Pat Ogden, PhD’s Go-To Please and Appease Strategies

In the aftermath of trauma, getting to the heart of your client’s pain can be complex – especially when that client is caught in a defense response pattern that trauma researchers often identify as please and appease.

For many clients, chronic people-pleasing bleeds into every relationship. . .

. . . and when that includes the therapeutic relationship, it can block your client’s ability to open up (and ultimately stymie healing).

So how can you tell whether your client might be stuck in this type of pattern? And beyond that, what can you do to address it?

In the video below, Pat Ogden, PhD shares one telltale sign of a please and appease response, as well as two strategies to help ease clients out of it.

Click here for full transcript

So I have a couple kind of favorite exercises with please and appease, and one is to track the physical indicator of that please and appease. Often it’s a smile, but it can be anything. I’m remembering one client, we’ll call her Mallory where she talked like this all the time. She could be talking about the worst thing that happened to her, but she would be smiling all the time. So there was an incongruence there, and very much related to please and appease was my hypothesis. So I just asked her, I said, “Do you notice even when you’re talking about these horrible things, you’re smiling?” She goes, “Oh yeah. People tell me that all the time.” I said, “Have you worked with that?” She said, “No, but everybody’s always telling me.” I said, “Well, maybe let’s explore that for a few minutes.” And she said, “Fine.” So I said, “Let’s just exaggerate that. Just hold the smile. Don’t even talk, hold the smile.” And pretty soon, what came up for her was the part of her that was desperate for me to approve of her because if I didn’t, abuse could happen. And this was the story of her early childhood. But there was a desperation of this, “Approve of me. I’m a good person, a nice person. Approve of me,” to keep herself safe.

So exaggerating a primary indicator of please and appease can be really helpful. My other favorite one is to work with boundaries, to have clients in some way construct a boundary around themselves. Many times I can do it just with their arms to have a sense of it. Other times we’ll sit on the floor and I’ll have ropes or tinsel or something to put around to make a boundary around you and your space. First to start to feel yourself because people who are into please and appease, they’re often out of themselves and into the other person. So we’ll set that boundary.

I’m remembering one client who she couldn’t feel it with her arms or even with a rope. It felt so weak. So she took pillows and objects from the office so that she could really see that this was her boundary, and then she felt different inside herself.

From there, we start to do experiments with the client saying no. And they can be simple experiments of coming into the boundary or taking a pillow that represents a person or a demand that’s coming towards them, invading their own sense of boundary and have them say no. And it’s amazing how much these physicalizing experiments bring up because they’re not just physical exercises, they’re connected with implicit memories that are just full of meaning and emotional pain.

When we do these experiments, it’s not about the content anymore. This is one of the things I love about this work. It’s around how a person organizes around a particular issue. So we’re not talking about how she pleases her husband all the time or he’s always pleasing everybody. We’re not talking about it. We’re getting under the content into implicit phenomena that drives the content. So we’re changing patterns of organization through that, which is I think at the root of healing and change.

For more expert interventions like this one, check out Working with Please and Appease. In it, you’ll hear from experts like Stephen Porges, PhD; Terry Real, LICSW; Janina Fisher, PhD; Richard Schwartz, PhD; and more.

Now we’d like to hear from you. What have you found helpful in your work with clients who please and appease? Please leave a comment below.

7 Comments

Svetlana Kryukova, Coach, RU says

Thanks a lot! Gave me a lot of food for thought!

Anita Prince, Social Work, CA says

i work with residential school survivors and families. unfortunately lack of resources on first nation reserves has further imbedded trauma energy….many do not understand these trauma responses or these negativebehaviours have normalized….may i suggest more infographics as first nation people learn by watching and looking…not too many read…but understand pictures/infographics ..

Rachel M, Psychology, ZA says

Love this physical creation of boundaries idea. I often telly client to imagine a bubble. This is great.

Margaret Nandita Stalder-Fischer, Other, CH says

Dear Ruth,

Heartfelt thanks for all the inspiring I could profit from in the last years.
Pleasing and appeasing was my strategy to survive as a jewish refugee in Switzerland. My mother had survived a concentration camp she was locked in for three years.
ADAPTING was my constant focus: Language, habits, food, behaviour……
I did not learn to respect my own boundaries, to say NO. Smiling, making a joke in moments I got offended…..

I had the priviledge to study music and to work for 39 years with kids, teaching them singing and dancing. In this work I learnt to express myself authentically and to have boundaries.
In my private relationships (family, friends, official) I am at the beginning to learn……

Dear Ruth, take care and be well!
Warmly, Nandita Margaret

Bracha Goetz, Clergy, Baltimore, MD, USA says

WONDERFUL!

Jennifer Thomas, Counseling, AU says

The experiments sound great…. Will give them a go with clients when the opportunity arises…. Will also try them on myself…. Love the practical info that goes with the hypothesis…. 👍

Svea van, Coach, ZA says

I love the verb choice “ease out” – “as well as two strategies to help ease clients out of it.” Conveys partnership, respect and upholding the dignity of the client.

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7 Comments