Are You People-Pleasing or Surviving? How Trauma Shapes Codependency
Maybe you're too hard on yourself and constantly worry about how other people feel. Or you feel guilty and ashamed all the time, not even knowing why. You always put other people's needs before your own.
Uploaded from Unsplash on 12/11/2025
Experiences from our early childhood shape the person we become. Much of how we communicate, form relationships, cope with stress, and move through the world as adults has roots in the families of origin, communities, and dynamics we grew up with.
When Caring for Others Turns into Losing Yourself
Many of the people I work with have gotten lost in caretaking others. In our community, it's common to hear people describe themselves as the dependable one. Maybe you think of yourself as the helper, the peacemaker, or the one everyone else leans on. Growing up you learned to take care of others in your community. On the outside, that looks like generosity, loyalty or kindness. But sometimes, these are not just strengths or personality traits. They're often trauma survival strategies.
As a trauma therapist in Oakland, I often hear clients say, "How could this be trauma? I'm just a caring person."
If you've ever wondered why you lose yourself in relationships, why none of them feel fully safe, or why setting boundaries feels impossible, this may help you understand what's driving those patterns — because there is always a reason — and what healing can look like through trauma therapy.
What Is Codependency? (And Why It's Not Your Fault)
Do you believe that you must keep everyone else happy, calm, and taken care of to feel safe or valued?
Codependency is an unhealthy relationship pattern where a person's sense of worth and emotional stability depends on taking care of others, often at the expense of their own needs. An oversimplified definition is overly caretaking others or putting others needs above your own. It’s often a compulsion or difficult to stop even if you are aware and would like to tend to your own needs too.
Codependency often leads to blurred boundaries, unhealthy communication, and controlling or enabling behaviors. Codependent relationships are one-sided, with one person relying on the other to feel stable, secure, and complete. The other person in the relationship often enables this dynamic by allowing or supporting their partner's or family member's harmful behaviors, whether that's alcohol or substance use, impulsive behaviors, or other unhealthy patterns. These unhealthy dynamics can prevent both you and your loved one from growing.
Over time, they can take a serious toll on each person's mental health, often leading to anxiety, low self-esteem, or depression.
How People-Pleasing and Codependency Are Linked
People-pleasing and codependency often have the same roots: early experiences in which your needs weren't met. Environments where you didn't feel safe, seen, or important. People-pleasing is the tendency to say yes to everything, avoid conflict, and smooth things over. Codependency goes deeper; it’s your identity and self-worth that become enmeshed with caring for others. In other words, people-pleasing is often the symptom and codependency the pattern beneath it. You can be a people-pleaser without being codependent. Still, most codependent people have a long history of people-pleasing as a way to stay connected and avoid abandonment.
The Link Between Trauma and Codependency
Codependency and people-pleasing don't start in adulthood. You were not born with them either. These behaviors usually begin in childhood, especially in homes or communities where staying safe meant staying small, agreeable, or emotionally available to everyone but yourself. Where emotional needs were ignored, minimized, or punished. You may have learned early on to stay helpful, agreeable, or just… invisible.
Many adults carry these patterns without realizing where they came from. Often, it's adverse childhood experiences that wire your brain in negative thinking patterns and self-limiting beliefs like, "I am not (good, worthy, lovable, capable, etc.) enough." "I am responsible for how others feel." "I don't trust my feelings and judgment." "If someone mistreats me, it is my fault."
Codependency becomes a way to avoid conflict, keep the peace, and try to control chaos you had no power over. I often hear clients say, "I don’t know why I care so much about making other people happy.” Or “Why am I doing this?”
Those patterns were protective once. But as an adult, the same strategies that kept you afloat can make it incredibly hard to set boundaries, ask for support, or say what you really feel.
You could also explore: When It’s Not Just Stress: Recognizing Everyday Signs of Unresolved Trauma In Trauma Therapy in Oakland
The Fawn Response: Pleasing Others as a Way to Stay Safe
If this feels familiar, it's important to know that these patterns aren't choices you're making on purpose. They're survival strategies you learned a long time ago as a part of the fawn response — a trauma-driven pattern of pushing down your own needs and appeasing others to feel connected and safe.
How does this manifest in life?
You say yes when you actually mean no to avoid conflict or rejection. You take responsibility for keeping everyone else calm. Over time, it turns into chronic people-pleasing, guilt around having your own boundaries, and a profound disconnection from your feelings and identity.
Insecure Attachment and Codependency: How Early Relationships Shape Adult Patterns
Insecure attachment can show up as anxious, avoidant, or disorganized patterns. You may be constantly worrying someone will leave you (anxious). You may pull away when things get emotionally close (avoidant). Or, you may be feeling both at the same time (disorganized). It often creates deep uncertainty about relationships — you never know whether they are safe or stable, which makes it hard to trust people and feel connected.
If you grew up in an environment where attention and care were inconsistent, you may have learned to earn love by being overly responsible or compliant. Over time, this becomes a habit of meeting everyone's needs before your own.
In Oakland, many people were raised in high-stress environments where parents were doing their best but often emotionally unavailable due to work, survival, and other pressures. Maybe you were told that you were "being too sensitive" or "too needy" when your attachment wounds were actually rooted in real emotional deprivation.
How Trauma Shows Up as People-Pleasing
Difficulty Asking for What You Need
You find it difficult to stand up for yourself and ask for what you need. And asking for what you need feels uncomfortable.
Saying Yes When You Mean No
You say yes just to keep the peace or not disappoint others. You take responsibility for others' emotions and feel extremely anxious when someone is upset with you. You apologize all the time, even when you didn't do anything wrong.
Overfunctioning: Everything for Everyone
You always try to fix everything for everyone: you're the one who steps in, takes over, and tries to make things better.
Boundary Guilt
Setting boundaries? Impossible. You feel guilty each time you try to speak up, say no, or choose to protect your space.
You are used to quieting or brushing off your feelings to keep the peace.
"Oh, it's nothing, really."
"It's fine, don't worry about me."
"I can handle it."
Silencing your needs to avoid conflict, disappointment, or being seen as "too much."
You could also explore: The Power of Healthy Boundaries: Part 1 - An Anxiety Therapist’s Perspective on Why They Matter and How to Start Setting Them
Why People-Pleasing and Codependency Feel So Hard to Break
People-pleasing and codependency are challenging to break because these patterns are survival strategies your brain learned early on. Over time, you learned to feel valuable only when you were useful, like taking care of others and keeping the peace, and that makes stepping back feel unsafe, even selfish.
Breaking codependency means learning to separate your identity from your role. And this is something that takes time, support, and a safe space to practice healthier connections.
You could also explore: The Power of Healthy Boundaries: Part 2 - An Anxiety Therapist’s Perspective on How Boundaries Can Improve Relationships & Prevent Burnout
How Trauma Therapy in Oakland Can Help You Break the Cycle
Working with a trauma therapist will help you differentiate between who you really are and those survival patterns you learned long ago. Trauma therapy supports both the body and mind in processing old wounds instead of repeating them. In a safe therapeutic relationship, you learn how to honor your boundaries and reconnect with your real needs without guilt. Over time, you begin building a sense of self that doesn't depend on other people's emotions or expectations.
Most importantly, trauma therapy helps you to release the old belief that love must be earned, allowing you finally to step into relationships where you can feel seen, supported, and whole.
Lara Clayman, Trauma Therapist Oakland
Author Bio:
Lara Clayman, LCSW, is a trauma therapist in Oakland, California. She helps clients process trauma and reconnect to their nervous systems while developing a felt sense of safety. She specializes in anxiety therapy, online therapy, multicultural mental health, counseling for men, parenting support, and climate distress.
Learn more at www.laraclaymantherapy.com.
