“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
“The brutally honest care more about the brutality than the honesty.”
“Reasonable people can disagree reasonably.”
I can’t live up to those ideals but it would be cruel to myself and others to stop trying to.
It is definitely tough to shed that sense. Growing up knowing I was “weird” and therefore bad (no, it was just undiagnosed autism, but I was an adult before I knew that and that element of myself had long since been solidified) meant that if I wanted people to like me then I had to give more than they did in order to just break even, which is exhausting and unfair, especially since I have a tendency to read neutral expressions as negative ones.
One thing that has helped me is the realization that that happy feeling I get when someone came to me for help and I helped them? Goes both ways for good people. And it sucks for them, too, if you’re suffering and they could help but you were afraid to ask. Having standards is both a defense of yourself and a means of determining which people should stay prominent in your life.