When Being the Good Girl Stops Working - 64

You've done everything "right."

You've been responsible, dependable, successful, and the person everyone can count on. From the outside, your life may even look exactly the way you once imagined it would. So why does something still feel...off?

In this episode, we're exploring what happens when the "good girl" strategies that once helped you succeed begin keeping you disconnected from yourself. We'll talk about the difference between growth discomfort and misalignment, why high-achieving women often mistake burnout for a sign to simply work harder, and how living according to everyone else's expectations can quietly pull you away from your own values.

I also share some of my own journey—from pursuing leadership roles that looked successful but didn't feel aligned, to navigating family expectations, to the surprising lessons I've learned about authenticity through getting tattoos. Together, we'll explore how self-abandonment happens gradually and why that persistent feeling that "something isn't right" may actually be your intuition inviting you back to yourself.

If you've ever wondered why success still feels unsatisfying or why you're exhausted from trying to be everything for everyone, this episode is for you.

Inside my premium podcast, Becoming Her, we're continuing this conversation through The Self-Abandonment Recovery Project—a guided journey designed to help you stop outsourcing your worth and begin rebuilding self-trust through coaching, reflection exercises, and guided meditations.

Transcript

Autumn (00:00)

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This month we are doing an approval detox, and this week's episode is going to continue what we started last week, talking a little bit about why we constantly seek approval from other people. And today we're going to go a little bit farther and talk about what happens when being this good girl role and identity, seeking that self-approval.

what to do when it stops working, but even more so, how do you know when you're doing that? And

How can we tell when our discomfort is trying to tell us something bigger?

This week, when I use the word the good girl, I'm not exactly talking about someone who is quiet or passive. What I mean specifically is that version of us that learned that love and approval and safety come from meeting other people's expectations for ourselves. And for most of the women that I work with, that strategy works for a very long time until one day it just

doesn't. And the thing is that most of us don't recognize the signs that it's subtly not working, it's not working, it's not working. And it sort of builds until there's these red flashing lights saying, this isn't working for me anymore. But before we even get to that point, most of us are overlooking some subtle signs that there's a really big misalignment in our life that's only going to get louder and stronger.

until we pay attention to it. So I'm gonna share some of those signs with you today and some examples of how I see it showing up in my coaching work with professional women.

Before we dig into this topic, I feel like I need to clear the air a little bit because anyone that has worked with me or listened to my podcasts or webinars over the years, you know that I love discomfort and I love pushing people to do uncomfortable things. many, many moons ago, this whole thing, business, started as a blog called The Uncomfortable Dream.

And if you email me, my email remains the uncomfortable dream.com because I really felt very strongly and continue to feel very strongly that any type of meaningful growth or evolution is going to be accompanied by discomfort. That being said, I think one of the biggest lies that high achieving women tell themselves is this. if this feels hard, I just need to work harder.

Until it doesn't feel hard anymore.

We assume that any kind of discomfort simply means that we're growing. Well, if it's hard, I just need to keep going until I kind of grow into it. But sometimes that discomfort is not necessarily a sign of evolution and growth. Sometimes discomfort is not growth at all. Sometimes it's misalignment. It's your intuition trying to get your attention. It's that quiet voice inside of you.

saying or whispering, this isn't your life anymore. So today we're gonna really kind of unpack the distinction between good evolutionary growth discomfort and discomfort that is intuitive and trying to shine a light on something that you may be missing.

I want to begin our discussion today with a question that I think resonated with me very deeply when I really got into this work, gosh, nearly 20 years ago. And I think it's something that I hear professionals telling me again in one way, shape, or form, nearly every day. Have you ever looked around at your life and felt, gosh, you know, everything looks really good, everything seems to be as it should be.

You know, my paper resume is fantastic, but there's still this kind of quiet frustration that you just can't seem to explain and you can't quite put your finger on it. It's like there's this real disconnect between how you're feeling in those quiet moments and what your life says you should be feeling, right? Your life says you should be feeling really great about all these things. You should be happy. Everything is great. But inside there's something that's just

Or f

For some of us, this starts to feel like the question: why doesn't this feel like my life? Why doesn't it feel as good as I thought it would when I did all of these things? That quiet frustration and discomfort, it's not always burnout. Sometimes it is, certainly, but but often it's not.

Sometimes what's really going on is an unconscious awareness that you have been living a life that has been shaped by everyone else's expectations around you, so much so that you've sort of lost your true north. And that is the discomfort I think our intuition at some point kind of pops its head up and is like, hey, what's going on here? And it can be tremendously painful and disorienting. And so I think for a lot of us,

we just keep going instead of unpacking like what is that subtle frustration that I can't shake. So today I want to shed a little bit more light on that.

In last week's episode, I really set the stage for how being good often brings a lot of reward in our lives. Good grades and promotions, praise, being called dependable, responsible, the peacemaker, being easy to love or easy to get along with. And none of those things are inherently bad. In fact, a lot of them, a lot of those things really help us build and create a lot of success in our lives.

But eventually all of that goodness kind of comes to a head with this idea that success and alignment are not always the same thing.

As I said last week, the strategies of being the good girl, the dependable one, the peacemaker, those strategies might have helped us ten, twenty, thirty years ago. But now as we get older and farther along in our careers, those strategies may actually be limiting ourselves.

In my own professional experience, I felt this most strongly when I was getting deeper and deeper into corporate law. not surprisingly, there weren't a lot of women around. And and I can think back to so many experiences that I had in my practice where clients or co-workers or partners or leaders would make comments that were racist or sexist or

homophobic. And I felt this real pull to not be a bitch, to not make an issue out of it, and not be a muckraker. And I look back and have real deep shame over some of those instances and how I didn't show up for myself and I didn't bite back. Even instances where I was overtly sexually harassed by my coworkers. And I let people

Sweep it under the rug because there was a big part of me that had been conditioned to go along and get along and not make waves and not be one of those women that's always causing problems, that's just so sensitive about everything. A lot of that really kind of rang true for me. And I think it was were things that I had been told over and over in my life were important. And

Looking back now, I am ashamed of how I didn't stand up for myself and how I didn't push back and how I felt such discomfort being that bitch or that person that's always causing problems. we gotta watch what you say around her. I really did not want to be that person. And in doing so, really lost myself and and my own kind of moral compass and let people say and do things that I felt very strongly opposed to.

But I think it all kind of goes back to some of that conditioning that we had. The other thing that I saw happening in myself was the desire to kind of be the helper and to be responsible and to be the organized one. And so I always found myself getting put on all of these committees. In every professional job I had, I felt like I was always getting put on these committees. And I think at the time,

It felt like they were putting me on them because they like really saw something in me. And they wanted me to be a leader and I was doing the right things and I was, you know, achieving all these like great committees and this, that, and the other. And looking back, I I think it was that little girl in me that wanted to kind of please the teacher, to be the teacher's pet that got me excited about getting those opportunities and seeing myself in that way and kind of accumulating those roles. And in reality,

Not only were those jobs out of alignment for me and and not clearly anything that I was really passionate about, but I did not enjoy my time on those committees. And it felt just like one more thing, and especially in a world where your time is measured in increments of six minutes, you know, every tenth of an hour is revenue to a law firm and to a lawyer. And so when you think about it in that context.

Nobody wants to be on committees because it takes away from that billable time. So that means you end up just working longer days to capture your lost billable time. And so it seems to me and it feels to me looking back that that good girl in me, that people pleaser, that helper, set me up to be in positions where professionally, from a revenue perspective and from a work perspective, I was behind.

And I and I feel now like it was just another way of being taken advantage of. But I went along with it wholeheartedly with my eyes wide open. I think in part because I had been taught and told and understood and valued being a teacher's pet, being a helper, being the go-to person for all of the things. And I stretched myself way too thin with projects and roles and things that I did not enjoy and that did not align with me whatsoever.

As I was doing that, it seemed like every new opportunity was the next logical step on this path of success. But ultimately, every single one of those yeses just pulled me further into a version of success that belonged to somebody else. It wasn't me.

I wasn't making quote unquote bad choices, but I was making choices that fit this identity that I'd created that wasn't really me. It was in those experiences that I think I started to really understand that there are two different kinds of discomfort that I was kind of torn between and trying to figure out. There's the discomfort that comes from growth.

joining a new committee and learning about all of those things or starting a business and setting new boundaries, speaking publicly, learning something new, that discomfort expands us. And I think at the time, every new committee or opportunity that I was given or volunteered for or accepted, I f I thought it was kind of a a growth discomfort. And that's why I was, you know, so frustrated all the time. But the reality of it was

That it was coming from a misalignment discomfort. Yes, there was certainly growth in there, but for me, that misalignment discomfort was so much more painful and created so much more discomfort. And that was what I needed to be paying attention to. So when I talk about that kind of misalignment discomfort, I'm talking more about constant resentment for the quote unquote opportunity.

anxiety on Sundays, the Sunday scaries. Every every Sunday I would just really dread going in. I wasn't excited about all these new things that were added to my plate because they didn't feel right. That they didn't feel like growth opportunities. It felt just like one more thing. And I felt very trapped, which I think is another sign of that misalignment discomfort. I felt chronically exhausted. Again, not only because I had too much work on my plate, but because I was emotionally just

frustrated and drained and resented them for asking me to do this and resented myself for saying yes for doing this. And that adds to a whole different level of exhaustion. Other signs that I noticed was just feeling all the time like I was performing kind of a role. Like I had to put on this happy face and be this good girl that like juggles a full workload and does all these committees, you know, for free in my spare time because I just love working all day long.

And that led me to what I think is the last big sign of misalignment discomfort. It's that quiet sadness despite outward success. I just felt sad and kind of stuck and like a victim all of the time. That discomfort contracted me, really pulled me in.

In contrast, growth discomfort should pull you forward and and open you up and get you excited. And there shouldn't be all this heavy frustration and sadness and feeling trapped. That type of discomfort can really open you up like a flower blooming versus misalignment discomfort. I felt my whole body, all my energy just contracting because I was just, I felt so powerless and sad about it.

So ultimately, one discomfort is pulling you forward on your path, and the other one is asking you to change direction because you're just on the wrong path to begin with. I think a lot of professionals confuse the two. And so I think it's important for us to not only embrace discomfort, but ask, what kind of discomfort am I feeling right now? Is it the discomfort of growth that's gonna pull me?

in alignment with my path into a a different direction where I can grow and be excited about that? Or is it a discomfort that's really calling me to say, like, get off of this path. Like you're resentful, you're angry, you feel like victimized. All of that is a sign that this is not the right kind of discomfort for you. You're on the wrong road.

this brings me to a question that I want to offer to all of you that I wish someone had asked me all those years ago. And that is, have you ever realized that you were succeeding at something that you no longer wanted? I think that question is pure gold because if you can't answer

Wholeheartedly, yes, this is still what I want, and then I'm and I'm succeeding at it. If you can't say that out of the gate, I think there's something for you to unpack there. And you may be living more in misalignment, discomfort, and telling yourself that it's just the struggle of growth and evolution, when in reality it's your intuition saying, like, we don't want to grow in that direction.

With that in mind, I want to talk about some common signs that I see that acting as the good girl is just no longer working for us. So hopefully some of these will resonate with you. First and foremost, you replay conversations in your head. We only do this when we don't say what we wanted to say in the moment. And so if you find yourself replaying conversations, either find a way to say what you wanted to say.

Or develop a strategy to say it next time. But but the net takeaway is the same. You did not show up the way you wanted to in that conversation. And we have to understand why. Because that replaying is a sign that we're frustrated with how we showed up or didn't show up. We weren't being authentic. So if you catch yourself replaying conversations, you're probably not living fully in alignment.

Another sign is that you say yes without checking in with yourself because you have a habit of just saying yes, of being that teacher's pet, of being the good girl, the person that always volunteers. So if you catch yourself saying yes and then later regretting it, There's probably some people pleasing playing around in there that's driving you to do that. And so if you can buy yourself some space to think on it.

You may be able to show up more authentically. I, on the other hand, operate the opposite way. In the moment, I always know what my answer is. I can tell in my gut the answer is no, I don't want to do this. But for whatever reason, I have told myself that I just need to take it back and think about it and give myself some space. And every time I do that, I kind of beat myself up.

into being the good girl and saying yes. I tell them, sure you you do have time. You can absolutely do that. You can squeeze that in. It's the right thing to do. It's the nice thing to do. so when I buy myself space historically my tendency was to use that space to beat myself into submission. So for me, and if you're like me and that's your tendency, then my recommendation instead is to

Go with your gut answer. But regardless, if you give an answer, yes or no, and you find yourself later regretting that answer, you either have to buy yourself space so that you can give a more authentic answer, or give your authentic answer out of the gate so that you don't beat yourself into submission like I do and say yes when you really knew the answer was no to begin with. The next sign that I see pretty often, and I think this is one of the bigger ones that we don't pay attention to.

Is that you resent the people that you love. And it can be in the subtlest of ways. So for example, my husband works 24-hour shifts. So sometimes he's home recovering from a 24-hour shift or just resting. And there were days early on in our relationship where I would see him resting and I would get tremendously resentful. And the message, the takeaway for me was I'm resenting that because I'm jealous of it.

And it was a huge sign for me that I was just doing too much. That I just deeply wanted to be able to rest and have some downtime in the same way that he did because I was living out of alignment.

So looking to the people around us that we do love and care for, if there's resentment there, there's something happening. Maybe there's something that they're teaching us about what we really want, or maybe we're giving them more than we want and now we're sour about it. Think about those times when you say yes to happy hour or drinks with a friend or family and you're getting ready to go and you're just resenting yourself for having to go and you're kind of angry the whole time you're there.

That's a sign that you said yes when you really wanted to say no. So look for those little moments of resent.

next. Avoiding difficult conversations is a clear sign that you are done being the good girl and it's not working for you anymore, especially if we're obsessing about whatever is frustrating us that we want to talk to the other person about. if we're avoiding it, there's a sign that this is this avoidance isn't working for us anymore. There's a bigger part of you that just wants you to have the conversation.

Another sign that this is no longer working for you is when you constantly explain your choices. What that tells us is we're making a decision in alignment with our true self, but we feel like we have to justify it to the people around us because their approval really matters. And that's a really interesting observation that me doing what I want is making me uncomfortable. And I have to try and get this other person on board.

With the decision that I'm making for me. So if you catch yourself doing that, it's an invitation to you to just make your decision and not feel the need to explain it to anybody else. And that was one of the challenges I believe that I had in last week's episode to try and live a little bit more in alignment is to just state your preference or your decision without the need to explain it, but just notice the desire to explain it. That tells us that there's

a lot of value that maybe we used to put on other people supporting our decisions or our positions on things. And that desire to overexplain it is you just wanting to get them on board so that you can feel better about it. But part of this work is embracing that not everyone's gonna like what we do and what we have to say. And that's okay.

The next one is one I see all of the time, and that is you feel guilty resting. I have worked with so many amazing professionals over the years, and whenever I challenge them to not have something scheduled in the evening and to just relax, they experience a tremendous amount of discomfort. And usually when I tell them in person or on a Zoom call, like, hey, I want you just to not have anything planned.

Today or this afternoon, and just be with yourself. Maybe you read, maybe you write. And I can physically see their response and their discomfort around this idea of not having something planned and just resting and caring for themselves. Most of them will only do that after they've driven themselves to complete and total burnout because there's a lot of guilt around it that comes from this idea that we should always be helping. We should always be.

Doing more, striving for more, trying to please the people around us. And my gosh, what are they gonna think about me if I'm not working a hundred hours a week and I'm taking a night off just to do nothing or read a book? Like that's insane. It's a sign that you're more worried about what other people will think about you than your body's need to relax and take a break.

If that is something that causes you a tremendous amount of discomfort, it is probably, in my opinion, the biggest sign that you've been living out of alignment, people pleasing, and being the good girl, and it doesn't feel good anymore. It's not working for you anymore, it's inhibiting your ability to care for yourself and relax a bit. And the last one that I want to conclude with is if you don't know what you actually want and have a hard time answering that question.

You have probably been living in that good girl identity for a very long time. And it's not a criticism, it's just an interesting observation. Like, how did I get so far away from my own understanding of what I want that I don't even know what the answer to that is anymore? But I can tell you what my mom wants for me, what my spouse wants for me, what my boss wants for me. I know all of those things. I'm very attuned to those. But what I want has become kind of a foreign concept. it's a a painful observation.

but hear me when I tell you this, most of the professionals that I work with, it's exactly where they are. So there's no judgment there. It's just an awareness that I think can be really shocking, but also tremendously helpful in recognizing, wow, I really have gotten away from myself. I need to spend more time with her and understanding what she wants.

because none of these signs are intended to be characterized as a flaw in your personality or who you are or your character. It's just really good information. And it's information that there's an authentic and real part of you that's asking to be included in your own life. And that's why the feeling is there. That's why it's painful. Because that part of you.

wants to come out and there's a tension between that part of you wanting to be seen and who you think you need to be. And information like that is never bad. You can choose to do with it whatever you want, but I think we need to pay attention and gather that data and see, okay, wow, like maybe there is something there for me to learn and decide what I want to do with that information.

As I've been putting together the content for this month, I've been just paying a little bit more attention to my own inclinations and finding little ways that I still seek approval from people around me. And one of the ways that I find this, I think, most evident in my life is with my family and my friends. Over the past couple weeks, I have received a lot of inquiries for legal work and I'm something I'm trying to get away from. I don't really want to be a full-time lawyer anymore.

And I got a message from a friend of mine that I very rarely hear from. And in fact, it's not someone I'm particularly close with. We used to be close with years and years and years ago, but we don't have much of a relationship anymore. We rarely talk anymore. And in fact, the only time I ever hear from this person is when they want something from me. You know, they want information on how do I form a business and how does this work? What about this insurance? Or how do you start a podcast? And what do you do with that? And

It's always something along those lines. It's never a, hey, how are you? Or I saw this happen in your life. How are you doing? Never. It's always they want something. And for years I thought, you know what? That's not a real friendship. That doesn't feel good to me anymore. It seems to be driven by the old me that was kind of everyone's easy button. Like if you need help with this or that or this or that, like I'm your person. You want me to be on a committee I don't care about? Absolutely, right? That was me. And I think this person

Just knew that they could text me whatever was bothering them or troubling them and was moderately legally related or business related. And I would just answer it for them. Like I'm the little private Google box. So this last week, I get a message from this person asking me for advice on an estate plan. And I am not an estate planning attorney. I've never been an estate planning attorney. And anybody that knows anything about my legal journey.

would be hard pressed to even guess that I was an estate planning attorney. Like I just you don't really go in-house with the Fortune 300 company because you're an estate planning attorney. I I don't know, whatever, man. But they seemed to think I might know something special about this. And they wanted me to give them some advice. And I got the text message and I thought, what do I even say? And the good girl in me, the easy button girl in me

wanted to say, you know what, like I'll just Google it and see what the response says and kind of sift through with my own legal lens and kind of see, you know, what makes sense and that'll be my response. And then I thought, no, they can Google it themselves. Like why am I doing this? And I asked myself that question, why do you feel the need to respond to this? And my answer was, well, because you're supposed to respond to people's text messages. When people text you questions or they want help, you're supposed to respond.

And I really pushed myself on that. Like, do I really have to respond? Do I have to maintain this relationship with someone who just wants to treat me like their own little Google, you know, when they when they want to be lazy? Or, you know, do they really think that I have this unique legal lens that they just can't get from the internet, right? Like that was my ego coming in. Like maybe they just think that you can really add value, right? And the and the good girl loves adding value and being, you know, an essential member of the team.

I went back and forth on this for days and days and days. And what it came down to for me was I could not come up with any kind of a response that felt authentic, short of saying, gee, I noticed that I only hear from you when you want something from me. And and the truth is, that is a conversation I've had with them before, and it has yielded no success.

So I didn't respond and I don't intend to respond. But every once in a while I get this thought, like, I really should respond. Like, what am I gonna say next time I see them? Nothing. I I owe you no response whatsoever. But there was a real tension for me in not responding and not showing up and being polite and giving some type of response. Like, no, I left it on red. I'm done. I'm moving on with my life. If you need an answer, you can Google it. And and it was just interesting.

to watch myself go through this weird little tug of war on something so small, but that's because that good girl, that helper is so ingrained in so many parts of our lives.

And I can look back on so many times in my life when I made decisions based upon what I believed a good girl was supposed to do, instead of asking myself what actually felt aligned or safe or healthy for me. So again, it's not that there's anything wrong with being a good girl and being a and trying to help people, but when it becomes the foundation of resentment and frustration.

That's when we have gone too far.

The last thing I'll say on this topic that I always think about when I start unpacking like self-approval and people pleasing is tattoos. And I have talked about this before on my last podcast. I've got blogs on it. But here's the thing: I love tattoos so much because when you have a tattoo, good or bad, you are literally parading your decision around for public scrutiny. And people will have opinions.

Absolutely about the the tattoo itself in the artwork, about what kind of person you are because you've gotten a tattoo or how your tattoo doesn't really align with who they thought you were, but everybody's gonna have opinions about it. But when you get a tattoo, you are literally signing up for people to judge you. And I will tell you, when you do that and you get a tattoo that's difficult to cover up, you get real practiced.

At not caring about what other people think because you'll see it. You'll see their faces, you see their energy change, you see the way that they judge you, you see the way they look at you a little bit differently. It's not about the tattoo, it's about something deeper. You know, these people have chosen to live in alignment with who they want to be and and decorate their body in a way that aligns with who they are, and they don't care what anyone thinks about it. And I think there's something tremendously

powerful in that. And I think for myself, that was something that I did for me. And now when I see other people judge it, there were there was a long time where there was a tremendous amount of discomfort showing my tattoos out in public and watching my family and this, that, and the other. And it was such a powerful growing experience because it really shone a light on how much I still cared what people thought about me. And so that I think when I see people with a lot of tattoos, I think, you know what? Good on you.

Because you don't you clearly don't care and have gotten past caring about other people's judgments.

It really asks us to consider, am I willing to live in alignment with who I want to be or live in accordance with everyone else's expectations and avoid other people's judgments of me? And I think that question is really powerful. And I think it applies whether you're getting a tattoo or getting a divorce, starting a business, changing careers, leaving a relationship, deciding not to have kids.

We all make really big decisions. Some of those decisions, like tattoos, are easier for people to see and judge. But regardless, your decisions in life are going to invite judgment. And the sooner we can get better at letting people not agree with our decisions, the sooner we can start living more in alignment with who we're supposed to be and who we want to be.

so the tattoo, the behavior is not what's important. What is important is what you are doing that is an alignment that will invite criticism and opinions from other people. I just think tattoos are a really easy way to kind of understand that, but it's that's not what it's about. It's about the decision, the big decisions that not everyone's gonna get.

So what do we do when we start to recognize that that part of us that was the good girl, it doesn't fit anymore? What do we do with that old identity? And what's so interesting about this work is that there is a little bit of a grieving process that has has to happen and letting go of how that identity served us because we are letting go of a little bit of coat of arms. I mean, that good girl protected us from criticism.

And judgment, but at the same time, she kept us from being who we truly want to be. So we are kind of grieving, letting go of that armor, maybe letting grieving some decisions that we made that maybe weren't in alignment with who we wanted to be. And so I think there's a lot of kind of grief and evaluation and consideration, but also compassion for who you were that needed that identity and that protection. We don't have to villainize her.

But we can understand why we gravitated toward her, how she protected us, how she helped us belong and got us to where we currently are. But we can also honor that we don't necessarily need her to lead the next chapter. And in fact, maybe we really don't want her to participate in the next chapter, in the next chapter at all. There's a difference between honoring who you were.

And remaining trapped by who you used to be.

And we can let go of that identity, stop being trapped by it, but yet have compassion for it and understand why it was helpful, necessary, and what it gave us while letting it go and choosing differently moving forward. Because those good girl habits, they're not just behaviors, they're a real identity. And identities are hard to let go of because

They historically have been rewarded, not only protected us, but other people often like those identities. That good girl that we were living up to. People complimented her. She got promoted. She got positive reviews. She was celebrated.

But at some point, that good girl becomes indispensable to everyone else except herself. And that's when it has truly gone too far. And we have to let that identity go because that true part of you is building with resentment and sadness and just wanting to be seen. And we reach a tipping point that I really hope we can start paying attention to.

And letting that identity go. So I want to invite you on some journal explorations or contemplations that might help you understand parts of that identity that may still be holding you back or out of alignment. So some things to consider: either write them in your journal, you can meditate on them or just see what comes up. Maybe write them on a post-it, keep it close by, and just let yourself kind of chew on it throughout the day or the week. First.

Where am I still living according to an outdated version of myself?

What choices am I making simply because they're expected?

Where have I mistaken approval for peace?

If I trusted myself more than I feared judgment, what would change?

Again, you can use a journal to explore those or just kind of let them wash over you, keep them on a note and think about them over the course of the week and just notice what comes up.

If this topic resonates with you and seems like this is something that you might need more work on, inside Becoming Her this Month, we're working through a self-abandonment recovery project. It's a guided journey for women who are ready to stop living for approval and start coming back to who they really are.

This month, the topics will go beyond what we're discussing here on the free podcast. So we're gonna dig deeper into self-abandonment, to people pleasing, to these good girl identities, and give you some practical tools, some guided meditations to help you recognize where you've been abandoning yourself and maybe where you're ready to start rebuilding a little bit more self-trust.

For less than a cost of one coffee every month, you'll have access not only to the Self-Abandonment Recovery Project, but my growing library of guided meditations, shadow work journeys, identity work, and personal growth resources that are ready for you whenever you're ready to dig into them. I would love to have you join us.

This week in Becoming Her, I'm releasing episodes on the Good Girl Trap, where we're gonna dig a little bit deeper into childhood conditioning, family systems, attachment, and nervous system responses relating to this good girl identity. After that, at the end of the month on Becoming Her, I'm releasing an approval inventory workshop where we're gonna help you identify where you're trying to please and where you're self-abandoning.

Next week here on the free podcast, we're exploring one of the most important questions, I think, in this whole topic for the month. And that is what's the difference between being liked and being known? And again, that'll be free here on Lady-Ish next week. The reason I think this is so important is because many of us spend years becoming someone that everyone else likes, only to realize that almost no one really knows who we truly are.

And there is a world of difference between acceptance that's earned through performance and connection that's actually built through authenticity. And that, my friends, is what we will be unpacking next week. As always, thanks so much for listening and thanks for sharing with your friends that could also benefit from this work. I will see you next week.