441-How the Good Girl Syndrome Shapes Women’s Relationship with Food and Body

How can I recognize Good Girl Syndrome in my health coaching clients?

You can recognize Good Girl Syndrome in your health coaching clients by noticing patterns like perfectionism, people-pleasing, fear of conflict, black-and-white thinking around food, and a persistent desire to lose weight—even after understanding diet culture. These clients often struggle with body image and self-worth because they’ve been socialized to seek approval and follow rules to feel “good enough.” This internal conflict shows up as chronic dieting, emotional exhaustion, and resistance to fully embracing intuitive eating. Supporting clients with these patterns requires belief-level coaching and tools to build inner safety and self-validation.

441-How the Good Girl Syndrome Shapes Women’s Relationship with Food and Body

[00:00:00] Stephanie: Welcome back to It’s Beyond The Food Show. I’m your host, Stephanie Dodier, and today we’re gonna talk about the Good Girl trauma. But before we get started, if you’re watching us on YouTube, you’re probably noticing a different background. And if you’re listening to me on the podcast, maybe this sound is a little bit different, and I wanna tell you why, because if you’re following me on Instagram, you know the deets.

[00:00:28] Stephanie: I am back on the road as a digital nomad and I’m recording this new series of podcasts from Costa Rica. So what you’re seeing in the background is the space that I occupy within a. Co-living, you should Google that co-living facility that nurture and cater to people like me who are professional and run a location free business.

[00:00:56] Stephanie: And we all stay together within this [00:01:00] amazing community. It’s kind of a big villa where. We do our work, we run our businesses, and we get to live together in Costa Rica. So that’s my room you’re seeing on YouTube. And I’m using actually my stage mic to record the podcast episode. So that’s why the sound may be a little bit different.

[00:01:22] Stephanie: I invite you to follow me. On Instagram specifically in my story because that’s where I share my behind the scene and much more intimate content, and you would know all the deets. Also, if you are on my crew, on my story, today is Monday, October 27th. I’m recording literally a couple of hours before the podcast is being uploaded onto the feed, and I still have a knee.

[00:01:53] Stephanie: Injury. So I posted yesterday on Sunday that I went into a walk on the beach and I came [00:02:00] back with a very intense pain in my last knee. So I stayed up my feet the whole day on Sunday, hence why I didn’t record, because I couldn’t stay seated in a 90 degree angle with my knee. And I’m still experiencing pain, but it’s not as bad.

[00:02:18] Stephanie: So that’s the update for my Instagram story crew. Now let’s talk about the good girl trauma. I’m gonna ask you this question, which I think I know the answer, but let’s ask it. Have you ever had a client who knows that diets don’t work, who understand diet culture? But they still can’t stop thinking about losing weight.

[00:02:45] Stephanie: If you’ve had one of those, and I’ve had hundreds, I wanna say almost a thousand clients, they all had this. Repetitive thoughts in their brain when they started [00:03:00] to work with me. So if you’ve had them, this is the podcast for you, and we’re gonna go deep into the psychology of why this is happening, and that’s where the term good girl trauma.

[00:03:17] Stephanie: Comes from. So I’m gonna unpack a lot of coaching principle, a lot of psychological principle in this podcast episode. So it’s more of a, very I don’t wanna say intense, but a very, strongly based teaching episode. You may want to take a pen and a paper and take some notes, and if you wanna dig even deeper.

[00:03:41] Stephanie: Into the psychology as to why people are I wanna say the word addicted, but that’s not the right term. But they’re like constantly hooking back into diet culture. If you’re listening to me live, I’m hosting a free class [00:04:00] on Thursday, October. The 30th and I’m pulling up my calendar to give you the time and EST time.

[00:04:09] Stephanie: So it’s at 1130 on Thursday, October the 30th. And actually it’s from my Instagram crew who I was sharing, I was building week one of the curriculum for the body image coaching incubator. And, I was sharing a piece of research that I’m gonna be teaching about in the curriculum, which, said that they had found that the feminist identity had a protective effect for women against diet culture.

[00:04:43] Stephanie: And I was unpacking them with that and my DM blew up, like literally my DM blew up with dozens of messages from professional wanting to understand the mechanism. So that class actually came from there. So if you are. [00:05:00] Intrigued from this episode and you want to dig more, go in the show note of this episode.

[00:05:04] Stephanie: I know it’s very last minute, but that’s how I roll. And put your name and your email and we’ll send you the link to join us on Thursday, October 30th. So let’s talk about the good girl. Syndrome, which I call the good girl trauma. So it’s a psychological pattern of symptoms. It’s a collection of symptom specifically centered around one gendered.

[00:05:33] Stephanie: So women, people that have been raised and socialized. As women often experience what is called as the Good girl syndrome,

[00:05:48] Stephanie: And that’s the first teaching moment I wanna do here, or I’ll call them pit stop as we go along, is I wanna explain the concept of socialization. Socialization is a [00:06:00] psychological process that literally write the code in your brain. So I want you to think as a child is born and their brain is pretty much a blank canvas.

[00:06:13] Stephanie: And that’s why as adult, we need a long period of parenting for our children is because we need to upload in the brain of our children information so they can survive our society. And that’s what’s called the process of socialization, where the brain, the person acquires in part the culture, the subculture, the value of their group so that they can survive in their environment.

[00:06:45] Stephanie: So socialization happen everywhere for every single human, but the information uploaded in the brain is. Based on their identity may be different. So in the case of the Good Girl syndrome is the command the [00:07:00] coding uploaded in the brain. The socialization is very specific in Western society for boys versus girls.

[00:07:10] Stephanie: So it’s gender specific. It’s also could be race specific, could be religious specific. Political specific. There’s very different narrative that is being programmed in our brain based on who we are, who our parents are, and where we live. So today we’re gonna focus on the socialization that is specific for women.

[00:07:32] Stephanie: Now this is where the intersection with, system of power comes in. Being a woman in a Western society, a patriarchal society means that we. Socialize our girl to be what we call good girl, to be polite, to be submissive, to be modest to be behaving according to the rules, [00:08:00] to be rule followers.

[00:08:02] Stephanie: So very early on we teach girls that their. Place in the world, their value into the world, their worth into the world depend how other perceives them. Not how they feel about themselves, that doesn’t matter, but how other people perceive them. Hence the rule follower, to be polite, to be modest, to be quiet, to be helpful, to be submissive, and your ability to follow these rules is what makes you worthy because you’re then compliant to the role you are supposed to play based on your culture, which is for us as a patriarchal society.

[00:08:44] Stephanie: Now you probably noticed that I titled this episode The Good Girl Trauma because what happens is when we are not able. For all the reason in the world to comply to what [00:09:00] society tells us we need to do. There is psychological and social wound created by these expectation that we’re not able to meet. And in fact, I’ll dare to say, it’s almost the goal of these.

[00:09:16] Stephanie: Expectation on us is that we would never be able to meet them. So we’re constantly putting out all of our resources, our energy, our brain power, our physical power, our time, our money, trying to achieve the impossible standard of being the good girl. Even in our thirties and our forties and our fifties, and I’ve coached women as.

[00:09:42] Stephanie: Believe me, as old as 72 years old, realizing in their seventies that they’ve been the victim of that good girl expectation and diet culture and their awakening in their seventies. And I’ve had clients who’ve told me that their mother. And [00:10:00] that their existence on this planet, their life, still trying to lose weight at 80 plus years old.

[00:10:07] Stephanie: Because losing weight and our, and how our body shows up is an intrinsic part of being a good girl. And that’s the intersection between the good girl and how culture tells us we need to show up into the world. So diet culture. Is and I’ll deep dive into that on Thursday, but th culture was. Thought of created, imagined by patriarchal men in position of power and patriarchy as the new way of controlling women’s body.

[00:10:43] Stephanie: So in Century, before there was other ways, and I’ll go through the history of how women were controlled through their body, but in mainly the 19th and 20th century, women are being controlled through their body by. Telling Patriarchal [00:11:00] standard tells us how our body should look like, and it varies, and it had a great variation over the last century.

[00:11:06] Stephanie: Again, I’ll deep dive into that, onto Thursday and it’s impossible standard that we never reach and it leaves us with trauma wound. So what are a common sign of having experienced the good girl syndrome in a traumatic, Way that leaves you perfectionism, the belief that a mistake equals failure, dependence on the approval of others.

[00:11:35] Stephanie: So if people don’t approve of you, of what you do, of what you say, of what you think or how your body look, you feel unworthy. If you don’t receive this approval, this recognition, fear of conflict, right? Disagreement, feel very unsafe, or not doing what you’re supposed to be doing feels very unsafe, so that [00:12:00] you are willing to put at risk your own wellbeing in order to.

[00:12:05] Stephanie: Do what you’re being told to do. Difficulty of saying no. And that’s another great example of that. Boundaries. Very difficult with boundaries. Very traumatic experience with boundaries, I would say. excessive self demand. One of the thing that’s common to all the women that I’ve worked with in general population and even in professional is this inner self criticism constant and for professional, what I see is that it, people come to me typically as professional understanding of diet culture, the understanding of how toxic their education was, and they’re coming to me after this awakening.

[00:12:48] Stephanie: And then what I see happen a lot is that self-criticism from the good girl syndrome evolve to their business. So they leave it in the [00:13:00] context of their body and then it evolves to the narrative shifting to them. Achieving in their business. So if that’s, you know, that, that’s a trauma from the good girl syndrome.

[00:13:12] Stephanie: And overall just exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, physical exhaustion is very common.

[00:13:20] Stephanie: So let’s talk about how that shows up in our, particular niche of health coaching, nutrition, coaching therapy, specifically around women. It comes into that state where women are very smart, functional, people like they’re very smart. They have job. They understand how the world function. They even understand diet culture.

[00:13:48] Stephanie: They understand the thin ideal. They understand all of that. But for what they’ll tell you is unknown reason. I can’t let go of the idea [00:14:00] of not trying to shrink my body or when they get older of the idea of not trying to look younger. So the intersection with food. Particularly is that the medium that diet culture will teach women to achieve the thin ideals so that they can comply.

[00:14:21] Stephanie: And that’s a big word. Compliance

[00:14:24] Stephanie: The. Thin ideal. The ability to meet the beauty standard because we were socialized to that deeply. I have this image when I teach of a little. Girl, she’s probably five or six years old. She’s in a pink ballet dancer suit, and she’s holding this Barbie doll with blonde hair and the Barbie body.

[00:14:47] Stephanie: And she’s looking at it and she has tears rolling down her eyes because. She wants to look so badly like Barbie doll. That’s how socialization happened, It’s not just what people say to us. It’s what we [00:15:00] see constantly and what we’re being sold in the case of children to their toys. The tin ideal becomes the goalpost of being good, of being able to be the good compliant girl who follows the rules and who is worthy of people’s acceptance and love and pride to fuel this inner self worth.

[00:15:24] Stephanie: So, diet culture in a way will mirror. The values that were being taught as women, as achieving the good girls, control, self denial, discipline, morality, wanting that desire for approval. Diet culture tells you, you will get it if you achieve this. And in a way, our social system

[00:15:52] Stephanie: activate that when we comment on people’s body, when the first thing that comes out of the mouth of people [00:16:00] is, my God, you look good today. And think about that for a minute. Have you ever seen a man say that to another man when they meet each other? Hey, how you doing? Oh, you look so good today. Did you lose some weight?

[00:16:16] Stephanie: You never hear men say that to each other because men will not comment on that because that’s not a goalpost for them. Looking good and losing weight is not men. It’s about the amount of money they make. My colleagues who work with men will tell you they have the same pattern of socialization.

[00:16:37] Stephanie: They’re just different goalposts. It’s about being. Powerful, being bulky and making money. The patriarchal standard also exists for men. They’re just very different. In a way, society will reflect the narrative and confirm the narrative to people, to us women. And I wanna go beyond social system around us.

[00:16:58] Stephanie: I want you to think [00:17:00] about power system or even wellness culture, there’s a quote that many of my colleague will post on social media where it says that the the food eating behavior that we’re teaching people within Wellness Circle is the same eating pattern that they will diagnose as an eating disorder.

[00:17:25] Stephanie: And that anxiety that women feel around food. The constant rumination in thinking about food is normalized by our structure. So the anxiety, the depression, the low self-esteem is normalized because when women are in that state of deep anxiety and depression and low self-esteem, we are not in a position of power.

[00:17:52] Stephanie: We’re not in power within ourselves and we are certainly not trying to claim power [00:18:00] within society structure. So effectively patriarchy, the system set by patriarchy is working ’cause we’re not. Asking for power. We are not demanding power. We are not claiming our power because we’re so busy trying to achieve the thin ideal and being anxious and depressed.

[00:18:21] Stephanie: Because we can’t control our food. So it’s working. So to answer the question about our client that are strong, educated, highly functional women, understanding cultures yet still stuck in that space of, I understand, but I still want to shrink my body. What you’re seeing is not

[00:18:50] Stephanie: a lack of education, it’s trauma playing. It’s a need for safety. And they’re [00:19:00] fighting for feeling safe. And safety is one of the most primal feeling that we are seeking through our entire human experience, we want to feel safe. So if women are born and socialize within these values and. They can’t achieve them

[00:19:25] Stephanie: if they’re being put in a place where their wellbeing. Is putting them at risk of not being compliant, of being seen as a less worthy than other human being. That’s when the safety gets triggered. So when you hear your clients say. I don’t know. I understand all of that, but I just wanna lose weight. What you are, what you’re seeing coming out of their mouth of their being is a deep sense of feeling unsafe.

[00:19:58] Stephanie: And often that’s when clients will [00:20:00] come to us when that tug of war that’s happening within them. They’re wanting to comply, but their authentic self, their self that’s intelligent and smart, and know that what they’re doing to themself in order to achieve that is not good.

[00:20:17] Stephanie: It’s not for their wellbeing. And they’re like, often I give the imagery that they’re sitting over a fence. They’re literally sitting on the fence, a leg on both side, and they’re like. For one month on one side and the other month on the other side, and they’re stuck. And that deep sense of unsafety that being stuck is what makes them reach to you

[00:20:41] Stephanie: early in my practice, when I started to study cognitive behavior coaching. So we wanna dial back, I don’t know, six years and, and you probably would be able to find this episode on the feed of the podcast. I didn’t know about the Good girl syndrome because I wasn’t that deep [00:21:00] in my studying of cognitive behavior coaching and particularly from the lands of feminism, gender study. But I had observe. What I used to call Diet Brain, and I’m gonna bring that up in a few episode. Probably in the next couple weeks I’m gonna bring back that concept. I used to call it diet brain because at that point had probably had seen over four to 500 women general population.

[00:21:30] Stephanie: At that time. I hadn’t started teaching yet to professional and I kept seeing these. For pattern all the time, black and white thinking like it was. Almost every one of my client people pleasing perfectionism and what I used to call body filtering, where I remember opening sessions with client and say, so how you doing?

[00:21:55] Stephanie: And then it was either I’m doing great or I’m doing bad. And [00:22:00] when they’re saying like, I’m not doing well, I would say, so what happened? Oh my God, Stephanie, I stepped on the scale. Oh my God, Stephanie, I tried to put on my pants and they don’t fit anymore. Oh my God. Somebody made a comment that I’ve gained weight, so their state of being either I’m feeling good or I’m feeling bad, was filtered through their body image.

[00:22:20] Stephanie: So I used to call that body filtering. So I had noticed. These four core expression patterns, and I called it the diet brain. Little did I know, probably a year later when I started studying coaching through the lens of gender. I’m like, oh my God, that’s the good girl syndrome, right? The syndrome is a collection of symptoms being presented.

[00:22:47] Stephanie: I’m like, oh my God. That’s the good girl syndrome that I keep. Seeing and then I intersected with diet culture. I’m like, oh, oh my God. Like good girl Syndrome not only show true, [00:23:00] like perfect house, but it shows through the perfect body and the perfect beauty. So what does that mean for us as. A health professional, a coach, first of all, the, what does that mean?

[00:23:13] Stephanie: Understanding what I just taught you, understanding that as someone who helps people and their relationship with our culture. Coaching, just at the food and the body image level. For example, just telling people food freedom, right? Eat all the food and, there’s no good or bad food. It’s gonna work, but it’s gonna work short term.

[00:23:42] Stephanie: Why? Because at the thought level the good girl syndrome, the good girl trauma would still keep playing. Oh my God. Like you gotta be a good girl. Oh my God. The rules is to look this way, but you don’t look this way. Oh my God, you’re gonna [00:24:00] stop being thin. You’re gonna gain weight. Oh my god. People are gonna comment because you’re eating pizza.

[00:24:05] Stephanie: All that narrative in their brain will continue to play and then they’ll end up at this place saying, understand Coach Di culture. And I understand I can eat all the food, but I can’t stop obsessing about wanting to lose weight. So coaching directly just at the food behavior or the body image behavior, the health behavior is insufficient.

[00:24:32] Stephanie: It’s just insufficient because we need to dial much deeper at the socialization level for our client to understand. A, why are they having this obsessive thought pattern? Why are they feeling not good enough? I could do a whole episode on that, Why are they feeling not good enough? Why? Even though they know it’s not good for their health, they still want.[00:25:00]

[00:25:00] Stephanie: Why are they experiencing this constant duality and they’re responding with perfectionism and black and white thinking and this constant like infinite circle of struggles happening. We need to dial back to helping them understand socialization, helping them understand why they’re seeking to be compliant, even though they know it’s not good for them.

[00:25:23] Stephanie: We need to coach at the thoughts and the belief level. That’s what it means. And that’s what it means. That’s why your client keeps saying, I know it’s not good for me, but I can’t stop obsessing about it, is because the narrative of the good girl is playing in the background while you at the front tell them, let go of the food rule

[00:25:46] Stephanie: eat all that you want to eat right. Love your body. Like all this Instagram nutrition, anti diet culture, pop [00:26:00] stuff on the internet is happening. That is of no use long term because that narrative of the good girl keeps laying in the background. Coaching at the thought and the belief level and helping them trace back that narrative very often, all the way down to their youth, how their family interplayed with that, how their social system interplayed with that, and why they understand why they’re seeking to diet even though it’s not good for them.

[00:26:31] Stephanie: I’ll give you a little bit more here, a little bit more. Solution. So number one, coaching at the thought and the belief level. Number two, self-compassion. Like self-compassion is the antidote to perfectionism, their desire to be perfect, and that is not, trust me, it is not a teaching that we indoctrinate to our little girls growing up.

[00:26:57] Stephanie: Contrary to that, we [00:27:00] teach this very. Non-compassionate approach, their own behavior, right? We encourage our little girl to be ashamed, to be ashamed of what they’re doing when they’re not compliant. Like, how many times have you been told, go back in your memory box, be a good girl, right? Either your parents, your teacher, would constantly, when you were trying to express yourself, when you were trying to perhaps later on, express a point of view that is different than them.

[00:27:26] Stephanie: The reply was always back, be a good girl. And hope to ate some shame within you. So learning, teaching, and embracing self-compassion is the solution for our client’s desire for perfectionism, teaching our client how to create their own safety instead of seeking it from other, right? Most of us, I know I didn’t, I sure did not know how to create my own safety.

[00:27:55] Stephanie: So teaching our client how to create safety, self-compassion is one of the element [00:28:00] of safety, but teaching our client to be able to feel safe independently of the world’s opinion of them. By the way, that is the centric element to feeling empowered If you want to coach your client to feel empowered, the element that must be underneath that is the ability to create your own safety, because it is.

[00:28:27] Stephanie: I guaranteed that as a woman being an empowered woman who do what she wants to do in our society, there will be a ton of backlash, and if that backlash coming onto them feels unsafe. Because they can’t nurture their own self as safety. They will Crip long term. And that’s what happened. When we only teach people about intuitive eating at the food behavior level, they will go out there, try to do it, they’ll gain [00:29:00] weight, people will comment on their body and poof, they’ll be right back to ground zero because that comment on their body feels really unsafe.

[00:29:08] Stephanie: So the ability to create your own safety. And the ability to validate yourself. ’cause remember, one of the cornerstone of the good girl syndrome is seeking outside validation. That’s the only way we can ensure that women are submissive and not a threat to patriarchy is when they don’t know and don’t believe they can validate themselves.

[00:29:36] Stephanie: So as long as a woman is constantly seeking validation, she will for sure not challenge. The power structure. So when we are teaching positive reinforcement, not you positively reinforcing your client, but we are teaching our client to positively reinforce themselves to build their inner authority, [00:30:00] then they’re no longer dependent on society and the social structure around them, validating them.

[00:30:08] Stephanie: So these are just some of the subset of. The coaching that needs to happen in order for your client to truly embrace an anti-D diet culture, a intuitive eating slash normal eater status, a body neutral person, these psychological skill must be integrated in. Your coaching. So if you wanna explore this further, that’s what I teach.

[00:30:39] Stephanie: Like people often ask me, what is the difference? Like why, what is the difference between learning about intuitive eating and the non diet coaching certification? It’s pretty much this is being able to coach and teach psychological skillset to your client so that. The [00:31:00] socialization to diet culture, the good girl syndrome can be teared apart within them, and then rebuilt safety skills, psychological skills in order for them to be able to face diet, culture, wellness, culture, and make their own wellbeing choices.

[00:31:20] Stephanie: So the non diet coaching certification is the place for you and or twice a year I run the body image coaching incubator. It’s a mentorship for six weeks where we start learning these skills and integrating them within your coaching practice. And then the next step up is the non diet coaching certification.

[00:31:42] Stephanie: If you are listening to this live the second. Incubator. Usually I run the body image incubator twice a year. The second one for this year is happening starting October 30th, so you’re welcome to join us. I would love to hear from you if you [00:32:00] are coming over to Instagram after you’ve listened to this podcast episode.

[00:32:05] Stephanie: Would love to hear from you and your thoughts on the Good Girl trauma and how it impacts your client and your practice or even yourself. I love you, my sister, and I’ll see you on the next podcast episode.

[00:32:22] wanna coach behaviors, not bodies. Learn the mindset tool and the method that create real changes.

[00:32:29] Join the wait list for the next cohort of the non diet coaching certification at stephaniedodier.com/waitlist. That’s where the real training begins, and I’ll see you on the other side, my sisters.