People-pleasing and codependent tendencies often stem from a religious upbringing. In my own journey of unraveling those behaviors, I’ve had to confront what I was taught to believe about God, obedience, and how “being good” kept me in line. In part one of my conversation with licensed therapist Kendra Hill, we define religious trauma and explore how fear, bypassing, and chronic self-surveillance get wired into us. Here’s what we cover:

• Why many women feel terrified to stop people pleasing when religion is involved
•  How growing up with a fear of divine punishment can shape your nervous system
• The difference between religious trauma and religious hurt
• How spiritual bypassing teaches us to ignore our emotions
• What happens when you’re taught to trust authority instead of trusting yourself

Kendra Hill is a neurodivergent artist, beauty seeker, exvangelical, and believer in people. By profession she is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the State of Colorado and an online coach across the nation with a specific focus on providing space for those who have some kind of religious background, religious trauma, are deconstructing their faith, or come from high control environments. She has recently relocated to New York City but remains passionate about holding space for people's stories - especially the ones it seems like no one else understands. Kendra co-owns a private practice called Unraveling Free Therapy & Coaching and is currently accepting new clients.

Find Kendra here:

www.unravelingfree.com

https://www.instagram.com/unravelingfree

https://unravelingfree.com/resources

Find Sara here:

https://sarafisk.coach

https://pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

https://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/

https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/

https://www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

https://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Book a Free Consult

We all want the holidays to feel meaningful and connected, but the pressure to meet expectations often pulls us away from what truly matters to us. Between obligations, traditions, cooking, cleaning, and planning, we often miss out on quality time with the people we care about or a chance to rest. If you’re exhausted just thinking about putting on another holiday for everyone else, this episode will walk you through a simple four-step framework to help you create the holiday season you actually want. Here’s what I cover:

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• Why people-pleasing is at an all-time high during the holidays
• Three questions to help you pause and ask yourself what you truly want
• How to predict the discomfort that comes with prioritizing yourself
• An exercise to write down what support you need to make the holiday you want possible
• How to mentally rehearse the holiday and regulate your nervous system beforehand

Find Sara here:

https://sarafisk.coach

https://pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

https://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/

https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/

https://www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

https://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Book a Free Consult

Many of us know that grief isn’t linear, yet so much of what we’re taught still has us trying to get it “right.” In this conversation, I’m joined by Krista St-Germain, life coach, grief guide for widows, and host of The Widowed Mom Podcast. Krista shares how she helps women navigate grief with self-compassion, gentleness, and kindness, and stop making themselves wrong for what they feel. This episode isn’t just for those who’ve lost a spouse, but for anyone navigating loss and learning not to “fix” their feelings, but to create more capacity to hold them. Here’s what we cover:

• Why grief can’t be defined by the familiar “stages” and why it doesn’t end with acceptance
• How healing comes from increasing your capacity to support yourself, not from trying to change what you feel
• What secondary losses look like and how they reveal the ongoing nature of grief
• How to stop making yourself wrong for what you feel and practice meeting your emotions with compassion instead
• Why we sometimes feel uncomfortable around grief and how to show up for others in a way that is truly helpful
• The importance of normalizing sadness and modeling healthy grief, especially for children



Find Krista here:

https://www.coachingwithkrista.com/happier-holidays-for-widowed-moms/

https://www.coachingwithkrista.com/podcast/

https://www.instagram.com/lifecoachkrista/

Find Sara here:

https://sarafisk.coach

https://pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

https://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/

https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/

https://www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

https://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Book a Free Consult

On the surface, high-achieving people-pleasers are admired by everyone. We seem to have it all together—never complaining about our workload and always showing up prepared and polished. But the effort to make everything look easy, even when we’re struggling, comes at a huge cost. In this episode, I discuss why we do this and how to start releasing ourselves from the constant performance so we can feel supported, helped, and loved, rather than staying trapped in a cycle of loneliness and resentment. Here’s what I cover:

• Examples that highlight how high-achievers hide their struggles
• The underlying beliefs that drive this behavior and where they come from
• Why your body eventually refuses to keep up the performance
• The red flags that signal when you’ve become trapped in trying to make things look easy
• What it takes to begin unraveling this pattern and show up with authenticity instead

Find Sara here:

https://sarafisk.coach

https://pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

https://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/

https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/

https://www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

https://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Book a Free Consult

Sometimes it's hard to imagine how we can stay in relationships where there are huge differences–political, religious, or otherwise. In this conversation with my friend Katherine Golub on her podcast Conflict Decoded, I talk about how I’ve worked with the part of myself that just wants to stay safe–to only talk to people who agree with me and see information that confirms my beliefs–to stay in relationships that matter, even when we don’t share the same views. Here’s what I cover:

• How people-pleasing kept me at the church even after my mind and heart had left the building
• The moment I realized, “I think we’re wrong about this,” and how terrifying it was to hold that belief
• How I used scripture to back up my personal beliefs and was punished for it within the church
• The complexity of discerning who to maintain relationships with despite your differences
• Why safety must come first when moving toward relationships with people that you disagree with

Find Katherine here:

https://callingsandcourage.com/

https://callingsandcourage.com/podcasts/

https://www.instagram.com/katherinegolub/

Find Sara here:

https://sarafisk.coach

https://pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

https://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/

https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/

https://www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

https://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Book a Free Consult

Even with the powerful growth that can happen in coaching, the pressure cooker we’re all living in—the broken systems, the financial stress, the world that feels terrifying—can make everything feel harder, and much of it is beyond our control. But it doesn’t feel hard because you’re weak; it feels hard because it is hard. In this episode, I talk about how remarkable it is that we keep going—keep showing up for ourselves and others—despite it all, and how to be gentler with ourselves in the process. Here’s what I cover:

• A powerful coaching conversation about self-doubt and resilience
• What it looks like to let more than one thing be true at once
• Why “every little bit counts” when everything feels impossible
• How to know when your body is asking for rest instead of pushing harder
• The power of staying connected to yourself when you can’t fix everything in the world

Find Sara here:

https://sarafisk.coach

https://pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations

https://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/

https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/

https://www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach

https://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

What happens inside the free Stop People Pleasing Facebook Community? Our goal is to provide help and guidance on your journey to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from your life. We heal best in a safe community where we can grow and learn together and celebrate and encourage each other. This group is for posting questions about or experiences with material learned in The Ex-Good Girl podcast, Sara Fisk Coaching social media posts or the free webinars and trainings provided by Sara Fisk Coaching. See you inside!

Book a Free Consult