
This is exhausting - how trauma impacts the body
transcript
show notes
Hello and welcome back to our book club read-along of Are You Mad at Me? If you’re new here, I release a new podcast episode every two weeks where we deep-dive into this book together. You can also listen on Spotify & Apple Music. These episodes are meant to help translate theory into everyday language and to connect the science to real life, real patterns, and real change. We also gather twice during each book for live meetings where you can connect with others, share reflections, and ask questions in real time!
This book takes us deep into fawning, one of the survival strategies so many of us developed in childhood to stay connected and safe. It helps explain why we learned to manage other people’s emotions instead of feeling our own, and how patterns like people-pleasing, overfunctioning, and perfectionism make so much sense when we understand where they came from, and how they can change.
If you’ve been wanting to go deeper into this work, becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to the full book club experience. That includes our live sessions, ongoing discussions, and the complete archive of past reads, such as Unlocking the Emotional Brain, No Bad Parts, Healing Developmental Trauma, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Your support makes this space possible, and I’m grateful you’re here and reading along with me.
This week, we’re reading a chapter on how fawning and other adaptive survival strategies impact our bodies, and ways we might reconnect with safety and presence.
If you’re curious about doing a deep dive into how to create transformational change in your life, check out my new offering: The Transformation Lab. If you’re someone who reads all the books, tries every type of therapy, can analyze themselves better than Freud, but still can’t seem to change, then come join me for an experiment in transformation.
As you read or listen, you can be curious about these reflection questions:
1. What’s your relationship to your body? Has it felt like a safe place in which to exist?
2. Close your eyes and see if you can notice just one or two sensations in your body. Describe them.






