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Have you ever done all the “right” things, kept everyone steady, and said yes when your body was asking for no, then felt flat or quietly resentful afterward? That’s not you being ungrateful. It’s information. I call it the good girl hangover. In this solo episode, I name the pattern many responsible, capable women live inside, why it feels safer than it is, how it slowly drains your energy and self-trust, and what it looks like to step out of it with calm honesty, not guilt.

In this episode we chat about:

• What the good girl hangover really is, and why it leaves you feeling drained (3:00)
• The cycle that keeps the pattern in place (5:43)
• Clear signs you’re in a “good girl season” (8:17)
• Three key shifts to step out of it with steadiness and self-respect (11:27)

Episode resources:

• Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Comparisonitis by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Time Magic by Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst (book)
• Simon Biles Rising (watch it here)
• 1:1 Strategy Session (USE THE CODE 2026 FOR 50% OFF)

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The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

[00:00:00] The Melissa Ambrosini Show. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa bestselling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, open, wide, comparisonitis and Time Magic. And I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and. Isn’t a dirty word. Each week I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in your own life and become the best version of yourself possible.

Are you ready? Beautiful. Beautiful.

Hello and welcome back. Today I wanna share something I see in so many high achieving women, and it often goes unnamed. Now this is what I see. You can have the life that people admire, the job, the partner, the home, the calendar [00:01:00] full of responsibilities, and you can still feel empty, not dramatic, empty, not my life is falling apart, empty.

More like a quiet. Flatness that low hum of fatigue. Do you know what I mean? It’s that sense that you are doing everything right, but you are not being met by your own life. I have been there, I’ve had many clients who have been there, many friends and family members that have been there, and if that is you, I want you to know this first, you are not ungrateful, you are not broken.

You don’t need to push harder. There is a pattern underneath this, and once you see it, you can change it, and it is called the good girl hangover. It’s what happens when you have built your life around being capable, impressive, helpful, and easy to be around. What’s happened is [00:02:00] when you were young, you learned that being quote unquote good is safe and will keep you safe.

So you overcompensate, you deliver, you hold everything. You perform. You keep the peace, you stay on top of things, and then when the day ends or the milestone lands, you are left with this feeling that you can’t quite explain. It’s that feeling of, is this it? Why don’t I feel more satisfied? Why do I feel so tired when my life is so full?

And in today’s episode, I’m going to do three things with you. First, I’ll name what the good girl hangover actually is. Then I’ll show you the cycle that keeps it running. And finally, I’ll give you three grounded shifts that you can start using today so you feel more steady, more self-led, and more like you again.

So buckle up if anything lands. Let it land [00:03:00] gently. So let’s kick off first with what it is. So the good girl hangover is the emotional aftermath of living for approval. It is what happens when you build safety through performance. I have been there, I have many clients who have been there, many family and friends that have been there.

You become capable, you become helpful, you become impressive, and you become easy to be around and it works. And you get the praise, you get the results, you get the reputation. But inside something starts to thin out and not because you are doing life wrong, my friend, because you’re doing life without enough of you in it.

This is the part many women don’t say out loud. You can be proud of what you’ve built and still feel strangely disconnected from it. That is the hangover. This is what I hear from my clients when they first come to me. I should feel happier than [00:04:00] this. I dunno why I’m so tired. I keep achieving and it doesn’t land.

I’m doing everything for everyone and I feel alone in it. If that’s familiar. I wanna offer a little relief. This isn’t a personality flaw, it is a pattern, and it’s very, very common. Gallup reported that 51% of women in the US felt stressed a big, huge part of the day compared to 31% of men. They also found that 42% of working women said their job had a somewhat or extremely negative impact on their mental health in the past six months, that is 42% of women.

So when your system feels stretched, it makes sense. When your joy feels muted, it makes sense. You’re not failing at life. You are responding to the weight that you have been carrying that invisible load. There’s another layer here too. The pressure to be perfect has been rising for decades. [00:05:00] A large analysis of over 41 American Canadians and British College students across 1989 and 2016 found that perfectionism increased over time, including the kind that comes from feeling others expect you to be perfect.

So many women grew up inside that air. Be good, be pleasing, be high performing, be everything to everyone. If you do it well enough, you’ll be safe. But here’s the truth. Performance can build a life that looks solid. It can’t build the inner steadiness that you are actually craving that cannot be built.

Now I want to show you the cycle that creates the good girl hangover. And once you can see it, you can soften it. And this is what I work with my clients on. So step one. This is where you start. You perform to [00:06:00] feel safe, and it could be so unconscious, you’re not even aware that you’re doing it, so you learn that being good.

Reduces friction. So you become reliable. You anticipate needs. You keep the peace, you make it easy for others. This can start in childhood and it can start in your first relationship. It can start in your first workplace. Wherever it began, the message is the same. If I’m impressive enough, I won’t be rejected, and that actually brings tears to my eyes because I think about my daughter.

And I think about if she had this belief, I would be so upset. I’m like, I don’t want her to have that belief. If I’m impressive enough, I won’t be rejected. What? No, I don’t want this for her. I don’t want this for you. I don’t want this for any of us. But that is the first step you perform to feel safe. And step two is you [00:07:00] achieve to feel worthy.

Achievement becomes an emotional regulation. Your nervous system starts to treat output as safety, so you keep going when you wanna rest. You keep proving when you wanna rest. You keep delivering when you wanna rest, and rest starts to feel uncomfortable. Not because you don’t value rest, you want rest.

You understand It’s so good for your nervous system, but rest removes the thing that you have used to feel secure. So that is the second step you achieve to feel worthy. The third step is you crash into the hangover, not always dramatically. Sometimes it’s subtle, like a flatness or a fog or a low level irritation.

A sense that you are running a life not living one. Definitely felt like that in the past. This is where women often blame themselves. They call it lazy. They call it lack of discipline. They call it being ungrateful. They [00:08:00] call it, I just need to get my act together. But most of the time it’s not a character problem.

It is depletion, it’s self abandonment, fatigue. It’s your system asking for a different way. So I wanna share a few signs that you might be in the good girl hangover season. You might feel guilty when you rest. Just raise your hand if that is you, if you’re not driving. You over explain your no, raise your hand.

You say yes, and then you resent it. You feel responsible for other people’s feelings. You numb out at night because you’ve held it all together all day, or you struggled to follow through because your capacity has gone. Was your hand up for any of those or all of those? Be honest. Now I wanna make this practical.

Let give you a few composite examples. Now, these are not one person, they’re patterns that I’ve seen across many women that I’ve worked with. The first [00:09:00] woman is the high achiever, the high performer who can’t rest. So this is the one that she’s competent and trusted. People rely on her, but when the day ends, her body doesn’t drop.

She keeps thinking, she keeps planning, she keeps scanning. She tells herself she’s just wide like that, but underneath, she’s afraid. If she stops, she’ll fall behind. If she slows down, she’ll be exposed. If she rests, she’ll lose her edge. So she keeps running. And then she wonders why she feels so empty.

Then there’s the other woman, the easy partner who feels lonely. She avoids conflict. She keeps things smooth. She doesn’t ask for much because she doesn’t want to be a burden or rock the boat. She tells herself she’s being mature, but she’s also disappearing. And over time she starts feeling unseen. She starts feeling unchosen and she starts feeling like love has to be earned, and she can’t understand why she feels [00:10:00] resentful after all.

She’s the good one, but goodness, without self-expression becomes a quiet grief. And then there’s the third woman, the woman who can’t stay consistent. She starts strong and then she drops off and she thinks that she needs more motivation, but what she actually needs is recovery because she’s been using willpower to override exhaustion, and that never lasts.

So if you see yourself in any of these, just breathe with that. There’s no judgment. Once we have awareness, we can change. And I wanna share a public example briefly because it really matters. At the Tokyo Olympics, Simone Biles withdrew from the team gymnastic final saying she needed to focus on her mental health.

She made that decision in the most pressured environment imaginable. She did that for her mental health. That is amazing. And if you have not watched that documentary on Netflix, on Simone Biles, do yourself a favor and [00:11:00] go and watch it. It is incredible. I’m not sharing that. To compare your life to elite sport.

I’m sharing it because it shows something important. Even the most high performing people reach a point where performance is not worth the cost anymore. That moment is not weakness. It is discernment, and many women are reaching that moment quietly. Right now at home. I am seeing it everywhere. So now let’s move to the part that changes things.

The three shifts. This is where we stop analyzing the pattern and start stepping out of it. So the first shift is we stop outsourcing our worth. Many high achieving women outsource worth without even realizing it. They look for it in praise, in being needed in doing it, quote unquote, right in being the one who holds it all together.

So the first shift is gentle, but firm. You name the truth. [00:12:00] I’ve been using approval as a way to feel safe, and then you give yourself a new pause point before you say yes to anything. Take one breath, and then you ask one clean question. This is what I teach my clients. You ask this, is this aligned or is this for approval?

And if it’s for approval, you don’t need to shame yourself. You just need to slow down, and then you need to choose again. So that is the first shift to stop outsourcing your worth. The second shift is we build a self-respect compass. Now, when women heal this pattern, they don’t lose ambition. They lose self abandonment.

So we replace what will people think with what do I respect, and here’s a simple way to do it. Pick three standards for this season of your life, not goals. I’m talking about standards. Here’s some examples. I sleep like it matters. [00:13:00] I don’t overexplain my, no, I don’t betray my body. To meet a deadline, write those on a post-it note.

Stick them on your computer, put them in the notes section of your phone, set alarms in your phone so you do not forget these standards. Then run decisions through one sentence. Does this deepen self-respect or performance? Write that down. Does this deepen self-respect or performance? Now this compass is quiet, but it is so powerful.

It will change your calendar. It will change your relationships. It will change what you tolerate, and you don’t have to do it all at once. Choose one place to practice it just this week, just one, and then move on to the next. So that is the shift to build a self-respect compass. Number three, calm the body first.

Now this part really deeply, truly matters because insight alone won’t hold you. A lot of women understand the pattern. [00:14:00] They can name it perfectly, but their bodies still live in urgency. I have been there. I know what it’s like and what happens is you keep repeating it. This is why regulation comes first.

So, Mackenzie and Leland’s Women in the Workplace 2023 report found that women who experience. Microaggressions and then self shield to deflect them are four times more likely to almost always be burnt out. So self shielding is what many quote unquote good girls do everywhere, not just at work. They manage perception, they stay pleasant, they swallow needs, they keep it all together.

And that my friend takes a toll. So here’s a short practice that you can do right now. It’s simple and it brings you back. If you’re driving, you can keep your eyes open, of course, and just listen. But if you’re not driving, and you can [00:15:00] close your eyes, take a slow inhale through your nose and take a small top up, inhale at the top, and then let out a long, slow exhale.

Do that again. Inhale through your nose, small. Top up at the top, and slow and long exhale.

One more time. Inhale. Top up.

Exhale.

Now soften these three places, your jaw, your shoulders, your belly, and say quietly, [00:16:00] I am safe enough in this moment.

This is how you start living from steadiness, not from fear. And when you’re ready, you can open your eyes and you can write that one down. I am safe enough in this moment. Now I wanted to hide this together with one clear reframe. If your success requires self abandonment. It will never feel satisfying.

You can collect achievements forever, money, awards, whatever it is, but if you keep leaving yourself behind, the emptiness stays. So the goal is not to do less. The goal is to do it from truth, your truth, not what someone else on social media says. From [00:17:00] self-respect from an inner, yes, that feels clean. So now let’s make this actionable so you walk away with something that you can use in your everyday life.

Starting right now, I have a seven day invitation for you. So for the next seven days, keep it small and real and doable. The first thing you’re gonna do is one, honest, no, even a small one. A know that protects your energy. The next one is One Desire Led yes. Not the yes that makes you look good. The yes that makes you feel like you.

And the third thing is one daily 92nd regulation. Practice the breath that we just did. That is perfect. Do it before you check your phone or before you walk into your home at night. Do it multiple times throughout the day. Set alarms on your phone to remind yourself. And if you want a journaling prompt, use this one.

What am I afraid will happen if I stop performing? Oof. What am I [00:18:00] afraid will happen if I stop performing? Then answer it with honesty, not with judgment, because honesty is how you come back. Now, before we wrap up, I wanna leave you with something. You don’t need a bigger life. You need a truer one to you, and you don’t have to burn your life down to build that.

You just need to start choosing yourself in small, consistent ways. Then you can say hello to self-respect, hello to steadiness, hello to a life that feels like you. If this episode landed, you can come back to it anytime. Save it. You can download it, listen to it anytime. And if this resonated, please share it with anyone that you think would also love to hear this.

You can share it on your social media. Email it to them, text it to them. Do whatever you’ve got to do to get this in their ears. And if you haven’t already, please leave me a review on [00:19:00] Apple Podcast and email me a screenshot of your review to hello@melissaamini.com and I’ll email you my wildly wealthy guided meditation.

As a thank you for taking the time to leave a review, and if you wanna go deeper on some of the things that I’ve mentioned today, I have for January only, a special offer for my one-on-one strategy session. So just go to melissa ambrosini.com/strategy. They are currently 50% off with the code 2026. So I have that offer right now for January.

So I’ll link to it in the show notes, but jump on over there. If you wanna go deeper on what we have spoken about here, come and join me for a one-on-one session. I would love to support you and come and tell me what your biggest takeaway was from this episode on Instagram at Melissa Ambrosini. I love connecting with you and I love hearing your biggest key takeaways.

And before I go. Thank you so much for being here, for wanting to be the best, the healthiest, and the happiest version of yourself, and for showing up today for [00:20:00] you. You are amazing, and don’t forget that love is sexy. Healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word. See you next time.

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Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

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