Therapist perfectly explains why we’re always worried about people hating us

It’s become a bit of a trope: the anxious millennial who constantly wonders if the people around them are upset, annoyed, or angry. In a now-viral TikTok video, therapist Maggie Nick actually sums it up really well. Yes, we’re always worried people are mad at us—but here’s why.

“Why are you so f-ing terrified of making someone mad? Why do you say, ‘Are you mad at me?’ all the time?” she asks. “I’ll tell you—it’s a truth bomb, so hold my hand while I tell you this: It’s because nobody’s ever been mad at you, and still made you feel like they love you at the same time.”

The video is part of a series Nick has created called “Inner Child Rehab.” In it, she explains that this type of response to feeling like someone is upset with us is rooted in how our parents reacted when they were upset with us as children.

“When our parents got mad, they made us feel like they didn’t love us — with their words, with their actions,” she explained. “Your experience of people being mad at you is that they give you silent treatment. They withdraw and withhold love, attention, affections, a willingness to care for you when they’re mad at you. It’s our parents’ thing. ‘I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed,’ like disappointment isn’t a f-ing shame grenade.”

Nick continues, “And I think the last one that just cuts so deep is ‘I love you, but I don’t like you right now.’ When we are an attachment figure to a child and we drop something like that on their developing brain, they’re not going to be able to critically think and see the nuance there. They’re going to hear, ‘You don’t love me.’ And when we’re mad and say that, you really don’t love me.”

That’s a really good point. That was a line that parents of a certain age group (lookin’ at you, Boomers and older Gen X) loved to use. But young kids can’t make that distinction — hearing from a parent that they don’t like you is super damaging, even when it’s paired with a begrudging, “I love you.”

“Your lived experience with anger is that it doesn’t go well for you,” Nick says at the end of the video. “That person loves you one minute, and then when they get mad, they don’t give a sh*t about you. You have no value or worth to them. They not only don’t love you, they’re disgusted by you… that’s been your experience with anger. So of course you’re terrified to make people mad.”

In the comments, so many people resonate with what she’s saying here.

“ma’am I can’t be crying at work,” one person wrote.

Another added, “Why do all of these hit me so hard in such a healing/revelatory way? Wow. Thank you. I needed to hear this.”

Hopefully, this helps some people realize why others’ anger can be triggering — and take steps toward healing.