People-Pleasing "Nice Girls": How High-Functioning Women Learn To Abandon Themselves

Thoughts or comments? Send us a text!You can be confident, competent, and deeply self-aware and still find yourself saying yes when you mean no, smoothing things over, and quietly disappearing in your own life. That contradiction is exactly what Mary Rothwell explores with Ludovica Colella, a CBT-trained psychotherapist and confidence coach who specializes in people pleasing, fawning, and self-abandonment for high-functioning women who are exhausted from overgiving.We dig into the real roots of “being nice,” including gender socialization, the good girl role, and the fear that comes up when you stop shrinking and step into the spotlight of your own needs. Ludovica breaks down the continuum between selfishness and people pleasing, why the middle feels so charged with guilt, and what happens to relationships when you finally set boundaries that hold. We also talk about fawning as a survival response: hypervigilance, disappearing preferences, and trying to control how you’re perceived just to feel safe.Then we get practical. If boundaries feel terrifying, we walk through CBT-informed, low-stakes experiments that build confidence without detonating your life, plus why anger is not a character flaw but a vital signal that something matters and a boundary has been crossed. If you’ve ever wondered why you keep repeating patterns you can name but can’t change, you’ll leave with language, clarity, and next steps.Subscribe for more conversations that help you take up space and share this with a friend who needs it.You can find Ludovica HERE.https://lu-cole.com/Support the showBUY ME A COFFEE or SUPPORT ALFIE'S TREAT STASHLearn more about my book, Nature Knows: Grow and Thrive through the Wisdom of Plants HERE.Comments about this episode? Suggestions for a future episode? Email me directly at [email protected]. Want to be a guest on No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women? Send Mary Rothwell a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/noshrinkingvioletsFollow me on Facebook and Instagram, and check out my website!