Episode. 19 'The Most Exhausting Job You Never Applied For.'

I'm Skye. And this is What You Took Back. A podcast for women who've spent years surviving on fragments of themselves. I'm here to hand you back the whole damn thing. Someone tells you, "Honestly, you're just so easy to work with." You smile. You say thank you. Inside, some tiny, exhausted part of you goes, oh no — because you know what that sentence actually means once you translate it. You've never made this person manage your feelings, negotiate with your limits, or wait for you to think about what you actually want. You made yourself frictionless. And frictionless people don't get protected. They get relied on. This is Part 2 of the July series — Boundaries, People-Pleasing, Guilt, Self-Trust — and this episode goes straight at the mechanism underneath every collapsed boundary from last week: people-pleasing. Not the dictionary version. The real one. It's not about wanting to be liked. It's about a nervous system that decided, a long time ago, that being needed was safer than being known. In this episode: Why "just say no more" has never worked on anyone, ever The tiny question that gives the whole game away — pizza or Thai, this or that — and why your honest answer might be static Four small, deliberately uncomfortable reps to start rebuilding a preference this week Take the free Power Leak Checklist at whatyoutookback.com/power-leak-check-list-sign-up and find out exactly where yours started. What have you taken back? 🎙️