Are You a Sweet PEA? A Tale of Preemptive Empathic Appeasing

Tosca DeVito
Apr 24
3 min read

Updated: Apr 26

Have you ever adjusted your behavior to meet someone else’s needs before they even expressed them? Have you ever changed course, swallowed your own discomfort, or softened yourself—not because anyone asked you to, but because you felt what they needed and moved to meet it?

That’s what I call Preemptive Empathic Appeasing (PEA). It’s not just people-pleasing. It’s an instinctive, unconscious survival strategy that many highly sensitive people develop. It’s when we sense someone else’s unease and shift ourselves—not to accommodate, but to appease—often at the expense of our own needs.

Let me tell you a story.

A Walk in the Park... and an Unnoticed Choice

I was walking with my dog, Jack, through the park when we ran into a fellow dog walker. Our dogs love playing together, but today, something was off. The other owner had lost his leash and was holding onto his dog with both hands, eyes wide, tense.

I felt it. Not just his physical effort, but his nervous system—his stress, his internal struggle over what to do. And like a tuning fork, my own system started to vibrate with that same stress.

Before he even spoke, before he even made a request, I felt the urge to fix it. To smooth things over. To make it easier for him.

So I offered to walk Jack in the other direction, even though I didn’t have time for it.

He didn’t ask me to. He wasn’t expecting it. He was just standing there, frozen, overwhelmed. But my body, my nervous system, had already decided: This is too much. Let’s diffuse it before it becomes a problem.

I took the long way home, stretching my morning walk when I didn’t have extra time to spare. I disrupted my own rhythm, my own needs, just to ease the tension I felt in him.

The Difference Between Accommodation and Appeasement

At first glance, this might seem like kindness. Like being easygoing, flexible, generous.

But here’s the thing: true accommodation means both people’s needs are met in some way. It’s a give-and-take. Like if I pick you up on my way to work, but you bring me breakfast—we both adjust, and both get something we need.

Appeasement, on the other hand, is one-sided. It’s when one person sacrifices, shifts, or suppresses their needs to keep the peace. It’s the unspoken contract of “I’ll bend so you don’t break.”

And for those of us who are deeply attuned to the emotions of others, this pattern can run so deep that we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

Why Do We Do This?

This isn’t just a personality quirk. It’s a learned survival response.

For many of us, this strategy took root in childhood—when reading the room, smoothing over tension, or preemptively tending to others’ emotions kept us safe, kept things predictable, kept the connection intact.

It worked… until it didn’t.

Now, as adults, our nervous systems still leap into action at the first sign of someone else’s discomfort, trying to prevent a storm before there’s even a cloud in the sky.

Catching It in the Moment

On my walk that morning, as I doubled back, I felt it. The tension, in my body this time. The resentment.

That’s the telltale sign—resentment is often the body’s way of saying, Hey, we just abandoned ourselves again.

So I paused. I named it: Something in me is feeling resentful.

And then I softened into curiosity. I looked at Jack and said, Let’s have an adventure. We cut through the woods to make our way home, and in the end, I made it on time.

But the moment stayed with me.