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"Good girls don't ask questions. Good girls don't get angry. Good girls don't speak up. Good girls don't shout." My guest today rattled off that list like she'd memorized it in the womb, because she basically had. On paper, Amanda Kate had checked every box: good grades, the right marriage, two kids, a nice house. Behind closed doors, she says, "I was sick, I was depressed, I was scared, I was utterly unfulfilled." That gap, the balance sheet that looked perfect and the reality that didn't, is where codependency and the fawn trauma response come from, and it's exactly what we dig into today.

Amanda Kate is a self-mastery facilitator who survived chronic narcissistic abuse and the chronic fatigue that came from years of unrelenting emotional, mental, and psychological abuse. She walked the path of depression to the point of being on her floor screaming for God to take her home. Now she flips the current paradigm of what it truly means to master yourself, and she's got the receipts: kinesiology's five F's (fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and fragmentation), why "being an empath" is often a trauma response in disguise, and why we blame people for their reaction to abuse instead of the abuse itself.

We also get into the heroine's journey, why perfectionism and people-pleasing are really the same coin, and how to hold two things as true at once: that your parents loved you and that they also terrified you. If any of that sounds familiar, this conversation is for you.

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgCtxxBkpzg

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About Amanda Kate

Amanda Kate is a self-mastery facilitator who survived chronic narcissistic abuse and the chronic fatigue that followed years of emotional, mental, and psychological abuse and toxic relationship cycles. She describes herself as a recovering people pleaser and self-flagellator, walking a path that straddles the divine and messy.

Learn more at AmandaKate.com.au.

Favorite quotes

"When somebody does an action and you have a reaction to said action, that's actually normal human behavior. We are wired to have reactions." —Amanda Kate
"Perfectionism is unobtainable. It is impossible. There's not many things in this world that are impossible, but perfectionism is." —Amanda Kate
"My parents deeply loved me and they deeply put the fear of God in me." —Amanda Kate

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