The tyranny of good girl conditioning.
For most of my life I toggled between wanting to be a "good girl" and wanting to tell people (and systems) to leave me the f*ck alone.
It was a hard line to walk with one part of me wanting to be liked and held in "high-standing" and the other feeling criticized and judged. Each of these parts of me grew from, or out of rejection to, good girl conditioning.
Good Girl conditioning demands that we perform, serve, and labor without complaint and even with a smile. It expects us to contort ourselves into positions that never offend or disturb dominant culture. Good girl conditioning also tells us that our job is to keep others happy no matter what the cost to our bodies, hearts and minds. Last, though certainly not least, it demands that we be white, able-bodied, thin, and Anglo-Saxon-passing.
Now, whether you fit into the physical requirements of a good girl or are on the outside of those particular features, all women suffer (though differently, certainly) under good girl conditioning and the resentment it fuels is real and insidious. It feeds resentment towards our families, kids, bosses and partners. It makes us feel like we're the only ones who have a problem with all the "shoulds" heaped upon us. It makes us angry, cranky and has us often asking, "Why am I acting this way!?!" It also make us feel like a**holes whenever we aren't being of service, in some way, to others.
Good girl conditioning is much like diet culture in that it acts like a horse blinder, keeping our minds and eyes singularly focus on sacrificing all to fit in and never rock the boat.
So if we know good girl conditioning keeps us from living life on our own terms and we still get stuck in it, what do we do about it?
We look to our resentment for information and guidance.
When we feel resentment it means 1) a part of us is ready to push back against good girl conditioning 2) we are hungry for change and 3) we are ready to start living life on our own terms.
If you want to stop knee-jerking to good girl conditioning AND experience less resentment, join me for my new workshop Resentment Soup: How to Stop Hating the People You Love. (Info below)
We will be talking about conditioning, our knee-jerk reactions to say YES and how to reposition ourselves so that we can prioritize what we want and need.
Sending you so much love as we say goodbye to the tyranny of good girl conditioning and HELLO to the freedom of being ourselves.
Resentment Soup: How to stop hating the people you love
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This conversation is between myself and an incredible woman named Ani, who shares how she learned how to be authentic, practice self-compassion, and take up space without guilt or shame through my 6-month group coaching program, Homecoming. Ani is a model for how to excavate internalized misogyny and live authentically without fear of others’ opinions. The conversation originally took place on podcast, The Path Home.