"I'm Just Low Maintenance" Is What I Kept Saying - But It Was Something Much Deeper

I used to say it like it was a flex.

"I'm pretty low maintenance." "I'm easy, whatever you want is fine." "Don't worry about me." "I don't care either way." "I can go with the flow."

I said it in friendships. I said it in relationships. I said it in my business, panicking every time a client seemed even slightly unhappy, reshaping myself around whatever I thought they needed so they wouldn't leave.

I genuinely believed I was just easygoing. Flexible. Considerate.

It took me years, and a lot of therapy, to understand what I was actually saying:  I don't have needs. I don't have preferences. I won't cost you anything. Please don't leave.
I wasn't low maintenance. I was terrified of being needy or too much.

How People Pleasing Gets Born
Nobody decides to become a people pleaser. It happens the way most survival strategies happen, slowly, over time, in the small moments of childhood where you learn what gets you connection and what puts it at risk.
Maybe you had a parent whose mood was unpredictable. You got very good at reading the room, staying small, not adding to the noise. Maybe your needs were dismissed, not cruelly, sometimes not even intentionally, but often enough that you learned to stop voicing them. Maybe love in your house came with conditions, and you figured out early that being easy, agreeable, and undemanding was the safest way to keep it.
So you adapted. You got very, very good at making everyone else comfortable. You learned to sense what people needed before they said it. You became the one who smoothed things over, kept the peace, anticipated the problem before it became one.
And it worked. People pleasing kept you connected, kept you safe, kept you loved - at least on the surface.
The problem is you carried it into adulthood, your relationships, your career. Into a business you'd reshape every time someone pushed back, because the feeling of a client being unhappy registered as a threat to your safety and wellbeing.

The "Low Maintenance" Myth
Here's what I want to name directly, because I don't think anyone says it enough:
Being "low maintenance" is not a virtue. It's not a personality type. And it is definitely not something to be proud of.
I know that's uncomfortable to read. Because most of us were praised for it. We were the easy child. The flexible friend. The accommodating partner. The therapist (yes, even the therapist) who bent over backwards to make sure every client felt taken care of, to the point where her own boundaries were basically nonexistent.
But here's what "low maintenance" actually means for most of us who wear it as an identity:
I have needs and preferences, I've just learned to hide them. I have opinions, I just don't trust that they're worth the conflict. I want things, I just believe, somewhere deep down, that wanting things is how I lose people.
Low maintenance isn't easy. It's exhausting. It's the fulltime job of monitoring everyone else's comfort while abandoning your own.

What It Looked Like in My Life
In my relationships, I was the one who never picked the restaurant. Never said what I actually wanted to do. Never complained when something hurt. I called it being flexible. What I was really doing was making myself as frictionless as possible so I wouldn't give anyone a reason to leave.
Because leaving, being left, being too much, being the reason someone pulled away, felt unsurvivable. Even when I knew, intellectually, that it wasn't. Even when I'd built a full life and was objectively fine. My body felt like it wouldn't survive when someone left. And every time someone left, it felt like continual proof that I wasn't good enough. That there was something wrong with me and I would never be loved.
In my business it showed up differently, but the root was exactly the same. A client would express even mild dissatisfaction and I would feel it like a physical jolt; shame, panic, the immediate urge to fix it, to apologize, to reshape what I was offering so they would stay. Not because their feedback was valid. Sometimes it wasn't. But because somewhere underneath the professional, competent version of me was still that child who had learned that other people's disappointment was her responsibility to prevent.
I soon learned I was running an elaborate system for managing other people's feelings so I could feel safe, not a sustainable business.
Sound familiar?

The Moment I Realized It Was Trauma
I didn't recognize it as trauma for a long time. Because trauma, as I've written before, doesn't always look like what we expect. There was no single dramatic event I could point to. There was just a slow, steady education in smallness. In making myself easier to love by taking up the smallest space possible.
The realization happened when...
I noticed that "whatever you want" left me feeling invisible, not generous.
I saw the pattern in my business (the dread, the over-giving, the inability to hold a boundary without panic) and realized it had nothing to do with my clients and everything to do with how I burnt out I was from constantly ignoring my needs and wellbeing.
I finally sat with the question: What do I actually want?
And realized I didn't know. It wasn't because I didn't actually have any preferences, but because I had spent my whole life completely ignoring them and pretending they didn't exist.

What Healing People Pleasing Actually Looks Like
I want to be honest here: this isn't about learning to be selfish. It's not about swinging to the opposite extreme and deciding other people's feelings don't matter.
It's about learning that you are allowed to take up space. That your needs aren't an imposition. That a relationship where you are fully invisible isn't actually a safe relationship.
In trauma-informed therapy, we work on this at the root level. Not just the behavior, the "just say no" advice that never actually sticks, but the belief underneath it. The one that says your worth is conditional on your usefulness. That love is something you earn by being easy. That your needs are too much.
That belief was formed in a specific context, at a specific time, by a child doing her best with what she had. It made perfect sense then.
It's costing you too much now.
Through approaches like EMDR, somatic therapy, and inner child work, we can reach the places where that belief actually lives. Not just in your thoughts, but in your nervous system, in your body, in the way you brace before you say what you actually think. And we can begin to revise the story. Not overnight. But genuinely. In the way that sticks.

For the Woman Reading This at the End of Another Day of Going Along
If you're the one who always goes with the flow, who never wants to be a burden, who apologizes before stating a preference, who gives everything and then wonders why she still feels alone... I want you to know something.
You were not born this way. You were not built this way. You learned this, in a context that required it, from people who may have had no idea what they were teaching you.
And what is learned can be unlearned. Slowly, carefully, with the right support.
You are allowed to have a preference. You are allowed to take up room. You are allowed to need things and say so and not immediately apologize for it.
You're allowed to be human.
And if you're ready to start untangling this, whether you're in Nashville, Brentwood, Franklin, Green Hills, or anywhere else in Tennessee, I'd love to talk.
Book a free 15-minute consultation or schedule a session immediately → https://nicolettetomaszewski.sessionshealth.com/



Nicolette Tomaszewski is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC-MHSP) and Transformation Coach with 15 years of experience. She provides virtual trauma therapy for women across Tennessee using EMDR, somatic therapy, and Internal Family Systems (IFS). She specializes in trauma recovery, people pleasing, perfectionism, and helping high-achieving women heal the wounds underneath the hustle.
Therapy services are available to Tennessee residents only. For others outside of Tennessee, coaching options are available.

05/18/2026

By Nicolette Tomaszewski, LPC-MHSP | Trauma Therapy for Women in Nashville & Across Tennessee