Transcript - Kick the People-Pleasing Habit With Amy Wilson

Written by : Transcript – Kick the People-Pleasing Habit With Amy Wilson • February 18, 2025

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Kick the People-Pleasing Habit With Amy Wilson

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 507 of Live Happy Now. We know that helping others is a good thing. But what happens when it goes too far?

I’m your host, Paula Felps. This week, I’m talking to Amy Wilson, author of Happy to Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser. As you’re about to find out, Amy, who co-hosts the What Fresh Hell podcast, is a lifelong helper who spent most of her life putting others first. In her new book, she gives us permission to stop trying to take care of everyone else and tells us how we can start living our lives for ourselves. Let’s have a listen.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:40] PF: Amy, thank you for coming on Live Happy Now.

[00:00:43] AW: Thanks, Paula. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:45] PF: This is such a fun book that you’ve written, and it is so relatable. Before we talk about what you tell us in Happy to Help, can you talk about what led you to write it?

[00:00:57] AW: Yes. I have a podcast of my own. It’s called What Fresh Hell. It’s been around since 2016. It’s a parenting podcast. But truly along the way, as our kids have gotten older, my co-hosts and mine, we started to talk about our lives and the issues for the woman, not just for the kid and being our favorite selves, and so lots of content there. We had sort of circled this idea that when you’re struggling with a frustrating issue in your life, so much of what was offered were invitations to fix yourself, that you’re not getting enough help around your house because you don’t let people help you, right? Or you’re –

[00:01:39] PF: It’s somehow your fault, yes.

[00:01:40] AW: Right. Things are hard in your life because you’re such a perfectionist or whatever. I started to think like, “I’m not sure I agree with any of this.” Yet I’ve lived long enough that I’ve chased all these different versions of advice, and I had that sort of axe to grind. Then coupled with it was this realization. I was asked to write something about the times in my life that I really needed to pick up the slack. As hard as I could, I couldn’t think of times in my life where I had not gone the extra mile. All I had done was gone the extra mile, even when things were dead end, thankless. Anybody could see it but me. I kept going anyhow. I thought, “Oh, that’s what the book is going to be about,” so that’s how it came to be.

[00:02:20] PF: All right. We’ll get into it. But I got to say right up front, if for no other reason to pick up the book, it’s to learn about Bianca and scheme, okay? It’s those two things. I want all the listeners to go look for the Bianca and the scheme stories because those will live in rent-free in my head forever.

[00:02:38] AW: Thank you.

[00:02:39] PF: What your book really shows us, it’s so interesting because it does show us how women are conditioned to be helpers from the time we’re very, very young. Talk about how that messaging began for you because it’s not like they say outright like, “You are going to be a helper and give up your own self.” But how did that messaging happen for you?

[00:02:57] AW: In my particular case, so I’m the oldest of a big family. I’m the oldest of six kids, 25 grandchildren. You hear a lot about eldest daughter syndrome. I mean, I don’t think it’s a syndrome. But I do think, yes, I was babysitting for free from a pretty young age and was good at it and liked it, right? I was mom’s helper, and I liked it. It’s not that I was a resentful second grader heating up the bottle, not at all. But I did from a very young age have it. It just wasn’t in my sense of self that I was a good helper and that I was happy, that I enjoyed doing it, and that I would at least seem like I enjoyed doing it at all times, and that I could always handle whatever was thrown at me.

I think that’s particularly true for kids who grow up actually having to do some of the work around the house and caring for siblings. But I think it’s true in general. I went back and looked at the Brownie Scout pledge, which turns out it’s the Everybody Scout pledge. It’s not just for girls, but you say. You go to these meetings, and I raised my hand and swore on my honor, “I will try to help other people at all times.” That’s part of the pledge.

[00:04:02] PF: Like 24/7, I will not sleep.

[00:04:03] AW: Right, right. I’m an eight-year-old like, “Yep, that’s me. That is my job. I am always here to help anybody who needs it.” I don’t think – I mean, what’s interesting to me is, okay, there’s lots of scouts out there, and I don’t think quite so many people took it as literally as I did, maybe. But I did see myself as sort of the world’s protagonist here to save the day. Come on, everybody. Sometimes, that is a great trait to have. It’s not always a bad trait to have, but it can be overapplied, for sure.

[00:04:32] PF: Yes. You definitely gold-medaled in that brownie badge.

[00:04:35] AW: Right.

[00:04:36] PF: You just went above. You became the ultimate helper. Explain to our listeners what that looked like in your life as you became an adult.

[00:04:45] AW: To bring up the Bianca story, my first job out of college, I wanted to be an actor. I was an actor. But, of course, I needed to make money, and so I became a personal assistant to an actor right out of school, which for somebody who had trouble setting boundaries, which I did as somebody in her 20s, that was not a great job for me because it was the perfect storm of like, “Here’s somebody who will take everything you have to give, combined with somebody who is unable to say no.” I ended up being completely involved in the details of this person’s life 24/7 and not carving out any time to set my own goals and chase the things that I had extensively moved to New York for.

I still see it to this day in my mothering that, oh, the form that the kids need filled out or trying to find the specialist for this thing. These things are important, but they always take precedence over what I’m trying to do in my own life. When you’re a mom, that’s kind of the assignment. When you’re a 22-year-old, it’s not really the assignment, but I did it anyway.

[00:05:42] PF: It was like extra credit for you.

[00:05:44] AW: It was extra credit, right? To my employer’s credit, she would always say, “I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s amazing. She’s my brain. She’s indispensable. I couldn’t do it without her.” I think I was like, “Yes, that’s right. She can’t do it without me.” Therefore, I can’t leave or take off weekends. It was the perfect storm where this played out for too long.

[00:06:05] PF: Reading that, I think so many women will relate to that story. Maybe not at the extreme they like to go to, but I think we’ve all had those, especially early in our careers, where we’ve had those bosses. We’ve had those jobs where it’s like, “Well, I can’t say no.” I’m not being sexist. You didn’t see them asking the guys to do the same things that they were asking the women to do in a lot of those cases because it seems like they knew the women are going to do it.

[00:06:33] AW: Right. We’re told to sort of lean in, and I think that that can be taken advantage of. Not that lean in is always bad advice, but there I was leaning in. “Can you do this? “Yes, sure. No problem. Yes, no problem.” You think that if you work hard enough and you over-deliver long enough that this person who’s taking advantage of that is eventually going to see your incredible worth. It doesn’t actually work that way, right? You’re just somebody who will take on the next thankless assignment, too. They’re never going to say, “Give that kid a corner office.” She really over-delivered.” They don’t think of you that way.

[00:07:05] PF: Right. I think when you’re young like that and then finally you’ve had enough and you quit, it comes as a real shock that the company doesn’t completely fall apart. You’re like, “How is that still standing because I was single-handedly carrying it on my back?”

[00:07:22] AW: That’s so true. You want you want like the movie shot in your head of like you walking away while the city burns in the background, right? Then it continues on anyway. Maybe not perfectly but – and then you’re mad at yourself. Then you’re left with, “Why did I do that for so long?” There’s nowhere to turn that but inward.

[00:07:39] PF: Yes. Talk about when you left Bianca and how things –

[00:07:42] AW: Yes. Well, I mean, how things came to an end is that she used to call me to catch up and said, “Wait, I miss you. I haven’t seen you in so long. Come on over.” It had been years since I’d seen her, and so much had happened in my own life. My acting career was going. I had met somebody. There’s so much to talk to her about. She invited me over for coffee. I thought finally she’ll see me as an equal. I go over. She keeps me waiting for 15 minutes while she’s getting dressed. Then she says, “I’m so sorry. Something came up, and I’m not going to be able to have coffee with you after all. But can you run these lines with me for an audition, and can you come down in the elevator with me, and can you jump in the taxi with me real quick?” It just was, “Oh, my God. Now, she just wants me to work for her for free,” right?

This was the test. This was the test that I had failed every time in the past like, “Sure. Yes, I can.” The next time we’ll have coffee, I realize this person will never see me as an individual, and I just had to walk away, literally.

[00:08:35] PF: Yes. Yes. Those individual acts of walking away really start to finally add up in our lives. I would say that throughout your book you give us these fabulous essays with examples of how you had to walk away in one way or another. Talk a little bit about how being the person who’s there to help others can be such a good thing. But when do you know that it’s a problem? That maybe your helperness has gone too far?

[00:09:05] AW: Well, I think when it tips into resentment because people call this people-pleasing behavior. It’s easy to be circled and called that. I think sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. I think I really was acting more out of I am a good person when I’m saving the world. I was thinking more about myself, how I felt about myself and how other people felt about me. But I think it’s people pleasing when you’re doing this, and there’s this awareness of resentment and anger that you’re being taken advantage of. I think that was missing from me for a long time. It’s people-pleasing behavior when you know that this is inequitable and unfair, and you’re doing it anyway because they might be mad at you if you stop.

Definitely, when you think about that thing, you’re probably thinking right now, person listening, there’s that thing you really don’t want to be doing anymore. The person you really feel like you can’t help anymore in the same way. When you think about not doing it, what’s stopping you is the dread of saying, “I’m not going to be able to share that committee anymore or keep showing up every week anymore.” If the primary thing keeping you over delivering is, “But I can’t actually say I can’t do this anymore. What would happen if I did that,” then that’s the clear example that that’s the thing you need to stop doing, I think.

[00:10:18] PF: That’s such great advice. There’s another podcast that I produce, and the host was interviewing a guest, and the guest kind of flipped the question back. It’s like, “So what are the things that you do that you wish you didn’t have to do, but you do it anyway?” She said, and I was really surprised she put it out there. She’s like, “All this stuff from my kid’s class. I don’t want to go decorate these cards. I don’t want to do all these little things. That’s not my strength. That’s not what I tap into.” They had this whole discussion about how the host felt like she had to because these other moms are watching, and you feel judged, and it wasn’t what was bringing her joy. That is really a big point, too. You’re doing it because there’s an expectation that you’re going to do it instead of finding the thing that really lights you up, and it just is beneficial for somebody.

[00:11:07] AW: That’s right. I do think I have more than – my podcast co-host, for example, she talks about walking by those sign-up sheets at school and just being able to just walk right by them like, “Well, I’m not a sucker like some people.”

[00:11:18] PF: Blinders on.

[00:11:19] AW: Yes. She just like, “Nope, not for me,” and has none of that like, “Oh, but if I don’t do it, then will there be anybody at the bake sale table if I don’t sign up?” I think I have more of that, but it’s not even like, “Am I a bad person?” It’s like, “Oh, that would be fun. I’ll see people. I love catching up. Well, Paula signed up for that. I’ll sign up, too, and that’s when we’ll catch up.” I think I let those be where I found my friendships and my connections with other adult women was volunteering for stuff together.

But so much of that is tied into our kids and our communities. Your kid doesn’t take karate anymore. Your other kid graduates. Your friend moves away, and you need to have relationships that aren’t tied to sign-up sheets. I think one of the reasons I was such a helper is I was letting that do the work of connection for me.

[00:12:09] PF: Right. When you talk about being a people pleaser, it’s funny because that really has taken on a negative type of tone these days. When you break it down, it should be a good thing, right?

[00:12:21] AW: That’s right. How do you please people all the time? Right. It does make me angry the more I thought about it writing this book because we are told to be helpers, particularly as women. We are assigned, if you’re a mother, to put other people’s wants and needs before your own. I mean, I think that’s sort of on page one of the mothering handbook, in charge of what’s important anymore. You can’t live your whole life that way. Then when you finally say, “Wait a minute. This is unfair,” or, “I can’t do this,” or, “I’m struggling,” it’s given back to you like, “Well, if you just stop pleasing people all the time, as if it were some inborn feeling in you, as opposed to what the world runs on.” It needs to be addressed. What doesn’t, I believe, needs to be addressed is this disgusting personality flaw in yourself.

[00:13:06] PF: Maybe you can get therapy.

[00:13:08] AW: Right. Maybe go to therapy, but get somebody else to take the kids to soccer for a change. I mean, I think both things can be true. So often, when we say that we’re struggling, it’s given back to us, “Well, you’re such a workaholic, or you make things harder than they need to be.” Night, night and everybody just goes on with their lives, and you’re left with like, “That’s not helpful at all. That’s done nothing to change my situation.” I’ve found myself there a lot of times.

[BREAK]

[00:13:32] PF: We’ll be back with more from Amy Wilson in just a moment.

[INTERVIEW RESUMED]

[00:13:42] PF: Now, let’s get back to the show. Talk about when you had that realization that not everything was your job.

[00:13:52] AW: Yes. That not everything was my job and I didn’t need to read a book to change my mindset on how to stop thinking that everything was my job. You know what I mean? I was just giving myself more assignments, and I was getting stuck there. Once I got out of, “Okay, this needs to be redistributed. This is not my imagination. This is not a failing in me that I have more to do than time to do it. This needs to be redistributed,” then you get to the work of actually doing that with your loved ones, with the people you work with, and the situations you exist within. That’s not easy at all, and it’s definitely not one and done.

But, yes, I have some thoughts about that, too, because I have made changes over the last few years that were uncomfortable and maybe a little bit messy, and they happened anyway. I think that that’s – we have to get out of our heads and we have to do – we have to set healthy boundaries. No, you just need to set boundaries. Let them be messy and bad and terrible, you know.

[00:14:48] PF: I did want to ask you about that because it was so ingrained in you. As you said, you’re the oldest of six kids. I’m the youngest of six. I can tell you, I had a very different experience in that house, the top of the heap up there. Since you started as a child, you were taking care of people, pleasing people, how did you go about taking those steps to change that behavior?

[00:15:13] AW: Well, I’m going to talk about my family as an example. When I was writing this book, I needed more time to write the book. I have a spouse and three teenage kids. I kind of sat them down and said like, “Okay, I need to write this book and I’m deadline. Some other people are going to have to pick up the slack around here and do some stuff.” They were sort of like, “Like what?” Because I made everything operate so smoothly. I was sort of like, “Well, just like look around. Just turn the dishwasher on if it’s full. Just go get the dog food if we’re out of dog food.” Everything I came up with was like, “But you’re the only one who knows how to turn the dishwasher on. But you’re the only one that knows what kind of dog food she likes,” right? There was this thing that came back.

I think what I have done in the past is just immediately say, “Fine, fine. I knew this wouldn’t work. I’ll just do it all myself.” Then you tip into the people-pleasing martyr sort of behavior that everybody castigates in magazines. Instead, what I had to do was recognize that not as people who were out to undermine me or not support me, but instead try to take their questions at face value. You’re the only one who knows what kind of dog food she likes. Like, “Okay. Well, let’s fix that right now. I’m here to tell you that she likes any kind, and I buy the kind that’s on sale,” right?

Really walk through it and just not take no for an answer and not take but, but, but for an answer because those people aren’t saying it to you to be rude. They’re resisting change. Like, “Okay, so they’re going to resist change.”

[00:16:38] PF: Something there is used – they’re as used to being helped as you are helping that. That’s what they’ve known.

[00:16:42] AW: That’s right. That’s right. It’s definitely human behavior when things are the way they’ve always been, and then all of a sudden one day they’re different to say, “No, no, no, no. This is how it’s going to go.” You have to recognize that, not let it make you angry, and not let it cause you to do U-turn, but to say, “Well, I know, but I’m not going to be able to do that anymore. So you let me know if you need pointers, somewhere to go for dog food.” Yes. It worked. It didn’t work the first time or the second time, but it worked the eighth time. What you can’t do is get angry and take it all back.

[00:17:16] PF: Is that hard? Have you backslid ever?

[00:17:20] AW: For sure. One of the conversations I’ve had about this, somebody introduced me to the psychological concept of demand sensitivity, which I hadn’t heard of and I wished I had when I was working on the book. That just maybe some of us are – when I hear my spouse say something like, “Oh, you know what? It would be so fun if we organized a trip for my birthday this year to that national park that somebody told us was good. That would be fun.” I think sometimes when my spouse says things like that, he’s just saying things like that. That’d be nice is the end, and I hear that as like, “So go and execute a 72-piece program and bring it back to me.”

[00:17:56] PF: Do the [inaudible 00:17:56].

[00:17:57] AW: Right, right. That there is something in me that’s like, “That’s an assignment. Go.” I need to just recognize that like, “Oh, I’m feeling that way. I’m not sure that was the intent of the person saying it.” I mean, we’ve all had bosses like that, too, who just sort of muse about things. Then you spend three weeks on a whole proposing and bring it to them, and they’re like, “What is this?” They’ve forgotten already about the idea. I think recognizing that in me as something that I jump to every assignment even if the person saying it didn’t even mean it is an assignment. It’s something I’ve had to think about and try to [inaudible 00:18:29].

[00:18:29] PF: That is a great thing for all of us to think about because I think – I won’t say all of us. Maybe 99% of us have been there where we take it on, and we think, “Hey, we’re being proactive. I know this is what they want. They just didn’t want to ask outright.”

[00:18:43] AW: Right. But that’s how you overdeliver. Then they’re like, “Why did you work on this? I didn’t tell you to work on this.” I’m like, “Well, you kind of did.” Anyway, just recognizing that in yourself and getting more explicit about is this what is being asked of me in this situation and asking. I have somebody else that I work with who asks a lot of questions, a lot. What I’ve learned with this person is just an email, like lots of questions back and forth. It always gets asked back to you. What is this for, right? You don’t have to answer every question. Most of those, if you just ignore them for 5 or 10 minutes, it’s like, “Oh, here it is. I found it.”

But I had to learn, again, with that person that just because I’m getting the email hit back to me, just pause. Just don’t answer for 5 or 10 minutes. Wait and see if they figure it out for themselves. Wait and see if somebody else says, “Oh, actually, I’m free Tuesday this week.” Just wait a little longer.

[00:19:33] PF: Now, what has it done for you to make this shift in your life? How has it changed you? How has it changed your relationships?

[00:19:41] AW: Creating that space. It’s letting in a little bit of uncertainty, right? It’s letting in where you’ve always been like, “Okay, we always like to go out for mom’s birthday, and this is where we always go, so I’ll go there this year, and I’ll make the reservation because I always do.” Instead saying to my mom, “Well, what would you like to do for your birthday?” She’s like, “Well, I don’t know,” because nobody’s ever asked her before like, “Why don’t you think about it and let me know?” Just letting that wait or just saying to a group of people, “What do you think we should do,” and letting that silence go like 30, 45, 60 seconds. Nobody knows, and it doesn’t – even if you do have the answer, you can just wait.

These are minor examples, but it’s really changed my relationship to realize that maybe, at least my personal life, nobody was expecting me to always know what to do next. Leaving room for that uncertainty, I think, can be the hardest when we’re the dependable one. We’re the one who always came through for everybody to just say, “Well, this is an unanswerable question.” Wait and see what happens. Change is what happens if you wait long enough. It’s really interesting.

[00:20:46] PF: Oh, that’s interesting. Yes, it is. I’m sure that people – as you said, it’s uncomfortable at first when you’re just like, “Okay, I’m going to sit here and not do the thing that everybody thinks I’m going to do, which is jump in and take care of it.”

[00:20:58] AW: Right, right. I’ve had somebody in my life who read the book and came to me and said, “I’m so sorry that I didn’t understand that these times when you were really struggling. You didn’t seem like you were really struggling, and I should have seen through it, and I should have known you needed help.” That’s also not the takeaway. That’s not the like, “Everybody should be able to read my mind when I’m trying to juggle 10 things beautifully and seem really calm.” It’s not your job to see through that. It’s my job to say, “Hey, I need help,” and then to say it again and then say it again.

[00:21:28] PF: I think that’s part of what’s so wonderful about this book is it’s going to help the people pleasers, the helpers who want to get a handle on that and also the people who are less helpful, who aren’t inclined to jump in and let us see that through a different lens of like, “Oh wow. Okay. So maybe that person who’s taking care of everything isn’t necessarily doing it because they want to. They’re doing it because there’s a need, and that’s their job.”

[00:21:57] AW: Right. Maybe that person who always seems like she has it all under control is acting like she has it under control because that’s part of the assignment that we’re given as women to never seem angry or demanding and, “Gee, maybe I should wonder if she couldn’t use a little assistance.” Maybe I’m undoing what I just said before but right. I think the person who doesn’t ever sign up for anything, it’s like, “Why would I? They’ve got it handled. Those same three women who do everything, they’ll just do it all.” To not assume that that’s as foregone a conclusion as we’ve all pretended that it is for so long.

[00:22:30] PF: Absolutely. One thing about your book is that it’s such an easy read, and it’s these great essays. It’s really like having a friend just tell these stories of their life. I mean, that’s what it is.

[00:22:41] AW: Thank you.

[00:22:43] PF: It is.

[00:22:43] AW: Yes. That was my goal, to make it easy, to make it super relatable. The essays are related, but they’re not. It isn’t like, “Now, I put this book down for three days, and I don’t know where I am or what’s happening.” It’s not that kind of a book.

[00:22:56] PF: Right. You could honestly pick it up and just start. Pick a –

[00:22:59] AW: Just pick one, right.

[00:23:01] PF: Appeals to you and do that. Was it difficult for you in the writing process to sort out which examples you wanted to use? How did you go about that?

[00:23:11] AW: That is where I started with like, okay, the times that I’ve been a helper to my detriment, when are they? It’s all through my life. It starts when I’m in eighth grade, this book. Coming up with those stories, well, I mean, it took me a couple of weeks. But, I mean, I did come up with them. I can’t think of too many times that I had to add a whole other section, maybe one or two, but then more the order, the order of the essays, which is not the order that they happened in life. It’s instead the sort of order of the lessons that are learned.

The titles of the essays are sarcastic. The titles of the essays are the advice that you get instead of help, when you ask for help and you get back advice like, “Believe in yourself,” or something. There’ll be a chapter called Believe in Yourself or the story will be about me thinking I needed to believe in myself when I really needed to quit that dead-end job, say, or never give up. I’m misapplying that bad advice all through the essay before I learned something because sometimes people pick up the book, and they look at the titles, and they think, “Well, this is all the stuff I’ve heard before like the only one who can really make change is you.” I’m like, “No, these are sarcastic, at least kind of.” These essays are saying when that’s not enough, here’s what happens.

[00:24:19] PF: Yes. Here, have a platitude.

[00:24:21] AW: Right, right, exactly. They’re platitudes on purpose. That’s what I want to say.

[00:24:27] PF: Writing the book. Reading it is great. It’s great for the readers because it does inspire you to kind of get control over those habits. What did writing it do for you? Putting it all on that page, how did that affect and change you?

[00:24:40] AW: I mean, it profoundly changed me because you write the book that you need to read, or you write the book that tells you who you are. I mean, all those things are true. Figuring these things out about myself, these weren’t things I learned first and then wrote about them. They’re things I learned about myself and being this kind of person by sitting with these puzzle pieces for a year writing about it, right? Like, “Oh, I see.” So then you do this. Making those connections, and learning these things about myself, and then bringing them back to my life has definitely profoundly changed my relationships with the people closest to me, for sure. All of whom were very generous with –

I mean, I use nobody’s real name in the book, basically, except mine. I either don’t name them or don’t use their name, but it’s still a huge act of generosity for people close of you to see themselves reflected in any way. They didn’t have to be in a book, and then they are. But even more than that, I feel like they see things anew. I didn’t understand. You were thinking of it that way at the time. It’s really enhanced my relationships and my understanding of myself, which is the most important part.

[00:25:45] PF: Well, as I said, it’s a fun read. It’s not very often that you can have this much fun reading it and be learning. I think people need to take advantage of this opportunity.

[00:25:54] AW: That’s a high compliment. Thank you. That’s kind of what I went for. Like fun and wait a minute. They both would be in one book.

[00:26:00] PF: Yes, you got it. What is it that you hope readers take away from it?

[00:26:04] AW: The number one thing I want readers to take away from this book is when your life is hard, it’s hard because it’s hard, not because there’s something wrong with you, not because you make things harder than they need to be. That change is possible, but don’t get stuck in the, “First, I have to stop being such a high-functioning codependent, and then I will have the life I want.” Don’t get stuck there. Use that stuff if it’s helpful. Otherwise, no, you’re not nuts. What you have on your plate is nuts, and changing that is going to get you the change that you seek.

[00:26:35] PF: That’s amazing. Amy, thank you for the book. Thank you for sitting down with me. We’re going to tell our listeners how they can find you, your podcast, the book, all the great things that you’re doing. I look forward. I know you’re working on your next book, so I look forward to talking to you about that.

[00:26:50] AW: Thank you. This was such a pleasure. Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:26:56] PF: That was Amy Wilson talking about how to kick the people-pleasing habit. If you’d like to learn more about Amy, follow her on social media, listen to her podcast, discover her book, Happy to Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser, or download free bonus content from the book, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode. While you’re there, be sure to sign up for our all-new Live Happy newsletter. We’ve expanded to include more of the latest research on happiness, uplifting stories, our new Look for the Good word search puzzle, book recommendations from positive psychology experts, and, of course, our Happy Song of the Week.

That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.

[END]

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why women are more likely to become “helpers” throughout their lives.
What demand sensitivity is and how it contributes to people-pleasing behavior.
How breaking the people pleasing habit changes relationships — for the better!

Download bonus content from Happy to Help including an excerpt, book club guide, podcast playlist, and more!

Visit Amy’s website.

Follow along with the transcript.

Follow her on Social Media:

Facebook: @whatfreshhellcast
Instagram: @whatfreshhellcast
Instagram: @amywlsn
Threads: @amywlsn
TikTok: @whatfreshhellcast
TikTok: @amywilsonauthor
Substack: https://amywilsonwriter.substack.com/

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