‘Good Girl’ Pink Slips and Being Your(Whole)Self
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Written by Amelia Kriss, CPCC, RDT, CDWF; published originally here on her blog and published here with permission via Got It Done Gal x #Boldgirl.
One of the things we think about a lot in the coaching (and therapy) world is this: Who is my “ideal client”? Meaning what types of people or experiences am I deeply interested in + qualified to work with? I am never quite sure how to answer this question because I work with (and like working with!) so many different people. Over the course of my work in counseling & coaching, I have worked with men, women, and non-binary folks; with parents, founders, writers, healers, artists, prisoners — all kinds of people. And I have learned from and been impacted by all of them. But if I had to narrow it down to one thing that I love love LOVE to work on, it’s Good Girl Metamorphosis — I love working with women (and everyone!) to let go of toxic perfectionism, self-doubt, and people pleasing. And beyond just this letting go, there is also the claiming of what you really want, and who you really are.
A few notes: I’m going to use the female pronoun as I write this and I want you to know that 1. includes anyone who self-identifies as a woman and 2. also EVERYONE, and that which is feminine (or deemed so) in all of us. Because on a societal level, we devalue the “feminine” in all of its forms — we shame men, too, for the ways they are ‘soft’ or ‘emotional’ or ‘needy’. (And maybe the use of the female pronoun will be a good experiment for the dudes reading this, since we ladies have been trying to mentally insert ourselves into phrases like “mankind” for, like, ever.)
Basically, your “good girl” is a sweet little swirl of all the ways of being that you internalized as “acceptable” in your environment. So, if you grew up in the larger environment of American culture you were probably taught a lot about how you (and your body) should look, but also that thinking or caring too much about your appearance is shallow or selfish (unattractive). You were probably taught that it was important for you to seem feminine or “ladylike”, but that you shouldn’t be “too girly” or “overly” emotional, or (gasp) crazy. And on some level, we all encode these…
