Silvana Martinez, LCSW

Maybe you’re the person everyone knows they can count on.

You’re the one who helps, listens, keeps the peace, and thinks about how your choices will affect everyone else. You may be so used to considering other people that asking yourself what you want feels surprisingly difficult.

And when you do try to choose yourself, the guilt shows up.

You might replay conversations after saying no, worry that setting a boundary was selfish, or feel responsible when someone you care about is upset. Maybe you agree to things you don’t really want to do because disappointing someone feels worse than inconveniencing yourself. You know you can’t make everyone happy, but actually living that way is much harder than knowing it.

Over time, constantly putting yourself last can leave you feeling anxious, resentful, disconnected, or simply exhausted.

I work with adults who are tired of living their lives for everyone else but feel guilty when they try to choose themselves.

In therapy, we can slow down and get curious about these patterns rather than judging them. Instead of simply telling yourself to “stop people-pleasing” or “set better boundaries,” we can explore why those things are so difficult in the first place.

Maybe being helpful became an important part of how you see yourself. Maybe keeping the peace feels safer than expressing what you really think. Saying no might bring up fears of rejection, conflict, or being seen as selfish. Or perhaps you’ve spent so much time adapting to what other people need that you’re no longer sure what your own needs are.

There is usually more underneath these patterns than a lack of boundaries.

Culture and family can make all of this even more complicated. Messages about family, loyalty, sacrifice, respect, religion, gender, and responsibility can shape what we believe we owe the people around us. Advice like “just choose yourself” doesn’t always account for how difficult that can feel when relationships and cultural expectations matter deeply to you.

Therapy doesn’t have to mean rejecting your family, your culture, or the parts of your life that are important to you.

You can love your family and still need boundaries. You can value being there for other people without always putting yourself last. You can appreciate where you come from while questioning some of the expectations you grew up with. You can care about someone and still make a decision they don’t understand.

There is room for all of those things to be true at the same time.

As a bilingual therapist, I offer therapy in both English and Spanish. You’re welcome to use whichever language feels most comfortable, including moving between the two. Sometimes a memory, family interaction, joke, frustration, or feeling simply makes more sense in the language in which you experienced it.

You also don’t have to fit neatly into one cultural identity. You might feel deeply connected to your culture, caught between cultures, disconnected from parts of your background, or still figuring out what parts of it feel like yours. You don’t need to have that figured out before coming to therapy.

My approach is warm, collaborative, and curious. I’m not here to tell you what your boundaries should look like or which relationships you should keep. Instead, we can explore what is happening underneath the anxiety, guilt, resentment, or exhaustion and make space for the parts of you that may have very different feelings about change.

Therapy with me is not about becoming someone who never cares what other people think. Caring deeply about the people in your life can be one of your strengths. The goal is for caring about others to stop requiring you to disappear.

Together, we can work toward recognizing your own needs, trusting yourself when making decisions, and building relationships where there is room for you, too.

Luna Grove Therapy provides online therapy for adults throughout Utah. I especially enjoy working with people who want to understand themselves and their patterns more deeply, including concerns related to anxiety, guilt, people-pleasing, perfectionism, boundaries, family relationships, identity, and self-worth.

You don’t need to become someone who never feels guilty, never worries about disappointing anyone, or suddenly stops caring about the people around you.

The goal is to make more room for you in your own life.

If you’ve spent a long time being there for everyone else and you’re ready to start figuring out what it might look like to be there for yourself, I’d be glad to explore that with you.

Silvana Martinez, LCSW