Why You People-Please (and How to Reclaim Your Voice)

If you’ve ever said “yes” when your whole body screamed “no”…
If you’ve felt responsible for keeping the peace at your own expense…
If you’re exhausted from being everything for everyone…

You’re not broken. You’re just carrying patterns that once kept you safe.

Where People-Pleasing Begins

People-pleasing isn’t about being “too nice.” It’s a survival response — often rooted in early relationships where love felt conditional.

Maybe your caregivers praised you for being the easy one, the helper, the one who didn’t need much.
Maybe your emotional needs were ignored, minimized, or made you feel like a burden.
Maybe conflict felt scary, so you learned to avoid it by fawning, fixing, or appeasing.

So you shaped yourself to be what others needed to keep yourself safe — even if it cost you your truth.

The Nervous System's Role

People-pleasing is often a fawn response — one of the lesser-known trauma responses (alongside fight, flight, and freeze). Fawning means:

  • Prioritizing others’ comfort over your own

  • Over-apologizing

  • Struggling to identify your own needs or preferences

  • Avoiding conflict at all costs

Your nervous system learned that harmony equals safety. But in doing so, it disconnected you from your own needs.

Anxious Attachment + Codependency

If you lean toward anxious attachment, you likely:

  • Fear abandonment or rejection

  • Seek constant reassurance

  • Feel emotionally responsible for others

  • Overextend yourself to “keep” love

And if you’re codependent, you may:

  • Feel your worth is tied to being needed

  • Struggle to set or hold boundaries

  • Experience guilt when prioritizing yourself

These patterns often develop from inconsistent caregiving or emotionally unavailable relationships — where love was unpredictable or performative.

So How Do We Heal?

Healing people-pleasing starts with self-awareness and nervous system safety and regulation..

Here’s where to begin:

1. Name the Pattern (Without Shame)

Recognizing your motivating factor underlying your actions and responses is a helpful first step. This can sound like:

“I notice I’m saying yes out of fear, not desire.”
“I’m feeling responsible for someone else’s emotions.”

Awareness creates choice.

2. Reconnect With Your Needs

Ask yourself daily: What do I want? What do I need? What am I pretending not to feel?
This reconnects you to your inner voice — the one you’ve spent years quieting.

3. Start Small With Boundaries

You don’t need to cut everyone off to heal. Start by saying no to something minor where the stakes don’t feel so high. Take longer to respond. Let a ball drop — and notice that you’re still safe.

4. Regulate Your Nervous System

Because boundaries will feel unsafe until your body believes otherwise.
Breathwork, grounding, and inner child work can all help here (I teach these inside my coaching containers).

You're Allowed to Choose You

Unlearning people-pleasing doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you sovereign.
You don’t have to earn your place. You don’t have to perform for love.
You get to take up space — even if it disappoints others.
Especially then.

You’re not here to be palatable.
You’re here to be whole.

With all the love in my heart,

Elise

Elise Dean