Read time: 4 minutes
🎧 Listened in audio
📢 Narrated by Meg Josephson
⏱ Duration: 7 hours
🏷️ Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio & Gallery Books
Book Blurb:
You already know fight, flight, and freeze. But what about fawn? Psychotherapist Meg Josephson introduces the fourth, and most overlooked, trauma response: fawning, also known as people-pleasing. In Are You Mad at Me?, she unpacks why so many of us over-apologize, over-explain, and twist ourselves into pretzels to avoid conflict, all in service of keeping others comfortable. Through her own story, compelling client case studies, and actionable exercises, Josephson shows readers how to stop performing likability and start living from a place of authenticity, one boundary at a time.
Let’s talk about the book:
This book didn’t just speak to me. It saw me. Meg Josephson doesn’t just name fawning. She traces it all the way back. The child who learned that being easy, agreeable, and small was the price of safety. To the girl who was taught to hug Uncle Richard whether she wanted to or not, the version of you who stopped knowing what she liked, what she wanted, what felt like her, because she’d been adapting for so long she forgot there was a her to come back to. Listening to Meg Josephson narrate her own words felt like hearing a wiser, softer version of myself whispering truths I’d forgotten I knew. Her compassion never slips into cliche. Instead, she offers quiet revelations about what it means to find safety within yourself instead of searching for validations from those who may never give it. That’s a gut punch with compassion wrapped around it, and Josephson delivers it so gently, you almost don’t feel it landing until you’re already crying.
What also hit hard was the section on healing, specifically, what healing actually means Moving forward while still holding the loss. And for women especially, this book goes somewhere a lot of other such books doesn’t. It names the conditioning directly. The good girl. The cool girl. The caretaker. The one who was taught to want less, need less, be less. And then wondered why she felt so depleted and so far from herself. There’s something deeply radical about how Josephson reframes self-care, not as bubble baths or affirmations, but as an act of rebellion in a world that profits from out self doubt.
Each chapter felt like slowly building trust with my inner child again, reminding her that she’s not too much, not broken, and that it’s safe to take up space. And by the end, you’re left with a sense that you are not in trouble, you are not secretly a bad person, and healing at your own pace is exactly the pace you’re supposed to be at.
Would I recommend it?
This book moved me in a way few nonfiction titles ever have. It’s for anyone who has spent years apologizing for their own existence or hustling for love that never felt secure. This book doesn’t just explain people-pleasing. It honours the journey back to yourself. It’s warm, it’s precise, it’s deeply humane, and it gave language to things I didn’t know I needed named. If you’ve ever shrunk yourself to fit a room, carried guilt that was never yours, or wondered why you’re still people-pleasing even when you know better, this is your book!
Book recommendations:
- Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Tawwab — If Are You Mad at Me? cracked the door open on why you people-please, this one teaches you how to actually close it with a boundary. Practical, warm, essential.
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson — For fawners who traced their patterns back to childhood in Josephson’s book and want to go even deeper into understanding the “why” at the root.
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - The Disease to Please by Harriet B. Braiker — An oldie but a classic. If the fawning concept resonated and you want a more psychology-forward deep dive into chronic approval-seeking, this delivers.
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Burnout by Emily & Amelia Nagoski — A perfect companion read for people-pleasers who’ve also run themselves into the ground. Different lens, same exhausted reader — this one tackles the stress cycle and how to actually complete it.
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy - I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy — Hear me out. If you want to see fawning and people-pleasing laid bare in memoir form, raw and unflinching, McCurdy’s story is one of the most visceral portrayals of what Josephson’s concepts look like lived out in real life.
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
Are You a Fawner Too?
Do you catch yourself saying “sorry” for no reason or overanalyzing texts? Let’s talk about it in the comments. What part of people-pleasing are you ready to unlearn?
Book Links:
Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org
Reading tracker: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
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