Written by Maria Boncyk, LCSW | Reviewed July 2026
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Maria Boncyk, LCSW offers fully virtual therapy for people pleasing and boundary difficulties to teens and adults across New York and Massachusetts. Her practice helps clients understand why saying no feels dangerous, rebuild a connection to their own needs, and set boundaries without drowning in guilt. Begin with a free 25-minute consultation.
The Exhaustion of Being Everything to Everyone
People pleasing describes a way of relating where your own needs get deprioritized or disregarded entirely to accommodate other people, usually driven by a quiet fear that they will leave, get angry, or think less of you if you stop. In daily life it looks like saying yes while your stomach says no, apologizing for things that are not your fault, rehearsing texts before sending them, and anticipating everyone’s moods so automatically that you barely notice you are doing it. It is genuinely draining to spend your social energy scanning for disapproval and adapting in real time. Being around people, even people you love, becomes tiring rather than nourishing, and resentment builds in the background, followed quickly by guilt about the resentment. Perhaps most disorienting, after years of tuning yourself to other people’s frequencies, you may find you are unclear about your own likes, dislikes, desires, and even emotions. When someone asks what you want, the honest answer is that you no longer know. That loss of self-knowledge is not a personality flaw. It is a learned pattern, and learned patterns can change.
Why You Cannot Just Start Saying No
Advice about people pleasing usually amounts to set more boundaries, as if the problem were a missing skill. In Maria’s fifteen-plus years of clinical experience, the problem is almost never a lack of knowledge about what a boundary is. People pleasing is an attachment strategy, a way a younger version of you learned to stay safe and connected in relationships where love felt conditional, moods were unpredictable, or your needs caused conflict. Your nervous system concluded that keeping others happy was the price of belonging, and it has been paying that price ever since. This is why setting a boundary can trigger anxiety that feels wildly out of proportion, and why therapy at this practice goes deeper than scripts and assertiveness tips. Using attachment-based and relational approaches, we trace where the pattern began and what it protected you from. Somatic awareness helps you locate your actual preferences in the body, the tightening that means no, the settling that means yes, signals people pleasers have learned to override. Where the fear of disappointing others is rooted in specific painful experiences, EMDR therapy can reprocess those origins so that saying no stops feeling like a threat to your survival.
Ready to Take the First Step?
People Pleasing & Boundaries Therapy sessions are held virtually, so you can meet with Maria from anywhere in New York or Massachusetts. Request a free 25-minute consultation to see if it feels like the right fit, with no commitment required.
What Working on This Looks Like
After a free 25-minute consultation, sessions run weekly for 50 minutes over secure video, wherever you are in New York or Massachusetts. Early work focuses on awareness, catching the automatic yes, noticing the resentment signal, and reconnecting with the preferences underneath the accommodation. Middle work addresses the roots, the relationships and experiences that taught you your needs were too much, and begins experimenting with small, real-world boundary shifts that we process together. Because the therapy relationship is itself a relationship, it becomes a live practice ground. Disagreeing with your therapist, asking for something different, noticing the urge to perform being a good client, all of it is welcome material, and Maria will name these moments with warmth and directness. Most clients feel a shift in awareness within weeks, while changing the pattern itself, especially the guilt that follows early boundary setting, typically unfolds over several months. The guilt fades with repetition. It really does.
Who This Therapy Fits
This work is built for teens and adults who recognize the pattern: the friend everyone leans on who has no one to lean on, the employee who cannot decline a request, the partner who has quietly disappeared inside their own relationship, the eldest daughter who has been managing everyone’s emotions since childhood. It is an especially strong fit if your people pleasing connects to a childhood where love had conditions, because that is where attachment-focused and EMDR work reach deeper than advice ever can. It also pairs naturally with work on anxiety and complex trauma, which frequently share the same roots. If you are located anywhere in New York or Massachusetts, Maria can see you virtually. And if part of you is hesitating to reach out because you do not want to bother anyone or take a spot from someone who needs it more, notice that the pattern is speaking. Needing support is not an imposition. You are allowed to take up room in your own life, and therapy is a reasonable place to start practicing.
Support for Recovering People Pleasers Across New York and Massachusetts
The pace and density of modern life gives people pleasers endless opportunities to overextend, demanding jobs, layered social circles, family obligations stacked on top of each other, and clients across New York and Massachusetts describe the same squeeze in their own settings. Virtual sessions mean the work fits into your actual life, Monday through Thursday, 9 AM to 7 PM Eastern, without a commute. Maria is an out-of-network (OON) provider who confirms coverage details with each client first, offers out-of-network reimbursement support, and holds a limited number of sliding scale spots. A free 25-minute consultation is the low-pressure way to see whether this work, and this therapist, feel right for you.
Common Questions, Answered Directly
Why do I feel guilty every time I say no?
Because somewhere along the way, your nervous system learned that other people’s comfort was your responsibility and that disappointing someone was dangerous. The guilt is a conditioned alarm, not evidence you did something wrong. Therapy helps you trace where that alarm was installed and gradually turn its volume down.
Is people pleasing a trauma response?
Often, yes. Clinicians sometimes call it the fawn response, an adaptation where a person learned to appease others to stay safe or connected, frequently in childhood environments where love felt conditional or moods were unpredictable. Because it is a learned survival strategy, it can be unlearned with the right therapeutic support.
Can therapy help me set boundaries without ruining my relationships?
Yes, and this fear deserves a real answer: healthy relationships survive boundaries and usually improve with them. Relationships that only function when you self-abandon were costing you more than you realized. Therapy helps you build boundaries gradually, process the guilt, and see clearly which relationships deepen and which were resting on your compliance.