Do I need to bring my partner?

Not necessarily. A lot of people work on sexual anxiety individually. If there's a relational dynamic feeding the pattern, we might bring your partner in for a few sessions.

I feel anxious during sex but I don't know why. Is that normal?

You don't need a clear reason for your body to feel unsafe during intimacy. Sometimes it's years of cultural messages about how sex should look. Sometimes it's a pattern your nervous system built so gradually you never clocked the origin. We work with what your body is doing now.

Is this the same as therapy for sexual trauma?

Different entry point. Trauma therapy works with what happened to you and how your body still responds. Anxiety therapy works with the self-monitoring and performance pressure that take you out of sex, whether or not there's a specific event behind it. If you're not sure which fits, we'll figure it out in the consult.

What if I'm embarrassed to talk about this?

Most people are, at first. You don't need to walk in ready to describe your sex life in detail. We start where you are.

Sex & Relationship Therapy for

People Pleasing

YOU’VE BEEN EVERYONE’S FAVORITE YES.
IT’S TIME TO FIND YOUR NO.

You’re stuck saying “yes” but don’t always mean it.

Someone asks you for something and your mouth is already agreeing. The scan happened before thought: their face, their tone, what they need you to be. Later, alone, you find out what you signed up for, usually while resenting it, sometimes while drafting the apology text for a thing you didn’t do wrong.

People pleasers know they’re people pleasers. And you can probably trace it to its source, too: the family where your job was keeping everyone calm, or the relationship where being easy kept you safe. And here you are anyway, still saying yes despite your best attempts to be different.

That’s because the pattern doesn’t live in your understanding. There’s a part of you that learned, a long time ago, that other people’s comfort was a safety requirement, and it still runs the room before you’re consulted. It lives in your body, in what happens in your chest in the half-second after someone asks you for something. So that’s where we start.

I was a professional actor before I was a therapist, so I ask this with real respect for the craft: what is the performance you’ve been giving? Is it who you are? Is it who you want to be? What has it cost to pretend?

People pleasing wears different costumes on different people. Women trained to be accommodating. Queer and neurodivergent folks who learned to mask before they learned the word for it. The partner who becomes whoever the relationship needs, then files for divorce and grieves the person the marriage never made room for. Mourning that is allowed even when leaving was your idea. There may not be a “before” to get back to, and that’s fine, because we’re building who comes next: someone who takes up space physically, emotionally, spiritually, and risks being wrong out loud. I call that identity expansion.

And in a city like New York, where being impressive feels like a cultural requirement, the performance can run for decades before anyone notices it’s a performance.

The pattern is also rarely private. Partners of pleasers carry their own version of it: you stop trusting the yes, because you've watched too many of them curdle into resentment weeks later. You want to be chosen, and what you keep getting is accommodated. By then the pleasing belongs to the relationship, which is why this work comes in both formats: solo, or with the two of you in the room.

What people pleasing feels like

It’s going along with sex you didn’t want, with someone you love, and calling it fine. Not knowing what you like in bed, because you don’t feel responsible for your own pleasure. Agreeing to dinner while your whole body votes no. Keeping a running list of everything you’ve given, and hating yourself a little for keeping it.

And it follows you into the bedroom, where it hides best and costs most. If you can’t say no to a dinner invitation, the no you need at 11pm doesn’t stand a chance.

If you're the partner reading this, your version counts too: wondering whether the yes you just got was real, and feeling bad for asking.

GET STARTED

When someone asks what you want, do you respond with what they want to hear?

Other people's discomfort (real or imagined) registers as an emergency. Self-abandonment becomes the exit. And this usually happens in the relationships you care about the most, that’s where the risk is the highest. Often, in couples both share this pattern, it’s rare that only one person does it.

The same skill that lets you say what you like in bed is the one that lets you disappoint your mother on the phone. Both require knowing what you want: from you, for you. When did “what do I want?” last make your top three questions?

How I help

We bridge your insight and your body, in practice, at low stakes first. Your body will object when you start saying no. We build your capacity to tolerate the anxiety, the uncertainty, the frustration, and the fear that show up in that half-second, because those feelings are the price of a boundary, and you've spent your whole life paying them on behalf of other people.

Then we go after the wanting itself. Sexuality can be a playground for this if you want it to be. So can the hot air balloon ride you never took because your partner was afraid of heights.

I work with people pleasers individually and in two-partner sessions, via telehealth anywhere in New York or Oregon. Solo, the work is your half of the pattern. As a couple, we work the loop from both sides: the scan and the automatic yes on one side, the doubt and the eggshell-walking on the other. Either way, this is body-based work grounded in IFS parts work and nervous system approaches, not another round of boundary scripts.

WHERE YOU ARE NOW

The yes leaves your mouth before you've checked in. You're managing everyone's moods, tracking everyone's needs, and the resentment is quietly compounding. Your wants have been in storage so long you're not sure where you put them.

WHERE WE’RE GOING

You learn to catch the scan while it's happening, the moment your attention leaves your body and goes to their reaction. We get curious about the part doing the scanning, what it's protecting, what it learned. And we build your capacity to stay with your own answer while someone else is disappointed in it. If your partner is in the room, they learn the other half: how to receive a no without treating it as a rupture, and how to stop auditing every yes.

WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE in practice

What happens when you say no to your best friend who's had a terrible day and wants you to come over? What does your chest do? Can you feel the difference between kindness, which has a chooser in it, and pleasing, which skips the chooser entirely?

Those are the questions we work with.

A yes only means something when a no was available.

Ready to start?

A consultation is free, with no pressure. We'll talk about what's bringing you in and whether this approach feels right for you.

BOOK

FAQs

No. It's a pattern, and usually a brilliant one that kept you connected or safe at some point. It earned its keep once. It deserves respect on its way out.
Because wanting is my specialty, and people pleasing is a wanting problem. The bedroom is just where the pattern gets most expensive.
That fear is the pattern talking, and we'll work with it directly. The goal is choice: a yes that means something because a no was available.
Both. Solo, we work on your half of the pattern. As a couple, we work the loop the two of you built around it, the way I work with any two partners . One boundary I hold: if I'm already your individual therapist, I'll refer the couple work to a colleague so you keep a room that's just yours.
Yup, this pattern can impact anyone of any identity.

Therapy for people pleasers in Brooklyn, NY I work with New York clients via secure telehealth, in person coming soon. If you've spent your whole life being easy and want a therapist who won't let you perform your way through sessions too, let's talk.

Therapy for people pleasers in Portland, OR Licensed in Oregon, seeing Portland-area clients virtually. If saying yes has been running your life and your relationships, I'd love to connect.