A therapist describes a client who has everything on paper but feels empty because she's spent her life saying yes to others and managing their needs instead of building real connections. The real problem: people-pleasing erodes self-knowledge, so nobody actually knows her. The fix is boundaries, breaking codependency, and honest relationships.
I had a client come in and she was like, you know, I've done all the things, Terri. Like, I've literally done all the things, raised the kids. I'm in good shape. My husband and I have money. We travel. I do SoulCycle 3 times a week. I'm on all these boards. I get to, you know, donate my time. And she was literally like, hello, is this all there is? Like, literally, is this it? You know? And she's like, why do I feel so empty? And I was like, because you built your entire life checking boxes that somebody else constructed, saying yes when you wanna say no to be nice, managing the crap out of all the people in your life, not relating to them in an honest way. So really it's like an existential crisis of real deep loneliness because if we're saying yes when we wanna say no, we're always taking one for the team. People don't know you, which is why boundaries are so important, which is why not being codependent is so important because you're so worth knowing.
