This Seems Personal

Send us Fan Mail "What Have You Done?" My TEDx Behind the Scenes. | This Seems Personal Ep. 12 What really happens behind a TEDx talk? The fear, the dread, and the imposter syndrome I had literally just recorded an episode about . Plus the letdown after a big goal that nobody warns you about. This is the behind-the-scenes version, not the highlight reel. If you've ever worked toward...

Send us Fan Mail Imposter Syndrome: Why High Achievers Feel Like Frauds | Ep. 11 Do you ever feel like a fraud, like everyone else got the rulebook and you're waiting to get found out? That's imposter syndrome, and the people who feel it most are often the highest achievers. In this episode I share what it really is, why success makes it worse, the moment I got offered VP of Sales and wa...

Send us Fan Mail This Is Personal: Finding Yourself After a Toxic Parent Rachel Honeyman is one of the most refreshingly authentic people I've come across, someone who's fully, unapologetically herself. So for my first-ever guest episode, I wanted to know how she became that way. The answer turned into an honest, wide-ranging conversation about becoming your real self: the childhood mess...

Send us Fan Mail Why You Keep Attracting the Same People (It's Not Bad Luck) | Ep. 9 Ever looked around at your job, your relationship, your friendships and thought "wait, haven't I been here before?" You have. And it's not bad luck, and it's not a coincidence. This episode is about why we keep ending up in the same situations we swore we'd never repeat, the same...

Send us Fan Mail Why Is Everyone So Fake Now? | Ep. 8 If you're tired of how fake everything's gotten, the highlight reels, the fake-happy small talk, the "I'm great!" when you're absolutely not, this one's a bit of a vent, and you're invited. Here's a fun one: nobody smiled in photos until about 100 years ago, when a camera company literally sold us th...

Send us Fan Mail You Judge People All Day (Here's What It's Doing to You) | Ep. 7 We all have inner dialogue we'd be mortified for anyone to hear. She's got a great body. He's obviously rich. What a jerk. And here's the part we miss: that voice doesn't clock out. The same one judging everyone at the party turns around and judges you, I talk too much, I'm not...

Send us Fan Mail The Default Doer (Why You Can't Stop) | S2 E6 Check your texts. There's probably a message in there about a project you took on and quietly resented, because everyone just assumed you'd do it. This episode is about being the reliable one: the note-taker, the holiday host, the room mom, the friend who plans everything, the one who can't say no without guilt. It...

Send us Fan Mail Why You Do Things You Hate (The Rules Nobody Questions) — Ep. 5 There you are, standing in the card aisle, buying a card for someone you're not even that crazy about, who might not even read it — because you feel like you're supposed to. This episode is about all of it: the shoulds and the supposed-tos we do on autopilot, with a chest full of resentment, and never stop t...

Send us Fan Mail The fear of being seen does not always look like stage fright. You can nail a big presentation and still freeze when someone watches you parallel park, do math out loud, or share your screen on a Zoom call. That is the fear of being judged for the unrehearsed you, the one you never practiced. In this episode I get into why you can be great at your thing and still panic over the &q...

Send us Fan Mail Gaslighting yourself is when someone upsets you and within seconds you've built the case for why you were actually the problem. It's the quietest form of self-blame — apologizing to the person who hurt you, deciding you overreacted, insisting "he'd never do that" — and if you grew up learning to keep the peace, you probably don't even notice you'...

Send us Fan Mail You always knew you were competitive — or maybe you swear you're not, you just can't stand being wrong. Either way, this one's for you. In this episode, Leigh unpacks what competitiveness actually is: not passion, not drive, but a nervous-system response that ties winning — and being right — to your sense of worth. It's the person who has to win the game, sure....

Send us Fan Mail I've lived in London, led flash mobs with mayors, won Rookie of the Year, VP of Sales titles — and every win left me asking "what's next?" and still coming up empty. In this Season 2 opener, I unpack what I call the success symptom: when success becomes the disguise for something that isn't working underneath. We get into why achievement can feel like a th...

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...