Episode
#057 The Perfectionist and the People Pleaser
- Podcast
- Sit Around the Fire
- Published
- Jun 23, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1330
- Processing state
not_requested
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Summary
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Ashlea. She was good at everything, she was the one who kept everyone okay, and from the outside she looked like she had it all figured out. She was also exhausted all the time and had no idea who she actually was. In this solo episode, I'm telling that story — mine, and maybe yours too — and unpacking the two survival patterns that ran my life for a long time: perfectionism and people pleasing. We're not treating these like bad habits you need more discipline to break. We're looking at them the way they actually work: as nervous system strategies your body learned to keep you safe. We get into perfectionism as a flight response — the foot-on-the-gas, plan-for-everything, control-it-all way of trying to outrun threat — and why it leaves you frozen and exhausted at the same time. Then we get into people pleasing as the fawn response: the gazelle who pours tea for the lion to make the threat go away, and the quiet, devastating cost of that — the masks, the lost preferences, the disappearing self. And then we turn toward the way out. Because here's the thing you've heard me say before, and I'll keep saying it: you're not broken. You've been programmed. And programming can be rewritten. What we cover Why your nervous system is a prediction machine — and how the "what-ifs" are a survival system doing its job Perfectionism as flight: control as a strategy to make the world feel safe Why perfectionism keeps you stuck, indecisive, and exhausted with your foot on the gas Why a small mistake can feel like an identity-level emergency People pleasing as fawn: befriending the threat instead of fighting or fleeing it The real cost of people pleasing — the loss of self, the masks, not knowing what you even like How these patterns get wired ear…