This blog gets a little personal.
Therapists writing about over-accommodating is a bit like writers writing about… writing.
I don’t need to speak for the whole profession, but many of us became trained as therapists long before we ever went to school. Formal training, supervision, and consultation often become the place where we learn how to turn a survival strategy into a superpower—how to make something workable out of the radioactive spider of accommodation that bit us in childhood.
Over-accommodating is primarily a way to hide from authenticity.
As kids, being an “easy” kid is a wildly effective survival skill.
It helps in homes with conflict.
It helps when a sibling needs more attention due to illness, addiction, or behavioral struggles.
It helps when adults are unpredictable, overwhelmed, or emotionally unavailable.
It helps when there are frequent moves, losses, or transitions.
For a child, shrinking yourself can feel safer than taking up space.
There are moments in adulthood that quietly invite us to outgrow people-pleasing.
Leaving home for college or work can place us in leadership roles where we realize other people’s behavior now affects us directly.
Serious dating relationships reveal patterns we can’t explain away as “just them.”
Even when friends agree our partner is difficult, we may sense that we are participating in a dynamic that blocks honest dialogue.
Midlife is often a turning point here.
Men and women tend to move through this season differently, shaped by cultural gender norms.
But there’s a shared invitation:
to reckon with exhaustion, burnout, and the resentment that builds when old strategies no longer work.
Resentment is an important light on the dashboard.
It usually signals that you aren’t being clear or consistent about your own boundaries.
That’s not how we typically think about resentment.
Anger still carries hope for change.
Resentment is anger that has lost hope and gone underground.
As long as the locus of control stays outside of us, hope erodes.
Many over-accommodators carry a quiet belief:
If I just give enough, they’ll eventually reciprocate.
Resentment is often the moment we finally see that this strategy isn’t working.
And when that honesty lands, it usually brings grief.
They aren’t who I hoped they were.
My parent won’t change.
My partner won’t meet me here.
My boss won’t see me differently.
Even my kids may not respond the way I imagined.
This is where boundaries matter.
A boundary is not a wall.
It’s not the withdrawal of love.
It’s not punishment.
A boundary is the condition required for love and care to exist.
It says:
Boundaries aren’t about control.
They’re about clarity.
In this cultural moment of estrangement and no-contact relationships—especially between parents and adult children—distance is rarely about a single rupture.
More often, it’s the result of repeated attempts to connect on terms that might work for both people.
Those terms are violated.
So the boundary tightens.
And sometimes the boundary becomes distance itself.
Divorce, estrangement, and the ending of long-term friendships carry complex grief.
They leave unanswered questions and real loss on both sides.
No matter which side you find yourself on, the invitation remains the same:
to understand your relationship with over-accommodation,
how it shaped your choices,
and how to begin untangling yourself from it.
Therapy slows the pattern down.
Not to shame it.
But to understand where it came from.
In therapy, you can:
The goal isn’t rigidity.
And it isn’t selfishness.
It’s becoming real.
Real kindness includes you.
Real connection requires friction.
And healthy relationships make room for two full people.
If you’re tired of being “easy” and still feeling alone,
that isn’t failure.
It’s information.
And it might be time to let your relationships meet the real you.
