People Pleasing and Overachieving with Amy Wilson

Erin: Welcome to Hotter Than Ever, where we uncover the unconscious rules we've been following. We break those rules and we find a new path to being freer, happier, sexier, and more satisfied in the second half of our lives. I'm your host, Erin Keating.

Welcome back to our loyal listeners who have been listening to this podcast since the beginning or found us somewhere along the way, welcome to those of you who are new, who may have been forwarded an episode of this show by a friend saying, you must listen to this. Oh my god, this spoke to me. However, you got here, however, you found us, I'm so, so happy to have you here, it's just the most meaningful thing in the world that we can be in this shared conversation together, and I am grateful for you.

One thing about the show that you may have noticed is that it is now on an every other week show. So for those of you who expect new episodes every Thursday, please expect them every other Thursday. And also you can always go back into the archive, listen to the ones you may have missed and we will be beginning to drop new episodes. And then alternating with, classic older episodes. Classic, that's hilarious. I act like I'm like, I don't know, Three's Company. It's like a classic episode of Three's Company. You'll see that, I'll be dropping those on YouTube, coming up in the next couple of weeks. And I'll be telling you a little bit more about where you can find the video version of the show, which is super exciting.

Today my guest is Amy Wilson. Amy is the author of the memoir, When Did I Get Like This? And her latest book of essays, which we're going to talk about today, "Happy to Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser", is so terrific. Since 2016, she has been the co host of the Webby Honored podcast, "What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood", of which she has put out 800 episodes. 800 episodes. Does Amy Wilson seem like she might be an overachiever? Oh my God. She has also appeared on Broadway as an actor. She has toured her one woman show called Motherload to cities across America. She's been a series regular on TV sitcoms and had her writing published in places you've heard of like the New York Times and CNN.

This is one productive lady. And that's kind of what this conversation is about. It's about being a people pleaser, about being the person who always gets it done. The person who's available to solve all the problems in a pinch, sometimes referred to as a perfectionist, which, you know, this language is so loaded when it comes to women, but we get wired and trained to be wanted and needed and indecisive. And then when we become, you know, the optimizer of all systems, or we show up as like Tracy Flick in the movie Election, or as my kids would say a pick me, you know, the girl who sits in the front row and raises her hand and always has the answer, which is Amy describes herself that way in the book and in this conversation. We get wired for hyper competence and there are pros and cons to that.

And you know, it is also tough to be that person as a woman because I don't think you get a lot of credit for being, you know, the incredible solution provider, that so many of us are just as a default. Anyway, it's an awesome conversation and I think you'll really enjoy it. I think you'll enjoy the sort of message of the fact that there isn't anything wrong with you if you are this kind of person and it may not be on you to change if it isn't causing you distress. But for a lot of us, obviously we're doing this to overcompensate.

Anyway, getting ahead of myself, the conversation is wonderful. Please share this with your friends. If you think that they can relate, maybe your sister, maybe a coworker, maybe it reflects a conversation that you have had in your life . All right, let's get hot.

Amy Wilson, welcome to Hotter Than Ever.

Amy: Thanks, Erin. Thanks for having me.

Erin: I'm so glad to have you here. Your resume is insane. You have been so busy and that's what your book is about, right? Getting things done.

Amy: Getting things done, right. I am the kind of person who gets things done. I am an overachiever and whatever. And then yes, this book is about all the times that that's not good enough. That you meet your match with situations that are unfixable, with jobs that are a dead end, with relationship that are dead end. And when you're an overachiever like me, at least in my case, I'm going to work harder. I'm going to make this person love me. I'm going to make this boss see my value. I'm going to stick it out and make it work. That doesn't always work as it turns out.

Erin: Right. Because you can't make other people do stuff. This is a lesson I have to learn over and over again.

Amy: That's a good title. You can't make other people do stuff.

Erin: Totally, I'm gonna put that in my pocket. I'd love to start at the beginning and maybe try to get underneath how you became this person. I know how I became this person, but, you know, everyone has their path to hyper competence.

Amy: Yeah. Well, in my case, I am the oldest of six kids. And so from the time I was, you know, seven, eight, if I was around, I was helping, I was zipping jackets and getting the baby food warmed up and that kind of thing, being sort of mommy's helper. And I loved it. It wasn't like I was seething with resentment. Never. I mean, and was I as helpful as I thought I was? Probably not, but I, but it was part of what I did, you know, my everyday was, you're good at it, you're good at helping. It's what's expected.

And you do it joyfully and you do it skillfully and you make it seem like it's not hard. And then I took that to school with me. I went to Catholic school where I had some amazing teachers and also some who, like you live by the rules, you do what's expected. And I think nuns or otherwise, school is a pretty gendered place in the 70s and 80s, right. And just became somebody who, at least until I became a parent, I set my mind to something and then I succeeded. I was like a class president, valedictorian kind of kid. And you know, you meet your match once you become a parent and once you enter the adult world. I could over apply these if I just work hard enough. This will work lessons. But that was the sort of making of me. I was a Brownie and the Girl Scout pledge. The Scout pledge, boys and girls, you, you say, on my honor, I will try to serve other people at all times. That's kind of crazy.

Erin: Now, is the Boy Scout pledge the same?

Amy: It is, it is, because I looked it up. It is the same. And I thought, you know, that's kind of crazy that we're telling kids to, you know, swear that. But clearly I'm the only one or one of the only ones who's like, okay, watch it.

Erin: You might be more literal than others.

Amy: Yes, I took it very, very literally.

Erin: Did you get a lot of praise for being this person as a kid?

Amy: Yes, certainly it was the expectation. And you know, I talk about this in the book. You do see yourself to be the things that people tell you that you are, you know, for better and worse. And so I argue in the book, if you're told that you're, you know, a smart kid, then you're gonna start seeing yourself as a smart kid. Or if you're, if you're told that you're Type A and you're a workaholic, you're going to come to, you know, fold these into your sense of self, even if it's not entirely accurate, if you hear it enough. And so when I went back and looked like, but was I happy? Was I a happy helper? Did I want-- I can't really answer that. Because, yes, I was, because I thought that I was supposed to be like, there was no, there was no daylight between what I was supposed to be and how I felt about it.

I was told to be happy to help, and so I was. Maybe it's when you're an adult, you're like, wait a minute, I've been doing all these thankless tasks for decades. You know, it takes, it takes adulthood and time to come to those things. But we talked about the subtitle of the book maybe being something like Happy to Help and other lies and Happy to help, but not really. And I was really resistant to that because that wasn't who I was. I really was like, I can do this, watch me.

Erin: Right.

Amy: I can make this work.

Erin: Right, right. Yeah, I'm curious about the subtitle "Adventures of a People Pleaser" because the, the phrase people pleaser is so loaded, right?

Amy: Yes.

Erin: What does that mean to you? And what's the difference between being a people pleaser and just being competent and helpful? Is there, is there a cost? It implies a cost, I guess.

Amy: Yeah, I guess that's the difference. I mean, I have my issues with the term people pleaser and perfectionist and a lot of the things that I talk about in the book, Type A, because I think these are things that women, these are names that women call themselves.

Erin: So gendered.

Amy: They're so gendered. And they're, they are things that we are called when we express dissatisfaction with the status quo that you've created this. You like to make things harder than they need to be. You're such a workaholic. You're such a perfectionist. And we say, oh, I guess you're right. Well, let me go fix that and nothing changes.

Erin: Let me perfect my perfectionism.

Amy: So I have my issues with that. But people, so people pleaser, somebody who's always doing things for other people. I think a people pleaser is somebody who is either seething with resentment or who is consciously suppressing her own needs. And I really do think. I mean, did I sometimes help people who weren't even asking for it? For sure, but I think I was more motivated by I am the protagonist, I am here to save the day, than is she mad at me? You know, that, that doesn't, that part of it doesn't really resonate for me. But I do think it's what we call a person like this, no matter what her motivations are.

Erin: Yeah, I think that's right. It's kind of an insult.

Amy: Yes.

Erin: Right, like codependent people pleaser.

Amy: Yes, exactly.

Erin: Everyone expects you to please them.

Amy: Right, right. I looked up like the sort of textbook definition of people pleasing is putting somebody else's wants and for your own. I'm like, well, yeah, I have three kids, so yeah, I've definitely done that.

Erin: Yeah, that's the time that's required.

Amy: I'm pretty sure that was the assignment. And had I over delivered on that, probably. But yeah, this idea like, well, you shouldn't have been doing that. Like you told me to do that every day of my life.

Erin:What do you mean? You trained me for that. And the society expects that we're acculturated to that. You know, a couple other phrases have come come up for me in thinking about the phrase people pleaser. Goody two shoes. I sometimes describe myself as a goody two shoes. I'm kind of like a bad girl, goody two shoes combination.

Amy: Oh, interesting.

Erin: I know. Well, I think they're clearly reactions to each other or the bad girl part is a reaction to being like, I'm not so good, but yeah. And then there's a phrase that my kids use which is a pick me. Which if you think of the movie election and the character that Reese Witherspoon played, Tracy Flick.

Amy: Yeah.

Erin: Um, she's a pick me. And you describe yourself in one scene in the book, in a class where you were always in the front row raising your hand with the answer. Can you talk about that? And what the teacher slash nun's response was to that. When you tried to change that paradigm, it was the.

Amy: The moment that I like, that became me.

Erin: Right.

Amy: It was like the superhero making moment of this over deliverer.

Erin: The origin story.

Amy: The origin story story. I was in eighth grade and I was, you know, very smart and I was a class president. And I always knew the answer. And I liked being somebody who always knew the answer. I liked being that Tracy Flick type kid. And as most of us do, somewhere in middle school we're like, wait. But I want people to like me, especially boys. And a couple of the boys had started calling me Brainiac, which did not seem like a good.

Erin: Not hot name.

Amy: Not hotter than ever. So I'm like, I know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna stop raising my hand, that way they'll stop calling and they'll like me. And so the very first day, I'm like, I'm not going to raise my hand anymore. So I sat there in English class and Sister Benedicta, not a real name, but that's her name in the book, Sister Benedicta.

She asked a difficult grammatical question that I totally knew the answer to. Total sitting there on my hands, not answering. Nobody else knew the answer. So eventually she said, Amy, can you, do you know the answer? And I did, I was afraid of Sister Benedicta. So I, you know, said, yes, I told you I shall have been skating was the answer. And it was like the future perfect continuous tense.

Erin: I can never do that.

Amy: I mean, I had to look it all up for the book. But I remembered it, you know, so well. So I did know the answer. And she said, well, you did know the answer. How dare you not raise your hand? How dare you? Do you think you're better than everybody else in this class? She said to me, which was mortifying. It's so weird. It's so weird. I don't know what her motivation was. I think it was, I'm not going to let this kid do this or maybe she was just having a bad afternoon. I don't know, but she, here I was trying to, like, make sure everybody liked me, and she said she thinks she's better than the rest of you.

Erin: But how is that evidence of you thinking you're better?

Amy: The more I thought about it, you know, even for this book, the less sense it made. But that's what happened. And so the lesson that I learned that day was, you can't not raise your hand if you know the answer, even if people aren't going to like you, because you're always the one who has the answer. You have to, you can't opt out. You have to show up because somehow.

Erin: It's selfish for you to not care.

Amy: I guess that's it. Like, how dare you not share--

Erin: Right.

Amy: 100% of your gifts? How dare you not help other people at all times? So I guess I was like, okay, that's what I'm gonna do.

Erin: I mean, it's so fascinating to me because it could be a social experiment for you. To say, well, what happens if I don't offer? Like, I've been in work situations where I have people working for me who I wanted to train up and bring up, and I had to force myself to shut up, you know, had to force myself to not raise my hand and go, I know, because my goal was to empower other people.

That wasn't your goal in this context, but there's a lot of different reasons for not speaking up. Fascinating to me. It's just such a twisted, How dare you? How dare you is such a twisted thing to say to a 13 year old in any context.

Amy: Right, right. And I was pretty sure everybody would hate me, but I think everybody was like, she's mad and why is she.

Erin: What is she mad about?

Amy: Exactly. I think everybody was baffled enough that I was able to skate with everybody not thinking that I thought I was better than them or whatever.

Erin: Right. They knew you were, though. I mean, it's, you weren't proving anything by now.

Amy: Right? That's right. Everybody was zero percent surprised that she called. Amanda knew the answer because I knew the answer.

Erin: Exactly, exactly. So what do you think? So you're the oldest of six kids, you're the oldest of 25 grandkids.

Amy: Yes.

Erin: You're like the grand poobah of grandkids.

Amy: Yes and I have a brother who's almost 20 years younger than me. So in that generation now, the grandkids I have a kid who's 22 and my brother's kid is not even one yet. And they're the same generation. So we've so cool generations in my family. It is cool, I loved it. But you do feel like your every moment is an example. You are example setting. As you walk down the street, whatever you do perhaps get a slightly inflated sense of your own importance.

Erin: Well, in an inflated sense of responsibility.

Amy: Oh, yeah, for sure.

Erin: Right. And I mean, there's a lot of talk about birth order and you know, my mother is the youngest of three sisters and, you know, so much of her life can be mapped to that narrative. You know, I'm an only child. So much, I have a brother from my father's second marriage, but I'm my mother's only child. It's so much of my story can be mapped to that narrative. Do you feel like, as the eldest daughter, and I think that the daughter part of it is so critical that an eldest son is a different thing?

Amy: Yes.

Erin: That, that is just so definitional.

Amy: Yes and that's like not even something I query or feel bad about. It's like, oh, yeah, that's me. Yeah, I'm an oldest daughter. I'm a Virgo too, I'm super Virgo. And that may be nonsense, but I do cop to having all of those qual and as I say in the book, that people kind of like that most of the time. Right? We like that.

Erin: They like that we do stuff.

Amy: Right. We like that the Virgo among us has always has already figured out where we're going for dinner tonight. People most of the time float along with you taking care of business and everybody works pretty well for everybody most of the time. And of course, there are times when nobody asked you to boss them around. And of course, there are times when you're like, I don't want to be in charge of where we're going for dinner every time we get together. And then you try to hand it over and nobody wants to do it right.

Erin: Or they it up or they're bad or that which, you know, you wouldn't be. It's funny, I have an astrologer friend who says she only likes to work with Virgos because they do it. They do the work.

Amy: They do the work.

Erin: And then Virgo wouldn't run the world.

Amy: That's right, I agree. If you give me an assignment, I will see it through to sometimes my detriment, but that is my personality exactly.

Erin: I'm interested in the idea of perfectionism I had on a psychologist and author named Katherine Morgan Schaffler, who wrote a book called the "Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control."

Amy: Yeah, I like that.

Erin: Which is a gorgeous book and really unpacked the idea of perfectionism for me. And she's sort of identified seven different kinds of perfectionists. And she talked about how gendered perfectionism is that what we call perfectionism in women is called ambition. And I'm curious, you know, you've wrestled with being a perfectionist or recovering perfectionist, like where you've landed in the definition of it for yourself.

Amy: Yeah, like it's like being called brainiac. Like, oh, you're such a perfectionist.

Erin: I feel like it's so double sided.

Amy: Right. It's a very backhanded compliment, isn't it? There you go again, being good at things and making them look easy. Perfectionist.

Erin: And then it also means you're exacting or you're meticulous or you're driven or you're precise. All of which, if you put that on, a man would be like, wow, he's impressive.

Amy: High powered. Right, right, right. Perfectionist is what we are called when we're, I don't know, annoying, when we express dissatisfaction with things and that we're perfectionist. And I don't really stopped and thought about it. I wasn't sure. To me, perfectionist and people pleaser, they sound like, can't get out of your own way. They sound like stuck in the starting blocks because you had to do your hair over again because it didn't look right and now you're mired in the details. Yeah, mired in the details, not able to function.

I'm a very highly functioning person and I don't need my birthday presents to be wrapped perfectly. Or I don't, you know, I'll go on YouTube for my podcast without makeup on, whatever. So I, so then I think, like, well, that's not really a perfectionist. So am I a recovering perfectionist? But then I think that's just sort of cutesy. That's humble brag, like, I sure am not flawed anymore. I used to be that person. Not anymore, though. And so it's, I mean, it's harmless, but I'm not so sure it's an accurate description of who I am.

Erin: I used to say it at a job interview early on when I was, when I was just starting out. They would say, you know, what are your, what's your biggest flaw? Which I don't think is a thing people ask anymore, but I would always say, well, it's my perfectionism, you know, just such an, like, obvious thing to say.

Amy: It's a dumb question.

Erin: I don't know, I'm full of contempt for corporate America. Probably wouldn't get the job, though.

Amy: Probably not. Yeah, I think it's just I sort of, you know, bristle at the idea that there are things I have to fix about myself when my life becomes too much. You know, it might be somebody else needs to take on this task for a while. It might be that I'm in a really. I tell a story in the book about working on a sitcom that was a really unhappy working experience. And when you work in sitcoms, at least when I did this, you know, you sign away 7 years of your life as an actor before you start.

They can fire you at any time because they don't like your hair, whatever. They don't have to give you a reason that they fired you. And when they did, they, but I had signed away seven years of my life. So I was cast on a show, and then I had to show up every day at this show where I was reading pretty clearly that most of the people on set seemed pretty unhappy that I was there for reasons I couldn't possibly figure out. Turns out it's all in the book, it's a long story, but it just was, like, network person A wanted this showrunner, B wanted the opposite. And too bad, you know, you're getting this person added to your cast. It was me, and I was, like, the last person to know. Nobody liked me, basically. It was a very weird experience. And I felt like, well, I can't quit. I guess I'm gonna. And the show is doing pretty well.

I guess I'm gonna spend the next five years doing this show where nobody seems to like me. I could have just quit, but it wasn't as simple as that because I was very young, and I had signed a contract saying I wasn't allowed to quit. So I can look back now, like, why didn't I walk away? Well, because in the moment, it wasn't my imagination that a contract said I wasn't allowed to.

Erin: Right.

Amy: It doesn't make you a perfectionist. So what do you do in that situation? You lower your standards? I don't know. I don't know what you do. You try to fix yourself to make people like you more. That wasn't working either, it was unfixable.

Erin: Yeah, yeah. And sometimes you find yourself in an unfixable situation, you know, and, God, that's really vexing. Like, to be able to fix things.

Amy: Right, turn in. Trying harder doesn't fix an unfixable situation.

Erin: That's right.

Amy: Tap dancing faster. It does not work.

Erin: Right, right. The titles of your essays are hilarious. Okay, so the titles of all of the essays in this book are positive aphorisms, basically.

Amy: Right.

Erin: And I'm going to read a bunch of them because I'm tickled about it. "Give it all you got. Look on the bright side. It's never too late. Never give up. The only one you can change is you cherish every moment. Sometimes you just have to laugh. Make new friends, but keep the old."

Like, seeing them all in one, that's half of them. Like, seeing them all in a list in one place just cracked me up because it's the language. Our language is loaded with this. This sort of dictate to be positive, to, you know, charge forward and don't let anything get in your way. And, God, I mean, as much as we want to do and be that, like, it's never that easy.

Amy: No, no. And when in my life, when I have asked for help, what I've usually gotten back is one of those sayings instead, Instead of help. Instead of assistance. And most of those sayings are like, try harder, keep going.

There is an essay called "Never Give Up", and it's about my learning to ski as an adult with my children. And throughout the essay, without--throughout the experience, I'm applying this, like, never give up. Try harder. Just one more day. You can't quit. You can't show your kids that you're a quitter. You have to try harder. You have to keep going. And it's just that I am so bad at this, at this skiing. I'm terrified.

And eventually one night, you know, my husband said, well, you don't have to keep doing it. You can just quit if you want. And I was sort of like, I can. This is after 10 days crying, you know, on an icy mountain. And that was the real lesson is, sometimes give up. Not never give up. But I only learned that after, like, trying so hard to apply this. This really misapplied lesson in this broken situation.

Erin: Yeah. I feel like I will keep going after something, after something until there's some, like, bolt of lightning.

Amy: Yeah.

Erin: You know, like, I was an actor as a young person. And then I had this experience of seeing, you know, I was auditioning, but I'm like, auditioning. I'm like, being judged. And everything I was doing, I was making myself because I, you know, couldn't book jobs and because that was my inclination because I'm a maker. And then I saw this guy who I knew was 10 years older than me coming down the steps of the theater with his box of wigs. As I was walking up with my box of wigs, and I was like, oh, fuck, if I keep doing this, I'm gonna be him. And then I was like, oh, I gotta make a change, gotta do something different.

Amy: You know, it occurs to me as you're saying this box of wigs thing, like. Yeah, and there must be, there must be something in that, we're kindred spirits. And we also were performers. Like, let me entertain you. Let me find which wig you will like.

Erin: Right? What's gonna make you laugh.

Amy: What's gonna make you laugh? There must be one in here somewhere. And I'm not leaving until I figure this out.

Erin: Yeah, exactly. But, you know, when you do hear that, and as I've gotten older, I've made a practice of looking for those moments of intuition or really not sort of shutting down what my body, brain, heart, spirit, whatever, is telling me that I don't have to muscle through every situation. Maybe it took me almost dying of COVID to realize that about my marriage, but I was like, yeah, I actually, I'm not going to do that anymore, you know, because it's not working. But it took, sometimes you got to slap me upside the head to get me to pay attention to the signs that are all around me. You know, change is hard.

Amy: Somebody said, and I don't know who it is, because I really tried to find it was that it was about, like, the truth of your life-- First there's a whisper, then there's a knock, then there's a kick in the head. And I go to kick in the head for sure.

Erin: Totally.

Amy: Before I listen.

Erin: Totally. Yeah. I think that's right. When thinking about, like, the notion of being a people pleaser and an overachiever, you know, for me, there's sometimes this sort of resentment underneath all of it. The like, why do I have to be the. I mean, as much as you, as much as I like the sort of cash and prizes of. And the gold star, you know, of being the one who can get it done. There have certainly been times in my life When I've been like, how come nobody else can step up to this task?

Amy: Right.

Erin: Like, why does it have to be me? And the more you do it and override that internal conversation, that's what builds resentment. Do you have that experience as well?

Amy: I have as I've gotten older. And I wonder if that's what it is that it's the perspective. It's looking back, as I was just saying about that TV show, like, I should have quit without While being gentle to the me I was then that. That didn't seem like an option that was actually available to me, even though now I could see. Well, it definitely was, I think the resentment comes when you look back at the times you've been taken for a fool, maybe, or taken advantage of if your head's down, just working and trying harder, maybe you don't see it.

So I've had resentment in retrospect, but I don't walk through my life, you know, seething with resentment that I'm getting better at just saying when I need somebody else to do something. Like, Christmas morning recently, I got here, I was, my kids are asleep, my spouse is asleep. I hid the presents all which I'd wrapped. I'm getting them under the tree. And I guess they had decided after I went to bed that nobody was going to get up early.

And so I was up early, like, making, you know, making everything magical. And then I was alone and I was like, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? But what I've learned after doing this book, to be like, hey, I was really disappointed. And then I found out there was an explanation. Well, they, everybody decided to get up at 10, but nobody left.

Erin: They didn't tell you, right?

Amy: Like, that was really disappointing for me because I did all this and I need somebody to go get me a cup of coffee. And I'm gonna sit here now. I'm done working for today. Like, that's it. Now everybody has to ask me what I need. And they were like, oh, okay, it was like they, I was telling them to speak in French for the rest of the morning, but they tried, you know, they were like, would you, mom, would you like me to get you? And it worked.

But that's after a lot of, like, resetting of my life that's happened in the last couple of years. So I think change is possible. That doesn't happen, it's iterative, it doesn't happen all at once.

Erin: Yeah, mean, there's just such an enormous conversation out there about. When I say out there, I really mean Instagram and the New York Times. That's kind of those, I'm kind of joking, but about boundaries, you know, and women are talking a lot about boundaries. I don't think men need boundaries in the same way.

Amy: No, they're not. They're not conditioned to not have them. So they have--

Erin: But I didn't want to do that. I'm not doing that.

Amy: Right.

Erin: But I'm curious about. You know, I think there's a funny thing in your book where it's kind of about the combination of the inability to set healthy boundaries and then the lack of desire to have those boundaries.

Amy: Right. I guess that's what I mean. Like, I wasn't like, how dare these people be asking more of me than I can give? I didn't have that perspective in the moment. I just was like, oh, they need me, they need me. I worked for a very demanding actress as her personal assistant was my first job out of school. We've all met people like this person.

Erin: But you never said no to her.

Amy: I never said no. And she would tell everybody, you know, whenever I was around, she'd say, you know, this is Amy. I don't know what I'd do without her. And I would think to myself, like, that's right, she wouldn't survive without me. And I think I took gratification from that this person is very dependent on me. Her success is very dependent on me. Of course, it was her success and not my own success.

Erin: And she didn't care about your success.

Amy: And she didn't care about my success because my success was getting in the way of her success. If I couldn't, you know, come once day, and it was very hard for me to escape that orbit, which was very much on me. I mean, I try to make that very clear in the book. Nobody took advantage of me. You know, I could have said no, and I didn't.

But I think it was, I did buy into, she needs me, she needs me, and I can do it. And that's all I needed to hear. Like, that was the highest compliment I could receive. I think that I was, I was indispensable to somebody. I don't know if she really meant it, but I thought she did.

Erin: Right. No, that was always, my philosophy of work is make yourself indispensable. That is not a real thing.

Amy: Right. There was some book that was like, make yourself so good they can't forget you. I think that that's--

Erin: Maybe they can't forget you, but they can definitely fire you, right? You know, they can definitely lay you off, right? Like that was my experience in my last job. Like, I could not have overachieved more, I could not have self sacrificed more. And conveniently, I wanted to, because I did not want to be at home in my marriage and dealing with, you know, what felt like the inevitable decline of that relationship. But, you know, you think you're indispensable. You're the hero. You're the person who comes in and solves all the problems.

You're the, like, we'll just give it to Erin because we know she'll get it done. Like, it was always, you do, right? And then I do, and they go, you're so good, and here's some extra money, and here's some whatever work, and here's some more work, and here's, you know, you can sit in for your boss's maternity leave and not get compensated for that. Like, you know, and I was like, okay, great, I'll take that new responsibility. I'll learn, I'm gonna learn. I'm gonna, you know, always saying yes because I was getting so much approval. And then I got laid off and then it was like, and go yourself?

Amy: Yeah, you can't take that to the thing.

Erin: You know, and so then the question is, you know, this whole thing that started to happen during the pandemic, this sort of quiet quitting.

Amy: Yeah.

Erin: That was like an anathema to me. I was like, but how could you, like, have integrity with yourself if you're there not doing your best?

Amy: I've never understood. I mean, yes, I am one of those people who watches like a, you know, checkout line at a supermarket or a TSA line. And I just, I'm like, why don't you just have them take off their shoes while they're wearing? Like, I can see how well.

Erin: As Virgos, we're efficiency experts.

Amy: Yeah, exactly. I can improve the efficiency of any situation that I look at, whether or not. And I'm getting much better in my personal life of like, did anybody ask me to do this or am I just doing this? My helpful suggestions are that I left myself.

Erin: Right, I guess what comes up for me is like, it's not love. You know what I mean? It's not love. It's like your incredible diva actress boss. Like, she wasn't depending on you because she loved you or you loved her, you know?

Amy: Right.

Erin: It's, I think, for me, like, the overachieving had to do with, like, being like, you're lovable, you're approvable. You're, you know, like, you really are good. You know, you don't seem to have the same kind of damage that I have, but the Tracy Flick of it all, you know, it's an uncomfortable and exceedingly comfortable place to sit in the world, right?

Amy: Well, yes. Everybody wants you to be in charge because you're good at it. So then you are going to be in charge, and then you know that, like, there's going to be dinner on the table or presents under the tree or whatever. It'll get done. And it is hard for me when I'm like, okay, I'm gonna take a step back, and then nobody picks up the thing. And sometimes it's an important thing like this.

I think it's a little bit of a myth, this whole idea. Like, you're gonna stop doing, and then you'll just see that none of it mattered, that none of it needed to be done. Like, that's not always true. Sometimes there's a sick kid or a sick parent or, you know, something that's really thankless in small, daily ways, but it does have to be done, and maybe it does have to be done by you, but then what else can you hand over? And it's just at those moments that look on the bright side, or get up earlier. These aren't sufficient. They're sometimes all we're offering.

Erin: I did not want to hear get up earlier. I did not want to get up earlier. I've tried, it doesn't work for me.

Amy: Right.

Erin: I was, think I'll get up early and do it. Nope, I'm not going to.

Amy: And you want somebody to. You want to be working so hard and so well and so good that somebody will eventually say, like, my gosh, you. You're doing way too much. Let me take. Like, you'll perform so well. Somebody will see that you need help, which, of course, is not how it goes. But I did try that for a while.

Erin: No, yeah. In my experience, people just let you pilot on yourself.

Amy: Sure.

Erin: To your own, even if you're suffering from it.

Amy: If you're because, looking like you're happy to help and that you're good at it and, like, it's not that hard is all part of the assignment. So I've learned that, like, people aren't bad people. That they don't get that you're struggling when you are endeavoring very hard to seem like you're not struggling most of the time.

Erin: Right, right. Yeah, it's a blessing and a curse, hyper competence.

Amy: That's right. Hyper competence, I wish I thought of that word when I was writing the book. That's exactly what this is.

Erin: Yeah, and then learning to set boundaries and say, okay, actually, there are things that I'm actually not going to take that on, you know, and letting the cards fall, however they fall, is painful.

Amy: It's painful. And the hard part for me is I started to change things. Has been the silence that you have to sit through. The book ends in one of these moments where somebody says, like, I know who's going to do it. It's going to be Amy. And I say, no, that's not. Don't say that to me. That's not how we're gonna do this.

And then there's just this, like it's like the end of, remember Police Story, when they used to be on TV and everybody would just sort of freeze at the end of the episode while the credits rolled. It's just this weird freeze. Everybody's like, did she just say what I thought she said? Who's gonna do it? Like, I don't want to do it, that's all rolling heads.

Erin: Right.

Amy: There's a whole new, like, the rebooting of the system that has to happen that you have to sit through, and it's very uncertain, and it's very weird, and to sit through it before something else can happen. And that was, like, my last lesson I had to learn is don't sit through that. Don't take it back. Don't fill the silence. Nobody's a bad person. You just said, things are going to be different now and then you just have to wait.

Erin: It's hard. I think the hardest thing about setting boundaries is that discomfort.

Amy: Yeah.

Erin: You know, like, I have it in relationships with men because I. I want to get it. I want to, like, let's make a plan. We're going to, you know, where we're going to go do something. And then I say to myself, actually, it's important for me to receive. Like, that's my priority these days is, like, to try to receive.

But if I don't make room for someone to step towards me, if I'm always pushing and driving, then I'm setting this precedent in this relationship that is going to yield something I don't want. So me not doing anything is so hard because then I have to wait in the silence for whether or not someone's going to take action.

Amy: Yes.

Erin: And I hate it.

Amy: And maybe your problems stay problems and maybe the relationship isn't perfect and like that. This isn't the magic. All you had to do was not say anything. And then, like, magically, no, your problems don't.

Erin: Suddenly he becomes someone else.

Amy: Right, right. You're just sitting with something that's maybe a little bit broken or what, and sitting with it and existing with it and getting comfortable with uncertainty and unfixability is what it's really about. Didn't you see? All you had to do was start letting people help you? It's so much more uncertain than that.

Erin: It's so much more complicated. Yeah, it's so much more complicated. I think a lot of people who are listening to this podcast can probably really relate to this conversation and that they have people in their lives who should also hear this conversation that they should share this episode with because. And share your book with because, you know, I mean, Gen X women, we get the job done. Immigrants, they get the job done.

Amy: Right?

Erin: You know, right. To quote Hamilton. But Gen X women, we get the job done. We handle it.

Amy: Yeah.

Erin: We figure it out. We DIY it. We, you know, we're scrappy and solution oriented because no one ever did anything for us.

Amy: And I'd like to think that if somebody's, you know, a woman in her 20s or 30s could read this book and get something out of it, I'd like to think there's some possibility to sort of jump the line and learn some of these lessons. The less than hardest way. I'd like to think that. I think there's something that's universal about it. But I do think that you're right, that being Gen X means you've lived long enough to look back on things. Like you were saying at the beginning, like, oh, you've done a lot. Like, yet I'm not young, so I've done a lot.

And my college son's friend, I was saying that I knew the conductor of a Broadway show, and then I said I knew somebody else. And she was like, you know, all these really accomplished people, like, yeah, like, I've been around a while. I've been out of college for decades. My friends are now running things. You'll see.

Erin: We've all done a lot of stuff.

Amy: Yeah, we've all done a lot of stuff. And it'll happen for you too. So it's kind of a seed of wisdom and some partner and lessons. And I'm hoping that this has something not just for women who know every reference I'm making in this book, but maybe ones who don't, but to whom these messages still seem familiar.

Erin: I think we're the demographic who buys books.

Amy: That too.

Erin: Let's go Gen X. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I've loved this conversation. What do you want the hotter than ever listeners to take away about people pleasing. About our habit or acculturation of trying to do everything for everyone else?

Amy: I think just start with that when you're struggling, when you're going through something hard, that it's hard because it's hard, not because there's something wrong with you. And that the solution to whatever you're going through, there probably is a solution, but it might not be fixing yourself first or changing your mindset first. That you're not wrong to feel unappreciated, appreciated, or frustrated. And then you haven't secretly created the situation because you secretly like it that way. Like, don't stand for that stuff, because that stuff keeps us stuck in unsatisfying situations and also puts the burden.

Erin: Of responsibility of doing everything and changing everything right back on us.

Amy: That's right. You're right. Well, you won't let me help you. You only want the dishwasher loaded a certain way. Like, no, stop it.

Erin: Oh, God, I'm sorry. Were you in my house?

Amy: Right.

Erin: Well, you criticize it. Like, oh, my God.

Amy: Yes.

Erin: Ouch. That one was close to home.

Amy: Don't fall for it, Erin. Just like, just load the dishwasher bed. I don't care.

Erin: Yep, that's what I do with my kids. I'm like, yeah, do this, do this however you're gonna do it, I am not, you know, I'll come up behind you and solve it. If I need to redo it, I'll redo it.

Amy: I won't make you watch me.

Erin: Yeah, you don't need to bear witness to that. Oh, Amy, thank you so much. This has been a fabulous conversation.

Amy: Thank you, Erin. Thank you for having me.

Erin: Thanks for listening to Hotter Than Ever. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Amy Wilson, who is so smart, and this book is so terrific, and such a fun read, but also sort of deep and resonating. Is there someone in your life who needs to hear this conversation or whose voice and demeanor and point of view on life is really reflected in the conversation that Amy and I had? Please, please share this episode with them, that is the way the show grows. That is how we stay producing episodes for you. And thanks, thanks as always for listening.

Hotter Than Ever is produced by Erica Girard and PodKit Productions. Our associate producer is Melody Carey with music by Chris Keating and vocals by Issa Fernandez.

To all of you perfectionists, Tracy Flicks out there, I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful next couple of weeks. If you are a perfectionist, if you are the opposite of a perfectionist, however you are, whatever you are, however you identify, I am here for you, we need to be here for each other. And I just want to continue to be a stand for you to live the life that you want to live and not the life you think you're supposed to live or that the powers that be are telling you, you should live, you know, so many things that are like, that we thought were permanent anchors in our society, culture, life, you know, a lot of that stuff is up for grabs. That can be scary, and it can also be really liberating. So, you do you. You do whatever the fuck you want to do with this one and only life you've got. I'm feeling saucy today.