Why Do I Still Over-Apologise? On People-Pleasing, Boundaries, and Two Years of Therapy Training
As I get ready to start year three of my training to become a psychotherapist - my penultimate year - I've found myself asking a slightly uncomfortable question: what's actually changed?
Two years of training, two years of my own therapy and yet, I still catch myself wondering: have I changed all that much? Where are the breakthroughs I was expecting?
(In all honesty though, expecting big breakthroughs and demanding a lot of myself is very on brand… amiright 👀)
The moment that made me notice
As always, nothing dramatic happened. I guess that’s sort of the point, over-apologising doesn’t really make itself known in the big moments, instead it seems to show up in more small, subtle, easy to second-guess ways.
So, short story time…
I was on FaceTime with my mum when my stepdad interrupted our conversation on the call. I wasn't thrilled about it, and said so something like "I was in the middle of a conversation."
Now that’s relatively small and definitely a reasonable request - barely a boundary at all, if you ask me.
And then, almost immediately afterwards, I regretted speaking up for myself. As if I'd been the one out of line, and as if I needed to make excuses for his behaviour - maybe he didn't hear we were talking - rather than simply letting my very ordinary, very reasonable comment stand.
Then for the rest of the call, I noticed I wasn't really present. I was scanning: was my mum annoyed? Would this cause tension between them? Had I overstepped? Was I too sensitive? Had my stepdad gone off in mood? I was far more preoccupied with everyone else's feelings than my own - in a conversation I was supposed to be having with my own mother.
I weighed up apologising to my stepdad versus not. Honestly, it wasn't really a choice - I knew I wouldn't be able to settle otherwise and would have spent the evening overthinking, so I sent him a voice note, apologising for how my comments may have come across, and told myself “done now, no over analysing.”
When his reply came the next morning, I noticed I didn't feel apprehensive seeing his name, or anxious reading it. But I did feel sorry for him. Still slightly convinced I'd been the one in the wrong…
The turn
There's a voice that shows up in moments like this, in Transactional Analysis, we'd call it a Parent voice - an old, internalised message rather than my actual, present-day judgement. And what it was saying, more or less, was: who do you think you are.
To have a need.
To take up that much space.
To ask for something as small as being allowed to finish a sentence…
Initially, my instinct was to judge myself for still reacting this way after everything I've learned. The "correct" version of progress (as if such a thing exists…) in my head, looked like sharing the boundary and then genuinely not caring how it landed because, self-worth right?
But I don't think that's actually what growth looks like here. What I did instead was smaller, and maybe a little more honest… I found the confidence to voice the need in the moment, and then the confidence to repair it afterwards. That rupture-and-repair (however imperfect) taught me something important.
It showed me that my stepdad, and probably most people in my life, are more resilient than I give them credit for, that they can withstand me having a need and that the relationship doesn't fracture just because I took up a little space in it - that actually feels like a fairly big realisation to have.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not fully resolved - there's probably a more refined version of this where I can hold the boundary and find a cleaner way to close the loop afterwards, rather than quietly trying to sweep it under the rug.
Why people-pleasing shows up like this for so many of us
I think a lot of us were conditioned, early and quietly, to believe that having needs - or even just thinking about ourselves - makes us selfish. That being agreeable, easy, undemanding, was the safest and most valuable thing we could be.
If you’re nodding along in agreement, I’m sure you’ll also know that that message rarely arrives as a single scenario - it's absorbed over years, from family dynamics and the wider world alike, and it's often exactly why setting boundaries feels so uncomfortable even when the boundary itself is small and reasonable.
The surface problem, in moments like the FaceTime call, feels like:
Nothing is changing. I'm still doing the very same thing.
The deeper problem - the one actually running the show - is the quiet belief that there's something inherently wrong with us, which is why change feels so urgent and so incomplete no matter how much work we do.
In TA, there's a concept called drivers which are described as “learned patterns of behaviour associated with internal pressure to behave in particular ways.” (Kahler, 1975)
The five commonly identified drivers are:
Be perfect
Try harder
Please others
Be strong
Hurry up
And they’re instilled in us early, often without us ever consciously choosing them.
My apology to my stepdad had please others written all over it. Recognising which driver just took the wheel doesn't make it disappear, but it does make it a lot less mysterious, and a lot easier to catch next time.
What actually helps
Honestly, I want to help you find a way of meeting the moment differently:
- Notice any thoughts or tension as it comes up - what's actually running right now?
- Get curious about the feeling underneath it - is it unease? A sense of not mattering?
- Find one small, viable action that helps you feel back in control of the moment - for me, that was the voice note. That might not necessarily be the "correct" therapeutic response, but it’s the one that let me actually be present again.
- Get curious about where the pattern might have started - understanding tends to open the door to self-compassion in a way self-criticism never does.
- Try naming which driver might have quietly taken over - please others, be perfect, whichever one shows up for you - because naming it makes it far easier to recognise the next time it's steering.
Where this leaves me
This work was never going to happen in one big, visible shift, as much as I think a part of me was still hoping it might. It happens incrementally, in moments as small as a FaceTime call, as our Adult self slowly spends more time in the driving seat. And because it happens gradually, we often don't clock the impact until we look back and realise… Actually, that went differently than it would have a few years ago.
Speaking to myself as much as anyone reading this - that absolutely counts, even when it doesn't feel like a breakthrough.
If you recognise yourself here, and you’re interested in finding out how we could work together, take a look at the below page for further information.
Sending love,
Tiffany xx
References
Kahler, T. (1975). Drivers: The key to the process of scripts. Transactional Analysis Journal, 5(3), 280–284.
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