“Are You Mad at Me?”: Understanding and Healing the People-Pleasing Instinct

“Are You Mad at Me?”: Understanding and Healing the People-Pleasing Instinct

Lisa Marie Bobby, PhD, LMFT, BCC

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby is a licensed psychologist, licensed marriage and family therapist, board-certified coach, AAMFT clinical supervisor, host of the Love, Happiness, and Success Podcast and founder of Growing Self.

Have you ever been absolutely sure someone was upset with you because they took too long to text back… or ended a message with a period instead of an emoji? If you’ve spent way too much energy analyzing tone shifts, rereading conversations, or trying to fix a vibe that may or may not even exist, this one’s for you.

On the Love, Happiness & Success podcast this week, I sat down with psychotherapist, author, and all-around wise soul Meg Josephson to talk about something that so many of us experience but rarely know how to name: relational hypervigilance and the people-pleasing patterns that come with it.

Why You Always Feel Like You’re in Trouble

If you’ve ever caught yourself wondering “Are they mad at me?” on a loop, it might seem like you’re just being sensitive or anxious. But what’s actually happening underneath is often a deeply ingrained survival response rooted in complex trauma. For many of us, that fear of upsetting others or losing approval isn’t a personality quirk. It’s a brilliant, protective strategy we developed early on, especially if our emotional environments growing up felt chaotic, invalidating, or emotionally unsafe.

Meg shares her own journey of learning to decode these reactions in herself and in her clients. She explains how the fawn response, the lesser-known fourth trauma response alongside fight, flight, and freeze, often shows up as compulsive people-pleasing, perfectionism, over-apologizing, and a deep discomfort with simply existing as you are. In short: if you’ve ever felt like your worth depends on being liked, needed, or non-disruptive, this conversation will help you connect the dots.

The Hidden Costs of Being “Easygoing”

Here’s the thing about people-pleasing: it looks really good on the outside. You might be seen as kind, helpful, accommodating, “low maintenance.” You might even be rewarded for it in school, at work, and in relationships. But when we’re constantly scanning for approval and suppressing our own needs to avoid rejection or disapproval, we can lose sight of who we really are.

Meg and I explore how this shows up in everyday life, from over-explaining texts to struggling with resentment in relationships, and how learning to pause, check in with yourself, and gently set boundaries is the first step toward healing. These aren’t big, dramatic shifts. They’re small, intentional acts of self-connection that start to rebuild trust with the parts of you that learned it wasn’t safe to be honest, assertive, or even just… fully you.