What is the price of sacrificing yourself for others?

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Have you ever sacrificed yourself for someone? It is often said that every sacrifice for love requires us to leave something behind, when love should never be synonymous with loss, but rather with gain… We reflect on it.

Sacrifice yourself for others. Have you ever done it? We tend to have a high view of those who are capable of giving up what is important to them for something that at a given moment has greater value for them. Leaving work for children, leaving our country and family for a new partner, leaving our lifestyle for humanitarian work… We could give multiple examples of this reality.

However, all of them have the same component: loss. It involves, above all, the confrontation of two values and the choice of one of them, one on which we bet with greater conviction because we think it is more relevant, more decisive or even satisfactory. Likewise, there is an interesting fact regarding this topic.

From a psychological point of view, we know that self-sacrifice is something that has always been part of being human, but It does not always result in well-being or satisfaction. It is very possible that at a given moment we will see a meaning and purpose in it. However, there always comes a moment when the person experiences a certain feeling of loss, lack and even regret.

We analyze it.

Sacrificing yourself for others: when is it justified?

The act of sacrificing oneself for others always catches our attention. And it does so for a very specific fact. We tend to have a somewhat pessimistic view of human beings, we conceive them almost as someone more prone to selfishness than to altruism, to personal interest than to compassion. However, the reality is different: If we have survived as a species it is thanks to our sense of group and cooperation.

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Thus, studies such as those carried out by Dr. Mary McGrath of Yale University, for example, tell us that this collaboration experienced in our evolutionary past means that, in a certain way, we continue to feel that giving up something for someone has meaning and usefulness. Sacrificing ourselves for others is something we have actually always done.

Parents do it for their children. We sacrifice ourselves for work and also for the people we love. There are, of course, those who show a certain martyr complex and do so practically throughout their lives. Others, on the other hand, will never take the step toward this act of surrender or even resignation.

The field of psychology has been studying this fact for decades and there is a very specific aspect that is usually focused on. We must learn to calibrate on what dimensions, circumstances and people we are going to make that sacrifice. Not all situations are conducive to taking this step. and not everyone who is part of our lives deserves that we take this leap for them. We analyze it.

Give up yes, but for something that offers us meaning

A sacrifice should not turn us into victims or leave us suspended in an unbalanced scale. You don’t have to sacrifice your life for someone, but rather give up something specific to gain something greater that offers us meaning. We can, for example, leave our city and even our country for someone we love because what opens before us is a happier stage.

Sacrificing for others makes sense if by leaving something for someone, our reality improves. or we find greater meaning in our existence. The latter is relevant because it can often be the case that this sacrifice is imposed and not chosen.

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As a curiosity, studies such as those carried out at the University of Ontario (Canada) tell us about a remarkable fact. Culturally and socially, In the area of emotional relationships, it is the woman who has always been forced to make the greatest sacrifices (care of children, elderly people and dependents). In some way, the weight of gender roles has been affected by this reality.

It’s not just for you, it’s also for me

Sacrificing yourself for others is sometimes a necessity. This is where people with white knight syndrome come in, men and women who need to save others and even make great sacrifices for the good of others. Thus, studies such as those carried out at the Cambridge Institute of Brain and Cognitive Sciences tell us about an interesting theory.

There are figures who need to dedicate themselves and sacrifice themselves for others, driven by an almost painful and even selfish altruism., because with this what they aspire to is to reduce their own anguish. If I feel dissatisfied or bad with myself about something specific, I can choose to give it all up for someone as a cathartic exercise.

There are, as we see, different types of self-sacrifice, but at the extremes would be those imposed by society and those that one imposes on oneself as a form of penance.

Sacrificing yourself for others, a journey of mistakes and successes

On the journey of life you have to bet and even take great leaps of faith without knowing what is going to happen. We have all sacrificed ourselves for something or someone at some point and sometimes we have even crashed.. We made that jump without a parachute and in the end that risky decision went wrong. However, it was what we believed, we were convinced of it and we lacked the experience we have now.

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Therefore it was not a mistake, it was just another stage of life from which we learned. Making sacrifices is common in our daily lives and where they are made the most is in the territory of love. We give up things for our partner, children, family, for people who are significant to us. And sometimes, that act rewards us.

Let’s reflect and calibrate a little better about who and why we perform these small or large acts of renunciation. After all, people are guided more by altruism than by selfishness and this is a dimension that will always concern us and that we will always face.