IFS Therapy for People-Pleasing and Boundaries in Massachusetts & Rhode Island

You spend a lot of time thinking about how other people are doing.

You notice when someone's mood changes. You can tell when your partner is irritated before they say anything. You remember what your friend is worried about, anticipate what your colleague might need, and find yourself thinking about how to make something easier for someone before they've even asked.

You're very good at noticing other people.

But lately, you may be wondering where you are in all of this.

Maybe you say yes to something and immediately wish you'd said no. You agree to take on one more thing at work because it seems easier than disappointing someone, then wonder why you keep ending up with more than you can reasonably do.

Or you know perfectly well what you want until someone else wants something different. Then things get confusing. You start wondering whether you're being unreasonable. You can see their point. You think about what they're dealing with. What seemed clear five minutes ago suddenly doesn't feel clear at all.

You may spend a surprising amount of time managing other people's possible reactions to things that haven't even happened yet. How do I say this without hurting them? What if they're disappointed? What if they think I'm selfish? What if they're angry?

All of this can be exhausting. Or confusing. And sometimes it can make you really angry.

You may resent how much everyone seems to need from you. You may fantasize about not answering your phone, quitting your job, checking into a hotel by yourself, or having everyone leave you alone for approximately three weeks.

Then you feel guilty for thinking it.

Or maybe you've solved this problem differently. You don't let people need too much from you in the first place. You keep relationships at a distance that feels manageable, pull back when someone begins to expect too much, or find yourself wary of relationships that might ask more of you than you want to give.

You may not think of yourself as a people-pleaser at all. But closeness can start to feel like a threat to your ability to have needs, preferences, time, or space of your own.

You want to be generous. You don't want the answer to be caring less about other people.

You just don't want caring about them to require disappearing from your own life.

How did other people's feelings become so important?

As children, we depend on the people around us for almost everything. That makes us highly sensitive to what helps us stay connected to them. Long before we can make sense of relationships intellectually, we're learning what goes well, what doesn't, and what seems to be expected of us.

Maybe you can trace some of this pretty easily. A parent was volatile, and knowing what mood they were in helped you stay out of the line of fire. Maybe someone withdrew or became cold when you disappointed them. Maybe disagreement led to conflict you couldn't escape.

But sometimes the story is less obvious.

Perhaps one of your parents was anxious, lonely, overwhelmed, or easily hurt, and you became very good at reassuring them. Being cheerful or helpful may have seemed to make things easier. Maybe you were praised for being mature, undemanding, or unusually sensitive to other people. Or maybe there simply wasn't much room in the family for your anger, disappointment, messiness, or for needing very much yourself.

You may have learned to notice what other people were feeling before you learned to ask yourself what you were feeling.

And that can become an extraordinary skill.

You may be perceptive, generous, and remarkably good at reading a room. You may be the person people trust with difficult things. You can see several sides of a conflict. You understand that people's behavior comes from somewhere. You pick up on things other people miss.

The difficulty comes when information about someone else's experience automatically becomes more important than information about your own.

Someone is disappointed, and suddenly you're not so sure you should have said no.

Someone is upset with you, and you begin searching for what you did wrong.

Someone sees a situation differently than you do, and suddenly you're less sure of your own read on it.

Someone needs something you don't want to give, and their need begins to feel like a reason you should give it anyway.

You haven't stopped having your own perceptions, feelings, needs, or desires.

It can just become very difficult to stay connected to them when someone else's experience enters the room.

What if you can't tell what you want?

Sometimes the problem isn't that you know what you want and can't bring yourself to say it.

You may genuinely not know.

You can see why your partner wants what they want. You understand your mother's point of view. You know why your boss is asking. You can imagine how your friend might feel if you say no. Each new piece of information changes the picture, and your own position can become harder and harder to find.

You may spend a great deal of time trying to figure out what the right thing to do is without realizing how rarely your own preferences get to enter the equation.

Or perhaps you do ask yourself what you want—and realize you have no idea.

This can create a strange kind of stuckness. You don't exactly choose what other people want, but you can't seem to arrive at a choice of your own either. You wait. You reconsider. Circumstances change. Eventually a decision gets made because time runs out, someone else makes it, or one possibility becomes impossible.

If you've spent years orienting toward other people's experience, it can take time to recognize your own as information.

Why is it so hard to say no?

Sometimes people talk about boundaries as though they're mostly a matter of finding the right words.

And sometimes the words really do help. It can be useful to practice saying, I can't do that. Or That doesn't work for me. Or even just No.

But often you already know the words.

The harder part is what happens inside you when you imagine saying them.

Your chest tightens. You start explaining. You think of six reasons the other person really does need your help. You begin drafting a text that says no, then add so many apologies and alternatives that by the end you're not entirely sure you've said no anymore.

And then there's what happens afterward.

They might be disappointed.

They might disagree with you.

They might think you're being unfair.

They might be angry.

They may decide you're being selfish, difficult, or unfair—and you may not be able to change their mind.

Unfortunately, there isn't a version of a boundary that guarantees the other person will like it.

Sometimes setting the boundary isn't the hardest part. It's letting the other person have their reaction to it.

And sometimes, you do know you're angry.

Other times, you know something isn't working because you're getting angrier and angrier.

You may resent how much you're doing for everyone else, keep score in relationships, or find yourself furious about a request that doesn't seem like it should be such a big deal.

It's tempting to treat the resentment as a problem. But resentment can contain information.

Maybe you've agreed to things you didn't actually want to do. Maybe you're carrying responsibilities that should be shared. Maybe you've been hoping someone will notice how much you're giving and take care of you without your having to ask.

Sometimes anger is what happens when a part of you has been saying no for a very long time and nobody—including you—has been listening.

Anger doesn't necessarily tell you what to do. But it may tell you that something needs your attention.

What if you know what you need but can't ask for it?

You may be very good at figuring out what other people need—sometimes before they've even asked—and much less comfortable telling them what you need from them.

Asking means letting someone know that you need something from them—and finding out how they'll respond.

If you ask your partner for more affection, they could say no. If you tell a friend that something hurt you, they could become defensive. If you ask someone to help more, you might discover that they don't want to.

It can feel safer to hope they'll notice.

And when they don't, it can hurt enormously.

Why should I have to ask? I would notice if they needed something.

That thought makes sense when noticing has become one of the ways you love people.

But it can leave you waiting for other people to notice you as carefully as you've learned to notice them.

Meanwhile, the people around you may have no idea how much you're carrying, because you've become so good at handling things without asking anything of them.

Caring about someone doesn't make you responsible for everything they feel.

This can be difficult to believe even when it makes perfect sense intellectually.

Of course your choices affect other people. Relationships involve responsibility, compromise, generosity, repair, and sometimes doing things you'd rather not do.

But caring about someone's experience isn't the same as being responsible for making their experience okay.

Your partner can be disappointed, and you can let your decision stand.

Your parent can disagree with a decision and you can still make it.

Someone can misunderstand you without your having to explain yourself until they see you correctly.

You can recognize that another person is struggling without automatically concluding that you should be the one to solve it.

And sometimes you may decide to inconvenience yourself, make a sacrifice, or do something you don't particularly want to do because someone you love needs you.

You can decide that their need matters more to you in this moment without deciding that your own doesn't matter.

How can therapy help with people-pleasing and boundaries?

Learning to set clearer boundaries can certainly be part of therapy. But knowing what to say is often not the hardest part.

We can pay attention to what happens inside you when your own needs, feelings, or preferences come into conflict with someone else's.

Using Internal Family Systems (IFS), we might notice the part of you that immediately starts explaining why the other person's position is reasonable, the part that is terrified of being selfish, or the part that becomes furious that you're once again being asked to give something up.

Or perhaps another part has found a different solution: don't get too close in the first place. If closeness means becoming responsible for someone else's feelings, needs, or expectations, keeping some distance may feel like the only way to remain yourself.

Rather than trying to override these responses, we can get curious about what they're doing for you. Perhaps some part of you learned that staying connected meant staying agreeable. Or that another person's anger was dangerous. Or that being needed helped secure your place in a relationship. Or that having needs of your own put too much strain on people you loved.

Those ways of responding may have helped you navigate relationships when you had far fewer choices than you have now.

I also integrate Somatic Experiencing and Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) into this work. Each offers a different way of working with what happens in the moments when your own experience begins to disappear from view.

In therapy, we have a chance to slow all of this down.

You can notice someone else's disappointment without immediately moving to eliminate it. Notice the impulse to explain yourself without automatically explaining. Feel guilt without assuming the guilt means you've done something wrong. And when you genuinely don't know what you want, we can make enough room for your own experience that you have a better chance of finding out.

Over time, there can be more room for both realities:

I care how this affects you. And this is still what I want.

That's different from putting yourself first.

It's allowing yourself to exist in the relationship too.

What might change if you didn't have to choose between yourself and other people?

You might still be the person who notices.

You may still be generous, responsive, and unusually attentive to the people you love. There may be times when you choose to give more than your share because that's genuinely what you want to do.

But someone else's needs don't always have to push your own out of view.

You can be disappointed in someone without immediately talking yourself out of it. You can ask directly for what you need instead of waiting and hoping someone will notice.

You can say yes and know that you mean yes.

And you can say no and let someone else feel however they feel about it.

You can care deeply about another person's experience while continuing to take your own seriously.

Interested in working together?

If some of what you've read here feels familiar, we can talk about what's bringing you to therapy and whether working together feels like a good fit.