Others would describe you as kind, a peacemaker, service-oriented. You’d “give the shirt off your back” to help someone.

It’s hard to say “no” because you’re afraid to share what you think or feel.  You’re afraid of how others might perceive you.  It’s exhausting anticipating others’ needs or studying their moods or patterns so you can somehow be useful to or help them in some way.

You're on automatic when it comes to people pleasing.

You know you need and want better boundaries and you want to say “no” more often in your life, but if you imagine putting them in place or saying “no” to others, you feel a rush of anxiety.  You imagine conflict or how others might negatively respond. It’s excruciating and unbearable to imagine.  So, sometimes not having any boundaries at all feels easier in the moment. It’s so much easier to just say “yes” or do the thing.

You’ve probably tried to put boundaries in place and then feel like you didn’t do it “right” or that there may have been a “better” way for you to do it.

There’s an internalized sense of unworthiness that shows up when you try to set boundaries or say “no.” This only leads to the continual cycle of not putting them in place at all. If setting boundaries makes you feel bad, you wonder "why bother at all?"

It’s like you just can’t reach that place of emotional safety to trust that you can put boundaries in place and that it's OK to. Naturally, it’s affecting your home life, relationships, and work life.  You’ve sacrificed so much but it feels like you just can’t keep up at this rate.

You learned how to stay safe having to be a people pleaser in childhood.

Since childhood, others have expected from you.  They’ve expected ____ (fill in the blank!). Without saying it, you knew the expectation.

You didn’t have a choice growing up. 

You were taught early on that if you enforced your own boundaries it was “bad” or “wrong.”  On cue, you were expected to clean, take care of your siblings or a parent, and take care of yourself. 

There was no other way. 

Others' needs have always been more important so keeping boundaries is rocky for you.

.When others expected too much from you growing up, you learned others are more important than you, you need to make others happy, and “behave” or not “be a problem.” You’ve learned not to “get in trouble.” You still feel like you’re “in trouble,” even as an adult.”

When you complied as a child, it reinforced the belief that you were making others happy and that it's somehow your job to make everyone else happy. It was your “job” to please others.

It still feels like it’s your job. 

You're still operating from this place because it's all you've known.

You may have experienced childhood trauma. Your personal autonomy was taken from you and you were forced into situations that were frightening or filled with potential conflict and upset from an adult. In the face of what the mind and body perceive as a threat, you naturally, want to be more helpful, liked, and willing to bend over backwards to avoid conflict.

But now you're feeling like a doormat.

It’s so important to recognize that in order to cope, you’ve had to go about life in this way.  This is how you’ve survived and gotten this far.

Trauma and difficult experiences affect the way you understand and relate to your own boundaries and the urge to people please. There’s no recognition that time has past.

You’ve operated in ways that helped you growing up but don’t always help you so much now.  

This isn’t your fault.

Continuing with the same patterns and responses comes at the heavy price of forfeiting your needs, rights, and boundaries.