People Pleasing Is a Trauma Response. Here's How to Stop | Meg Josephson

Meg Josephson, licensed psychotherapist, certified meditation teacher, and New York Times bestselling author of Are You Mad At Me? How to Stop Focusing On What Others Think And Start Living For You, joins Lewis Howes to break down the psychology of people pleasing through the lens of the fawn response, a nervous system threat response alongside fight, flight, and freeze. Josephson explores her six people pleaser archetypes (peacekeeper, performer, perfectionist, chameleon, caretaker, lone wolf), the distinction between reassurance seeking and validation, complex trauma and generational trauma patterns, internal family systems (IFS) developed by Dick Schwartz, and the role of shame, the inner critic, and self-blame in compulsive approval-seeking.