Trauma and Boundaries: Why Chronic People-Pleasing is a Survival Strategy
Parents who repeatedly rebuff the child's primary selfobject needs are usually not able to provide attuned responsiveness to the child's emotional reactions. The child perceives his painful reactive feelings are unwelcome or damaging to the caregiver and must be defensively sequestered in order to preserve the needed bond.
Under such circumstances these walled off painful feelings become a source of lifelong inner conflict and vulnerability to traumatic states, and in analysis their re exposure to the analyst tends to be strenuously resisted.
— from Contexts of Being, The Intersubjective Foundations of Psychological Life, by Robert Stolorow and George Atwood
Understanding Boundary Dissolution
In my Manhattan practice, I often work with high-achieving professionals who struggle with an inability to say "no." What looks like "people-pleasing" on the surface is often a deeply ingrained survival mechanism designed to maintain relational safety at the expense of the self.
- Defensive Sequestering: The process of hiding one's true emotional needs to avoid a rupture with a caregiver or partner.
- Loss of Agency: When a child learns that their feelings are "damaging" to others, they lose the ability to set healthy boundaries in adulthood.
- The Analytic Process: Therapy provides an attuned environment where these sequestered feelings can finally be safely explored and integrated.
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