When you think of networking, do you feel discomfort or even dread?

Most of us learned that “networking” is fundamentally transactional, asking for and doling out favors in order to further our aims. Maybe you or someone you know is the type to be constantly trying to connect people to prove their own worth, or counting themselves out because they feel like they have nothing to offer. That’s the kind of networking that makes us go, “Ugh, I’d rather stay home.”

But networking can be about building real, powerful connections. And we need relationships, networks, and communities more than ever. 

And you don’t have to be a dedicated extrovert. You can cultivate a way of building connections and community that works for your nervous system and your lifestyle. The goal is discernment–knowing when to give, when to receive, and trusting that you have something worth bringing.

As my guest today shares, if we want to redefine networking, it starts with checking our biases and our burdens about what and who networking is and who it’s for. 

Monique Kelley is a trusted, purpose-driven professor at Boston University, a consultant and published author who serves in a fractional capacity for Fortune 50 and global biopharmaceutical companies seeking a strategic corporate, product or executive communications head who advances business objectives and alleviates their headaches. Professor Kelley wrote the book (literally) on effective networking, Redefining Networking: How to Lead with Your Unique Value. She is also a Boston Founding Member of women C-suite and executive community CHIEF.

Monique has built a strong network that she taps into for her consulting, referrals for her former coworkers and opportunities for her students and industry peers. At BU, she teaches the first and only Career Readiness course within the College of Communication. She teaches students and professionals alike her approach to effective networking and has facilitated “lead with your value” workshops for corporations and professional organizations, including Johnson & Johnson's Global Commercial Strategy Organization and Ticket to Biotech.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How to reach out without making it transactional
• Why networking should start with people you already know, not strangers
• Simple steps for connecting and communicating your unique value
• Why you have to take the time to build equity and trust before making an ask
• Why reciprocity and long-term relationships are the real goals of networking
• How thinking about what you can contribute in return can take the pressure off asking for help

Learn more about Monique Kelley:

• Redefining Networking
• Connect on LinkedIn
• Redefining Networking; How to Lead with Your Unique Value

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• My journey to find friends helped me find community instead | Shannon Watts
• Dorie Clark
• Adam Grant
• The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn from Bad Bosses, Mita Mallick
• EP 139: Bad Bosses Aren’t Born, They’re Made: Breaking Toxic Leadership Cycles with Mita Mallick
• The Roots
• John Candy: I Like Me

Story is our brain’s first language.

And our minds fill in a story’s blanks long before the facts catch up.

Before we consciously interpret an event, our nervous system has already scanned for threat and sent that information to our brains, which in turn builds a narrative about what it means. We’re constantly interpreting events, and not always accurately. 

Research has shown that negative information carries more psychological weight than positive information. That bias isn’t a flaw–it’s survival wiring. 

But what protects us biologically can distort us relationally.

Unexamined stories shape our leadership. They shape how we interpret feedback. They shape how we respond to conflict. They shape culture. They shape trust.

Which is why reclaiming “storyteller” as a skill set matters.

Good storytelling connects to our capacity for joy, along with our ability to connect to what is truly authentic for us, which plays a role in the stories we tell ourselves and others. 

Today’s guest digs into how to become a better storyteller—with yourself and with others—why joy is a skill that helps regulate our state and expand capacity, and how connecting to our authenticity is essential to telling good stories. 

Shabnam Mogharabi is an entertainment executive, producer, and New York Times bestselling author with 20 years of experience in mission-driven media. She is currently the founder of The Joy Brigade, a boutique production company, and also serves as Executive Director at Soul Boom, which creates media to ignite a spiritual revolution. Prior to that, Shabnam was an EVP at film company Participant and also co-founded the uplifting content studio SoulPancake with actor Rainn Wilson, which she ran as CEO for nearly a decade, amassing one billion video views. She has a certificate in positive psychology and believes joy is transformational.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why joy is not about bypassing, but actually helps us navigate and weather our hardest days
• The difference between experiencing the emotion of happiness and cultivating the tools and practices of joy
• Three tools Shabnam returns to over and over in her own life to reset her perspective
• Why we have to play the long game with joy practices through consistency and time
• Key elements that make for an impactful story, and why you don’t need to be an artist or writer to hone your storytelling skills
• How Shabnam built and sustains the trust at the foundation of her 17-year creative partnership with Rainn Wilson

Learn more about Shabnam Mogharabi:

• Website
• The Joy Brigade
• Soul Boom
• Connect on LinkedIn

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Soul Boom Workbook: Spiritual Tools for Modern Living
• The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
• Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl
• The Goonies
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• When Harry Met Sally
• Spaceballs

Most of us know about the “fight, flight, freeze” responses to trauma. But there is another concept that has been steadily gaining awareness over the last several years, in large part due to pop psychology on social media: Fawning.

You might have heard it described as akin to extreme people-pleasing, over-accommodating, over-functioning, and fundamentally a problem in the person doing the fawning. But as my guest today illuminates for us, it’s not a personal failing, or even always a conscious choice. 

It is human nature to prioritize safety and connection, and fawning is a means of keeping ourselves safe. But when fawning runs the show, self-leadership diminishes and quietly drifts toward conflict-avoiding, blurred boundaries, and self-abandonment.

Waking up to your fawning response takes courage. You will meet resistance from some as you shift the dynamics of your relationships. But it also unlocks deeper intimacy, more honest connection, and the joy that comes from trusting yourself and letting others meet the real you.

This conversation invites you to consider where and with whom you fawn, and how you might want to respond in the future. Fawning has a real purpose when safety is on the line, but the more we are aware of it, the more we can be intentional about how we show up in our relationships.

Ingrid Clayton is a licensed clinical psychologist with a master’s degree in transpersonal psychology and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. In her private practice in Los Angeles she supports individuals in healing trauma, reclaiming agency, and reconnecting to their authentic selves.

She is a regular contributor to Psychology Today, and her work has been featured in Oprah Daily, The New York Times, Women’s Health, Forbes, 10% Happier with Dan Harris, Girls Gotta Eat, and NPR’s On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti. Ingrid’s latest book, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves and How to Find Our Way Back, explores the often-overlooked fawn response to trauma.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why fawning shows up as an unconscious response to ongoing relational trauma
• How understanding fawning helped Ingrid understand and heal from her own complex trauma
• How our culture demands and reinforces fawning for women and marginalized people
• The often very real bind of choosing safety over self and the feedback loop it creates
• Accessible practices to build a sense of internal safety and self-trust
• How chronic fawning and self-abandonment contribute to burnout

Learn more about Ingrid Clayton, PhD:

• Website
• Instagram: @ingridclaytonphd
• Facebook: @ingridclaytonphd
• YouTube: @ingridclaytonphd
• Unfawning on Substack
• Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves–and How to Find Our Way Back
• Believing Me: Healing from Narcissistic Abuse and Complex Trauma

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• What Is the Fawning Trauma Response? | Psychology Today
• Peter Levine
• The Greatest Showman Cast - This Is Me
• The Traitors

There is a well-known cognitive phenomenon that we are all susceptible to, and even more so when we’re stressed. And we’re all at least a little stressed and overwhelmed right now.

The illusory truth effect catches us when we repeatedly hear statements and begin to assume they are true through repetition and familiarity. Things feel true, even if they couldn’t be further from it. Research has shown that sheer repetition can even override facts when we know better.

Naming–systems, feelings, what we’re witnessing, what’s missing, what’s wrong–is a powerful antidote to the illusory truth effect. Naming forces us to slow down. It interrupts the repetition. We can’t meaningfully talk about integrity, values, courage, or innovation if we refuse to look directly at what is.

My guest today reminds us that we can’t disrupt what we can’t name. And we can’t heal what stays vague.

Soraya Chemaly is an award-winning author and activist. As a cultural critic, she writes and speaks frequently about gender norms, social justice, free speech, sexualized violence, politics, and technology. The former Executive Director of The Representation Project and Director and co-founder of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project, she has long been committed to expanding women’s civic and political participation.

Her most recent book, All We Want is Everything: How We Dismantle Male Supremacy, has been called “a potent rallying cry for a beleaguered feminist movement.”  In it, she challenges dearly held beliefs about gender and equality today, drawing clear lines between the dynamics of intimate inequality and global anti-feminist, anti-democratic backlash and machofascism.

Content warning: Discussion of details of the video footage leading up to Renee Good’s murder, less-detailed discussion of sexual and gender-based violence and harassment

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why we need to name systems clearly and specifically in order to challenge them
• How male supremacy encompasses concepts of sexism, misogyny, and patriarchy and frames them as part of a larger hierarchical system
• How we’re witnessing DARVO play out at scale in our government and media, as well as in personal interactions
• How deepfakes use the pervasive threat of sexual violence against women to dehumanize and enforce subjugation
• How women play roles in passing on and enforcing male supremacy
• How “the boy crisis” reinforces norms of masculinity at the expense of girls and women
• Why big tent politics that asks everyone but cis, straight men to give up fundamental rights cannot be a yardstick of success

Learn more about Soraya Chemaly:

• Website
• Instagram: @sorayachemaly
• All We Want is Everything: How We Dismantle Male Supremacy
• Subscribe to Unmanned

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Dechêne, A., Stahl, C., Hansen, J., & Wänke, M.. The Truth About the Truth: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Truth Effect. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 238-257
• Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G. (2018). Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(12), 1865–1880
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
• Fazio, L. K., Brashier, N. M., Payne, B. K., & Marsh, E. J. (2015). Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(5), 993–1002.
• EP 96: Rage to Action: The Leading Power of Women’s Anger with Soraya Chemaly
• EP 117: Rethinking Resilience: Moving from Bouncing Back to Relational Resilience with Soraya Chemaly
• Jennifer Joy Freyd, PhD.
• What is DARVO ? | Jennifer Joy Freyd, PhD.
• 11. Boy Crisis Asides and the Invisible People and Power Living in Them | Unmanned
• Afterlives, Abdulrazak Gurnah
• Radiohead - Creep
• I'd Love to Change the World - Ten Years After
• Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
• Blondie

The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, Rebecca Solnit

If it feels like you’ve lived a year inside of a month right now, you’re not alone. The cycle of our times is relentless and demands more of our attention and emotional capacity than we were ever meant to carry.

This disorientation makes us more prone to disengagement, burnout, cynicism, and the lure of certainty. We also risk what social psychologists call moral narrowing, where our moral attention and empathy constrict to a smaller set of people or issues—often those we identify with directly—while excluding or devaluing others outside that circle. We can become more rigid, less able to tolerate complexity, and more likely to simplify moral dilemmas into “us versus them.” 

Even the most caring people are susceptible to moral narrowing when they’re constantly overwhelmed. But we can build skills that help us move through grief, tolerate uncertainty, and stay engaged without losing ourselves.

We need to train for these times, not just intellectually, but relationally and somatically. We need to be able to stay in the room long enough to build lasting connections and coalitions.

My guest today models what it looks like to think and lead with the long game in mind while also tending to present-day relationships and her own well-being. She reminds us that despair is not a strategy and that steady, relational, local action is how we keep the future from being decided by the loudest and most reckless forces in the room.

A’shanti F. Gholar is the President & CEO of Emerge, the nation’s largest network of women elected officials and candidates. A’shanti co-founded Emerge Nevada in 2006, was named Emerge’s national policy director in 2016, and became the first Black woman to lead Emerge in February 2020. Under A’shanti’s leadership, Emerge has experienced unprecedented growth and success. With affiliates in over two dozen states, more than 1,200 alums in office, and over 6,500 Democratic women trained to run for office and win, Emerge has become a force to be reckoned with in the political landscape. 

She is also the founder of The Brown Girls Guide to Politics and its award-winning podcast, which The Guardian recognized as a “practical guide to progressive activism.” 

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How A’shanti learned early on the power of getting involved at the local level
• How Emerge helps women recognize the value of their skills and lived experiences in holding political positions
• How centering the “why” helps Emerge candidates get elected, fight through the hard days, and get re-elected at high rates
• Why servant leadership is at the core of how Emerge trains candidates to lead
• How every day micro engagements in your community add up to make a difference and keep hope alive for the long haul
• Why representation, visibility, and mentorship are vital to changing the narrative of who can run for and hold office

Learn more about A’shanti Gholar:

• Emerge
• The Brown Girls Guide to Politics Podcast
• Instagram: @ashantigholar

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age, Shannon Watts
• Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President, E. Jean Carroll 
• Stone Temple Pilots - Interstate Love Song
• Stranger Things

Our nervous systems form the foundation of how we move through the world. It is the filter for our thoughts, behaviors, and interpretations.

And when our nervous systems are dysregulated, it impacts how we show up for ourselves, our loved ones, and those we lead.

Emotional regulation isn’t as simple as a human equivalent of turning your computer off and on again. But it is an essential practice to learn to notice dysregulation, and develop skills and practices to bring us back when we’ve spiraled or disconnected.

As we head into another year of challenges and uncertainty, personally and societally, I’m coming back to my conversation on Polyvagal Theory with Deb Dana from earlier this year, which also happens to be the most downloaded episode of 2025. When the stakes are high, it only makes sense that so many of us are looking for ways to cope. Polyvagal practice offers a compassionate map to ourselves, and helps us build the adaptability, curiosity, compassion, and connection that are most needed in leadership right now.

Deb Dana, LCSW, is a clinician, consultant, author, and international lecturer on polyvagal theory-informed work with trauma survivors and is the leading translator of this scientific work to the public and mental health professionals. She's a founding member of the Polyvagal Institute and creator of the signature Rhythm of Regulation® clinical training series.

Deb's work shows us how understanding polyvagal theory applies across the board to relationships, mental health, and trauma. She delves into the intricacies of how we can all use and understand the organizing principles of polyvagal theory to change the ways we navigate our daily lives.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How regulation practices help us build the capacity to return to ourselves when we’ve been challenged
• How subconscious survival responses hijack our ability to problem solve and narrow our options
• How tiny moments of noticing can add up to big changes in your capacity to find regulation
• Why we need skills for coming back to regulation in order to engage with discomfort and struggle in our lives and in the world
• How leaders can create connected, collaborative environments for themselves and those they lead

Learn more about Deb Dana:

• Rhythm of Regulation

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Stephen Porges
• The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah
• Blue: The History of a Color, Michel Pastoureau
• Céline Dion, Andrea Bocelli - The Prayer
• Halloween Baking Championship
• Holiday Baking Championship
• The Great British Baking Show

How do we stay awake and aware without constantly being outraged? Or, perhaps even worse, normalizing what should be utterly unacceptable?

Staying human is hard in this environment. So many leaders are trying to hold onto their boundaries and values against pressure to act contrary to them, to stay compassionate and curious when so many forces benefit from and encourage our outrage.

Anger, rage, and outrage are powerful and can be useful emotions. But when we live from a perpetual state of outrage, we lose access to the self-leadership and adaptive skills that help us lead well, and eventually it takes us out.

Today’s guest is here to help us understand what outrage really is, why it’s so potent right now, how it becomes weaponized, and how we can use it without losing ourselves.

Kurt Gray is a social psychologist who studies our moral minds and how best to bridge political divides. Gray received his PhD from Harvard University, and now directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab at The Ohio State University. He also leads the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, which explores new ways to reduce polarization, and is a Field Builder in the New Pluralists, which seeks to build a more pluralistic America.

Gray’s work on morality, politics, religion, creativity, and AI has been widely discussed in the media, including the New York Times, the Economist, Scientific American, Wired, and Hidden Brain. He is the co-author of the book The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels and Why it Matters, and the author of Outraged: Why We Fight about Morality and Politics. 

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Kurt’s childhood experiences with his stepmother’s conservative, evangelical family have informed his thinking about how we can connect despite differences
• How our human wiring for threat detection causes “harm creep,” even while many of us are safer than ever
• How our outrage is connected to our perceptions of our risk and vulnerability
• How our moral imagination helps us maintain our empathy and humanity without losing sight of our values and boundaries
• Why we need to learn to recognize destruction narratives and how they’re being used to sow division
• Why leading with facts and statistics fails in moral and political arguments and how we can more effectively begin to bridge the gaps
• Why we need to leave room for uncertainty and humility in our convictions

Learn more about Kurt Gray, PhD:

• Website
• Connect on LinkedIn
• Moral Understanding Newsletter
• Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground
• The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why it Matters

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, Brené Brown
• Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger, Soraya Chemaly
• EP 96: Rage to Action: The Leading Power of Women’s Anger with Soraya Chemaly
• Brené Brown on the State of Leadership in America Today | On with Kara Swisher
• EP 52: Charlie Gilkey: Leading With What Matters Most
• Daryl Davis
• Saja Boys - "Your Idol"
• Stranger Things 
• Bad Thoughts
• Ordinary People Change the World Series, Brad Meltzer and Christopher Eliopoulos

Every day, we’re flooded with information–headlines, opinions, advice, noise. And beneath that deluge of input, we carry stories that tell us how we stay safe and what asking questions will cost us.

Certainty too often feels like safety. So we rush to respond before we understand and defend before we discern. We don’t pause to reflect or to question the loudest voices in the room–proverbial or otherwise.

But certainty at the expense of discernment can damage our connections to each other and to ourselves. 

Leadership that builds connection and trust for the long term requires us to cultivate the courage to ask questions and follow the answers, even when it’s uncomfortable. When we catch an old story running the show and stay curious instead of certain, we can metabolize what’s driving reactivity and protection. 

It’s how we stay open, grounded, and self-led in a world that rewards reactivity.

My guest in this conversation refers to this practice as faithful skepticism: asking hard questions without abandoning hope. When I read his moving essay, “Groomed by the Church: How The Clash Saved My Soul,” I knew I had to invite him here to discuss the importance of refining our discernment and cultivating skepticism as a vital tool for effective leadership. And how music serves as a powerful trailhead–both as a cultural lightning rod and as a catalyst for self-discovery. 

David Adey is a multimedia artist based in San Diego, CA. His work has been exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Orange County Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Frist Center for The Visual Arts, Oceanside Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and venues nationally and internationally. His work has been featured in publications including Art in America, LA Weekly, The Huffington Post, Wired Magazine, Thisiscolossal, and PBS. He received his MFA in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Adey is a professor of art and design at Point Loma Nazarene University.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How an outing to see a Black Sabbath cover band inspired David’s essay
• How the parallels of the Satanic Panic of his youth and our current cultural moment took the essay from journal entry to published work
• Why David believes in the power of being offensive with a purpose
• How the church’s narrow focus on spiritual dangers came at a cost to real life safety
• How David’s teenaged experiences inform how he now leads his students and parents his children
• The impact of his mother’s support when he both wanted to reject his musical loves and then reconnect with them
• Why faithful skepticism is a powerful antidote for certainty and cynicism

Learn more about David Adey:

• Website
• Instagram: @davidadey.studio

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Groomed By the Church: How The Clash Saved My Soul | The Rumpus
• Satanic panic
• Jeff Koons
• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt
• North Country, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
• Loot
• Star Wars
• Richard Rohr
• Thich Nhat Hanh

Leaders carry the weight of more than their current roles.

We receive messages from the generations before us about our worth, work, and belonging that shape how we show up–for better or worse. This is just as true in our working lives as it is in our families.

If we want to change the narratives, we have to become aware of the legacy burdens–personal, familial, cultural, systemic–that have been passed down to us and choose to transform those burdens into opportunities for healing, growth, and leadership that alters the course of our teams and organizations for the better.

When we can name what we’ve absorbed–what doesn’t belong to our personal story but to those who came before us–we create space for healing and release. And from that place, we can hold onto our hope, lead with integrity, and stay grounded in what truly matters.

My guest today is a dear colleague and friend who is here to talk with me about the impact of generational messaging on our leadership, and how we can begin to dismantle these narratives for ourselves and in our organizations.

Crystal R. Jones is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Lead IFS-I Trainer who passionately spreads the healing essence of the IFS model worldwide. Known for her embodied compassion, relatability, and heart-led approach to her work, Crystal has personally experienced the transformative power of the IFS model in her own healing journey. This profound experience fuels Crystal’s dedication to creating safe spaces for marginalized communities, particularly Black women and women of color, to feel connected, seen, heard, and valued as they embark on their healing journeys individually and collectively. Crystal is fervently committed to teaching the model in a way that illuminates and speaks to BIPOC communities, ensuring its adaptability, accessibility, and relevance to diverse populations.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How legacy burdens are passed through families and cultures as messages of survival
• How Crystal reckons with cultural burdens by choosing to show up imperfectly and with vulnerability
• Self-reflection questions to help you identify and consider legacy burdens
• How belonging and shame show up when working with legacy burdens
• How Crystal is shifting workplace narratives for her teams and in her trainings

Learn more about Crystal Jones:

• Life Source Counseling Center

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• EP 139: Bad Bosses Aren’t Born, They’re Made: Breaking Toxic Leadership Cycles with Mita Mallick
• EP 102: Toxic Leadership: The True Cost of Workplace Trauma with Mita Mallick
• Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human, Cole Arthur Riley 
• Alex Isley
• Orange Is the New Black

What does it mean to be good?

It’s a little word that carries a lot of weight for many of us. Be a good girl. Be a good friend. Be a good leader. Do good.

Good can sound like praise, but become a cage of expectations and shoulds, a performance that chips away at our authenticity. Good is no longer something we are, but is how others see us. It leads us to people please and keep the peace at all costs. And that’s especially true for women.

All too often, when women are in leadership, their goodness is measured by how they make others feel–good, comfortable, understood. All of that matters. But when the measure of leadership becomes how comfortable other people feel around us, we lose something essential.

We perform and manage emotions instead of building trust and respect. We seek to be liked and to fit in at the cost of real integrity and effectiveness. And likability is oh-so fleeting.

Respect, integrity, and true belonging take time and discomfort to build, but they last.

My guest today has written beautifully and bravely about the cost of being good, the truth of belonging, and the courage it takes to lead ourselves and others through discomfort.

Elise Loehnen is the New York Times bestselling author of On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good and the host of the podcast, Pulling the Thread, where she interviews cultural luminaries about the big questions of today, including people like Joy Harjo, John and Julie Gottman, Dr. Gabor Maté, and Esther Perel. In addition to On Our Best Behavior, she is the author of a corresponding workbook—Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness—with coach Courtney Smith (July 2025), and the co-author of True & False Magic, with legendary psychiatrist Phil Stutz. Elise lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Rob, and their sons, Max and Sam.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Elise traced the cultural roots of the “good woman” back to early Christianity and the many additions, erasures, and mistranslations of Biblical stories
• Why we need to pay attention to our envy and how it shows up in relation to other women
• How envy, pride, and greed fuel each other and the ways we stay small and tear other women down
• How social media has heightened the risk of reputational damage and changed how women work and lead, for better and worse
• Why we latch onto ideas of goodness and purity more deeply in times of greater uncertainty
• How current narratives about the “natural” order are ahistorical manipulations that limit what we believe is possible

Learn more about Elise Loehnen:

• Website
• Pulling the Thread on Substack
• Instagram: @eliseloehnen
• On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good
• Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness: A Process for Reclaiming Your Full Self
• True and False Magic: A Tools Workbook

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, Brené Brown
• EP 123: Befriending Your Nervous System: Building Capacity for Regulation with Deb Dana
• The Intrinsic Order that Emerges from Within Chaos (Elinor Dickson, PhD)
• Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness, Elinor Dickson and Marion Woodman 
• EP 88: Right-Use-of-Power: Navigating Leadership Dynamics with Dr. Cedar Barstow
• EP 125: Power, Regulation, and Leadership: Connecting to Your Personal Power with Dr. Amanda Aguilera
• The Reprioritization of Relationship (Lori Gottlieb)
• Maybe You Should Talk To Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed, Lori Gottlieb
• Lessons from Hollywood’s Most Powerful Woman—And How They Can Help You (with Donna Langley) | Aspire with Emma Grede
• Answer to Job, Carl Jung
• Aion: Researches Into the Phenomenology of the Self, Carl Jung
• The Science of Magic: How the Mind Weaves the Fabric of Reality, Dean Radin PhD
• Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
• Sigur Rós - YouTube
• Jónsi - YouTube
• Love Island
• The Gilded Age
• Maiden
• Stutz