Episode #43: Good Girl Syndrome, Signs & How To Deal

Do you suffer from Good Girl Syndrome?

If you’re a woman, the answer is probably yes (Of course, this can apply to men to.)

Good Girl Syndrome looks like perfectionism, people pleasing and an acute fear that someone isn’t going to like you.

On the surface, that might not look that damaging. But being hypervigilant is super stressful on the body and can lead to resentment and bitterness over time.

So today we’re diving into the signs of Good Girl Syndrome as well as getting into how to heal!

In This Episode:

Find out what Good Girl Syndrome is
Learn more about the signs of Good Girl Syndrome & why they’re so harmful
Get a solid healing plan to get you out of it for good!
Much more!

Listen Here:

Good Girl Syndrome, Signs & How To Deal | Episode #43 Transcript

Hello friend, welcome.
Today we are going to chat about good girl syndrome and particularly about the signs of
good girl syndrome.
Do you really struggle to have people like you?
Does it really weigh on your shoulders when you think somebody doesn’t approve of you?
Or do you waste a lot of time thinking about how others perceive you?
These are just a few of the signs of good girl syndrome.
Today we are going to talk about what good girl syndrome is and talk a little bit more
about what the signs are.
So before we get into it, please note, this isn’t something that just happens to women.
Yes, I am choosing to call this good girl syndrome today because many women are socialized
in this way.
However, it is not a gender binary, so it’s very possible that if you are male, you have
also been programmed this way as well.
I did not mean to choose the word good girl syndrome to discourage anybody from listening
in, so take what you need from this and leave the rest.
Basically, good girl syndrome is a symptom of the way many of us have been socialized as
women.
Collectively, when we raise little girls, we place a very high importance on turning them
into nice girls.
And that means teaching them that they have to look out for other people to put other people’s
needs first, to always be smiling, to never ask for anything, to never be bossy or demanding
or talk about themselves too much.
Maybe right now you’re hearing that and you’re thinking, “Okay, well, isn’t that good?
Shouldn’t we be teaching women to do all of these things?”
So teaching people to value others, that is obviously not a bad thing, right?
But it does become toxic when we teach people to value others above themselves.
The problem with good girl socialization is that we really only concentrate, and I’m
talking about the collective we hear, we only concentrate on one side of the equation.
It’s like we are so concerned with teaching girls to be nice and to smile and to help with
others, but we don’t teach them the other skills they need, the other skills being, learning
how to ask for what they want and what they need, to set boundaries and to say no.
So because we only receive one side of this programming and we don’t learn the other side
of it, which is all about protecting yourself, yes, good girl programming is incredibly toxic.
It’s the very reason why so many women and men struggle to speak up for themselves.
We were taught from a very young age that it was wrong to do that, or that it was somehow
greedy or evil or sinful to feel good about ourselves, to have boundaries, to have needs even.
There are many narcissistic parents in the world who did not let their children have needs.
If you grew up in a household like that, you might have learned to become focused on your
parent because that is what they demanded from you, from their narcissism.
So there’s a few different ways that this can come out, but largely socialization, it’s
really the way that we look at raising girls, hopefully not to this day, but definitely
when I was a kid.
And it can definitely happen through other avenues, as I mentioned, if you had a narcissistic
parent, of course, you probably had to learn how to manage their feelings and to prioritize
them above yourself.
So good girl syndrome happens because you are socialized to look at the world a certain
way. You are basically socialized to put your energy outward and your attention outward.
Like I can’t feel good, I can’t feel happy unless the people in the room or the world around
me feel happy.
And then I get to relax when other people are relaxed.
In this way, we are teaching children how to become hyper vigilant, how to always be on
the lookout.
These are the kinds of people who are excellent at analyzing the tiniest facial expression.
Like they will see somebody turning their head away and it will turn into a story of this
person is not interested in what I have to say, right?
Like they’re very good at reading physical cues, but sometimes also that reading physical
cues comes with a lot of baggage because maybe you’re used to this parent who is constantly
turning away from you.
And now in the world, that’s what you see in other people, but that doesn’t always mean
the same thing that it did when you were a child.
But this state of being hyper vigilant and this state of having your energy outward and
being a people pleaser and constantly focusing on everyone, everybody else but you.
This is an exhausting way to be.
And it is one that we really struggle with breaking up with.
So before I talk about why it’s so difficult to change this, let’s talk a bit about the
good girl syndrome signs.
I think it’s really interesting to go through this as a list.
So many people have no idea that this applies to them.
So if you recognize yourself in here, it’s totally okay.
You are one of us.
And I’m going to talk a little bit more about why it’s difficult to change, but why you
should change in the next part.
So one of the signs of bringing this good girl baggage into your adult life is over-apologizing.
So over-apologizing occurs when you are taking on responsibility for things that maybe
aren’t your responsibility.
Like when somebody bumps into you and you say sorry, that is a sign of over-apologizing.
It’s also a very Canadian thing to do.
But you see the point I’m getting at over-apologizing means that you have been socialized to always
put yourself down.
You’re taking that apology and you’re putting that out there before anything else can happen.
So even when things are not your fault or it’s not an appropriate time for an apology.
So that is one really big sign.
The next one is you are afraid to disappoint people or to not have them validate you and
all of this or to not have them like you.
And all of this really stems from us not being able to like ourselves.
If you have been systematically taught that your value lies in the way that people look at
you and perceive you and that you can only feel good about yourself if everybody around
you likes you, then that’s a really difficult place to be, right?
Because not everybody is going to get you.
You are not meant for everybody, my friend.
But feeling unlike or feeling like you’ve offended somebody or that somebody is disappointed
in you.
Like these are normal things.
And with people that aren’t so important to us and even people who are, these are things
that a normal healthy person should learn how to manage.
But if you have good girl syndrome, this can trigger a huge shame response in you.
Because when you were a child and you had a parent that didn’t approve of you or that
you disappointed, it’s like they withdrew their love away.
And that felt like a very real threat.
That would put you in fight or flight response because I felt like your protectors were
going to leave you.
So this can feel like very overwhelming.
It can feel like an attack on your humanity and trigger you to go in a fight or flight.
It can also be deeply woven with shame.
So when your parent rejects you, like that’s one of the most painful feelings that a human
can have, right?
It can really elicit huge feelings of shame.
And you might still be carrying that over into your adult life.
Like in your adult life, it doesn’t really matter if this girl that you met two weeks ago suddenly
thinks you’re a bad person for some random reason.
Like that doesn’t actually make a difference on your overall life.
But if you are struggling with good girl syndrome, you might find it really difficult to get
over that and you might be thinking about it over and over again in your mind and unable
to get away from that.
And that is because of this syndrome.
Next you are a people pleaser, but you really take it to the next level.
It’s like people pleasing has become part of your identity.
Again, there is nothing at all wrong with doing nice things for the people in our life, for
going above and beyond sometimes.
But the problem with the good girl is that this has now become part of your identity.
It’s like you really believe that you need to over perform in your relationships because
you are terrified that people will stop liking you or loving you.
And that goes back to the previous point.
Ultimately, you are really afraid that someone might be disappointed in you or that somebody
might have some criticism of you.
And you are trying your best by people pleasing to get away from that.
However, this is all just a bandaid behavior, disguising the real truth and the real truth
is that you are afraid to be unloved.
You were so deeply afraid to be unloved because you felt that so deeply as a child.
Similarly, you are exceedingly polite.
You will smile and nod excessively, perhaps in conversations.
Oh my goodness, I have caught myself doing this at lectures before.
Boy, is that embarrassing when you see it?
You will smile and nod.
You are good at encouraging other people to speak, but you will not speak out even when
people are saying things that goes against your moral code.
You were too afraid of being perceived as being rude to stand up for your core values.
So again, none of these things on their own like apologizing.
That’s not a bad thing on its own.
But when you are doing it too much or when you are doing it in situations where it is not
appropriate, it becomes toxic.
Being afraid to disappoint somebody like that is somewhat of a normal concern, but when
that is really driving all of your behavior, that is when it becomes toxic.
And wanting to be nice and polite and encourage people to speak, that is also okay, but when
that comes at your own expense.
When you stop having a voice in the conversation and when you feel like you cannot speak up
when you disagree with somebody about something important, that is when it becomes self-sabotage.
Another symptom, perfectionism, I always say perfectionism and people pleasing and go
hand in hand.
And so many women I meet struggle from both of these syndromes at the same time because
they both come from the same place.
So when you feel you need to be perfect, again, usually that comes from a fear that we are
afraid to be criticized.
Again, it goes back to that being afraid to disappoint somebody or to offend somebody.
So we are trying with our actions by overexerting ourselves, by doing too much, by going far beyond
what we are asked to do.
We are trying to avoid that disappointment in somebody else.
We think that we just have high standards, but really we are just lying to ourselves about
what we are running away from.
So both people pleasing and perfectionism are both active behaviors that are usually hiding
some shame that we have.
And finally, this also relates to people pleasing, but struggling to say no or to set boundaries,
a good girl will struggle with this because again, you are not taught how to have your own
back.
You were taught to put everyone else ahead of yourself and therefore you never learned
how to get your own back.
You literally learned that your needs came last and as such, it might feel evil or wrong
or rude in your adult life to talk about what you need or what you want.
So I just want to reiterate that right now in case that still seems strange to you, but
as a healthy adult, you should be able to talk about what you need and what you want comfortably.
Doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to get everything met all the time.
It doesn’t mean being demanding and bossing everyone around and never listening to anybody
else, but you should be able to verbalize what you need and what you want without feeling
shame.
Okay, so those are a few of the symptoms here and we’ve already touched on it, but I first
want to talk about why it’s so difficult to leave good girl syndrome behind and it is
as you might have guessed the word shame.
We learn how to be good girls and we are literally shamed for anything that doesn’t fit
into this very narrow criteria of what a good girl looks like.
And your family’s definition of a good girl might go much deeper than this.
It might have to do with the clothes you wear, the people you hang out with, the school you
went to, et cetera, et cetera.
But you were still taught from a very young age that there is one way of being an acceptable
woman.
And so as an adult, it is terrifying to your subconscious mind to step out of that limitation.
You are now living in your own world, your own world as your creation.
And if you want to live in a bigger world than the one your parents prescribed to you, you
are able to do that.
However, it is really difficult to do that when you have shame interlinked here.
Shame is the lowest of the low emotions.
And it is something that we go out of our way to avoid.
It is one of our largest motivations, even though we don’t want to admit it to ourselves
because we are always hiding from our shame.
The reason why good girl syndrome is so difficult to change is because any time we step even a
little millimeter outside of what this vision is, we run the risk of being called bad.
And there is nothing that your brain wants to avoid more than to be called bad or to be
somehow rejected or judged especially from your friends and family.
So this is just a short podcast episode today and there is so much more I can say about
tools to help you through this.
But I’m going to give you a list right now of places that you can begin to look if you
are ready to break out of the mold of being a good girl and to finally live your life
on your own terms.
The first tools that I will suggest to you are polyvagal tools.
Basically, any time a shame response comes up in your body, you are going to go into fight
or flight.
So if somebody is calling you a bad girl or judging you or doing anything that might
trip that feeling of shame inside of you, you might have the urge to yell and scream at
them and to assert yourself that the other person is wrong.
That is a fight response.
That is your fight response trying to save you from the very idea that somebody could
think something different about you.
Alternatively, maybe you want to run away, lay down, stop thinking about it, numb out by
watching Netflix or scrolling for hours on TikTok.
That is another way that we avoid our lives problems and it is also indicative of either
a freeze response or a flight response.
So even these things that you do that you think are bad little habits, many times they are
just tied to your trauma response.
They are tied to the fact that you think that you are avoiding something.
However, we can never make change in our life when our body is triggered and activated.
So it is really important for you to understand what your dominant trauma responses are and
to create a healing toolkit, things that you can do to bring yourself back into relaxation.
Additionally, I would suggest picking something that regulates your vagus nerve, picking a
vagus nerve exercise to do regularly.
I’ve got quite a few of them on the blog, I will link that below, but just exercising
your vagus nerve is also going to help you in the long run.
It is going to help you to get out of that fighter flight and get back into regulation
faster.
Nobody is perfect.
We will all get triggered at some point in time, but I challenge you to figure out how
to take care of your own reactions.
Second, let’s do some shame work.
Let’s do some deep healing work.
For this, I suggest doing some inner child healing work or internal family systems work.
I want you to get down to that root cause of what is motivating you.
You might have a few motivations here.
That’s fine.
But many of them will go back to feeling rejected or unloved or abandoned by our parents.
Because as a child, that is one of the most terrifying experiences that you could ever
have.
Even if your parent isn’t abusing you, if you felt emotionally unsafe, if you felt rejected
or abandoned, you probably have some lingering trauma, some lingering emotional wounds that
are still coming up and getting triggered.
You can probably see that if you look back over your life.
But you can do a lot simply by imagining yourself, your inner child, imagining those situations
when you were young and looking at the little child you were, seeing yourself being innocent,
seeing you just wanting to be loved and accepted.
Understanding that that is a real desire that was not met in you, like just understanding
that alone will go a long way.
As children, we don’t understand that what we want is normal and natural.
And actually, we learn how to blame ourselves for those unmet emotional needs because we
don’t know how to blame our parents.
And we live constantly wanting to get that love from them.
Therefore, the problem must lie with us and not with the parent.
So if you can rotate back and think about this from that inner child perspective and look
at who you were and have compassion and understand that your needs were not met then, you can just
do a visualization exercise where you imagine your adult self coming in and telling that
child version of you that you love them, that you support them, that you have your back
and that you will always be there for them.
This sounds a little crazy, like you were talking to yourself or you’re just imagining things.
Like this emotional starvation that you have been feeling your whole entire life, all it really
wanted was your acknowledgement.
And you can do a lot to solve that inner pain by going in and acknowledging it yourself.
Finally, I suggest doing some shadow healing work specifically in regards to your shame.
Think about those times in your life where you felt rejected or shunned or judged by a parent.
And really look at that part of you that you felt you had to cut away and move away from.
Really try to imagine extending love to that part of you.
Like understand that when you were 13 and your mom yelled at you, it was not your fault.
Right?
Understand that whatever happened to you.
Even if you did something that caused them to yell at you, quote unquote, the yelling was
not your fault.
Feeling unsafe, feeling unsupported.
These are very real things and we have learned to hide those parts of ourselves away.
But those parts that we hide, that is where our shame hides.
And if you can bring those pieces out of the dark and love on them a little bit.
And again, just through a mental exercise, like the one we did for the inner child, this
can go such a long way to healing those emotional wounds inside of you.
And you will find that you will be able to let go of those fears.
And when you can let go of those fears of being shamed or unloved or abandoned, that is
when you can start to behave differently.
You’ll have more confidence that it is safe for you to advocate for yourself, to not be
the over-apologizer, the perfectionist, or the people, please.
So that’s all I’ve got for you today, my beautiful friend.
Thank you so much for listening.
If you want to do more of this deep inner healing work, I invite you to check out my
healed program.
It’s got a ton of different healing workshops in there to help you manifest your best life
by working through your emotional traumas.
We have got workshops in there specifically about perfectionism and people pleasing.
So if you need a little boost and if you are ready to break up with your good girl, then
that is a place for you to be.
I’ll leave a link for that in the show notes.
If you liked this episode, please do me a favor and leave me a star or a thumbs up depending
on what platform you’re on.
Be healing gorgeous, I wish you a beautiful week.