‘Let’s Try This Again’ Explores the Hidden Trauma Behind People-Pleasing—and How to Break Free

People-pleasing is a behavior so many women learn early—keep the peace, don’t rock the boat, make everyone happy. But what happens when “being nice” starts costing you your peace? That’s exactly what Let’s Try This Again host B. Simone explores in her candid conversation with Brittney Moses, a psychology graduate, women’s coach, and mental health content creator.

Moses unpacks how trauma can program women to make themselves smaller to stay safe, a pattern that often starts long before adulthood. If you’ve ever walked on eggshells, felt bad about saying no, found it difficult to express your true feelings, or wondered why your peace always seems to come last, Moses’s insight will help you change your behavior and address the underlying reasons.

People-Pleasing is a Trauma Response, Says Brittney Moses

Understanding the roots of people-pleasing

Moses explains that people-pleasing is a trauma response. “The fawn response,” she says, “is how some people cope with stress and conflict by making themselves smaller to stay safe.” Instead of fighting, fleeing, or freezing, we learn to appease.

Moses points out that growing up in unstable or critical environments can teach a child that being agreeable equals safety. “If you spoke up, it was an issue,” she says. “So it might have been safer for you to stay small—to chameleon yourself, to be palatable, to be acceptable to everyone.”

Simone agrees, admitting that she once feared confrontation so much that she avoided it at all costs. “I used to walk on eggshells because it scared me,” she says. “If I just made everyone happy, I didn’t have to have the tough conversations.”

But as she learned, silence doesn’t prevent conflict—it only postpones it. “I remember a time when I didn’t speak up, and it blew up in my face later,” she says. “You think not speaking up is helping, but it’s really ignoring the issue,” she says. “It blows up anyway.”

Why people-pleasing feels so hard to unlearn

Believe it or not, people-pleasing often takes a physical toll on the body. Moses explains that when you suppress your truth long enough, your body starts to keep score. “You might notice shallow breathing, tension in your muscles, or a pit in your stomach,” she says. “That’s your intuition trying to tell you something.”

She also explains that the brain processes emotional pain the same way it does physical pain. “To your brain, pain is pain,” Moses notes. “That’s why rejection or heartbreak can feel like a gut punch—because it literally activates the same part of the brain as physical pain.”

That realization reframes people-pleasing as something deeply human, and as a learned form of self-protection.  “Safety shouldn’t require self-erasure. But for a lot of us, that’s what we learned to do to survive,” Moses says.