"Am I Doing This Right?" When People-Pleasing Shows Up in Therapy
You know you struggle with people-pleasing in your personal life or professional life. But therapy is supposed to be your space, right? So why is it sometimes so hard to be honest with your therapist?
For many survivors of emotional neglect, it can feel impossible to leave those people-pleasing tendencies at the door. You may find yourself “trying to get an A in therapy” by:
Strategically leaving out messy details from your life, or not wanting your therapist to find out that you didn’t work on that goal you set last week
Trying to show your therapist how much you’ve learned, changed, or grown, and feeling afraid they’ll be disappointed in you if you don’t make progress
Wanting to know if your therapist likes you or not, or worrying that they might secretly find you annoying, boring, or frustrating
Feeling afraid that you’re not using your therapist’s time “correctly,” or that you’re not a good use of their time
Trying to be seen as a “good client” or “good patient;” trying to give “the right answer”
But we all want to be liked, right? What’s wrong with that?
This is important to say: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to be liked by your therapist or wanting to progress in therapy.
If you’re a survivor of emotional trauma, it’s likely that protective parts of you learned these patterns to escape punishment and gain positive attention when you were younger. The smaller you made yourself, the less you got hurt; the more you anticipated others’ needs, the more you got your needs met. Even today, these tools are probably still pretty effective in many relationships in your present life.
The cost, however, is you. Your sense of who you are, your ability to advocate for your needs, the chance to be truly seen. It also can be hard to truly relax into any relationship. Many who employ these tactics live in fear that if they show a tiny bit of themselves, if they were to be found out for their imperfect opinions, if they expressed a somewhat unpleasant emotion or disagreed with someone or made someone else’s life even a little bit difficult–if they did these things, then they would be abandoned, unloved; because no one can really love them for who they are.
Where therapy comes in
The purpose of therapy is to slowly, gently learn how to change old patterns that are no longer serving you. My goal is for you to see that you are loveable, that you are good, just the way you are, without having to prove it to anyone. If you’ve been people-pleasing for a long time, not everyone in your life may be able to be on board with these changes. Another goal for us is to learn how to find the people who genuinely like the real you when you let yourself show.
If you’re struggling with people-pleasing in therapy, don’t be too hard on yourself; it’s normal and expected. If you can, try to talk to your therapist about it (you can even send them a link to this page if you like). A good therapist will discuss these concerns with you and help build a space of safety where you can start to be yourself. When my clients are “difficult,” when they say no to ideas, when they tell me they didn’t do the thing we talked about, I celebrate it–because it means they feel safe enough to tell me how they really feel, and that itself is a step forward.
If any of this sparked your interest, feel free to reach out. Let’s start a conversation about how IFS can help with old habits so that you can feel free to be yourself.
