Stop People-Pleasing: Healing the Trauma Behind the Habit

By Andrea Gonzalez
Published on July 28, 2025

Do you often say “yes” when you mean “no”? Feel guilty for setting boundaries? Worry constantly about others being upset with you?

You’re not alone, and more importantly, you are not broken.

People-pleasing is more than just being "nice." For many, it's a deeply ingrained survival strategy that began in childhood or during a traumatic experience. At Baypoint Counseling Center, in Miami, we’ve worked with countless individuals who struggle with similar experiences. And here's what we want you to know: this pattern can be healed. 

What Is People-Pleasing, Really?

People-pleasing involves prioritizing others’ needs, emotions, or approval at the expense of your own well-being. It often looks like:

• Over-apologizing

• Avoiding conflict at all costs

• Taking on too much to keep others happy

• Feeling anxious when someone is disappointed

At its core, people-pleasing is a nervous system response: a fawn response to threat. Unlike fight, flight, or freeze, fawning is a strategy of appeasement in response to perceived threat. It's common among people who have experienced complex or developmental trauma, such as childhood emotional neglect or abuse (Appeasement as Survival Strategy – PMC).

How Trauma Fuels People-Pleasing

Trauma, especially developmental trauma, teaches us that our worth depends on how others feel about us. If you grew up in a home where love was conditional, you may have learned to please others to stay connected. 

A 2023 study published in Child Abuse & Neglect explained how trauma affects the brain’s interpersonal stress response, leading to chronic guilt, over-functioning, and emotional dissociation as seen in the fawn response (Kim, M. J., & Park, J. (2023).

In other words, people-pleasing is not about weakness—it’s about survival.

Signs Your People-Pleasing Comes from Trauma

If any of these resonate, you may be operating from unresolved trauma:

• You feel anxious or ashamed when someone is disappointed in you

• You struggle to identify what you actually want

• You suppress anger or discomfort to keep the peace

• You feel resentment building from overcommitting

• You associate conflict with danger or abandonment

These patterns may have kept you safe once—but they’re now costing you your peace.

Healing Through Therapy: What Helps?

Therapy is a powerful space to explore the roots of people-pleasing and begin to shift the patterns. At Baypoint Counseling Center in Miami, we help clients:

1. Understand the Origin

We begin by gently tracing your people-pleasing habits to their emotional roots. You’ll start to connect the dots between your current behaviors and past experiences.

2. Rebuild Self-Worth

You’ll explore how to define your value beyond performance and learn how to prioritize your well-being without guilt.

3. Set Boundaries That Stick

You’ll receive structured support for asserting your needs and saying “no” in ways that feel safe and empowering.

4. Soothe Your Nervous System

Through somatic exercises and grounding tools, we help regulate your body’s stress response so that setting boundaries becomes less overwhelming.

5. Reconnect with Your Authentic Self

People-pleasing often means losing touch with your wants, needs, and desires. Therapy helps you come back to your own voice and reclaim your identity.

A Note of Compassion

If you’ve spent years trying to keep everyone else happy, please be gentle with yourself. People-pleasing is not a weakness. It’s wisdom from a younger you, doing their best to stay safe. But now, as an adult, you have the power—and the right—to live differently.

Ready to Break Free from People-Pleasing?

At Baypoint Counseling Center, we offer trauma-informed therapy to help you step out of survival mode and into a life that’s yours. Whether you’re just starting to recognize these patterns or have been working on boundaries for years, you don’t have to do this alone.

You deserve to be seen, heard, and supported—not just for what you give, but for who you are.

References:

• Bailey, B., & Thompson, A. (2023). Appeasement: Replacing Stockholm Syndrome as a definition of a survival strategy. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 9858395. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.9858395

• Kim, M. J., & Park, J. (2023). Between pleasure, guilt, and dissociation: How trauma unfolds in the fawn response. Child Abuse & Neglect, 142, 106262. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106262