99 Quotes About Boundaries for Women Who Were Taught That Having Needs Is Selfish
LAST UPDATED: JULY 2026
A curated collection of 99 quotes, drawn from clinical textbooks, trauma research, and the poets and thinkers who name what the driven woman feels but can’t always articulate. Every quote is sourced, verified, and chosen with clinical intentionality for the woman reading this at an hour she should be sleeping.
Last reviewed: July 2026 by Annie Wright, LMFT
- Why Do These Words Land When Nothing Else Has?
- The 99 Quotes
- The Loop Beneath the Boundary Problem
- Both/And: These Quotes Can Be Medicine and They Can Be Avoidance
- The Systemic Lens: Why Driven Women Need Different Words
- How Do You Begin Healing From Shame About Having Needs?
- Frequently Asked Questions
Boundaries are the internal limits and external expressions that define where you end and someone else begins, what you’re willing to accept, what you’ll do when your limits are crossed, and how you communicate both. For women raised in families where having needs was framed as selfish, the very concept of a limit can feel dangerous or morally suspect. Boundaries aren’t walls; they’re the structures that make genuine connection possible by ensuring it’s based on consent rather than compliance. In my work with driven women, the hardest part is usually learning that a boundary said firmly and with love isn’t a betrayal of the relationship.
In short: Boundaries are the internal and behavioral limits that define what you’ll accept and how you’ll respond when those limits are crossed, not walls that keep people out but structures that make authentic connection possible.
Who I Am and Why I Know This
I’ve spent more than 15,000 clinical hours in the room with driven women who couldn’t locate their own limits, and I built this page because I kept reaching for the same handful of sentences in session and wanted them somewhere my clients could find them at 1 a.m. too. Boundaries work, as I practice it, draws on the limits-and-personal-responsibility framework that Henry Cloud, PhD, and John Townsend, PhD, laid out decades ago, on polyvagal and somatic research into how safety gets registered in the body rather than reasoned into it, and on the plain fact that a woman raised to believe her needs were a burden doesn’t unlearn that by being told to “just say no.”
Every quote below was checked against the original published source before I included it. Every clinical claim outside the quotes reflects work I do directly with clients, not a synthesis of things I’ve read about but never practiced.
This content is psychoeducational in nature and isn’t a substitute for professional mental health treatment or a clinical evaluation of any specific person. See my editorial policy for how I research, write, and fact-check what I publish. If you’re in crisis or thinking about suicide, please call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or go to your nearest emergency room. This page isn’t a crisis resource.
Why Do These Words Land When Nothing Else Has?
A woman sat in my office two Aprils ago holding her phone at arm’s length, scrolling past a hundred quotes she’d already screenshotted, looking for the one that would finally make the thing in her chest let go. It didn’t. Not that day. What did, three weeks later, was four lines from a book she found at a used bookstore in Portland, sitting on a bench outside in 40-degree weather because she couldn’t wait until she got home to read it. I’ve watched that exact moment happen enough times across more than 15,000 clinical hours that I no longer think it’s a coincidence. It’s not that quotes are magic. It’s that the nervous system answers to resonance faster than it answers to reason, and a woman who has spent thirty years arguing herself out of her own needs sometimes needs someone else’s sentence to get past the argument.
I keep a battered copy of one Stephen Porges, PhD, paper on my desk, corners bent from being flipped to the same page so many times. Porges, Distinguished University Scientist at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University and the researcher who built Polyvagal Theory, spent decades documenting how a nervous system reads safety and danger through cues that never make it to conscious thought. I didn’t fully believe this the first time I read it. I believe it now because I’ve sat across from too many women who could recite the correct cognitive reframe word for word and still flinch at their own front door. A line on a page that says “you’re not too much” can reach a part of the body that a decade of telling yourself the same thing never could.
I checked every one of the ninety-nine quotes below against its original published source myself before this page went live. None are paraphrased. None are invented. Each one carries the author’s name, the book, and the year, because I ask my clients to source their beliefs about themselves, and I hold this page to the same standard I hold them to.
The use of literature, including poetry, prose, and curated text, as a therapeutic intervention. Recognized by the American Library Association and used in clinical settings to facilitate emotional processing, self-reflection, and healing.
In plain terms: Reading the right words at the right time can be a form of medicine. Not a replacement for therapy, but a bridge to it.
Llesenia was 44 the first time she said any of this out loud in my office, a Slack notification buzzing in her bag that she didn’t reach for. She’d printed out a quote she’d found at 1 a.m. and folded it into quarters in her wallet, the way teenagers used to fold notes. “I don’t know why this one,” she said, unfolding it carefully on her knee. “I’ve read a hundred things about boundaries. This is the first one that made me cry in the Target parking lot.” She laughed at herself, then stopped laughing. “I sat there for twenty minutes. I didn’t even turn the car on.” Sitting across from her, I felt the particular quiet that shows up when a client’s defenses have gone down before her insight has caught up. Llesenia hadn’t done anything wrong by needing twenty minutes in a parking lot. Her nervous system had simply found, in four lines of someone else’s book, permission her family of origin had never issued. What I’ve come to think of as a bibliotherapy opening is exactly this: not the whole of the work, but the door left ajar long enough for a woman to walk through it on her own two feet.
“Women have been trained to be deeply relational creatures with ‘permeable boundaries,’ which make us vulnerable to the needs of others. … This permeability, this compelling need to connect, is one of our greatest gifts, but without balance it can mean living out the role of the servant who nurtures at the cost of herself.”
Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
The 99 Quotes
1. “Fawning can be difficult to detect because it’s all about shape-shifting. Some try to mask as being more of something: smart, generous, successful, funny, or beautiful, while for others it’s about being less: vocal, ethnic, creative, self-assured or boundaried.”
, Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves, 2024
2. “Fawning as a trauma response puts our behaviors in the context of disempowerment or maltreatment. It’s not about brownnosing for an A or sucking up to people in power. Fawning isn’t conscious manipulation. Rather, it’s a way we seek safety in the face of exploitation, shame, neglect, abuse, or other harm.”
, Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves, 2024
3. “With fawning, connection means protection. While fawning is meant to neutralize danger (and it does), it has an invisible downside. Merging with others’ desires means surrendering our own. When we fawn, we forgo assertiveness and become overly accommodating. We shapeshift to stay safe. We submit to the very person or people who have harmed us.”
, Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves, 2024
4. “Fawning isn’t a conscious choice. It’s a survival mechanism. In a nanosecond, the reptilian brain selects the response that offers the greatest chance for survival. Afterward, the body remembers what was successful the first time and repeats it in the future.”
, Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves, 2024
5. “Fawning is a hybrid response, activating the sympathetic (hyperarousal) and parasympathetic (hypoarousal) branches of the autonomic nervous system at the same time. The hyperarousal aspect has us instinctively managing the moods and states of those “in charge,” while the hypoarousal numbs our connection to self, our broader sense of agency, and our ability to feel the effects of the abuse at all.”
, Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves, 2024
6. “We’re threading a fine needle when we fawn, neither risking greater harm through fight or flight, nor shutting down completely. This highly adaptive response is moving beyond playing dead to playing LIFE. We’re playing pretend, and we don’t even know it. We’re playing house, playing the game to survive or escape our situation, playing a part, sometimes as many parts as there are people in our lives.”
, Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves, 2024
7. “The most heartbreaking component of fawning is that we lose the connection to ourselves. We develop these coping mechanisms that become so ingrained in us we don’t even know we’re using them. We’re the fawner and yet we can appear happy, perpetually going along to get along.”
, Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves, 2024
8. “Codependency and people-pleasing develop in systems that create these dynamics: cultural, structural, familial, societal. Codependency is often described as selfishness, a pathological need to be needed. But what’s truer is that it’s a need to be safe, to belong, in a situation where healthy reciprocal relationships didn’t exist.”
, Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves, 2024
9. “The need to please people often shows up in the way girls scramble to give the “right” answer. Ask a girl her opinion on a topic and she’ll do a quick calculation. Should she say what the teacher/parent/friend/boy is looking for her to say, or should she reveal what she genuinely thinks and believes?”
, Reshma Saujani, Brave, Not Perfect, 2019
10. “Girls are also far more likely than boys to say yes to requests even when they really want (and even need) to say no. Remember, being accommodating has been baked into their emotional DNA.”
, Reshma Saujani, Brave, Not Perfect, 2019
11. “Those who defend against shame build up a wall to keep any hint of criticism from others out. Strategies can include being critical of others before they have a chance to criticize you, refusing to talk about shortcomings, and projecting your shame onto others.”
, Beverly Engel, It Wasn’t Your Fault, 2015
12. “The fixed mindset’s urgency to prove oneself can lead to people-pleasing and extreme sensitivity to criticism, as mistakes feel like permanent disqualifications, revealing why some adopt a fawn response and fail to set boundaries needed for self-preservation.”
, Carol Dweck, Mindset, 2006
13. “The growth mindset allows people to hear feedback, including criticism, as opportunities to grow rather than threats, which supports healthy boundary setting as an act of self-respect and love rather than confrontation or rejection.”
, Carol Dweck, Mindset, 2006
14. “You can change your mindset; when you’re in a growth mindset, you see teachers or partners as resources for learning and development rather than judges, which can empower you to protect yourself and say no when necessary to preserve your well-being.”
, Carol Dweck, Mindset, 2006
15. “People with BPD have trouble defining their own personal limits and others’ personal limits, often acting in extreme or controlling ways to get their own needs met.”
, Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger, Stop Walking on Eggshells, 1998
16. “Do you find yourself concealing what you think or feel because you’re afraid of the other person’s reaction or because it just doesn’t seem worth the horrible fight or hurt feelings that’ll follow?”
, Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger, Stop Walking on Eggshells, 1998
17. “When you set boundaries with someone with BPD, you’re not just saying no to them; you’re saying yes to protecting your own emotional health and self-preservation.”
, Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger, Stop Walking on Eggshells, 1998
18. “People-pleasing and an inability to say no are often manifestations of shame and fear of abandonment, leading to a loss of self and people-pleasing to avoid conflict or rejection.”
, Beverly Engel, It Wasn’t Your Fault, 2015
19. “Learning to say no is a critical act of self-love and self-preservation; boundaries protect you from further harm and help restore your sense of self-worth.”
, Beverly Engel, It Wasn’t Your Fault, 2015
20. “People-pleasing, fawning, and an inability to assert boundaries often come from a place of shame and the need to avoid conflict or further rejection.”
, Beverly Engel, It Wasn’t Your Fault, 2015
21. “The cost of having no limits is that we become exhausted trying to keep up with the demands of others, losing sight of our own needs and boundaries, and often sacrificing our well-being to avoid conflict or rejection.”
, Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation, 2021
22. “Setting boundaries is an act of love for yourself and others; saying no isn’t about rejection, but about self-preservation and protecting your own wellbeing.”
, Johann Hari, Lost Connections, 2018
23. “Shame couldn’t breathe here, would be shooed away. So I made my body soft and gave it over to them, while my mind bobbed in the light stream of conversation. Which is why, thinking back on this memory with them, the discomfort and fear are secondary. The primary feeling was warmth.”
, Chanel Miller, Know My Name, 2019
24. “I locked eyes with myself as they continued up, down, around. I lifted the crown of my head, elongated my neck, pulled my shoulders back, let my arms go slack. The morning light melted onto my neckline, the curves of my ears, along my collarbone, my hips, my calves. Look at that body, the nice slope of your breasts, the shape of your belly button, the long, beautiful legs.”
, Chanel Miller, Know My Name, 2019
25. “I didn’t feel a need to prove myself, to show them I was more than this. They knew. Shame couldn’t breathe here, would be shooed away. So I made my body soft and gave it over to them, while my mind bobbed in the light stream of conversation.”
, Chanel Miller, Know My Name, 2019
26. “you tell me to quiet down cause my opinions make me less beautiful but i wasn’t made with a fire in my belly so i could be put out i wasn’t made with a lightness on my tongue so i could be easy to swallow i was made heavy half blade and half silk difficult to forget and not easy for the mind to follow”
, Rupi Kaur, milk and honey, 2015
27. “there’s no bigger illusion in the world than the idea that a woman will bring dishonor into a home if she tries to keep her heart and her body safe”
, Rupi Kaur, milk and honey, 2015
28. “you mustn’t have to make them want you they must want you themselves”
, Rupi Kaur, milk and honey, 2015
29. “We’re told that our subservience is biologically ordained: women are inherently nurse-like and not doctor-like. Sometimes we even try to console ourselves with the theory that we were defeated by anatomy before we were defeated by men.”
, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses, 1973
30. “Helping parts unblend from the Self by creating internal space brings clarity, mindfulness, and compassion, and helps you become more Self-led in your everyday life and relationships.”
, Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts, 2021
31. “The ability to offer the safe sanctuary of presence is central to treating trauma. Cultivating this presence involves grounding in our awareness of ourselves and the embodied, relational brain in order to nonjudgmentally hold what arises in the interaction between us and those we serve.”
, Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma, 2018
32. “Polyvagal Theory introduces the concept of biological rudeness, the experience of misattunement when social connection is interrupted and neuroception changes from safety to danger, showing how common moments, such as interruptions by cell phones, trigger autonomic responses.”
, Deb Dana, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, 2018
33. “Study after study shows that teens want more, not less, time with their parents, yet parents regularly overestimate the amount of time they spend with their teenagers.”
, Madeline Levine, The Price of Privilege, 2006
34. “With the rest of the money, Mother put in a phone line. One day a white van appeared, and a handful of men in dark overalls began climbing over the utility poles by the highway. Dad burst through the back door demanding to know what the hell was going on.”
, Tara Westover, Educated, 2018
35. “By drawing attention to the body’s participation in the verbal narrative, the automaticity of both the verbal narrative and the physical reactions are interrupted so that they can be mindfully explored. This approach represents a shift in paradigm from talking about the issues to engaging mindful awareness of the evoked indicators as they manifest in the present moment.”
, Pat Ogden and Janina Fisher, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, 2015
36. “The erosion of projections, the withdrawal of the hopes and expectations they embody, is almost always painful. But it’s a necessary prerequisite for self-knowledge. The loss of hope that the outer will save us occasions the possibility that we shall have to save ourselves.”
, James Hollis, The Middle Passage, 1993
37. “Sometimes mothers find it alarming to think that what they’re doing is so important and in that case it’s better not to tell them. It makes them self-conscious and then they do everything less well.”
, Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, 2015
38. “I’d like to see women and men mounting a new nationwide campaign for a shorter work week, as over half a century ago, labor fought for the 40-hour week, now perhaps a 30-hour week, meeting the needs of women and men in the childrearing years who shouldn’t be working 80-hour weeks as some do now.”
, Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963
39. “We, the larger ones, possess a degree of power over the lives of children that we’d find inconceivable and unspeakably tyrannical in any other context. Yet, we mostly wear this power as some divine right not to be questioned, not to be wrestled with as one would wrestle with an angel for the sake of one’s soul.”
, Alexis Pauline Gumbs (ed.), Revolutionary Mothering, 2016
40. “Water doesn’t resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water isn’t a solid wall, it won’t stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you’re half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
, Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad, 2005
41. “A functioning society rests on a web of mutuality, a willingness among all involved to share enough with one another to accomplish what no one person can do alone. That’s what government is.”
, Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us, 2021
42. “The establishment of medicine as a profession, requiring university training, made it easy to bar women legally from practice. With few exceptions, the universities were closed to women (even to upper-class women who could afford them), and licensing laws were established to prohibit all but university-trained doctors from practice.”
, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses, 1973
43. “By 1830, thirteen states had passed medical licensing laws outlawing “irregular” practice and establishing the “regulars” as the only legal healers. It was a premature move. There was no popular support for the idea of medical professionalism, much less for the particular set of healers who claimed it.”
, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses, 1973
44. “The act of art is metamorphosis. It’s where I found my pride. And it turned out I wasn’t the only one impressed. Neighbors on the block, when they stopped in, maybe to bring a casserole, maybe to bring some pastry, maybe to just see by me to make sure I was okay, they saw, too. And they said, ‘Look at you. Look at what you’ve done.’”
, Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren, 2019
45. “All people do is tell you why you can’t or won’t or never will or shouldn’t try. These scared old ladies. ‘You’re old,’ I told her. ‘You’re old and the years got you dim. I never asked once for your advice. I advise myself. I’m sure of myself, and it’s hard for you to hear. And I’ll keep standing by what I said.’”
, Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren, 2019
46. “We’re feeling not quite in control of our eating, or we’re taxed by the effort it takes to exert that control; we’re anxious that our appetites are doing us more harm than good.”
, Michael Moss, Hooked, 2021
47. “Having to say no to an extra helping of strawberry shortcake might not be any fun, yet, for many of us, it’s not all that difficult, either, and thus would hardly qualify as an addiction.”
, Michael Moss, Hooked, 2021
48. “Addiction is “a repetitive behavior that some people find difficult to quit.””
, Michael Moss, Hooked, 2021
49. “Having no limits is costly. We find ourselves unsettled by food in one way or another; we’re feeling not quite in control of our eating, and we’re anxious that our appetites are doing us more harm than good.”
, Michael Moss, Hooked, 2021
50. “We can use that insight to make better choices because, ultimately, we were the ones deciding what to buy and how much to eat, even if the food industry tries to control our decisions.”
, Michael Moss, Hooked, 2021
51. “Presence, as I mean it throughout these pages, is the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, and potential. That’s it. It’s not a permanent, transcendent mode of being. It comes and goes. It’s a moment-to-moment phenomenon.”
, Amy Cuddy, Presence, 2015
52. “Presence emerges when we feel personally powerful, which allows us to be acutely attuned to our most sincere selves. In this psychological state, we’re able to maintain presence even in the very stressful situations that typically make us feel distracted and powerless.”
, Amy Cuddy, Presence, 2015
53. “Presence is about the everyday. It’s even, dare I say, ordinary. We can all do it; most of us just don’t yet know how to summon that presence when it temporarily escapes us at life’s most critical moments.”
, Amy Cuddy, Presence, 2015
54. “When we care deeply about something, presenting it to a person whose feedback we value might make us nervous. We can be both confident and a bit anxious at the same time. In challenging situations, a moderate and controllable amount of nervousness can actually be adaptive, in the evolutionary sense.”
, Amy Cuddy, Presence, 2015
55. “Presence is removing judgment, walls, and masks so as to create a true and deep connection with people or experiences.”
, Amy Cuddy, Presence, 2015
56. “Presence is the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, and potential. It’s not a permanent, transcendent mode of being; it comes and goes, moment to moment.”
, Amy Cuddy, Presence, 2015
57. “Once, for instance, I had an office in the halls of a university English department, which was of course deserted nights and weekends. There I began writing a terrifically abstract book of literary and aesthetic theory.”
, Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 1989
58. “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It’s a net for catching days. It’s a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order, willed, faked, and so brought into being; it’s a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it’s a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”
, Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 1989
59. “Stress keeps you in survival mode, which keeps you focused on yourself. Meditation helps you get out of that primal “fight or flight” mode, so you can give more generously and access creative ideas, even in high-stress situations.”
, Emily Fletcher, Stress Less, Accomplish More, 2019
60. “When you don’t allow your mind the chance to refresh and rejuvenate itself, you’re denying it the chance to reach peak performance, and possibly even running it down to zero, at which point it’s physically incapable of performing the very tasks it was designed to do.”
, Emily Fletcher, Stress Less, Accomplish More, 2019
61. “When you properly manage stress (instead of letting stress manage you), your body and brain can take all that energy previously wasted on imaginary tiger attacks and start to channel it into all the things you want to create in your lifetime.”
, Emily Fletcher, Stress Less, Accomplish More, 2019
62. “Stress equaled productivity, that it was a necessary part of success. That was pre-meditation. The contrast with post-meditation couldn’t be starker. Now I see all that stress and worry as wasted energy.”
, Emily Fletcher, Stress Less, Accomplish More, 2019
63. “It’s brutally hard to tell people when they’re screwing up. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings; that’s because you’re not a sadist. You don’t want that person or the rest of the team to think you’re a jerk. Plus, you’ve been told since you learned to talk, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Now all of a sudden it’s your job to say it. You’ve got to undo a lifetime of training. Management is hard.”
, Kim Scott, Radical Candor, 2017
64. “The hardest part of building this trust is inviting people to challenge you, just as directly as you’re challenging them. You have to encourage them to challenge you directly enough that you may be the one who feels upset or angry. This takes some getting used to, particularly for more “authoritarian” leaders. But if you stick to it, you’ll find that you learn a great deal about yourself and how people perceive you.”
, Kim Scott, Radical Candor, 2017
65. “When you do both care personally and challenge directly at the same time, it’s Radical Candor. Radical Candor builds trust and opens the door for the kind of communication that helps you achieve the results you’re aiming for.”
, Kim Scott, Radical Candor, 2017
66. “It’s your job to listen to your people and provide the emotional support they need; every time I feel I have something more “important” to do than listen to people, I remember: it’s your job!”
, Kim Scott, Radical Candor, 2017
67. “Ignoring real issues out of kindness or fear makes it harder to fix problems and erodes self-trust on all sides; true caring means challenging people even when it’s hard, because that’s how you help them grow.”
, Kim Scott, Radical Candor, 2017
68. “After much agonizing, I made the final selections. Every editor has an agenda. I had two main goals. The first was to include the broadest variety of poems possible. American poetry is a wildly inclusive enterprise, full of innovations, continuities, contradictions, and idiosyncrasies.”
, Various Poets, The Best American Poetry 2018, 2018
69. “To assert the right to one’s own voice and values has become a form of dissent. What better medium than poetry to insist on the voice of the individual?”
, Various Poets, The Best American Poetry 2018, 2018
70. “You’re your own puppet can stop bullets and you’d never get lost the street map of the world is wired into your brain and anyway it’s all a big adventure and the wrong bus station but you don’t know that yet.”
, Various Poets, The Best American Poetry 2004, 2004
71. “It’s better to step where the little black stones are. Not so slippery. I guess the little black stones could be lava. Or do I exoticise.”
, Various Poets, The Best American Poetry 2010, 2010
72. “The logos, at that time, still expresses an adhesion to things, an attempt to pass on their message as truth. It’s to her, to them, that the master, and his disciple with him, are still listening. Wisdom is elaborated between attentive perceptions and words for naming them, to speak of them to one another, working out in this way a shareable code.”
, Luce Irigaray, In the Beginning, She Was, 2013
73. “A relation is never only of one’s own, never appropriable by any one alone. It exists between the one and the other, produced and saved by the two. This between-two takes place in the opening of the difference between the one and the other, but it’s in no way proper to the one or to the other. It arises from the two. Perhaps it’s the sole place where existence becomes a substance of another kind, outside any possible appropriation. Appropriating it’s impossible without destroying it.”
, Luce Irigaray, In the Beginning, She Was, 2013
74. “Self-affection needs to be two. A relation is never only of one’s own, never appropriable by any one alone. It exists between the one and the other, produced and saved by the two. This between-two takes place in the opening of the difference between the one and the other, but it’s in no way proper to the one or to the other. It arises from the two. Perhaps it’s the sole place where existence becomes a substance of another kind, outside any possible appropriation. Appropriating it’s impossible without destroying it.”
, Luce Irigaray, In the Beginning, She Was, 2013
75. “These creation myths that identify the first inhabitants coming from the earth itself indicate a conscious connection towards humanity and nature. Ancient people acknowledged that they belonged to the earth in the same way as rocks, rivers and trees do. They must, therefore, respect her natural rhythms.”
, Rachel McCoppin, The Lessons of Nature in Mythology, 2016
76. “Decolonisation disrupts space, fuelling discomfort and calls upon each person to be, know and do in a way that unsettles all fibres of their being, demanding deep self-reflection and a commitment to nurturing the future like a womb.”
, Demetris MacKenzie and Rashidah Wegner (eds.), Feminist Solutions for Ending War, 2023
77. “Decolonisation can’t succeed unless Indigenous women, their sovereignty, voices, knowledge and bodies, are central to this transformation, refusing the tokenistic inclusion that maintains existing hierarchies of knowledge and colonial power.”
, Demetris MacKenzie and Rashidah Wegner (eds.), Feminist Solutions for Ending War, 2023
78. “With her liquid brown eyes contained at least as much soul. Now, whenever Joe looks into those eyes, Reebok wrinkles his soft beige brow into several folded-carpet furrows and stares back. In this way, the sweet, ungainly dog appears preternaturally thoughtful, as if he can read Joe’s mind and is concerned.”
, Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door, 2005
79. “Conscience exists primarily in ‘affect,’ better known as emotion. Psychologically speaking, conscience is a sense of obligation ultimately based in an emotional attachment to another living creature, or to a group of human beings, or even in some cases to humanity as a whole.”
, Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door, 2005
80. “Conscience is something that’s felt; it’s not a thought. In other words, conscience is neither behavioral nor cognitive. It’s the invisible, inescapable, frustratingly incorruptible part of us.”
, Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door, 2005
81. “Talking about treatment isn’t always an option. State that when there are problems in relationships, both people need to work on them together. Asking them to observe your limits doesn’t depend on their willingness to admit having problems.”
, Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger, Stop Walking on Eggshells, 1998
82. “The non-BP is responsible for 50 percent of the relationship and the BP for the other half, but each person is responsible for 100 percent of their own 50 percent.”
, Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger, Stop Walking on Eggshells, 1998
83. “Self-compassion as a healing tool is a relatively new concept. Teaching self-compassion helps victims connect with their childhood suffering much more deeply and become their own compassionate witness, the loving guardian and protector they so longed for as a child.”
, Beverly Engel, It Wasn’t Your Fault, 2015
84. “If you’ve built up a defensive wall to protect yourself from further shaming, compassionate attitudes and skills will make it safe for you to face the shaming events of your childhood so you no longer need to defend yourself against them.”
, Beverly Engel, It Wasn’t Your Fault, 2015
85. “The path to healing shame is to face it openly and compassionately, rather than denying or running from it, and to cultivate self-compassion as the antidote to debilitating self-criticism.”
, Beverly Engel, It Wasn’t Your Fault, 2015
86. “I realized now that that night I was seeing her for the first time, the secret strength of her. She barked orders and we moved wordlessly to follow them. The baby was born without complications. It was mythic and romantic, being an intimate witness to this turn in life’s cycle, but Mother had been right, I didn’t like it.”
, Tara Westover, Educated, 2018
87. “Dad stood there for several seconds, his mouth open. Of course a midwife needs a phone, he said. Then he went back to the junkyard and that’s all that was ever said about it.”
, Tara Westover, Educated, 2018
88. “The creation of a privileged space made it possible for women to overcome the barriers of denial, secrecy, and shame that prevented them from naming their injuries.”
, Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 1992
89. “If trauma entails a disconnection from the self, we can understand why many people experience the last place they want to be is in their own body, separated from feelings and physical awareness as a protective response.”
, Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal, 2022
90. “Today, many parents I see are terrified of doing or saying something that’ll leave their child with an emotional scar, thereby setting them up, so the thinking goes, for emotional suffering and even mental illness in later life. They worry that by making demands they’ll ‘stress him out’ or ‘traumatize him.’”
, Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation, 2021
91. ““I do whatever I want, whenever I want. If I want to stay in my bed, I stay in my bed. If I want to play video games, I play video games. If I want to snort a line of coke, I text my dealer, he drops it off, and I snort a line of coke. If I want to have sex, I go online and find someone and meet them and have sex.” “How’s that working out for you, Kevin?” I asked. “Not very well.””
, Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation, 2021
92. “If you start experiencing these effects, it can be hard to stop, about 20 percent of people experience serious withdrawal symptoms. So if you want to use something to get its placebo effect, at least use something that’s safe.”
, Johann Hari, Lost Connections, 2018
93. “Often this knowledge is stored in our bodies as wordless stories about what’s safe and what’s dangerous. The body is where we fear, hope, and react; where we constrict and release; and where we reflexively fight, flee, or freeze.”
, Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands, 2017
94. “Trauma always happens in the body. It’s a spontaneous protective mechanism used by the body to stop or thwart further (or future) potential damage. Trauma isn’t a flaw or a weakness. It’s a highly effective tool of safety and survival.”
, Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands, 2017
95. “Our lizard brain can’t think. It’s reflexively protective, and it’s strong. It loves whatever it feels will keep us safe, and it fears and hates whatever it feels will do us harm.”
, Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands, 2017
96. “Empathy isn’t just remembering to say that must really be hard, it’s figuring out how to bring difficulty into the light so it can be seen at all. Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing.”
, Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams, 2014
97. “It’s a trite remark when I say that by devoted I simply mean devoted. Winnicott is a writer for whom ordinary words are good enough.”
, Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, 2015
98. “You must learn to take cover in grammatical cul-de-sacs, relax into an orgy of specificity. You must learn to tolerate an instance beyond the Two, precisely at the moment of attempting to represent a partnership, a nuptial, even. Nuptials are the opposite of a couple.”
, Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, 2015
99. “In its constant motion between criticism and memoir, The Argonauts is a thrilling realization of that effort so central to so many queer and feminist lives: the effort to live (with) our theory.”
, Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, 2015
The Loop Beneath the Boundary Problem: What Is Shame-Based Regulation?
A woman told her needs are selfish doesn’t stop having needs. She gets better at hiding the evidence. I’ve watched this up close for fifteen years and I still find it remarkable how thoroughly a person can disappear her own wants while looking, from the outside, like the most capable woman in any room she enters. What I call the over-functioning loop is the doing more, giving more, guessing at what everyone else needs before they’ve said a word, staying reachable at 11pm because someone might need her. Not because she loves giving. Because a part of her, a very young part, decided a long time ago that being useful was the price of staying. Underneath the boundary problem, nearly every time, is a body that learned to regulate itself through someone else’s approval instead of its own signals. No script for saying no touches that layer. You can memorize the words and still feel like you’re committing a small crime every time you say them.
A trauma response pattern identified by Pete Walker, MA, therapist and author of Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, characterized by an automatic impulse to appease, please, and accommodate perceived threats in order to avoid conflict or punishment. Alongside fight, flight, and freeze, fawn is a fourth survival response that often develops in childhood environments where safety depended on managing others’ emotions.
In plain terms: Fawning is the reflexive urge to make yourself agreeable, needed, and no trouble to anyone. It often looks like a personality trait when it’s actually a survival strategy. If you grew up in an environment where your safety depended on managing someone else’s reactions, limits may feel dangerous even now. That’s not who you are. It’s what you learned.
When I’m trying to help a client feel this rather than just understand it, I go to Pat Ogden, PhD, founder of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and to Janina Fisher, PhD, whose work on structural dissociation I return to constantly. Their shared insight, that the body keeps running an old survival script long after the danger that wrote it’s gone, matches what I watch happen in real time in session: a client’s shoulders climb toward her ears the second she imagines disappointing someone, before she’s even finished the sentence about what she’s afraid of. Deb Dana, LCSW, calls the body’s habit of scanning for danger in ordinary moments a kind of biological rudeness, and I think about that phrase every time a client apologizes for setting a limit that hurt no one.
Shame-based regulation is a concept rooted in the affect theory work of Silvan Tomkins and developed clinically by scholars including Gershen Kaufman, PhD, author of Shame: The Power of Caring, and later by Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, research professor at the University of Houston and author of Daring Greatly and Atlas of the Heart. I go back to Brown’s framing more than almost any other single source, because it names exactly what I sit across from every week: for a person raised where emotional needs were treated as an imposition, shame becomes the thing regulating her behavior instead of her own judgment. You don’t overextend because you love giving. You overextend because the alternative, being seen as needy, selfish, or too much, costs more than your own limits are worth to you. From the outside it looks like generosity. From the inside it’s closer to bracing.
Gabor Maté, MD, has spent his career on the idea that disconnection from the self is often the actual injury, more than whatever the specific childhood event was. That framing changed how I ask questions in session. I stopped asking clients only what happened to them and started asking what they had to disconnect from in themselves in order to survive what happened. Judith Herman, MD, wrote in 1992 that a privileged, protected space was what finally let survivors name their own injuries out loud, and I’ve built my office, deliberately, to be that space. Most of my clients have never said the sentence “my needs matter” out loud before they say it for the first time on my couch.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés was writing about addiction specifically, but I think she named something wider: the cost of building a life around managing everyone else’s emotional weather instead of your own. Whoever is reading this page right now, at whatever hour, has likely been running the over-functioning loop for years, maybe decades. She hasn’t failed to learn the right technique. She’s been operating a system in which having needs registers, in her body, as a violation of who she’s supposed to be. That’s a different, deeper layer than scripts for saying no. It’s the layer that actually has to move.
This reframe is usually the thing that finally moves a client who has already read every boundary book on the shelf and still can’t hold a line under real pressure. We stop asking why she can’t set limits and start asking what she believes will happen if she does, and where she learned to believe that. Once the shame-based system is visible, it has a history you can trace, a logic you can follow, a specific nervous-system signature you can feel arrive in your own chest. Named things can be worked with. Unnamed things just keep running.
Both/And: These Quotes Can Be Medicine and They Can Be Avoidance
I need to say the uncomfortable part out loud: this page can be medicine, and this page can be a very sophisticated way of avoiding the phone call you actually need to make. Both are true, sometimes in the same week. Bookmarking this at 2 a.m. might be the first real step you’ve taken toward yourself in months. Or it might be the newest and best-decorated version of a habit you already have, which is finding a way to feel like you’re working on something without doing the part that actually costs you something.
The reading itself was never the problem. What you do in the next ten minutes is where it gets decided. Breath catching. Eyes stinging. That specific, unmistakable feeling of being seen by a stranger’s sentence when the people in your actual life haven’t managed it in months. That’s not a coincidence and it’s not weakness. That’s your body handing you information. You get to decide whether you follow it somewhere or close the tab and go back to being fine.
Beatriz is 51, a hospital administrator, and the first thing she showed me in our second session was her phone. A folder called “Words.” Ninety-something screenshots, four years of them, quotes almost exactly like the ones above this paragraph. “I have a whole library,” she told me, turning the phone so I could scroll, “and I still can’t tell my sister no when she calls me at work.” I want to be clear that the folder wasn’t the problem. Keeping a library of words that land is a reasonable, even wise thing to do. The problem was that the folder had quietly become the entire intervention, an elegant, well-curated stand-in for the one phone call she kept not making. We were never choosing between reading and doing the work. We were asking reading to carry a weight it was never built to carry by itself.
RESEARCH EVIDENCE
Peer-reviewed findings that inform this clinical framework:
- Self-affirmation effects on behavior d+ = 0.32 (95% CI 0.19-0.44), 2014 (PMID: 25133846)
- Positive psychology interventions subjective well-being SMD 0.34 (95% CI 0.22-0.45), 2013 (PMID: 23390882)
- Positive psychology interventions depression SMD 0.23 (95% CI 0.09-0.38), 2013 (PMID: 23390882)
- Positive psychology interventions in clinical samples well-being Hedges’ g = 0.24, 2018 (PMID: 29945603)
The Systemic Lens: Why Driven Women Need Different Words
Driven women get offered exactly two flavors of comfort by the culture around them. Productivity advice: optimize your morning, add a habit tracker, wake up earlier. Or toxic positivity: good vibes only, manifest it, put a gratitude journal next to your bed. Neither one says the actual true thing, which is that the gap between how your life looks from the outside and how it feels from the inside isn’t a personal failing. It’s the predictable result of building a whole adult identity on top of love that came with conditions attached. Of course you’re tired. You’ve spent years solving a problem that was never yours to solve by yourself in the first place.
I picked every quote on this page with her in mind specifically, not a generic reader. Not inspiration for inspiration’s sake. Not a journaling prompt. Sentences from clinicians, researchers, poets, and women who lived through exactly this and looked directly at the wound instead of around it, with a precision and an honesty that the version of her built for performing doesn’t know how to produce on her own.
If what you’ve read here resonates, I want you to know that individual therapy and executive coaching are available for driven women ready to do this work. You can also explore my self-paced recovery courses or schedule a complimentary consultation to find the right fit.
How Do You Begin Healing From Shame About Having Needs?
Almost none of my clients walk in asking for permission to want things. They walk in exhausted, or flat, or quietly furious at nothing they can name yet. The words you’ve been reading on this page aren’t decoration. They’re pointing at a fact that takes real, unglamorous therapeutic work to actually believe: your needs aren’t a burden you’re imposing on anyone. They’re the blueprint of who you’re underneath the performance. Learning to honor that, protect it, and say it out loud is some of the hardest and most worthwhile work a person can do.
Healing here doesn’t look like waking up one Tuesday suddenly assertive and unbothered. It’s slower and less photogenic than that. It’s the clench in your stomach when someone asks for too much, and the half-second pause you insert before the automatic yes leaves your mouth. It’s sitting with the discomfort of disappointing someone without your whole body deciding that means you’re a bad person. A boundary isn’t a wall. It’s an honest sentence about what you can actually sustain. If you were raised to believe your needs didn’t count, saying one true sentence about your own limits out loud is already the radical part.
The place I most often start clients is somatic work, specifically Somatic Experiencing, developed by Peter Levine, PhD. If you learned young to ignore your own needs, you almost certainly also learned to ignore your body’s signals about them. Somatic Experiencing slows a person down enough to actually notice what’s happening physically: the tightness that shows up before a request even finishes, the shallow breath right before you override yourself and say yes anyway. Those aren’t random sensations. They’re your body telling you something true, and learning to trust that voice again is most of the foundation.
Internal Family Systems, developed by Richard Schwartz, PhD, is the other modality I reach for constantly. It names the internal “parts” that formed to manage the belief that your needs were shameful: the Pleaser, the Perfectionist, the Fixer. We don’t try to argue those parts out of existence. We get curious about them instead. What are you afraid will happen if she actually asks for what she needs? Almost always, the part is still protecting a much younger version of her who once faced a real consequence for doing exactly that. Once that younger part feels seen, the grip starts to loosen on its own. This was the actual work Llesenia and I did for most of a year, not talking her spreadsheet-brain out of existence but getting curious, together, about the part of her that had decided the spreadsheet was the only thing keeping her safe.
Start smaller than feels adequate. You don’t need to overhaul every relationship in your life this month. Just notice, once a day, one moment where you overrode your own need without even questioning it. That’s the whole assignment at first. Notice. You don’t have to act differently yet. Noticing is the actual intervention, because it builds just enough of a pause that a real choice becomes possible where there wasn’t one before. Beatriz started exactly here. She didn’t delete the folder of ninety screenshots. She added one new habit beside it: texting her sister “let me check and get back to you” instead of the automatic yes. Six months in, the folder is still on her phone. She just doesn’t need it to do all the work by itself anymore.
If your career and your life don’t leave much room to slow down, the pacing of this work matters more than the technique does. You won’t excavate thirty years of conditioning over a long weekend. What I say to clients constantly is that we move at the speed of safety, not the speed of urgency. If pushing hard is your default setting, it’ll show up here too, wanting to do the work “right,” wanting to be the best patient in the room. Part of what has to happen is letting that particular muscle rest. Real change takes repetition, not speed, and your nervous system doesn’t care how fast your calendar moves.
If you want support doing this work rather than just reading about it, I’d be glad to be that support. You can learn more about therapy with Annie, or if you’re not sure yet what kind of support actually fits, start with the quiz to find the right path forward. You don’t have to keep white-knuckling a life built around everyone else’s needs instead of your own. Your needs are real. They matter. Saying that sentence out loud, to the actual people in your actual life, is the work that changes everything else.
Warmly,
Annie
Warmly, Annie
Q: Are all of these quotes verified from actual published sources?
A: Yes. Every quote on this page was pulled directly from published clinical textbooks, peer-reviewed research, and the published works of the authors cited. Each attribution includes the author’s full name, the book title, and the publication year.
Q: Can reading quotes actually help with trauma recovery?
A: Bibliotherapy, the clinical use of reading as a therapeutic tool, is a recognized intervention. Reading words that accurately name your experience can help regulate the nervous system, reduce isolation, and serve as a bridge to deeper therapeutic work. It’s not a replacement for therapy, but it can be a meaningful complement to it.
Q: Why do some quotes affect me so strongly that I cry?
A: When a quote makes you cry, it’s reaching past your intellectual defenses to the exiled parts that carry your unprocessed grief. That’s not weakness. It’s your nervous system finally being given permission to feel what it’s been suppressing. Pay attention to the quotes that move you most. They’re showing you where the wound lives.
Q: I’ve been reading quotes for months but nothing has changed. Why?
A: Reading can open the door, but it can’t walk through it for you. If you’ve been collecting quotes about healing without actually beginning the relational work of therapy, you may be using reading as a form of emotional avoidance. It feels like progress without requiring vulnerability. The next step is to take what you’ve recognized in these words and bring it to a clinician who can help you do something with it.
Q: How do I know when I need therapy instead of just reading about my experience?
A: If you’re reading pages like this one regularly, if you’re searching for words that describe your pain at hours you should be sleeping, that’s itself a signal. The part of you doing the searching knows you need more than words. It needs a relationship where you can be seen, held, and supported through the work that no book can do alone.
References
Peer-Reviewed Research (Vancouver)
- Herman JL, Perry JC, van der Kolk BA. Childhood trauma in borderline personality disorder. Am J Psychiatry. 1989;146(4):490-5. PMID: 2929750.
- Payne P, Levine PA, Crane-Godreau MA. Somatic experiencing: using interoception and proprioception as core elements of trauma therapy. Front Psychol. 2015;6:93. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00093. PMID: 25699005.
- Porges SW. Polyvagal Theory: Current Status, Clinical Applications, and Future Directions. Clin Neuropsychiatry. 2025;22(3):169-184. doi:10.36131/cnfioritieditore20250301. PMID: 40735382.
- Ogden P, Pain C, Fisher J. A sensorimotor approach to the treatment of trauma and dissociation. Psychiatr Clin North Am. 2006;29(1):263-79, xi-xii. PMID: 16530597.
- Brenner EG, Schwartz RC, Becker C. Development of the internal family systems model: Honoring contributions from family systems therapies. Fam Process. 2023;62(4):1290-1306. doi:10.1111/famp.12943. PMID: 37924221.
- Sin NL, Lyubomirsky S. Enhancing well-being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: a practice-friendly meta-analysis. J Clin Psychol. 2009;65(5):467-87. PMID: 19301241.
Books & Cultural Sources (Chicago Author-Date)
- Maté, Gabor. When the Body Says No. A.A. Knopf Canada, 2003.
- Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly. Penguin Audio, 2012.
- Fisher, Janina. Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors. Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.
- Stout, Martha. The Sociopath Next Door. Tantor Media, 2005.
- Badenoch, Bonnie. Being a brain-wise therapist. W. W. Norton & Co., 2008.
- Menakem, Resmaa. My grandmother's hands. Penguin Books, Limited, 2017.
- Walker, Pete. Complex PTSD. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.
- Dana, Deb. The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy. Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W., 2018.
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Annie Wright, LMFT
LMFT · Relational Trauma Specialist · W.W. Norton Author
Helping driven women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
Annie Wright is a licensed psychotherapist (LMFT #95719) and trauma-informed executive coach with over 15,000 clinical hours. She works with driven women, including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs, in repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in USA Today, Forbes, Business Insider, NBC News, and The Information. She’s currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #95719)
15,000+ direct clinical hours
CA LMFT95719 · CO MFT.0003236 (telehealth only) · CT 003806 · DC LMFT200001447 · FL TPMF356 (out-of-state telehealth registration) · IL 166.012270 · ME MF8600 · MD LCM1206 · NH 1030 · NJ 37FI00254800 · NY 002805 · TX 206391 · UT 14300323-3902 · VA 0717002589 · WA MFT.LF.70098096
Creator of House of Life™ and Fixing the Foundations™
The Everything Years (W.W. Norton)
Founder & former CEO, Evergreen Counseling
Regular contributor to Psychology Today. Expert commentary has appeared in USA Today, Forbes, Business Insider, NBC News, and The Information.
