Unlonely with Dr. Jody Carrington - Too Busy to Be Well: Breaking Free from Good Girl Expectations - Michelle McQuaid
Episode Date: June 5, 2025Let’s talk about the Good Girl Trap. The one that tells us to do it all, keep everyone happy, and somehow still be thriving. Spoiler: It’s a one-way ticket to exhaustion, resentment, and losing yo...urself.I sat down with the incredible Dr. Michelle McQuade to unpack why women are still stuck in outdated expectations—and more importantly, how we break free.We’re diving into:Why we feel too busy to be well (and how to change that)The hidden costs of being a "Good Girl"How to build self-compassion & secure attachment (with YOURSELF)The truth about why women are wired to save the worldIf you’re feeling overwhelmed, stretched too thin, or like you’ve lost yourself in the expectations of others, THIS is the episode you need.Follow Dr. Chellewww.thegoodgirlgamechangers.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/chellemcquaid/https://www.youtube.com/user/chellemcquaidhttps://www.facebook.com/chellemcquaid/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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At the beginning of every episode, there will always be time for an acknowledgement.
You know, the more we do this, people ask, why do you have to do the acknowledgement
in every episode?
I got to tell you, I've never been more grateful for being able to raise my babies on the land
where so much sacrifice was made.
And I think what's really critical in this process is that the ask is just that we don't forget. So the importance of saying these words at the beginning of every episode will always be of utmost importance to me and this team. So everything that we created here today for you happened on Treaty 7 land, which is now known as the center part of the province of Alberta. It is home of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which is made up of the Siksika, the Kainai,
the Pikani, the Tatina First Nation, the Stony Nakoda First Nation, and the Métis Nation
Region 3. Our job, our job as humans is to simply acknowledge each other. That's how we do better, be better
and stay connected to the good.
Well, welcome in, welcome back
for another episode of Unlonely.
This one, listen, if you know a girl, are a girl,
attached to anybody who identifies as a girl,
this one's for you. I have to tell you about Dr. McQuade. I, okay, so she's an honorary fellow at Melbourne University
Center for Wellbeing Science and one of LinkedIn's top 10 mental health thought leaders. She has transformed cutting edge research
into practical tools for navigating all the shit
that is happening.
Listen, her work is featured in media outlets worldwide.
She weaves scientific rigor and lived experience
through like her best, she has six bestselling books
and journal articles and an acclaimed podcast.
She has included over 250 conversations with leading researchers.
She talks a lot about this concept of being a good girl, the expectations of women, and
her latest research is all about helping women embodying, to embody their unique selves through
evidence-based practices.
And I think that today in this episode,
what you'll find is really a deep conversation.
And I was just like really conscious of this right now,
raising two sons, a daughter.
What does it mean to be in a position of powerful women?
What does that look like, you know,
when our expectations are to stay in line,
not be too big, too loud, too noisy, which
is the story of my life. And I loved it. I hope you do too.
You just heard all of the introduction to this beautiful soul and Dr. Michelle McQuade
is somebody who is currently on the other side of the globe at this moment, which is
the thing about this piece of technology that I love that is intended to keep us unlonely
and I wanted to use it in the best way today.
Michelle welcome.
Thank you so much for coming. A conversation today, I want to
jump right in. The Good Girl got me from your research right away because I was like, yes,
we are stuck in this place of expecting so much from women and providing little resources
in this space of role clarity that's all over the map. The expectations are through the
roof and quite frankly, I think we're going to have to save the world. So can you take me to the beginning of
your work, walk us through it, I would, I'm so grateful for this community to know you. So
tell me, tell me all the things. Thanks so much Jodie, it's such a privilege and pleasure to be
with you and all your beautiful listeners today. For me, I grew up professionally doing marketing
and communications, public relations, getting people in the media,
keeping them out of the media.
Amazingly, at one point, it was my job to explain to the Australian press what the worldwide
web was and how anyone would make any money out of it.
I am that old, Jodie.
Wow.
And so communication and how we connect and how we understand messages and how we act on messages has always fascinated me and so I you know worked in ad agencies
And then I went and worked in big companies like IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers all over the world
And I really got interested as part of that are going well. It's one thing to get a message through
It's another thing to change behaviors behind that message and I realized that a lot of what we knew at that time wasn't great. We were good at
getting compliance at scaring you or bribing you to do the thing that you
should. But that didn't last very long, right? When the next thing came along and grabbed your attention or you
adapted to those things, you just went back to doing what you were doing before.
So I got really curious around, well what else do we know about changing
human behaviour to bring out the best in people, to help us thrive even during some of the most
challenging times in our lives. And so I went and did a master's in applied positive psychology at
the University of Pennsylvania with Dr Martin Seligman and his team. It kind of changed my
world Jodie to want to know there is a whole body of decades
of research on human thriving.
I think we should all get that, you know,
from the first moment we enter school.
But secondly, to understand, hey, actually,
what are evidence-based, practical, tiny ways
that we can fit into our very busy lives
that start to help us to show up
and be more of who we wanted to be. And so I
went back into workplaces initially sharing this work going, how can we make work better for people?
I truly believe part of the future of our world depends on workplaces sorting themselves out.
Oh gosh.
As I was doing this with all sorts of people, I kept bumping up against one obstacle and that was,
love all this wellbeing stuff, I wanna prioritize looking after myself,
but I'm just too busy.
And Jodie, I bet you can't guess
who I most heard that answer from.
But it was women, particularly women in their like
mid thirties to mid forties,
who are often juggling careers and families
and all sorts of things.
And so I kept-
Too busy to be well.
Too busy to look after ourselves, Jodie.
And I kept kind of like, well, what's making us too busy?
Why do we believe we're not worth prioritizing
in order actually to have the energy
to do all the things we wanna do,
looking after everybody else if nothing else.
And what I found in the research,
cause I'm a data nerd at heart, Jodie,
is that I kept bumping up against this set of expectations
about being good girls.
That we'd often learned really early in life
by about the ages of 11, most women could say,
yeah, by that age, I was starting to understand
if I wanted to earn love,
and I thought that was so fascinating as to why I needed to perform
perfectly, I needed to please other people and I needed to protect everyone.
So that threw me over the last few years into this whole new world of conversation and research
and looking for tools about where do these expectations come from, do they work for us
or not, when do they, when do they not?
And if they aren't, how do we break free of them
to embody more of our unique selves,
those people we are at our best
when we're not busy conforming
to who everybody else wants us to be.
Hmm, wow.
I, I don't even know where to start.
Okay, so too busy to be well.
As women, I mean, I have so many questions right now.
So as a woman who is, I would say first generation,
successful at getting a post-secondary education,
getting grad school educated,
being in a place where it was like,
no, without a question in my mind,
I'm gonna be the CEO of my company, I'm gonna run things, my husband, this was a place where it was like, no, without a question in my mind, you know, I'm going to be the CEO of my company, I'm going to run things, you know, my
husband, this was a massive conversation we've had in our
own family system of like, what does it mean when the you know,
we come from very traditional homes, I would say. So now what
does this mean that I'm earning more than my husband? What does
that mean to my mother in law? What does that mean to the
family system, the community we're
living in, all these things? Help me understand like how, you know, somebody
can explain it to me like this. Tell me what you think. Role clarity was so
obvious three generations ago. When you were born with a vagina, you knew your
plan. When you were born with a penis, you knew your plan. And there's comfort in
that, right? Like there is something in predictability, assurance, we know where we're going. There's emotional regulation that comes with that.
Okay, I don't got a lot of choices. There's no freedom in this, but I know where I'm headed
in the expectations for me. In two generations at best, we've attempted to flip that on its
head under the guise of this isn't fair and equality and feminism and all these kinds
of things. I'm now fascinated because we're stepping into this place,
I think, where not only is it timely or is it fair
that we sort of switch these things a little bit,
but it's necessary because the skillset that women
bring to the table in this very disconnected world
is something we're gonna need if we ever hope to survive.
How do we navigate this expectation
where there's so much freedom now in our role? There's so much freedom, you know, you can
be anything, do anything, and very, very little role clarity. But what does that mean? Do
I still have the expectations of being the good girl, of being able to, you know, primary?
I remember my mother-in-law being like, okay, this is cool that you travel and everything, but like, who's going to
look after the kids?
I was like your son, you know, but, and I, and I doubted it too.
Right.
So it's like, okay, but now what?
You know, so I don't even know what the hell the question is in there, but like the idea
is really for me, lack of role clarity to now freedom comes at a cost.
Yeah.
And I think we're still expected in this very lonely world now to not only be anything,
do anything and take the bull by the horns and make the money and make your mark, but
also PS in our bones, still be nurturing and on the PTA and being very, very attentive
to the people we love and we lead, which is what we want to do and we're good at.
So do you see the cost?
I'm fearful that we're on this like collision course
in this generation of being like, we're exhausted
and we're gonna say we're not getting married anymore.
We're not gonna have children anymore
because we just can't take on all this responsibility.
Yeah, interesting
question and there's so many parts in that. So let's see if we can unpack a few
of the things that we're finding. Thank you Dr. Michelle McQuade. Unpack it because
we're doing therapy with Jodie Carrington today. I think number one a little like you I was
really curious how is this playing out across generations? I'm 52. Is this just a gen X thing? I grew up, I was born just before women first got
the right to have bank accounts that their fathers or husbands didn't have to sign for in many Western
countries like the US and the UK, Australia and the like. So I am part of that first generation of women that hasn't known what it was not to be able
to open my own bank account.
And I think absolutely financial independence that we gain when we're able to work or things
like that is a component of what is definitely adding into the complexity and the support
and choices that we have here.
The other interesting thing I was like, well, again,
I grew up at a time where, you know, for me, when I look back as to where these good girl expectations
come from, my earliest memory is about five years old, and getting a Walt Disney little golden book
at the supermarket, I have a copy in front of me that's called The Good Little Bad Little Girl.
And in this treasure are all sorts of instructions about how the good girl is quiet and obedient
She doesn't eat too much
But the bad little girl is the opposite of all those things and then the big surprise is she discovered the good little girl the bad
Little girl same little girl
But if she made the good little girl grow taller and taller and the bad little girl smaller and smaller
Then she would be happy and loved.
And the look of horror on your face was like oh my gosh I copied this off eBay about 10 years ago
as a therapy exercise Jodie and your face is exactly how mine looked when I read this 50 years
later go oh my god. That is awesome. Well I'll go Just as an example, right? Again, certainly in my generation, those ideas weren't considered
dangerous is what I would call them. I think about-
They're protective. The intention was great.
Right. To keep us safe because again, wasn't that long since women had any source of financial
freedom where our main role, our main path of survival was to attract a man.
Because the men had the bank accounts, the men had the jobs,
so if we wanted a roof over our head and food on our table,
some degree of perhaps physical safety, of course we know now that for many women
they're not safe in their own homes unfortunately.
But that was the path, right?
You had to be compliant so that you could earn love
so that other people would want you.
Now, if we fast forward to now,
we've just been doing this big demographic population study
to go, is this still true for women?
Like, is this just my generation thing?
Have we finally like, we've got Elsa now
as a hero for Frozen in Disney movies.
Surely we've moved on.
So we find overall across all generations from women 18 plus
65% of women still say, I feel the need to conform to other people's good girl expectations of me.
77% of women aged 18 to 35 say that is true for them. So what we actually see is that our younger generations
feel this more acutely than our older generations do.
When we get to women 65 plus, it's about half of them.
So the good news is as we get older,
we start to shake off some of these beliefs.
I think losing the estrogen at menopause
helps as well personally, Jodie.
Well, and then you just don't give a shit anymore.
Like I think that's also the point, right?
Like, yeah, okay.
And we've become too exhausted to care anymore.
So it still is going on.
So to your question about kind of, is this still a thing?
Is it getting harder for us now?
We don't have the role clarity.
I mean, I think we're seeing some of this in the trend of tradwives, right?
Of younger women go, well, I just want to be a traditional stay at home wife, you know, versus the other extreme. The women go, well, I just wanna be a traditional stay at home wife,
versus the other extreme, the women go,
well, I'm not gonna get married, I'm not gonna have kids.
So we see this younger generation hungry
for some more simplicity of what has become
a very complex question about what is my role in the world?
Where is my value?
How do I not be lonely?
How do I find my people and connect
and feel supported by that?
So I think those questions are definitely being asked across the board. The interesting thing is
that our answer is still often very tied into these old gender ideas, whether we're trying to
break free of them or whether we feel stuck in them. What I love is the research by some of the
leaders for decades in this space, like Dr. Carol Gilligan, who's actually advocating, you know what?
She spent, Carol spent decades looking at the difference between men and women and what we needed.
But in the past two years has come out and said, how about we just start thinking about what human beings need to thrive?
And we've seen this in our research too, Jodie, when you unpick it all as to what helps us break free as women, what helps us to thrive in this very complex world in which we now find
ourselves, it's not different between gender. There are actually some very simple and consistent
skills, connection being one of them to the beautiful theme of your podcast, that help us
thrive. What often gets in the way though are these societal expectations
that we feel a need to conform to.
And we can talk about the costs of that further if you want.
Yeah, I'm so interested
because I would agree wholeheartedly this idea that,
the bottom line for humans is we need connection.
I guess where I struggle sometimes is that
who tends to be more skilled at connection,
historically tend to be women.
So if we look at, you know,
because primarily to an emotional language,
and so I, due to our much more exorbitant emotional language.
And so if I think about,
from a neurophysiological perspective,
when we have less opportunities to connect with each other
and we are required, like we are one of the human rules,
we're neurobiologically wired for connection.
So you disconnect from an infant, they die.
The world has now interjected all of these disconnectors,
COVID expediting this process,
but also Apple, Meta, Uber, they own 8.9,
8.49, I think, trillion dollars worth of market
capitalization that is intended to keep us disconnected, okay? Now we know rates
of burnout, marriage failure, lack of, you know, staying connected to our children,
the, you know, the adolescent mental health rate, all those kind of things,
will require somebody to pull that human connection
back together. Okay. So if I think then, okay, I'm going to be looking for, if I'm going
to save the world, I'm going to be looking for who is goodest at pulling that shit together.
Guess what? It's women, right? So I, what I, so I worry a little bit about this idea of like,
okay, I get it.
And I think Carol's like bang on, she's so brilliant.
As humans, we need one thing.
And the greatest commodity we have
to facilitate that process is women.
How do we make sure their needs get met too?
How do we make sure in this season of,
the platform you have and I have,
and when I think about doing the things,
I think I know some of the answers,
but I'm so interested in like, how can we construct that
and have those conversations with our daughters
and our sons about what is required
to maintain healthy relationships
in this very disconnected space,
especially when the brunt of that appears to be
on the shoulders of women.
That's right, women.
Yes, I think there's three really interesting parts to this.
One is you're absolutely right that to a large degree,
women are better equipped, have better levels of skills
at being able to support our path back to reconnection.
And absolutely being no doubt there are,
while many of us were taught by our mothers or that,
these ideas about being good girls to protect us, there are absolutely some in the world who have used them to profit from us.
And so when we are in pain, we tend to buy things to numb that pain. And so right now,
it's the Ubers and the Medders and those people in the world. But there has always been people that
have profited from dividing and propagating these gender stereotypes rather than letting people
connect in the way that we actually naturally of course are wired to do.
Some of the ways that they've divided and I think Carol's research and her colleague
Naomi Way who studies this in boys are so interesting to watch together would find that
up until sort of those early, you know, the first 10 years of life and particularly the first four or five,
the level of emotional capability between boys and girls,
it's not that different.
We're actually, again, all wired for connection.
Our brains are wired to want to do this,
to have the skills to do it.
But what happens is we start to get socialized
to different expectations of roles.
So, Carol's work and ours shows that we get socialized
to be these good girls.
Part of being a good girl is the people pleasing,
it's the emotional reading of everybody's needs.
The other part though, is emotionally silencing ourselves
so that we don't upset other people
or rock the boat that we protect them, right?
And that's where some of the costs comes
for women we can come into.
The second part though for boys, particularly in Naomi's research has beautiful longitudinal
studies of boys, is that boys get socialized to be real men or tough guys and part of that
is to disconnect them from their emotions to say that really the only acceptable emotions
for a real man or a tough guy is that we've got anger and assertiveness and competitiveness and everything
else is kind of soft. And so I love Naomi's research around the crisis of connection,
particularly for men in their relationships and friendships. And so then of course, as they grow
up, that's starting around 11, 14 for boys, by the time they're men, and particularly men in their
fifties and beyond, no, they don't have the skills to do that anymore.
They have spent decades unwiring
that very natural response in them.
So I think it's important to remember
that we do both have these capabilities.
It's just that some of us have been conditioned
to practice them more than others have been
to suppress them.
And I think that's part of it.
Then the second part becomes, okay, well then,
how do women help
us get back to that place of connection? How do we help, you know, the men in this world
around us? And I think we can see right now, so many men struggling and angry and lost
right now. How do women do that without burning themselves out? The two questions that we
found in our research were helpful for women was on whose terms and for whose benefit.
And what we find with a lot of the complying
to these good girl expectations is,
we're not consciously thinking about that as women.
We're just like, well, I will need to earn love
and respect and care from others.
And this is how I get it.
I people please, I perform perfectly, I protect others.
But when we start to slow that down
before we do the next thing on our very busy list
and think, hang on a minute,
on whose terms for whose benefit,
like that beautiful conversation you had
with your husband and family,
then it starts to be very rarely ever
just my terms, my benefit,
but we can hold space for the end.
Yes, there's some of everybody else in there,
but there also has to be some of me
for it to be sustainable.
And then we did find in our research, there are three skills that help with
that, which we can come to, but let me pause because that was a bit to take in.
No, I love that because I would love to know those skills.
I think on whose terms and for whose benefit is our fantastic questions.
And is that, are those the questions women should be asking?
Yeah, well, I think honestly, all of us should be asking.
I think particularly in the
US right now on whose terms for whose benefits would be very helpful questions to be asking,
whatever your political background may be. But definitely, it just it slows down and moves us
from being reactive to being able to be consciously responsive. Yeah. And to know that again, that
right answer is really ever just gonna be,
it's all on my terms and it's only for my benefit.
I think the advantage women have in answering that question
to your point of having all those years
of practicing the skills of caring for others
is we are more likely to come to the answer
on that question in the end of, yeah, here's what I need.
Here's what I can see you need.
What we're not always great right now is doing as women
is advocating for the part that we need as well.
Okay, okay.
Or even understanding the importance of that.
Yeah.
Like if the message in our bones is be the good girl
because that is what keeps you safe,
that is what keeps you successful,
that is what keeps you all those things.
It's like a rewiring of that a little bit actually,
if you put yourself first in ways that doesn't,
and the rhetoric of self-care is such bullshit,
because I think that's where we land all the time.
It's like, no, no, no, you can do all the bubble baths
you want, but like, if your shoulders are up here,
it's a waste of time.
So I think it's really being clear on what that means
to be able to make sure that we are,
and for me, the meaning is emotionally regulated
from a neurophysiological perspective.
So I wanna make sure your body knows it's safe
before you're taking on the roles of other people.
And I think that's becoming even more compromised
in this social media world because we can't,
we don't take breaks, we're not good at it.
We're on all the time, right?
And again, think about on whose terms for who's been,
who benefits from us being on
and in constant sort of nervous system protection mode and
on the verge of exhaustion and burnout and resentment.
That was what fascinated me in the research with women, particularly by the time we're
35, the level of resentment and exhaustion that this is what we are carrying starts to
become unsustainable.
So, Jodie, this was the cost part. And the way the women talked about it was,
you know what, in the short term, being the good girl actually kind of works for me. It's
why it's hard to break free of, right? People are happy with me. They like me. I get the
pat on the heads, the gold stars, and maybe getting the promotions because I'm helpful.
I don't get a lot of short term kudos when we are being compliant and behaving the
way other people want.
But the long-term costs that most women reported, and this particularly tends to show up in
a crisis mode as we hit mid-30s, is I'm exhausted, I am resentful, and I'm lost.
I don't know who I am anymore because I've spent so much time now twisting myself into
the shapes that everybody else needs me to be.
And at the extreme of course the fallout of feeling that way is everything from burnout
to addiction to eating disorders to self harm to suicidal ideation to finding ourselves
stuck in cycles of poverty and violence.
Like it is really extreme as to when you see
how this can play through for these compliance ideas
and the costs.
So we talk about this Jodie, it's kind of junk food love.
Like in the moment, like a sugar hit, it feels kind of good
but 30 minutes later you've crashed out
and you got to do it all again in order to earn that high
all the way over.
So it's very tied to this idea that as a woman
I have to earn
people's love, I am not just deserving of it in and of myself. So the alternative we found when
women are breaking free from that, they were super clear that you know what short term, that can have
costs. And that's also why many of us don't break free of it, right? People might be disappointed,
upset, frustrated, angry, mean to me because I'm starting to
say no, or I'm starting to set healthy boundaries around things, or I'm starting to speak up
and rock the boat when I'm not comfortable with something.
Like there can be, right, from very small to very serious consequences.
My mother and I have been through this journey with each other over the last decade and we
had a period of sort of three years where we just needed space and time out from each other because my rocking the boat was not,
you know, something she was on board with at all and I needed to rock the boat for my own sanity
and well-being. So there can be very real short-term consequences that stop us going there,
but what the women told us is, you know what, if you get past that moment of discomfort,
the long-term benefit of when we're honouring
who we uniquely are, thriving as human beings,
is we have better levels of wellbeing,
we're not exhausted, we're not on the verge of burnout,
we have healthier relationships because they are built more
as equal, respectful, mutual relationships between people.
And I feel like I'm authentic to myself,
I'm aligned, I'm in my integrity. I know who I am.
I like that person.
And so we think of this as nutritious love
versus the junk food love.
Because you know, I don't know,
when you start eating healthy sometimes, Jodie,
if you've not been, you know, in that space for a while,
it doesn't always taste good at the start.
Doesn't sound nearly as fun as all that junk food
you might have been craving.
But once you kind of get past that addiction
to the sugar high, it starts to nourish you from the inside becomes actually a pretty sustainable and good way of
living. So we see these two things, the challenge in the middle to your point about nervous systems
and how our brains work, is that our brains do this faulty maths when it comes to safety.
And we tend to only look at the short term cost, not the long term cost or the short term game and not the long term game and so when we do that folding mats conforming to those good girl behaviors feels like the safer more rewarding option.
Not often until we get to that point of exhaustion resentment feeling completely lost to who i am am I willing to recalculate that equation?
Oh, so the cost has to be pretty great before we will ever, ever sort of take a sort of restock
of where we might be.
We could be more educated and informed and see better role modeling around us of other
generations of women. And then we might learn that, oh, actually, there's an easier way I could get there
than waiting to be in my mid-30s and feeling burnt out,
lost, exhausted, and resentful.
Oh, I love that.
And I've just never thought about it this way.
And so I really love that, Michelle,
because I think it's this idea of resentment
that I've only attributed to boundaries.
And so that's usually the key for me.
Like, Brene Brown's work has really taught me this piece where if I get resentful over saying yes to something, I've foregone my own boundaries.
So that's like my key. I've never ever thought about it though, as like sort of becoming that
time in our lives, particularly for women, where you start to like work your ass off,
do as much as you possibly can, try to get everything, every, and then all of a sudden you're like, okay, now I present everybody
and everything and you know, I don't, I married the wrong person. I, you know, these kids, what
do I do? Like all that kind of, like, I love that there's that trajectory in the research. And so
then what, how do we start to re reverse engineer this then I guess is the question, right? Like, so being aware of some of these things,
knowing that the bulk of or the weight of, you know,
many of the skillset that we're gonna need in this world
as it's evolving so quickly.
The good news is it comes in the bodies of women.
It comes in the bodies of, you know, our sons,
our partners, our brothers that have the emotional capacity
that have been well enough to stay connected
and that process. So I get how it's easy to know. I get the answer that this connection piece is
the most important. How do we stay well enough to be able to continue to access that part of ourselves?
This is what fascinated me most in the research.
And you think I like it found so far and was fascinated by it.
This for me was the, because like you, I'm like, okay,
so are we just stuck there?
Is this just the path that we're walking?
Do we just do it for the service to humanity?
Everyone put your eyes on out there please, right?
And so we absolutely, as I was saying,
we were finding that as women got older, they were
reporting finding ways to break free of these good girl beliefs. I should add again, some of our young
women are already there. But it is really hard, even if you don't grow up in a family where these
good girl ideas were encouraged, we're in surround sound with society that keeps reinforcing these
messages for many of us. So it can be hard to break free. So number one, let's have some compassion for that. This is not that we're stupid. It's not that we've
been ignorant or blind or, you know, compliant participants in all of this. This is a systemic
societal expectation that is woven into our schooling, into our churches, into our sporting
approaches, into our government
policies, like into our media and social stuff.
Like it is everywhere.
Yep.
And so it's number one, it just, it is what it is historically.
I don't think the blame and shame game here does anybody any good.
I'm more interested in let's see it for what it is and think about how we want to
go forward together.
So just some compassion for everybody in the mix.
Growing up is hard to do.
Definitely then.
Got it.
Yep, some awareness then to start going,
oh, okay, where are these good girl beliefs
starting to come up for me?
And then is it working for me or not?
So I'm not anti-good girl behaviors per se.
I will absolutely sometimes go to my people pleasing
and performing perfectly mode,
particularly Jodie be coming over to visit my house about half an hour before I'll be cleaning everything from top to bottom like a crazy person.
And so I think about this sort of as a continuum between our good girl beliefs and our uniquely you beliefs.
And again, on whose terms for whose benefit it is your choice at any given moment where
you sit on that continuum.
And as long as it is working for you and not undermining your wellbeing and your relationships
and your sense of self, that is each person's choice to make.
So I think again, let's not be too black and white, even though our brains often love
that simplicity.
And then we get to your point about, okay, well, beyond the self-care of a bubble bath,
which is only gonna last really for about five minutes
after I get the bubble bath,
and then the next person wants something from me,
what are the neurological and somatic,
those nervous system body skills that I can build
to help me navigate this world of surround sound
of these expectations that are gonna keep coming at me?
And how as a woman do I build those skills in a way that might help support our guys who are
still often locked in this tough guy requirement where they're cut off from
some of these relationship emotions that make relationships worth having. So there
were three skills in the research Jodie, the first was self-compassion yeah and
we really saw that need to be perfect for
women drives incredibly high levels of self criticism and self judgment. Those
things we say to ourselves that we'd never say to anybody else. So Jodie when
I'm madly cleaning the house before you come to visit my self critic is in there
going what would Jodie think of me? She'll see those cobwebs in the corner,
she'll think you haven't got it together, what's she gonna say to the person she
sees after she's left your house? All those things that we do to ourselves those cobwebs in the corner, she'll think you haven't got it together, what's she gonna say to the person she sees
after she's left your house?
All those things that we do to ourselves,
instead of being the wise and kind friend
that we're so good at being for everybody else around us,
but we often don't feel we are deserving of ourselves.
And we do it because we think that inner critic somehow,
again, is keeping us safe and not realizing
how that wears us down over time and actually
undermines our confidence when it's going on for years and years and years.
So self-compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff's work in this space is beautiful.
So many beautiful resources, somatic and cognitive head practices that we can engage in.
The second skill was secure attachment.
Now, of course, many of your listeners have probably heard about secure attachment through
the lens of how we grew up with our parents, maybe even our relationship with our romantic
partners, which has been all over social media the last few years.
But I love the new wave of research on secure attachment, which is looking at how do we
securely attach to ourselves?
Ooh, tell me more.
We will show up for ourselves,
that we will advocate for ourselves,
that we will not abandon ourselves
in the ways that we need.
And this is where your boundary work
from Dr. Brené Brown and other people will come in.
But there really is this first piece
about understanding that when I feel under threat,
my nervous system will naturally go to a more
protection space.
And when I'm in that protection space, I'll tend to do one or two things.
I'm either up regulating, everything's getting very intense and urgent.
I love the research, the psychologist, Dr. Sue, sorry, Dr. Anne Kelly and her partner
Sue Marriott talk about this as the red zone.
So everything's intense and urgent.
I go into people pleasing mode.
I go into pleading mode.
I go into prodding mode.
At the extreme I'll go into provoking mode.
But I'm trying to control other people's behavior so that I will feel safe again in
the relationship.
The other way though that I can go when I'm in protection mode with my nervous system
is I can down regulate.
So Anne and Sue talk about this as the blue zone.
And here everything gets very cold, very fast.
I'm pushing you away so I don't have to be emotionally vulnerable with you.
And I always think Jodie about anybody who ever tells me I'm fine, I know is absolutely
not fine.
Because you don't say I'm fine when we're actually feeling okay. We say
I'm okay this is happening that's happening but I'm fine is like that
pushing me away going hey I don't want to get emotionally vulnerable with you
right now I don't want to feel too connected to you. So in the blue zone we
tend to disconnect, we disengage and at the extreme we become dispirited right
we kind of get isolated on our own
little island, we don't trust anybody, we don't want to be connected with anybody.
So our nervous systems when we abandon ourselves are in protection mode and then we're either
trying to pull people towards us to prove we're lovable or we're pushing people away so that they
don't get too close but neither place is great for our well-being or connection.
So the trick is in starting one to know, okay, where am I going with this? Am I in protection
mode? Have I gone red? Have I gone blue? And what Anne and Sue talk about in their research
is when we're securely attached to self, we're instead in our green zone where our
nervous system is connected. And we're trying to figure out, yeah, things might be hard.
We might be a bit tangled in knots relationally right now, I might not like what you said,
I might be feeling a bit scared or vulnerable with you, but also really
value this relationship and I'm prepared to stay and figure it out and I trust
myself to be in that discomfort with you, that I will not abandon myself, I will
not go to people pleasing mode, I will not go to I'm fine,
I'm not going to talk about it mode, but I can just be present with you. And so when we're securely
attached, we feel confident that we can show up for ourselves and advocate for ourselves as we need
in our relationships. And then the third and last skill is self leadership. And we think about this
as self with a capital S based on the internal family systems work
that says we all have this self, this wise, kind friend
like we talk about in self-compassion,
but those moments where we are kind and we're compassionate
and we're connected and we're curious and we're creative
and we're confident and we're clear,
we've all had those moments.
And the internal family systems research suggests
actually all born wired for that capacity is the good news.
So we all have this self with the capital S,
that best version of us.
But then we also,
particularly as we're growing up in those early years
and we might still be kind of getting those
training wheels off that self.
We have these protective parts that pop up
to help us deal with what's happening in our world,
often when we're young, and keep us safe.
And those protective parts often do look like
these good girl behaviors of,
well, I'm gonna perform perfectly
because then people will appreciate me and value me.
So now I'm over preparing every time somebody comes
to my house because I think that's why you're gonna like me
versus just showing up as my messy imperfect self or now I'm gonna
people please because if I keep you all happy then you will love me and I will
be safe or I'm gonna protect others by silencing myself so that then I'm not
disrupting things and and you're feeling okay with me so we all have these
protective parts they're not bad parts of us they are just parts that came
online to try to keep us safe when we didn't have any other options and that We'll have these protective parts. They're not bad parts of us. They are just parts that came online
to try to keep us safe when we didn't have any other options.
And that wise and kind self kind of
re-parents with us those parts to say, you know what?
I'm 52 years old now.
I probably don't need to clean the house
before Jodie comes over.
Jodie would probably love to see the mess.
It'd probably take the weight off Jodie as well.
And next she'll go and talk to someone and go, wow,
you should see how relaxed Michelle
is when you come to her house.
So these are the three skills Jodie that we find help again rewire the brain, the nervous
system.
Number one is women so we can look after ourselves, but also number two, so we can build healthy
respectful relationships with other people, particularly the men in whatever role they
are in our world and to teach them how they can do those things as well. These skills are not
gendered. There are decades of research in each of these areas that suggest there's nothing gendered
about being able to build these capacities. Okay, beautiful. And my question about that,
so I really love all of these things. So self-compassion, secure attachment for yourself is so brilliant.
And this idea of self-leadership.
I know also, particularly in the world of trauma, that you can't give away something you've never received.
So how do we then, you know, initiate some of these things, you know, when we don't have those resources yet built into ourselves?
Because my guess is we're going to lead on other women to assist us in that process or therapy
or books by Dr. McQuade or like all of these things
that will help us guide,
which is why I think we've seen such an uptick
in self-help books or mental health and wellbeing guidances
because I think a lot of us would love to get there
and I can feel it when we're there.
And we talked briefly about the privilege
of having emotional regulation, the privilege of feeling in your body what it's like to
be somatically safe, what it is to have self-compassion, what it is to be securely attached to yourself.
Not all the time because we're hot messes generally speaking. And let's normalize that.
But I think so my question is
when we start to sort of get people, particularly when we think about when we're struggling the most
in our lives or the people we love are struggling the most, or we're, you know, trying to make a dent
in, you know, mental health or housing insecurity or financial insecurity or all of those kinds of
things that like struggle, marginalized peoples that have had multiple weights on their shoulders, multiple generations
of abuse, neglect and trauma.
Where do we start in that way?
What have you seen in how we get to this place
of building these skills?
So for me personally, J.E., I grew up in a house
where there was a lot of violence.
My father was a Vietnam vet and had come home
at a time where that was a thing full of lots of shame. He had post-traumatic stress disorder,
but we didn't understand that, of course, at that stage. And he was self-medicating
with alcohol and drugs and just led to a not great situation. My mum, bless her, was very
young, 20 years old. I was at her 21st birthday, and is trying to, young mum
with a baby, you know, a husband who's completely struggling, those first four and a half years
of my life where our nervous systems and our brains need so much safety and love and attachment
in order to help us grow up regulated, I did not have, my situation did not afford that.
And so my mother then got divorced when I was about four and a half at a time
when most people were not divorced.
Wasn't until I was about grade six where more kids started showing up
with divorced families.
And again, you know, this was back sort of, you know, 1976, 77,
getting rent even at somewhere to live.
She was a school teacher, single income.
We were living on the poverty line.
It was a very, for me, messy
start to life. And when I was 16 years old, I walked out of home and put myself through
the rest of school, worked on the checkouts at Kmart. And so I don't think, Jodie, it
was probably until I was in my early 30s that I first felt like I could even draw breath
to feel like, okay, I feel somewhat safe.
I had enough of a career built then, I was earning my own money, I had a good partner,
I had a young son myself then, so I was getting to sort of rework through lots of things of
what perhaps it was to have been a parent in that situation.
And I felt like I had life just a little bit under control and that of course,
Jodie, to your point was where the therapy started. I had to go, I felt enough I had
life a little bit under control to realize, oh, okay, there's a lot of things here that for me
in my body, the way my brain would work, I was in constant hypervigilant state that I didn't need
to be in anymore because the danger had passed, that stage of my life was done, but I didn't need to be in anymore because the danger had passed that stage of my life was done
But I didn't know how to live in the world without it. So definitely therapy I think if any of the things we're talking about today
Feel raw and tender for you and you can access any therapeutic support be that online or in person with good help
There's no shame in asking for help in any of this
There's no shame in asking for help in any of this completely normal and healthy responses that our bodies and brains have had to really hard situations. To your other point, I think great support, right? I had other friends I could start talking to about it.
When I was in my 30s, most of us weren't exposed to many of these ideas like self-compassion or secure attachment. So we didn't necessarily know quite what we were doing
but just to have people see you and say hey that must have been so hard I'm sorry that that was
your experience. I can't tell you how much just that alone would help calm my nervous system. You
go okay I'm not crazy here this is not just a me thing like this was hard because I didn't have any
context to know any differently as
many of us don't when we're growing up in really challenging situations.
And then yeah, reading the books, doing the research, staying in therapy, practicing.
The beauty of these skills is and for me it really started with self-compassion.
As I started to be able to be a bit more of a wise and kind friend to myself to go, you
know what?
Yep, you just had a PTSD attack and that was pretty embarrassing in the middle of the shopping center. But
that was a completely normal response to a hard situation that you lived through. And
you know what, you're still processing that. So what do we need now to feel safe? What
might be the next step for support? Where do we go? Whereas in my younger years, Jodie,
I just would have died of mortification and shame and kind of whip myself into a self judgment frenzy following those kind of occasions.
So I think just as for what it's worth as one person sample of one of lived experience,
these things are within us that as internal family system suggests that self energy,
it is there in all of us. It can be buried under a tonne of pain and trauma and fear.
And so finding the people in the places that we feel safe enough to be able to start to
access and practice and play.
I think about I'm always playing with these skills and tools to go, okay, what would work
there?
Okay, that one not so much.
Okay, what would work?
Okay, that one's a keeper.
Let's hold on to that.
But just to know, it's an ongoing journey.
None of us do this perfectly.
Nature wired us to be perfectly imperfect
so that we could learn and grow and adapt and evolve
as the world around us,
and again, each of us keeps changing.
I hear you.
Oh my gosh, that is wonderful.
That's so profound.
When I take you back to little girl Michelle,
when you are sort of leaving at 16,
can you tell me some of the, little girl, Michelle, when you are sort of leaving at 16, can you
tell me some of the, is there anybody that sticks out that sort of allowed space for
you? Like your corrective experiences, you know, I mean, that's amazing to me that you
could then come, I mean, for sure through lots of shit, I understand, in your thirties,
you know, to be able to sort of have this realization that you can have self-compassion.
I want to know who showed you how to do that. Did you have mentors? Did you have, you know, to be able to sort of have this realization that you can have self-compassion. I wanna know who showed you how to do that.
Did you have mentors?
Did you have, you know, people that you can, you know,
get in your head right away that you would be like,
oh, you know, mom was maybe too exhausted
to be able to be that human when she wanted to be.
Dad was so ill, given the things
that he wasn't allowed to process.
And I think that's an experience of many of us, right?
And so when our parents are really, really, really burdened,
not because most of the time people haven't been there
to do it for them, who were the building blocks in your life
that sort of give you those moments
of even that neurological pathway to understand that,
as you say, this idea of sort of self-compassion even exists?
So I had great grandparents who were definitely my safe space and whenever shit was going on in our world, we were sent to my grandparents.
They had a farm down in the coast of Victoria and that was the safe place.
We moved a lot as kids.
So having one consistent place where the people just, you felt like they loved you for you
made a huge difference.
That kind of gave me a glimmer that perhaps it wasn't all me.
I was very fortunate in my middle school years to have a best friend.
And although of course, you know, she didn't have the skills or the language to do the
therapy style work that I needed, just again, having somebody that felt like they were in
my corner, they'd listen, they'd try not to judge
as best they could, that also gave me some sense of, okay, it might not just be me, there could be
some good parts in here that are worth hanging on to. When I left home at 16 and I had nowhere to
live, I was very fortunate and it was actually work my mother had done for years. She went back as a
social worker to support teenage
mothers based on her own experience. It was actually one of the teenage mums that she
had supported that then rented a room for me that I could pay with my like $60 off my
Kmart checkouts each week. So I was able to find a roof to put over my own head at a time
where I really needed it. So again, it's beautiful the way these things kind
of pay themselves forward. But it was probably my early 20s I started therapy and it was a mix of
like different people. It took me a while to find the therapists that worked for me and definitely
I think on my own healing journey the reason I was fascinated when these tools kept coming up in the
research in different forms for women.
I was like, oh yeah, those were the things that were helping me at each stage kind of build through
and heal to be able to today feel more embodied, to listen to my body, to kind of know where my
nervous system's in protection or connection, to not judge that but kind of, oh okay, what's
set that off or oh what's supporting that, how do I do more of, oh, okay, what set that off or, oh, what's supporting that? How
do I do more of it? To be able to hold that space for myself and then for others. I have two boys,
and so watching them grow up, you know, they're again, white skinned Caucasian young men,
watching them grow up in the world at this time and how do you navigate and equip them and try to
help them have the skills to not be in this crisis of connection
that so many of our men are, you know, to be able to pay that forward to them has been
a beautiful part of this journey.
Oh, I love that.
And you know, as you're listening to this, I mean, this is, this is the power of community.
This is the importance of the work that you do, regardless of what it is.
Because when we show up in our communities as you know, the hockey moms, the soccer moms, the,
the, you know, the grandparents, the aunt, the adopted cousin who like takes the babies in and,
you know, says, absolutely, I'm going to bring you a snack or yes, you can rent this room.
I think that is just such testament to the fact that we were never meant to do any of this alone.
No, absolutely.
And I think if you have that capacity, some of our greatest gifts are in those moments
where we'll never know it.
I often speak about the women and the men
who along the way were my safe places
when my mom and dad were going through a divorce,
when they were disconnected.
I mean, there was never a doubt in my mind
that they loved us, but they're just one person.
So their capacity to provide the everything
and the everything all the time,
regardless of whether there's a massive trauma
going on or not, it is in those corrective experiences
along the way that, you know, it is the grandparents,
if you're lucky enough, it is the aunts or the uncles,
or, you know, the police sergeant that I worked under
when I was in the, you know, with the RCMP,
our National Police Force,
he was the most reparative experience for me
about like what it can be meant to be guided
by a very emotionally astute man
who just had no other interest
other than making sure he was proud of me.
And that was so important for me
to be able to watch that along the way.
And, you know, again, two parents who have been very involved my entire life,
but we're not good enough even as parents to be able to do those things.
So how are we being perfect, right?
Just on our own journey, trying to figure out anything.
Yeah.
We're never going to be everything that somebody else needs.
And that's, and you can't like, and I think that's, I have two sons and a daughter.
And I think about this all the time, you know, as I travel the world and pursue these dreams in the hopes that this will inspire
them to do that too. I also think about the, the, the beauty that then they get in this process of
spending more time with grandparents that they get in, you know, building connections in our
community. And this one's taken them to lacrosse and this one's doing those things. Yes, please.
And then I get to do those things too. That the more shoes at my front door,
that is a great sign for me.
And I really just, to your point, right?
Switching this narrative that is in our bones
about just being good at everything
and keeping everybody happy,
I think we will not be able to sustain that.
So I think your work is so, not only life changing, I think it's life saving.
I just think it's phenomenal.
So what, any last words?
I have a thousand more questions.
I didn't even get to one of them.
But that's always a sign of a good interview when I-
Jody.
Oh.
I think again, we are, naturewired us to be perfectly imperfect.
Not a single one of us has it all figured out on any given day.
We're nailing it sometimes, we're falling way short other times and all of that is okay
because we are perfectly imperfect so that we can learn and grow so that we can connect
with each other.
I think you don't want to be too shiny and smooth, your house too perfect when someone
comes over because otherwise there are no rough edges to hang on to with each other. I think you don't want to be too shiny and smooth, your house too perfect when someone comes over, because otherwise there are no rough edges to hang on to with each other.
And so embrace that, give yourself permission for that. If we give each other permission for that, then we get to go practice these skills of self-compassion and secure attachment and self-leadership from a more grounded,
open-hearted, compassionate, connected place. And that actually
is where we all get to thrive. Oh, yes. Let's say it for the kids in the back, Michelle,
you are changing the world. I want to just before we leave, I want to say that two new books have
come out in the world for you. There's, there's, there's some things you've created to assist us
in this process, right? Because again, sometimes we get in the research of things as research nerds, people are
like, I don't know what the fuck that was. So I love, can you tell me about these two things
that you've just created? Because I think, and we're going to link them in the show notes too,
but just tell me a quick about them because I think we sometimes need that guide if we haven't
had it. Yeah, absolutely. So The Perfectly Imperfect Little Girl is a storybook for adults,
beautifully illustrated by our illustrator, Lucia.
And it really is kind of the,
it's the book I wish I had instead of that little golden book,
but it is for women.
There are a few swear words in there.
I'll just preface, Jadie.
And in there is some of the research
from the women as beautiful like protest posters,
like, you you know it was
her body and her choice and things like that in there.
But the other one if you're more in the practical if you're like what other tools what can I
use where are the stories of other women who might be on this path with me then the perfectly
imperfect women's journal has all of that and it has a section for each of those skills
self compassion secure attachment and self leadership and a beautiful mix of somatic body practices, cognitive thought
practices that you can use and you can use it alone or get a group of women
together to play with it together.
Oh, like a book club.
Okay.
Well, they're all on order.
Uh, and I just cannot wait to dive in.
Thank you so much, Dr.
Michelle McQuade for your work, for your kindness, for your love.
And I just, I need to be in Australia
so we can sit down and have a conversation together.
That is the goal, my friend.
So thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
I would love that, and I won't even clean up the house
when you come, Jodie.
Yes, thank you.
I knew it, I knew I loved you.
Listen, everybody, I hope you love this
as much as I did today.
Take care of yourself, take care of each other, and I will meet you right back right here
in a couple of weeks.
Unlonely Podcast is produced by three incredible humans, Brian Siever, Taylor McGilvery, and Jeremy Saunders,
all of Snack Lab Productions. Our executive producer, my favorite human on this planet
is Marty Piller. Soundtracks were created by Donovan Morgan, Unlonely Branded Art were
created by Elliot Cuss, our big PR shooters are Desvino and Barry Cohen. Our digital marketing manager
is the amazing Shana Haddon. Our 007 secret agent from the talent bureau is Jeff Lowness.
And emotional support is provided by Asher Grant, Evan Grant and Olivia Grant. Go live.
by Asher Grant, Evan Grant, and Olivia Grant. Go live. I am a registered clinical psychologist in Alberta, Canada. The content created and produced in this show is not intended as specific
therapeutic advice. The intention of this podcast is to provide information, resources, education,
and the one thing I think we all need the most, a safe place to land in this lonely world.
And the one thing I think we all need the most, a safe place to land in this lonely world. We're all so glad you're here. Thank you.