People-Pleasing & Fawn Response Therapy in Santa Monica, Thousand Oaks, and Throughout California
Does this sound familiar?
✓ You worry about disappointing other people.
✓ You say yes when you want to say no.
✓ You replay conversations long after they've ended.
✓ You struggle to identify what you actually want or need.
✓ Setting boundaries feels selfish, mean, or unsafe.
✓ You often feel responsible for other people's emotions.
✓ You avoid conflict, even when you're hurt or overwhelmed.
✓ You appear caring and capable on the outside but feel exhausted, resentful, or disconnected inside.
Understanding People-Pleasing
People-pleasing is often misunderstood as simply being "too nice." In reality, people-pleasing can develop as a way of maintaining safety, connection, and belonging in relationships.
For many people, people-pleasing began as an adaptive response to difficult, unpredictable, or emotionally challenging experiences. You may have learned that keeping others happy, avoiding conflict, or prioritizing other people's needs helped you feel safer, more connected, or more accepted.
Over time, these patterns can become automatic. While they may have once served an important purpose, they can eventually lead to anxiety, resentment, exhaustion, difficulty setting boundaries, and feeling disconnected from yourself and your own needs.
What Is the Fawn Response?
The fawn response is one of several nervous system responses to stress or perceived threat, alongside fight, flight, and freeze. The fawn response often involves prioritizing the needs, emotions, and expectations of others in order to maintain safety, avoid conflict, or preserve connection.
People who experience the fawn response may find themselves:
apologizing excessively,
avoiding conflict,
struggling to say no,
feeling responsible for other people's emotions,
seeking reassurance or approval,
or prioritizing others' needs over their own.
The fawn response is not a character flaw or a sign of weakness. Rather, it is often a protective strategy that developed in response to difficult experiences, relational trauma, or environments where it did not feel safe to express your own needs or emotions.
How Childhood Experiences Can Shape People-Pleasing
People-pleasing patterns often develop early in life and can be shaped by experiences such as emotional neglect, emotionally immature parents, unpredictable caregiving, parentification, attachment wounds, or relational trauma.
You may have learned that:
your needs were less important than others' needs,
conflict was unsafe,
expressing emotions created problems,
your role was to keep the peace,
or that love and connection depended on meeting other people's expectations.
These experiences can affect how we relate to ourselves and others long after childhood has ended, contributing to anxiety, difficulty setting boundaries, perfectionism, chronic self-doubt, and challenges in relationships.
Why Self-Trust Can Feel So Difficult
People-pleasing often goes hand-in-hand with difficulty trusting yourself.
When you've spent years focusing on other people's needs, emotions, and expectations, it can become difficult to identify your own wants, feelings, and instincts. You may find yourself seeking reassurance from others, second-guessing your decisions, replaying interactions, or feeling uncertain about what you truly want.
Part of the therapeutic process involves not only reducing anxiety and people-pleasing behaviors, but also developing greater clarity, self-trust, and confidence in your own thoughts, feelings, and decisions.
How therapy can help
Therapy can help you understand the protective role that people-pleasing and fawning have played in your life while developing new ways of relating to yourself and others.
Our work together may focus on helping you:
✓ understand the origins of people-pleasing patterns,
✓ develop healthier boundaries,
✓ reduce anxiety, guilt, and fear surrounding conflict,
✓ identify and express your own needs,
✓ build greater self-trust,
✓ develop healthier relationships,
✓ tolerate discomfort without abandoning yourself,
✓ and create a deeper sense of safety and connection within yourself.
Why a Somatic Approach to People-Pleasing Can Help
Many people understand intellectually that they should set boundaries, prioritize themselves, or stop people-pleasing, yet continue to experience intense anxiety, guilt, or fear when they try.
This is because people-pleasing is often not simply a habit or personality trait—it can also be a nervous system response.
Somatic approaches recognize that experiences of trauma, emotional neglect, attachment wounds, and chronic stress can shape how our bodies and nervous systems respond to relationships, conflict, and safety.
By working with both the mind and the nervous system, therapy can help you develop greater flexibility, self-trust, and the ability to respond more intentionally rather than automatically reacting from old patterns.
My Approach
My approach integrates Somatic Experiencing (SE), EMDR, psychodynamic therapy, and IFS-informed therapy to help clients understand the deeper patterns contributing to people-pleasing and difficulty trusting themselves.
Rather than focusing only on changing behaviors, I work collaboratively with clients to understand how these patterns developed, the protective role they have served, and how to create meaningful and lasting change.
I strive to provide a therapeutic space that feels safe, supportive, and paced according to your individual needs and experiences.
Frequently Asked Questions
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The fawn response is a trauma response that involves prioritizing the needs, emotions, and expectations of others in order to maintain safety, avoid conflict, or preserve connection. It often develops in response to relational trauma, emotional neglect, or environments where expressing your own needs did not feel safe.
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People-pleasing can develop for many reasons, but for some individuals it functions as a trauma response. It may emerge as a way of maintaining connection, avoiding conflict, reducing perceived threat, or creating safety within relationships.
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Many people who struggle with people-pleasing learned early in life that prioritizing others' needs was important for maintaining safety, connection, or acceptance. As a result, setting boundaries may feel uncomfortable, selfish, or unsafe, even when those boundaries are healthy and necessary.
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Yes. Growing up with emotionally immature, inconsistent, or emotionally unavailable caregivers can contribute to patterns of people-pleasing, self-doubt, perfectionism, and difficulty trusting your own needs and emotions.
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Many individuals understand their patterns intellectually but continue to experience anxiety, guilt, or fear when attempting to change them. This is often because these responses are rooted not only in thoughts, but also in emotional experiences and nervous system patterns developed over time.
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Therapy can help you understand the origins of people-pleasing patterns, develop greater self-awareness and self-trust, establish healthier boundaries, and build relationships that feel safer, more authentic, and more fulfilling.
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Yes. I provide in-person therapy in Santa Monica and Thousand Oaks, as well as virtual therapy for clients throughout California.