like you are making the first steps to considering psychotherapy.  My initial gut feeling is that you are maybe scared, that if you see your family for a moment not comfortable they will maybe hate or blame or reject you.  Is this the case?  The fact is there is no family on this planet where all the members are content all the time, not in reality, only in fairytales.  The sign of a healthy family is one where all are comfortable to show all their moods and insecurities, to have huge arguments over silly things, for kids to cry and declare they hate you as parents, for husbands and wives to see each other as pure evil on ocassion.  When we live together all this gets thrown into the mix.  Families stay together because under all the arguments and misery that inevitably arises they love each other.  
You are inadvertantly also putting your loved ones under some pressure with your need.  They love you and see how much you want to please them.  It could even be that they are becoming nervous of showing you anything other than pleasure, as you are so sensitive to this.
I am not a great one for advocating digging up the past to get to the route of problems, but in your case I think there is a call for it.  Something has happened to make you like this, for example an early abandonment by someone you loved, for which you blame yourself for as maybe at your last interaction you felt you made them sad.  Just guessing.  However you decide to solve this, and you must solve it, it will be painful and unpleasant for you - be warned.  If at the end you can have more realistic relations with your family it will be worth every moment of struggle.  I'm glad you have realized you have a problem, things would be so much worse if you didn't.  It takes courage to own up to something like this, and you can be buoyed by this bravery to sort yourself out.  The result will be what you always wanted, a genuinely happy family, not just those who smile from moment to moment as seems to be the case right now.  Maybe let us know how you get on?