People-pleasing rarely announces itself loudly. It appears in everyday gestures: saying yes when you want to say no, softening your needs to avoid discomfort, anticipating others’ reactions before they are even expressed. Many people who identify as people-pleasers are outwardly competent, caring, and reliable. They are often described as “easy to be around.” Yet beneath this surface, there is frequently exhaustion, resentment, and a quiet sense of self-erasure.
In psychodynamic psychotherapy, people-pleasing is not understood as a personality flaw or a lack of assertiveness. It is a psychic solution — one that once served an important function. The difficulty lies not in why it emerged, but in why it continues long after its original necessity has passed.
What People-Pleasing Looks Like in Everyday Life
In everyday life, people-pleasing shows up as chronic over-responsibility for others’ feelings. Decisions are filtered through the imagined reactions of family, partners, colleagues, and even strangers. Discomfort is avoided at all costs, particularly the discomfort of disappointing someone.
From a Lacanian perspective, this pattern reflects a subject who has positioned themselves primarily in relation to the desire of the Other. Rather than asking, What do I want?, the guiding question becomes, What does the Other want from me? Over time, the subject’s own desire becomes difficult to locate, sometimes experienced only as anxiety, irritation, or fatigue.
In clinical work, people often seek a therapist in Melbourne because they feel “burnt out” or “taken advantage of,” without immediately recognising people-pleasing as the underlying structure. The symptom is exhaustion; the cause lies in a particular relation to desire and recognition.
Developmental Origins and Unconscious Drivers
People-pleasing typically has its roots in early relational experiences. In many cases, it emerges in environments where emotional attunement was conditional: love, approval, or safety depended on being compliant, helpful, or emotionally available.
From a psychodynamic point of view, the child learns that their place in the world is secured by meeting the needs of others. This can occur in families where caregivers were overwhelmed, emotionally fragile, unpredictable, or demanding. The child adapts by becoming attuned to subtle shifts in mood and expectation, often at the expense of their own needs.
Lacan’s concept of alienation is useful here. To enter language and relationship, the subject must alienate themselves in the signifiers of the Other. For the people-pleaser, this alienation becomes particularly rigid. Their sense of self is organised around being what the Other desires. Separation — the moment when the subject recognises that the Other lacks — becomes fraught, even threatening.
Unconsciously, people-pleasing can function as a defence against loss. If I am indispensable, agreeable, and self-sacrificing, perhaps I will not be abandoned. This logic is rarely conscious, but it is powerful. It explains why simply “setting boundaries” can feel not just difficult, but dangerous.
Emotional and Relational Consequences
While people-pleasing may reduce conflict in the short term, its emotional cost accumulates over time. Chronic anxiety is common, particularly anticipatory anxiety about others’ reactions. Anger is often disavowed, emerging instead as resentment, passive withdrawal, or sudden emotional outbursts.
Relationships shaped by people-pleasing tend to become unbalanced. The people-pleaser gives more than they receive, while others may unconsciously come to expect this accommodation. Intimacy suffers, as genuine closeness requires the presence of two subjects, not one subject and one set of expectations.
In Lacanian terms, the subject becomes trapped in the fantasy of being the object that completes the Other. Yet this position is structurally impossible. The Other’s lack cannot be filled, no matter how much one gives. This impossibility often shows itself clinically as repeated disappointment: No matter how much I do, it’s never enough.
Many people seek psychodynamic psychotherapy at this point, not because they want to become selfish, but because they can no longer sustain the psychic cost of self-abandonment.
Psychodynamic Approaches to Understanding and Shifting the Pattern
Psychodynamic psychotherapy does not aim to eliminate people-pleasing through techniques alone. Instead, it works to make the unconscious logic of the pattern speakable. In therapy, the people-pleasing dynamic often emerges within the therapeutic relationship itself: the patient worries about being a “good client,” about taking up too much space, or about disappointing the therapist.
Rather than correcting this, the psychodynamic approach is to listen carefully to it. These moments offer valuable insight into how the subject positions themselves in relation to authority, care, and desire. Over time, the patient may begin to hear how often their speech is organised around obligation rather than want.
In Lacanian work, the goal is not to replace people-pleasing with assertiveness as an ideal. It is to create space for the subject’s desire to appear — often hesitantly, fragmentedly, and with anxiety. The question shifts from How do I make others comfortable? to What is being asked of me, and at what cost?
For those seeking psychotherapy in Melbourne, this process can be both unsettling and liberating. Letting go of people-pleasing often involves mourning: the loss of a familiar identity, and sometimes the loss of relationships that depended on self-sacrifice.
Practical Steps to Build and Maintain Boundaries
While insight is central, change also requires lived experience. Building boundaries does not mean becoming rigid or uncaring. It means recognising the limit between self and other — a limit that allows for difference, disagreement, and desire.
One practical step is learning to pause. People-pleasing thrives on immediacy: the quick yes, the automatic accommodation. Creating a small delay — “Let me think about that” — can interrupt the compulsion to comply and allow space for reflection.
Another step is tolerating discomfort. Boundary-setting almost always produces anxiety, particularly at first. From a psychoanalytic perspective, this anxiety is meaningful. It signals a shift in the subject’s position, a movement away from being organised entirely by the Other’s desire.
Working with a psychologist in Kew or a therapist in Melbourne who is trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy can support this process. Therapy provides a place where boundaries can be tested, negotiated, and reflected upon, rather than imposed prematurely.
Encouragement and Next Steps
People-pleasing is not something to be shamed or eradicated. It is a testament to the subject’s early ingenuity — a way of securing connection in a world that once felt uncertain. The task of therapy is not to undo this history, but to loosen its hold.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy offers a space where the subject can begin to hear themselves differently: not only as the one who responds, adapts, and gives, but as someone whose desire matters. This shift does not happen overnight. It unfolds through speech, repetition, and careful listening.
If you recognise yourself in these patterns and are considering psychotherapy in Melbourne, know that change does not require becoming someone else. It begins with allowing yourself to take up space — in speech, in relationship, and in your own life.
Disclaimer
These writings are not therapy; they are general information about therapy. They are not a substitute for therapy or professional psychological advice. While care has been taken to ensure accuracy and reference to published research, therapy and psychoanalytic work are domains of ongoing study. A written text cannot replace the conversation that takes place in therapy sessions, which are dynamic, evolving, and centred on individual experience. Each person’s situation is unique, and meanings can only be spoken and explored within one’s own sessions. If something in these writings resonates with you and you are considering therapy, you are welcome to book a session.