Good Girl, Goodbye #author Caitlin Judd

Good Girl, Goodbye: Rewrite Your Story, Reclaim Your Power, Build a Life You Love 

We’ve spent years being the good girl: saying yes when we mean no, shrinking ourselves to make others comfortable and prioritising everyone else’s needs. Our conditioning to be ‘good’ runs deep. As children, we’re praised for being polite, quiet and well-behaved. In the workplace, we’re rewarded for compliance over confidence. The result? Chronic illness, burnout, buried emotions ― and a feeling that we’re constantly performing for other people, rather than living a life that is true to us.

In Good Girl, Goodbye, Caitlin Judd ... founder of the award-winning lady-brains podcast, offers a bold roadmap to break the patterns keeping us small. Drawing from her work coaching thousands of women, interviewing Australia’s best female founders, and her background in business and positive psychology, Judd shows women how to set fierce boundaries and build a life they love. 

Author Caitlin Judd is a business and brand coach, facilitator and strategist who helps women untangle their ‘good girl’ conditioning so they can design richer, more meaningful lives

To connect with Caitlin .....
https://www.caitlinjudd.com/
https://au.linkedin.com/in/caitlinjudd
https://www.instagram.com/caitjudd/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

It's good morning, Caitlin Judd. Welcome to Yellow Shelf. Thanks, Joe. Thanks so much for having me. Oh, my pleasure. Congratulations. Your book is out now. It's called Good Girl Goodbye. Tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Yes, well, I think a lot of it is in the title, Good Girl Goodbye. So the whole premise of the book is looking at the scripts and the rules that women inherit growing up and how that then impacts us throughout the course of our lives. So we often, when we're younger, we have this desire to feel safe, to feel loved, to feel accepted. And that often then carries through in our behaviors. So we often end up people pleasing, we often perfect our work before sending it out. We perform and, you know, kind of put on these faces as I like to call them, different good girl faces or masks. And we do that in order to create that safety and that security and to feel like we're accepted in who we are. But as you we grow up, we don't really need to be doing that as often. When we're younger, absolutely. You know, we need our parents, we need our caregivers, we need those kind of our school and those institutions that we grow up in to take care of us because we rely on them. But when we grow up, we don't need them so much. We are capable individuals that can make choices, we have agency. But because these patterns become so ingrained, it's really hard to let that go as we grow older. So I started looking at it and exploring this concept, and it's been absolutely has been written about previously. Um, you know, Good Girl Syndrome, I'm so sure you've heard of uh before. It's been written throughout history, um, you know, and through different lenses, often through um perhaps, you know, an individual as an individual flaw or a trauma-based lens. Um, but when I started digging into the book, uh my perspective and my lens on this was well, hang on a minute, it isn't actually an individual flaw. Being a good girl is not something that I just wake up and decide that, you know, that's what I'm gonna be today. It's in fact something that we, as I said, inherit. It's something that we learn and that we um embody. And, you know, it begins in the family, but then it's reinforced through school, through workplace, through culture, through our society. And it can be really, really difficult to shake. So we internally internalize these identities and we end up absorbing these identities, and that's what I ended up exploring. And so the whole first half of that book is looking at all the different different you know institutions, and then I kind of go through the unbecoming and the unpacking, and how do you untangle from the good girl? So, yeah, that's that's the premise of the book. Very deeply researched. Um, you know, we kind of use that uh psychosocial perspective. Um, but yeah, it's it's really about how is it that we have managed to adapt rather than looking at it from that individual perspective of this is actually a flaw when it's not. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Caitlin, I'm a mother, I'm a mother of a 13-year-old. So when I read the book, um it got me thinking like just normal day-to-day life. And I was thinking about when my 13-year-old, who's in high school, pushes back on me, and that can be really frustrating, but I've actually learned to get almost proud of her for doing that. And then then that makes me proud of me for being, you know, I guess accommodating that yeah, my expectations or the way I was nurtured and I was raised. Um obviously nowadays looks very different. So I got a lot out of your book because I'm I'm living that experience. You're very much in a 13-year-old girl. Yes, you are. But you know, this book is for dads. This book is for, you know, it's this book's for anyone.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Absolutely. And I think that's a really great point. It is, it's really helpful to understand, um, you know, as I said, those, you know, what we face as as women in particular growing up. And they are often a set of different rules to men or to other people. Um, and and therefore it does impact, you know, who we become and our identity. And so it's important for everybody to read it. And I also think, as I mentioned earlier, it shows up in different ways and in different forms. So it doesn't always show up in the family home. It might show up in work, you know, you might be the person that's um afraid to put your hand up in a meeting or to push back on the status quo. Um, it might show up, you know, in school again, where like you're too scared to hand in your assignment until it's perfect. Yes. So there are different ways that the good girl um can show up and in different places. So I think that's also really important um to understand.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Yeah. And Caitlin, do you want to tell us what inspired you to write the book and uh a background about you as well?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Yeah. So what inspired me? Um, I have worked for myself for quite a while now. Um, so my background is in business marketing, media and communications, and positive psychology, positive psychology. So a nice mix. Yeah. Um, I love all of those things, and I've managed to use all of that throughout my career. I am a business and brand consultant and coach. I also had quite a successful podcast, so I use my media and comms degree in that respect. And then um I also absolutely adore positive psychology. And I weave that through everything that I do, but I also work with a lot of post-sych uh experts and thought leaders around the world. So that's where I really when I began consulting, gosh, almost 10 years ago, that's the industry that I picked. Um, and you know, I fell in love with it. So that's my background. So yeah, as I said, working for myself, having to wear all the hats, um, predominantly working with women, although not always, but I really fell in love um working with women. And what I often found was when we came across a bit of a hurdle, in a in a work sense, it wasn't always about the business. You know, there was often the kind of the head and the heart, or it there was a behavioral element that perhaps was holding them back, whether that was imposter syndrome, confidence of a confidence crisis, um, you know, again, the people pleasing, um, and you know, the the perfectionism. And so then I started to notice not only in my clients, but also in myself, which I'll get to in a minute, this pattern. And that's the pattern that I then identified as the good girl. And so this was a couple of years ago, and you know, as I said, I was working a lot with women, I noticed these common themes and and behaviors come cropping up again and again and again. And I was like, what is this? What's going on here? You know, why are women holding themselves back from opportunities? Why aren't they putting their, you know, hat in the ring? Why do they feel unsafe when they're about to go on stage? Um, you know, all of these kind of questions kept coming, um, coming up. And, you know, I was I was coaching and and chatting more and more to my uh community. And um, and yeah, and that's when it really dawned on me that this good girl pattern, this good girl adaptation um was what was what I was kind of you know starting to discover. And so I went on this, that's when I went on the whole journey of research and um and also surveying over a hundred women in my community to learn about their good girl patterns. At the same time, I was also uh going through uh, I suppose burnout, uh, a long form of burnout, you know, was working for myself, um, you know, had a relationship breakdown that I struggled with. And yeah, I discovered that also in a lot of that, I was also acting as the good girl and putting other people's feelings first, other people's priorities and needs before my own. Um, you know, not speaking up and using my voice, holding back my anger, which is a massive one, you know, feeling like I couldn't let that out or unleash that um in fit in fear that, you know, I would be judged or that it would upset the other person. And so I was like, oh my goodness, okay, I can see it in me, I can see it in my clients and other people. There's something here. And so I really started to like scratch the surface of that. And I was like, what is this? What's going on? And um, yeah, that's really when I was like, okay, cool, like I've I've got an idea here. Like I can see these habits, I can see these behaviors, I can see that we're all trying to accommodate to maintain smallness, to stay safe. And um, yeah, that's when I started to realize this isn't this isn't just an individual deficit. This is something that, you know, is quite common. Um, and yeah, that was the turning point for me. It was like, okay, I've got to, it was like a download, truthfully. I know um, you know, few people say that, a few authors say that, but the idea just was like, yep, the title came to me straight away. And yeah, I just really jumped in and um and started researching and writing. And yeah, I'm really glad I did. You know, I think that that the the perspective that I offer, as I mentioned, is quite unique to what's been written about the good girl previously. You know, it is very relational. It is in, you know, the good girl appears in relation to other people quite often. But it again, it's it's affected by those external and those societal and cultural um, you know, conditions. So that's why it was really important that um I highlighted those so people didn't feel like they were that you know, they were they that they were stuck with this. It's something that absolutely can be changed.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah. Well, thank you for writing the book. I think this is a really valuable piece of work that really anyone, like we chatted about, can read, or you can buy it for someone. Um, Caitlin, I I encourage the audience to to have a read and just send you some feedback. Like I gave you the feedback on my experience with my daughter. Uh, you know, my circumstances being challenged. Uh tell us if we're curious to learn more about you, if we're curious to about the book, you have a fabulous website, LinkedIn, Instagram, I follow you. Point us in the direction and I'll put it in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Thank you. I so appreciate that. I would absolutely love feedback and I would love to know which of the 12 archetypes. I've designed some really great archetypes in there. Like I know it's gonna probably, yeah, you'll be like, hmm, yes, maybe that one. Oh, and that one. Yeah, yes, that we've had a few people, yes, message saying, um, okay, I think there's more than I did with. But yeah, I would love to know, you know, which of the archetypes speak to you. Um, what's your good girl experience? And I'm also really interested to learn more about the good girl conditioning across cultures, uh, across different countries, um, across different religions. So I would really love your, you know, your experience. Um, please do reach out. So you can head to my website, kaitlinjudd.com, um, my social media, my Instagram, it's Caitlin Judd. Um, you can DM me. Um, and I have Substacks. So good juju by Kate, yeah, by Kate Judd. Um, if you just type in again, my name Caitlin Judd, you'll find me there. So um some really cool stuff going up there uh, you know, over the next kind of few months. So, yes, lots to engage with, and I would absolutely love to hear from you.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah, awesome. Well, everyone knows yellow shells on Substack, so I'll make sure Substack goes in as well in the show notes. Caitlin, thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Thanks, Joe. Thank you so much for having me. Cheers.