How CPTSD Survivors Can Protect Their Dreams From Other People’s Expectations: Setting Boundaries with CPTSD and People-Pleasing
- diaryofafloppingfi
- Oct 2, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: 6 hours ago
The Struggle of Being Misunderstood
Living with CPTSD is not just a difficult condition to live with, but it also means being misunderstood by most people in your life, and a constant tug-of-war between your goals and the goals others have for you.
Part of this difficulty is because many who live with CPTSD learned in childhood that their wants and needs are not important and are often a nuisance to caregivers. You are not to set boundaries or expectations on how others treat you, and your goals for yourself are often not seen as important. Because of these wounds from childhood, when others impose their expectations or overstep your boundaries as an adult, it can be triggering, but even worse, it presents a problem in how to handle it.
People-Pleasing as a Survival Tactic
People-pleasing is often learned as a child as a survival tactic to both keep the peace with your caregiver(s) and obtain emotional validation from them. For instance, if playing music upsets your parents or others near you, then you may stop practicing when others can hear you, which is a hard parameter to meet and eventually would lead to not playing music at all.
Subsequently, you might also start doing things that elicit a positive response from them, even if it isn’t something you care about, like picking up the sport they like or spending all your free time cleaning the house.
This learned behavior does not stop when you become an adult, but it shows up in all of your adult relationships, from bosses to friends to romantic partners. This puts a lot of people with CPTSD or other related trauma disorders in danger of living their lives for others and never being able to set healthy boundaries or have the courage to follow their dreams or care for themselves.
Dreams Deferred and Careers Shaped by Others
I could write a very long list of all of my dreams that I have tossed aside because someone told me I was bad at it, they told me it was useless, and then I was pushed to take a job that I don’t like because it made money, whereas my passions, businesses I wanted to start, or careers I tried to get into did not.
Hiding Your True Self: Setting Boundaries with CPTSD and People-Pleasing
As a child, I learned to be two different people, but I cannot stop my true self from popping out when things are finally just too much. Part of me just agrees to what people want and does what they ask. If they want me to do the dishes more, fine. If they want me not play guitar because they can hear it at all, fine. Then I keep my secret self locked inside, and I hide in secret and work on my things.
I can’t be alone in feeling like it is never safe to come out and tell people what really matters to you or what you are really working on. There is a fear that others won't care if you want to be a musician, or a writer, or if you have a show coming up, and that would start the cycle of self-doubt and abandonment all over again. This blog was a secret from everyone in my life for at least the first six years of its existence because I knew people would not understand, and even worse, they would read my writing and be mad at me for them, even if the things I wrote weren’t about them.
Why Other People’s Plans Can Derail You
It is not satisfying to keep the best parts of yourself hidden deep down inside, and what’s worse is that people will not stop making plans and demands even if they don’t know what you’re working on. I have said it before that you should keep your dreams close to your chest because others won’t find them important, but I would like to add that others also don’t find what they don’t know about you important either. Sometimes people just like making plans for other people, and they just don’t see why it is a problem. It doesn’t mean that people are “narcissists,” but people just have different personalities and ideals, and some people honestly just don’t understand emotions and are not good at empathy.
At the core of things, we have to put ourselves first, take up our own space, and put our needs first. When recovering from CPTSD, this is perhaps the biggest challenge, especially when putting ourselves first, which always comes with the possibility that a relationship will not continue. Commonly, those who have CPTSD grew up feeling that their needs were bad, and we rewarded for self-sufficiency with approval or at least the absence of disapproval. People pleasing is a learned survival tactic for us, and it also leads us to put our own needs aside to the point of abandoning ourselves for the needs or wants of others. Healthy people do not want and won't let people do this. However, this may be the main reason that people diagnosed with CPTSD or similar disorders go on to have similarly dysfunctional relationships repeatedly throughout their lives.
The “Let Them” Theory and Taking Back Control
I, like millions of people, have found a lot of solace in Mel Robbins’ “Let Them” theory. To summarize her theory, the idea is that you cannot control other people, and if they want to do something, think something, or not do something, instead of trying to change their view, just let them do it.
Let people think that you are lazy, let them think you don’t care about anything, let them think you’re the problem child, a bad neighbor, or an insubordinate employee.
Focus on doing what you need to get done, and don’t try to change others’ opinions of you. Don’t organize your life to revolve around making other people happy if it means that you don’t get to make yourself happy ever. If it means that relationships that depended on you ignoring your own needs fall apart, then let them.
Any relationship that is structured on one person in the relationship doing all of the sacrificing and the other person just taking is not a loving relationship, and it is best to let those go. I am not a proponent of blindly following this advice to the point where relationships that are healthy aren't nurtured, or relationships don't get repaired after an argument, but we should not feel like we have to keep trying to fix the perceptions people have about us that we weren't responsible for creating in the first place. After many years of being concerned about whether people like me or not, I just pity them now because they never really knew me, and will never really know me, and I happen to be funny as Hell so they are missing out.
Healthy Love and Boundaries
On the other hand, a relationship that is founded on real love—if that is romantic, familial, or any other kind of love—will be pliable enough to reorganize so that both people in the relationship can take care of their needs and feel fulfilled. Taking care of yourself and putting your needs first is not selfish because if you are not taking care of your needs and desires, then you are not truly loving yourself. When you do take care of yourself, then you are better able to love other people.
However, setting boundaries with CPTSD and people pleasing is hard to retrain yourself to do, and saying no to people does make people uncomfortable, which makes it harder for you to set boundaries. Nobody likes to hear no, but also removing yourself from other people’s plans for you makes them rather uncomfortable. There are also relationships where it can become dangerous to say no and set boundaries, and if you or someone you know is in one of these situations, then don’t follow this advice.
In Conclusion
Many aspects of life are harder for people who live with CPTSD, but one of the hardest is setting boundaries. Our tendencies towards people pleasing and avoiding conflict make it difficult to fulfill our own needs and set healthy boundaries. However, we can learn to set healthy boundaries and foster healthy relationships with healthy people. The first step is to recognize that we are in charge of no one but ourselves, and no one but ourselves is in charge of us.
I hope you enjoyed today's post. Let me know in the comments what you think, or how you feel about setting boundaries! Or find me on social media!
Resources
The Diary Of A Flopping Fish and any posts or articles published on Diaryofafloppingfish.com are not reviewed by a therapist or medical or mental health professional. Resources are cited, and opinion is opinion. No advice or opinions in any articles replace professional advice from a doctor, therapist, or any other kind of health professional. The author is not a licensed professional of any kind.
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