What It Looks Like When Therapy Starts to Work

One woman’s journey from people-pleasing and emotional invisibility to learning how to come back to herself—and stay there.

Once upon a time, in a suburb not so far away, lived a woman named Brooke. Brooke used to think being chill was her superpower. She was laid-back. Easygoing and cool under pressure. She wore “go with the flow” like armor—low maintenance, high maturity.

Brooke genuinely believed that not needing much made her helpful. Thoughtful. Evolved, even. She took pride in how self-aware she was, how good she'd become at anticipating what people needed before they asked. She didn’t recognize it as self-abandonment, because it didn’t feel like suppression—it felt like a skill.

But slowly, almost invisibly, Brooke’s strategy started to calcify into an identity. She wasn’t just someone who could adapt—she became someone who didn’t need. Someone who made things easier and who stayed small enough to be digestible. 

And until she came to see me, Brooke never noticed how the better she got at her role, the more she disappeared into it. 

How people-pleasing damages intimacy

When she first came to see me, Brooke didn’t talk about grief or loneliness - she talked about logistics. She told me she had a good partner, a stable relationship. No real fights. No red flags. “We get along,” she said, in a way that sounded like both a celebration and a resignation. And then one day, a month or two in, she told me a story that changed everything.

She had been crying—not loudly, not messily. Just one of those quiet leaks that happens when your body can’t hold the weight anymore. A few tears. A little shaking in her voice. Nothing huge - but her partner sighed. And before she could even register what was happening, she wiped her face, made a joke, and shifted the mood.

That’s when I saw it (or at least that’s when I got the opening to help her see it, because I’d felt it in the room since the beginning):  Brooke wasn’t actually easygoing; she just made herself easy to be around.

She took a breath to move on to another topic, but I interrupted her, “Hold on - what just happened?” She looked at me, confused. It didn’t seem like a big deal to her. Just a sigh. Just a moment. She thought it was a random, throwaway story.

But I know a doorway when I see one.

So we stayed with it - the moment her partner sighed. And as we began to pull at that thread, more came with it. Memories that weren’t big or dramatic—just consistent. Moments where she learned that her being upset made things harder for everyone. That being easy to be around was rewarded. What had started as a gift of being attuned to others slowly became a survival skill (secure connection via not disrupting it), and she had unconsciously honed it throughout her growing-up years.

And when we began to trace it back, the pattern was everywhere now. The cups she picked up without being asked. The way she filtered her tone mid-sentence. The smile she wore in rooms where she couldn’t feel her own body. Waiting to be noticed, then pretending she didn’t need to be.

Until that session, she’d called those behaviors being considerate. Maturity.

The difference between personality traits and coping strategies

The more she talked—explaining why she didn’t bring things up, how she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it—I could feel something shifting. The logic was still there, but the energy underneath it had started to feel…smaller. Younger. So I asked her, “This might sound like a weird question—but how old do you feel right now?”

She paused. Blinked hard. “Oh my gosh - I feel so stupid right now,” she said. “Like I’m still twelve years old, trying to get people to like me.” She laughed when she said it, but her eyes were already filling. 

And I got it. Sometimes the part that lands the hardest isn’t the insight, but the grief of realizing how long you’ve been trying to earn love. The clarity doesn’t always feel brilliant, either. Sometimes it feels embarassing. Like, “How did I not know this is what I was doing?”

Brooke initially thought she was just being childish, but I helped her see what was more true: early on in life a younger version of her somehow got the idea that the safest way to keep love close was to never ask too much of it - and she was just trying to help Brooke with that. But what that part couldn’t see—until we slowed things down together—was that protection had also cost her.

Over the next few months, Brooke started to realize how impossible it is to feel close to people when you’re working so hard to also be convenient. She started noticing how she would filter herself before she even spoke. Realized she’d say, “I’m good” before checking if she actually was—because what if the truth made things weird? She caught herself rewriting texts to sound more casual, just in case she was asking for too much.

And then she started to see the unintended side effects of working so hard to be convenient - how it had worn her down. Not in some dramatic falling apart—just in small, almost unnameable ways. And the more we named it, the clearer it became: what looked like connection had really been about control. Ironically, connection was the very thing the “laid back” persona had ultimately cost her. She had become so good at managing her impact on others that no one knew there was anything (or anyone) to make space for.

And once she saw that—a second doorway appeared.

Why Self-Awareness Isn’t Enough to Break Old Patterns

We’d spent weeks tracking the shape of the pattern. Naming the ways that younger part of her kept herself small. Feeling the grief of what it had cost her.

She knew this part of herself well by then. The one that always softened her voice. That rushed in with “it’s okay” before anyone even apologized. The one that smiled through things that didn’t feel good, just to keep the peace intact. She could name the strategy. She could explain where it came from. She had insight for days.

But this session felt different.

She was quieter. Slower. Something in her system seemed to know we were getting closer—not just to the story, but to the part of her still living inside it. At one point, she closed her eyes and said, barely above a whisper, “I think she’s scared people will leave us if we’re not easy to be around anymore.”

She didn’t have to explain who “she” was. I already knew. She was talking about the part. The one who’d been holding the strategy (along with the fear and a series of painful memories) for years. And instead of analyzing that part or trying to talk her out of her ways, we did something else. We turned toward her.

Brooke spoke to the part directly. Not to fix her. Not to shame her. But with the kind of softness you offer to someone who’s been carrying a job that was never meant to be theirs alone. She didn’t say, “You’re wrong.” She said, “I see how hard you’ve been trying.”

And that was the shift - the breakthrough. Not a behavioral overhaul. Just the first moment of real connection between herself and another, younger version of herself. She didn’t push her away. She didn’t try to take over. It was the beginning of learning to stay with what she felt, instead of shrinking away from it. And that’s where things began to change.

What Therapy Feels Like When It’s Working

Once she stopped confusing that younger part of her for her whole self, things didn’t necessarily explode into change—but they did build towards it. The shift wasn’t dramatic or sudden. It was steady. Intentional. The kind that doesn’t push but doesn’t really hesitate, either.

She started pausing long enough before she said “I’m good” to check if it was true. She let herself say, “Actually, I don’t want to go,” and didn’t follow it up with a justification. She let a friend see her cry—and didn’t try to wipe it away or turn it into a joke. 

She began saying all of what she actually thought or felt about something, even if her voice shook a little when she said the thing that mattered. 

And little by little, it started to feel less risky to be fully there. Her thoughts. Her feelings. Her actual reactions. From my perspective, she came to trust that it was okay if her honest thoughts and feelings broke something open, because she no longer feared the space between rupture and repair. She knew she could navigate both, and everything in between.

How to Begin Emotional Healing: With a Therapist, or on Your Own

Brooke did that work over several years in therapy with me—slowly, gently, over time. By being in a relationship with me, she had support and guidance as she learned how to unblend from the parts of her that had been managing everything alone. 

Our time together was years ago now, and since then, I’ve worked with so many others like her. Women carrying the same shape of silence. Running the same kind of survival math. Eventually, I took the core pivots from that work—the insight, the reorientation, the slow return—and distilled it into something new: Divorce Detour.

Divorce Detour isn’t therapy, and it’s not really even about divorce. It’s about the way back to yourself. It’s a self-guided, structured course to help you stop maneuvering and start getting honest—with yourself first. No pressure to share, no one else in the room. Just you, your truth, and the tools to walk toward it without apologizing for the mess along the way.

So now, you’ve got options.

If you’re ready to do this work and want someone alongside you, you can contact me here for 1:1 therapy. And if you’re more in the I-need-to-understand-this-first space—Divorce Detour might be the place to begin.

Either way, the work is yours now.

Other Services Offered with Good Woman Therapy

Curious to learn more about therapy for women in St. Louis, MO? Send me a message! As an IFS therapist, I love helping women and fellow therapists navigate their everyday lives with greater ease using Internal Family Systems Therapy and specialize in therapy for stress & overwhelm, inner critics, perfectionism, peacekeeping, and relationship concerns. My office is located in Ballwin, MO and I help everyday women navigate their everyday lives with greater ease by offering both in-person counseling as well as online therapy to clients throughout Creve Coeur, Ladue, Town and Country, Chesterfield, and St. Peters. I also provide online therapy, Missouri-wide, to clients outside the St. Louis and St. Charles County area. You can view my availability and self-schedule a free, 20-minute consultation on my consultation page.