Programs · People-pleasing · Give and Take
Give and Take
Overcoming people-pleasing with DBT
A yes that costs you isn't kindness — it's a debt you didn't agree to take on. This program teaches DBT's FAST skills for the self-respect stake: fairness that counts your side too, apologies saved for real wrongs, values you can name before the pressure hits, and the plain truth about what you're actually able to do. You log every costly yes as it happens, and your own resentment trend tells you whether it's working.
The default has a shape, too
- Yes arrives before you've decided anything.
- Preferences that die before they become sentences.
- Apologising for taking up space, or for existing.
- Resentment building with no clear source.
- The suspicion that being easy to be around is costing you something.
Every costly yes gets counted
Not a course you watch — a loop you run. Give and Take logs the accommodations as they happen, tags each to the FAST skill it belongs to, and points next week at whichever letter your own log says is costing you most.
Measure
A quick log whenever a yes costs you something, plus a thirty-second weekly check-in on how many of your yeses were real and where the resentment sits.
as it happens + weeklyLearn
Short sessions with Simone teach the method — where the pattern came from, then FAST one letter at a time.
10–15 min · most daysAdjust
The weekly review counts each letter straight from your log and sets the target for the week ahead.
weekly review↻ the loop runs weekly — six times
The outcome here isn't how many times you said no — refusing more isn't the goal. It's where the resentment sits week to week, because resentment is the bill a costly yes leaves behind. Each logged accommodation is tagged to a FAST letter, so the review can tell you which of the four is doing the damage.
Six weeks, one method
Fourteen sessions and five weekly reviews. The first week is free — including your baseline accommodation report.
Week 1The Default SettingWhere the pattern came from, and what it costs3 sessions
Week 2Fair (to You Too)FAST's first letter3 sessions
Week 3No Over-ApologizingFAST's second letter4 sessions
Week 4Stick to ValuesFAST's third letter4 sessions
Week 5TruthfulFAST's fourth letter, and all four together4 sessions
Week 6A Yes You MeanYour data, and what carries forward1 sessions
Simone
DBT: interpersonal effectiveness · guides 4 programs
The interpersonal-effectiveness coach — warm and refreshingly practical about relationships, scripts and all. Simone treats asking for what you need as a skill, not a personality trait.
“Hi, I'm Simone. Over the next six weeks we're not going to make you selfish — we're going to make the yes mean something, by counting what it's been costing you.”
The self-respect stake, worked as FAST
Give and Take takes the self-respect stake from Linehan's interpersonal effectiveness module and works it as FAST — Fair, no over-Apologizing, Stick to values, Truthful — one letter at a time, alongside challenging the myths about accommodation, with self-monitoring and behavioral rehearsal throughout.
- The self-respect stakeLinehan
- FAST, one letter per week
- Challenging myths about accommodation
- Self-monitoring and behavioral rehearsal
Where the pattern isn't a habit
If the pattern traces to fear of one specific person's reaction, the onboarding screen routes to Common Ground's relationship-safety screen, and that relationship's situations stay out of this program's practice entirely. Skills don't fix an unsafe relationship.
Where the pattern runs identity-deep — a sense of self organised almost entirely around other people's needs, at cost to basic self-care — the screen offers an honest therapy-adjunct note rather than a lockout. This is not medical advice, and not couples or family therapy.
Give and Take, next to the field
| Give and TakeResiliens | Bounds: Set Boundarieswithbounds.com | Enough Without the Effort (Annie Wright, LMFT)anniewright.com | Boundary Playbookboundaryplaybook.com | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $149 one-time (draft) — the program is yours | $12.99/month, $69.99/year, or $149 lifetime | $297 one-time, or two payments of $149 | Free |
| Structure | 6 weeks · 14 sessions + weekly reviews | A real-time intervention rather than a course: a two-minute quiz assigns one of five people-pleaser types, then a 90-second guided pause (breathe, locate it in the body, script, decide), morning goals, evening reflections and weekly reviews, wrapped in a five-phase recovery timeline | Self-paced: three modules, ten lessons, and a 102-page companion workbook | Printable worksheets rather than a program. The Automatic-Yes Log captures the request, what you said, what you wanted to say, and what you feared — then asks you at week's end to circle the ones that still sting |
| Personalization | Accommodation log → FAST letter → this week's target | Scripts personalised by people-pleaser type across six contexts | None | None |
| Human support | Self-guided · clinician-referral gates built in | None; data stays on the device | None | None |
| Access | Self-serve, start today | Direct-to-consumer | Direct-to-consumer, web, lifetime | Free and open on the web |
| Breadth | 24+ program catalog · bundle 2-3 related programs and save | Dedicated to people-pleasing and boundaries. Notably it already logs every decision and surfaces which people trigger the automatic yes — and already frames a genuine yes as equal to a no | Dedicated to people-pleasing | Boundaries generally; it never mentions DBT, DEAR MAN or FAST |
| Platforms | Web · iOS · Android | iOS · Android | Web | Web |
Sources: competitor pricing and program pages — every production value carries a source URL and access date, and unpublished facts are labeled "not published," never guessed.
Why we built it differently
- The bill, not just the decision. The closest competitor logs what you decided. This logs what the yes cost you — and charts the resentment trend that follows, which is the measure the workbooks have used for decades and no software has ever tracked.
- Every yes tagged to the skill that failed. Fair, no over-apologising, sticking to values, or the helpless act — each accommodation is tagged to one of the four, so the weekly review can tell you which habit is actually doing the damage rather than handing you a general count.
- A credentialed protocol, instrumented. The best-credentialed course in this market advertises that it has no quizzes and no tracking. The most instrumented app claims five modalities and names none of the skills. This is Linehan's FAST, run one letter at a time, against your own data.
Start free. Continue if it's working.
First week
- Onboarding + two full sessions
- Accommodation log + weekly check-in
- Your baseline accommodation report
Full program
- All six weeks of Give and Take, yours to keep
- Every session, review, and exercise
- Web + Untangle app access
Working on more than one thing? Related programs bundle together — two or three at a discount. Bundles are announced at launch.
Before you start
Will this turn me into someone who says no all the time?
No — and saying no more isn't the goal. Generosity that costs you nothing real is still generosity. The program targets the yeses that leave a bill, which is why the outcome it tracks is your resentment trend rather than a count of refusals.
What if my people-pleasing is about one specific person I'm afraid of?
Then this isn't the right tool for that relationship, and the screen catches it — routing you to a relationship-safety screen and keeping that person's situations out of practice entirely.
Why one FAST letter per week?
Because they fail differently. Over-apologising, unfairness to yourself, abandoning a value under pressure, and the helpless act are four separate habits — the log tags which one is costing you, so the weeks aren't generic.
How much time does it take?
A quick log whenever a yes costs you, thirty seconds for the weekly check-in, and ten to fifteen minutes most days for the session.
Be first to mean your yes
Give and Take is launching soon on the web and in the Untangle app. Join the early-access list and we'll let you know the moment it opens.
One email when your program opens. No drip campaign.