3 Subtle Ways People-Pleasing Reappears After Healing

Even healthy boundaries can wobble under pressure. Here's what research says about why that happens.

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | December 30, 2025

Most people who vow to work on their people-pleasing patterns assume healing will be a clean break. And, for most, it can start out that way. You slowly but surely stop over-explaining; you start saying no without feeling ill; you insist on a boundary and, miraculously, the world doesn't end. At this point, it's tempting to start thinking that you've healed.

And then, inexplicably, you backtrack. You catch yourself agreeing too quickly, or notice yourself compromising on a need mid-sentence. You feel that old familiar instinct to be "easy" and "low-maintenance." It isn't a full-blown retreat back to square one; it only happens in certain rooms, with certain people, under certain pressures. Still, most are left wondering: How did I get back here?

What few people realize is that healing rarely means fully erasing a pattern for good overnight. More often, it means reducing its automaticity. And, unfortunately, this leaves room for old strategies to reappear when the conditions for them are right.

Here are three ways people-pleasing can re-emerge not because you've failed, but because your nervous system is doing what it once learned to do best.

1. People-Pleasing Due To Situational Relapse

A useful lens for understanding this backtrack comes from research on relapse. Note this doesn't entail relapse in the moralized sense of "falling off the wagon," but rather in the behavioral sense.

In a study that posed an interpersonal model of addiction relapse, researchers argued that relapse into an addictive or habitual pattern of behavior can often be situational. This means falling back into old ways can be triggered by environmental or social stressors that overwhelm our coping resources, and not because we simply lack willpower.

People-pleasing is, at its core, a learned regulation strategy. Many rely on it as a strategy for reducing perceived threats, like conflict and rejection. Over time, the behavior can become habitual, or even addictive, if our nervous system begins encoding it as a reliable way to regulate anxiety in relationships.

However, when life is calm and our resources are abundant, it can feel easier to practice assertiveness, boundary-setting and emotional tolerance; these are the ideal conditions under which we can kick a people-pleasing habit. But as soon as you find yourself under heightened stress (especially relational stress) your nervous system is likely to default to its older, well-worn strategies.

This isn't regression so much as it is efficiency: your brain is just reaching for what once worked fastest. In practice, this might look like slipping back into people-pleasing during a particularly stressful family gathering, or during a period of instability at your workplace. Importantly, the relapse is context-bound. This means that, outside of these stressful situations, your progress is still totally intact.

Moments like these are humbling reminders that healing doesn't render you immune to old patterns. It does, however, make you less dependent on them. In turn, you're also more capable of noticing when they resurface. But, importantly, small backsteps like these don't erase all of the hard work you've done to improve.

2. People-Pleasing Due To Boundary Erasure

One of the easiest ways to fall back into people-pleasing is through boundaries — or, rather, a lack thereof. Research published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin on attachment styles and contingencies of self-worth helps explain why this happens.

The authors of the study note that many individuals base their sense of self-worth on specific external domains, such as others' approval or relational harmony. However, as soon as self-esteem becomes contingent on being accepted or needed, then personal boundaries will start to feel psychologically costly in turn. In other words, saying "no" to others can feel inherently threatening to our sense of self. The authors also note that people with attachment fears are especially prone to this.

This is precisely where boundary erasure starts. When insecurely attached people sense that their closeness to someone is threatened in any way, they might abandon their self-protective boundaries in favor of anything that could protect that proximity. And, often, this happens regardless of the personal expenses it may bring.

In turn, they might refrain from asserting themself or confronting others, since their self-worth is tied to how secure their attachments feel. And, often, each of these small decisions can feel reasonable in isolation. But, cumulatively, it can lead them to returning to people-pleasing in certain relationships.

However, this process is often invisible to the person going through it. They don't consciously think to themselves, "I'm going to abandon my needs for this person." Instead, the thought pattern is usually, "This relationship matters, and I need to protect it." From this perspective, healing demands the stabilization of self-worth, otherwise the price of connection might always be self-abandonment.

3. People-Pleasing Due To Likability Reflexes

The third route back into people-pleasing is perhaps the most automatic: your sociotropic reflexes. Classic research published in Cognitive Therapy and Research defines sociotropy as a personality orientation characterized by heightened concern with others' approval, or an increased sensitivity to negative social events.

In the study, sociotropy was linked to increased anxiety and depressive symptoms, particularly when individuals lacked effective coping strategies for difficult or unpleasant social scenarios. And under social threat, this leads us to becoming reactive. Our reactions come out faster than our ability to reflect or think critically, and, in turn, likability becomes our primary reflect.

This helps explain why people-pleasing will often reappear first in awkward or unenjoyable social situations. You laugh at a joke you don't find funny, or soften a major disagreement in a situation where you'd otherwise put your foot down.

When we strongly dislike our circumstances and the way they make us feel, we cope by making ourselves more likable. Often, this is because our outward presentation can feel like the only thing that we have control over, or the only thing that can make us feel safe and comfortable. And for someone with a history of people-pleasing, safety has long been associated with being agreeable, pleasant and easy to like.

Even after substantial healing, those reflexes can flicker back on when the environment feels evaluative, uncertain or difficult to handle. Importantly, this doesn't mean that sociotropy is our destiny at every social event. The same research highlights coping as a mediator.

In other words, if you keep working on your emotional regulation and self-soothing skills — instead of solely focusing on avoiding people-pleasing alone — then the pull toward placating others will weaken. Although the reflex might still arise, you'll find it much easier to control the outcome.

Wondering if people-pleasing is shaping who holds power in your relationships? Take this science backed test to see how much influence you give away: Relationship Control Scale

From quiet diplomats to reluctant revolutionaries, people-pleasing shows up in history. Take the Historical Figure Quiz to see who you align with most.

A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.