This Seems Personal

Send us Fan Mail Self-abandonment is all the stuff we do for other people that nobody actually asked us to do. The birthday cakes, the friendship check-ins, the bad seat at the sleepover, the over-explained no. It looks like generosity. A lot of the time it's people pleasing running on autopilot, and it's quietly exhausting you. If you've ever kept a mental clock on your friendships...

Send us Fan Mail We love to call it laziness, or a willpower problem. But self-sabotage usually shows up sounding completely reasonable — "I'm not ready," "I just have a few more things to do first," "I'm not really qualified." It's not that you don't want the thing. It's that some part of you is working overtime to keep you safe from it. In t...

Send us Fan Mail The fear of being seen doesn't start in the bad relationship or the burnout job — it starts in childhood, the moment a kid learns the world is watching before she learns who she is. In this episode, Leigh shares the oversized t-shirt she wore to swim in as a child, and how that one small act of hiding became people pleasing, performing, perfectionism, and decades of self-surv...

Send us Fan Mail Overthinking doesn't always look like overthinking. Sometimes it looks like being responsible, three steps ahead, or "really good at processing." But if your brain has ever spiraled over face soap, eyeliner timing, or a 4 AM decision that wasn't actually a decision — this episode is for you. In this one, Leigh breaks down why overthinking isn't a sign of i...

Send us Fan Mail People pleasing isn't a personality trait — it's a freeze response. The fawn response. A survival skill that hijacks you in the moment and makes you say yes, take the blame, and lose your voice when you didn't want to. There's actual science behind it (it's called tonic immobility), and in this episode I prove it the hard way: by catching myself doing it o...

Send us Fan Mail Most people pleasers don't know they're people pleasing. They just think they're nice, easygoing, low-maintenance — or that they're not doing enough. In this episode, Leigh breaks down the fawn response, why people pleasing is a survival skill (not a personality trait), and the small everyday moments — the wave to the neighbor, the "I'm fine," th...

Send us Fan Mail Your Traumatic Intelligence™ is showing, and most of us were never told what it actually is. Overthinking, overworking, and over-giving are not personality traits. They are a survival skillset. In this episode, I introduce a concept called Traumatic Intelligence™, and once you hear it, you will not be able to unsee it in yourself or the people you love. I break down what trauma ac...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is a deep breath for anyone who has spent their life trying to manage how they are perceived. I walk through the psychology behind why we care so much about what people think, why it feels like survival, and why it’s actually just projection. I share my own history with codependency and the ways I outsourced my worth to other people’s reactions. If you’ve ever walked...

Send us Fan Mail Most of us spend years believing the voice in our head is our own. The doubts. The criticism. The second‑guessing. The constant feeling that someone else must know better. But what if those thoughts were never yours to begin with. In this episode, I break down the moment I realized my inner critic had been running my life on outdated software. I share how conditioning, childhood w...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we’re pulling back the curtain on something most high‑functioning humans never realize: your nervous system is running the show… and it has been for decades. If you’ve ever wondered why you overreact, shut down, over‑prepare, people‑please, or go into “go mode” without meaning to, this is the episode that finally explains it. I break down Nervous System 101 in sim...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I talk about self abandonment and the subtle ways we disconnect from who we really are. This is a real and unfiltered conversation about mask wearing, people pleasing, nervous system conditioning, and the survival strategies we learn long before we ever realize we are using them. I share how I spent years adapting, performing, smoothing edges, chasing approval, an...

Send us Fan Mail This first episode is me stepping out from behind the mask and telling the truth. This is the beginning. I talk about what brought me here, the years of performing, the pressure to hold it all together, and the burnout I kept calling normal. This episode is the line in the sand. What I will be talking about from here on out, what I am done pretending, and why I am choosing to star...