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Not sure where to begin? These are my most popular posts on boundaries, burnout, and people-pleasing.
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Not sure where to begin? These are my most popular posts on boundaries, burnout, and people-pleasing.
You're the one who remembers everything. The appointments, the emotional undercurrents, the thing someone said three days ago that you're still quietly tracking. You handle things before they become problems. You keep the emotional temperature of the room stable without anyone asking you to.
And somehow, even after eight hours of sleep, you still wake up tired.
This isn't about doing less or managing your time better. It's about what your nervous system learned to do a long time ago — and why it's so hard to stop, even when part of you is desperate to.
For years, I've talked about people-pleasing. But lately, I've been learning something deeper: people-pleasing isn't always just a pattern. Sometimes, it's a trauma response. And when that's the case? We call it fawning.
I had a free Sunday recently. Kids gone, nowhere to be, nobody needing anything from me. And my brain, given all that freedom, offered me work. Not rest. Not pleasure. Work.
If you've ever found yourself unable to relax even when you finally have permission to — this is for you. Because the inability to rest isn't a character flaw. It's your nervous system doing exactly what it was trained to do. And understanding that changes everything.