Helping Clients Recover from People-Pleasing: When Saying Yes Meant Survival
Presented by
Dreya Blume, LCSWThis training helps psychotherapists understand the deeper roots of people-pleasing through the lens of trauma, attachment, and relational dynamics, while offering concrete strategies for healing.
Overview
Recorded: February, 2026 3 CEs
For many clients, people-pleasing is not just a habit: it began as a survival strategy. Saying “yes” in childhood may have kept them safe, secured approval, or prevented conflict, but in adulthood it often leaves them anxious, resentful, and disconnected from their own needs.
This training helps psychotherapists understand the deeper roots of people-pleasing through the lens of trauma, attachment, and relational dynamics, while offering concrete strategies for healing.
Participants will explore how to compassionately validate the protective origins of people-pleasing while supporting clients to set boundaries, reclaim their voice, and practice self-advocacy. With a mix of clinical insight, case examples, and practical tools, therapists will leave with new ways to help clients transform people-pleasing patterns into healthier, more empowered ways of relating.
Objectives
Develop an understanding of people-pleasing as a trauma-informed survival response with relational and cultural roots. Learn therapeutic strategies to help clients identify, interrupt, and shift automatic people-pleasing behaviors. Identify interventions that support boundary-setting, self-compassion, and authentic self-expression in clients recovering from people-pleasing.
About the Presenter
Dreya Blume (she/her) is a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, author, and educator. Dreya began working in the mental health field in 2004 in southwest Virginia, where she spent almost two decades serving the local transgender community as a gender therapist. She recently moved to Durham, NC, where she focuses on offering continuing education training to therapists and coaching for private practice clinicians who want to expand their business uniquely. Dreya loves to write and is the author of several books, including, “The Tarot Activity Book: A Collection of Creative and Therapeutic Ideas for the Cards,” “Journaling the Tarot,” “Everyone Has a Story: Using the Hero’s Journey and Narrative Therapy to Reframe the Struggle of Mental Illness,” and “Tarot for Transformation: Using the Major Arcana to Discover Your Best Self and Create a Life Worth Living.” All of Dreya’s books (under her former name, Andy Matzner) are available here: https://dreyablume.com/books. Dreya is also passionate about teaching. Before becoming a mental health clinician, she spent many years teaching English as a Second Language in places such as Japan, Australia, Thailand, and Hawaii. Once in Virginia, Dreya worked as an adjunct professor for almost twenty years at Hollins University, teaching gender studies and sociology in their Master of Liberal Studies program. In addition, she spent twelve years teaching future social workers in the human services program at Virginia Western Community College. Learn more about Dreya on her website: https://dreyablume.com/.