SELLEST OSAST
You know all that guilt you feel? For everything from not completing your to-do list to even just sitting down for five minutes to rest. Turns out it's entirely unnecessary and unhealthy — for you and those around you.
This week, board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Reid — author of Guilt Free: Reclaiming Your Life from Unreasonable Expectations and host of A Mind of Her Own — joins Meghan to break down why so many women feel so much guilt and how she has taught hundreds of her patients to let it all go.
Last episode, Cindy Gallop told us to channel our red-hot rage. This week, we're naming the other emotion women are quietly drowning in. The one that whispers you're not doing enough even when we know we're doing too much.
Dr. Reid walks us through the Guilt Equation (guilt = expectations − perceived reality), the Four Furies that generate most women's guilt, the Hypercompetence Trap that keeps high-performing women stuck doing more while everyone else does less, and the SPEAK Framework — her five-step clinical tool for interrupting the spiral in real time.
Also inside: Meghan's velociraptor-at-Christmas confession, the Pinterest-fail reframe for the holidays, the evolutionary reframe that will change how you think about ambition, and the simplest permission slip of the season.
WHAT WE COVER
- Why "I'm never doing enough" is the single most common sentence Dr. Reid hears from brilliant, high-achieving women
- How COVID exposed the clinical gap that led her to write Guilt Free — there was no literature on what she was seeing
- The "reflected appraisals" concept — why we often feel about ourselves what the important people in our childhoods felt about us
- Winnicott's "good enough mother" concept and why it's radical: your kids thrive when you let them experience disappointment
- THE GUILT EQUATION: Guilt = Our expectations of ourselves − our perceived reality
- THE FOUR FURIES — the four systemic expectations generating most women's guilt
- The ugly fifth layer: doing it all without ever showing exhaustion
- Why men's guilt often comes out as anger — the gender-split landmark moment
- The social coding problem: men who succeed with a wife at home or a nanny don't get questioned. Women are questioned either way.
- The quote that reframes the whole conversation: "You can't push back against a shadow."
- THE HYPERCOMPETENCE TRAP: "When we carry constant guilt, we do more. And others pull back and say, 'awesome, she's a superwoman.'"
- Why over-doing isn't a gift to the people around you — it's a ceiling on what they're allowed to become
- Meghan's velociraptor Christmas story and the "quality of being over quantity of doing" reframe
- Why holidays hit all four furies at once
- The 70% stat: a manager has as much impact on your mental health as your spouse
- The evolutionary reframe: "Ambition and motherhood went hand in hand because we needed high status to keep our kids alive"
- Meghan's joy trip + the "look at what you're modeling for your daughter" moment
- Age-appropriate transparency with kids about managing guilt (and her husband's wisdom: "The boys need to know you have limits")
- THE SPEAK FRAMEWORK — Dr. Reid's five-step clinical tool:
- S — Show up (I'm valuable enough)
- P — Pay attention (notice the internal voice)
- E — Examine (plug into the guilt equation)
- A — Action (cognitive restructuring, delegation, boundaries)
- K — Keep going (daily practice)
- The rough draft → neutral → positive reframe for interrupting critical self-talk
- The permission slip: "Permission to be goofy. Permission to laugh at yourself. Permission to not take yourself so seriously."
ABOUT THE GUESTDr. Jennifer Reid is a board-certified psychiatrist, author of Guilt Free: Reclaiming Your Life from Unreasonable Expectations (Penguin Life, 2026), and host of the A Mind of Her Own podcast. She holds clinical faculty appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and Cooper Hospital, and trained at Columbia and UCLA.
For over a decade in private practice — first in Philadelphia and now via telehealth from her home office — Dr. Reid has worked with brilliant, high-achieving women who kept saying the exact same thing: "I just never feel like I'm doing enough." When she couldn't find clinical literature that addressed what she was seeing, she wrote the book she wished existed. Guilt Free lays out the Four Furies, the Guilt Equation, and the SPEAK Framework — a complete clinical approach to understanding and interrupting the guilt spiral that drives so much modern women's exhaustion.
PULL QUOTES"Guilt equals our expectations of ourselves minus our perceived reality."
— Dr. Jennifer Reid, THE EQUATION
"When we carry constant guilt, we do more. And others pull back and say, 'Awesome — she's a superwoman.'"
— Dr. Jennifer Reid, on the hypercompetence trap
"You can't push back against a shadow."
— Dr. Jennifer Reid, on the invisibility of modern guilt
"I was in my office with my husband and I'm like, do you have a lot of guilt? And he's like, I think it comes out as anger for me."
— Dr. Jennifer Reid, the gender-split landmark
"Ambition and motherhood went hand in hand because we needed high status to keep our kids alive. The idea that they're competing is modern. And it's wrong."
— Dr. Jennifer Reid, the evolutionary reframe
"I might just have to sit with that guilt. I just don't want it to make the decision for me about what I'm going to do next."
— Dr. Jennifer Reid, on how to actually work the practice
CHAPTERS
- 00:00 — Cold open (Jennifer on the hypercompetence trap)
- 00:32 — Meghan's intro + the Sunday-couch-laundry confession
- 03:09 — Interview begins: Jennifer's childhood conditioning around rest
- 05:15 — Origin story — COVID, the sentence she kept hearing, writing the book she wished existed
- 07:35 — Perfectionism and the "good enough" reframe
- 09:28 — Winnicott's good-enough mother concept
- 10:52 — Threading to "It's Not You, It's the System"
- 11:28 — The Guilt Equation + the Four Furies walkthrough
- 13:52 — The gender-split landmark: men's guilt comes out as anger
- 16:55 — Gender differences in perfectionism and "having it all"
- 18:39 — "You can't push back against a shadow" — Meghan quotes back the best line
- 19:35 — The Hypercompetence Trap — the leader-guilt insight
- 22:41 — Meghan's velociraptor Christmas story
- 24:14 — Why holidays hit all four furies — and the Pinterest-fails reframe
- 27:09 — The 70% stat + letting go of the "ideal woman" story
- 28:32 — Intergenerational agency + the pretzel grandma
- ~30:30 — "Ambition and motherhood went hand in hand" — the evolutionary reframe
- 31:44 — Meghan's joy trip + "look at what you're modeling for your daughter"
- 34:23 — Age-appropriate transparency with kids about managing guilt
- 37:31 — The SPEAK Framework walkthrough
- 42:22 — The rough-draft → neutral → positive thought reframe (laundry-couch example)
- 44:36 — The Permission Slip: laugh at yourself, be goofy
- 45:52 — What's next for Jennifer (her next book on the "next era")
- 46:46 — Four Unbehaved Lessons from the episode
- End
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Dr. Jennifer Reid's work:
- Book: Guilt Free: Reclaiming Your Life from Unreasonable Expectations (Penguin Life, 2026)
- Podcast and Substack: A Mind of Her Own
Concepts + frameworks referenced:
- The Guilt Equation: Guilt = Our expectations of ourselves − our perceived reality
- The Four Furies: Constant Caretaking · Hyperaccountability · Seeking Perfection · Having It All
- The Hypercompetence Trap: when guilt-driven over-performance causes others to pull back, trapping you in doing more
- The SPEAK Framework: Show up · Pay attention · Examine · Action · Keep going
- Rough Draft → Neutral → Positive thought reframing
- Winnicott's "Good Enough Mother" — foundational child-psychology concept
- Reflected appraisals — how we see ourselves through how important others saw us
People + organizations referenced:
- Dr. Donald Winnicott — pediatrician/psychoanalyst who developed the "good enough mother" concept
- Meghan's book: This Isn't Working: How Working Women Can Overcome Stress, Guilt, and Overload to Find True Success — Chapter 1: "It's Not You, It's the System"
CONNECT WITH MEGHAN & UNBEHAVED- Book: This Isn't Working
- Website: meghanfrenchdunbar.com
- Substack: meghanfrenchdunbar.substack.com
- Instagram: @meghanfrenchdunbar
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/meghanfrenchdunbar
FULL TRANSCRIPTJennifer Reid, MD — Full Episode Unbehaved Transcript (Cleaned)
COLD OPEN
**Jennifer Reid (00:00):** When we're feeling this constant guilt, what is it pushing us to do? More, more, and more.
And when we're doing that, guess what the other people in our lives are doing? They're saying, "Awesome. I'm gonna just step back because you are crushing this."
And because we don't feel like we can show that it's hard, or that we're suffering, "she's doing great. She doesn't need any help. She is like a superwoman." How many times have you heard someone say that? "My wife's a superwoman. My mom's a superwoman."
Guilt pushes you to be hyper-competent, and other people around you to pull back and be less competent.
---
## INTRO
**Meghan (00:32):** Hello, lovely human, and welcome to Unbehaved. This is a show where we unpack the status quo BS that's making so many of us feel broken. And we talk to fascinating leaders who found success by doing everything differently. I'm your host, Meghan French Dunbar, recovering CEO and author of *This Isn't Working*, and I am so damn thrilled you are here today.
Today I get to talk to the incredible Dr. Jennifer Reid. She's a board-certified psychiatrist and author of *Guilt Free: Reclaiming Your Life from Unreasonable Expectations*. And this one felt personal for me — because a few weekends ago, my husband said he was gonna take both kids out for a bike ride. They'd be gone for maybe two hours, so I had the house alone. I made myself a cup of coffee, I sat down on the couch with my book, took a couple sips… and made it about five minutes before there was that little voice in my head that started telling me that for some reason it wasn't okay for me to just sit there and relax. I felt so guilty for just taking a little time for myself.
And this wasn't a one-time thing. This is how I felt for years and years. Just this constant feeling of guilt that plays in the background for all sorts of things. Taking a trip with my girlfriends. Getting a massage. Not responding to a stranger's email. Any of this sound familiar?
Yeah. It's not great. And a ton of us feel this way — that we're never doing enough, never good enough. And we've just kind of normalized all of this guilt.
It wasn't until I found Dr. Reid's work that I finally understood that so much of the guilt we feel is both unhealthy and unnecessary — what she calls maladaptive. Meaning: it's a faulty adaptation. It's completely unhelpful. This is something she discovered after sitting across from thousands of brilliant, high-achieving women who kept telling her how guilty they felt — but she couldn't find any resources to help these patients.
So she finally just sat down and wrote the book that she wished existed.
In this conversation, she gave me the clearest, most actionable framework for understanding and then letting go of all of this guilt that I have ever come across. I'm so grateful we had this conversation — because not only was it about letting go of guilt, she helped me realize why this isn't just bad for us, but bad for the people around us as well. It was one of those conversations that brought things to light that I feel like I'll never be able to unsee. It's so good.
Let's get into it.
---
## INTERVIEW
**Meghan (03:09):** Jennifer, your book talks a lot about the ways we are socially conditioned to experience guilt. What ways were you socially conditioned to experience guilt as you were coming of age?
**Jennifer Reid (03:23):** Ooh, I love that as a starting question. Okay. I write about something called *reflected appraisals* in the book — this idea that we consider ourselves in the ways that we were reflected back. So the important people as we were growing up, the way they saw us and treated us, that was how we start to feel about ourselves often. For better or worse, frankly.
For me, as being the youngest child of three, there was this running joke that I was really good at shirking duties. I was really good at "I have to use the bathroom when it's time for dishes," or "I have to go do this thing." My mom jokes she's the youngest of six — she used to do the same thing when she was younger. But there was this undercurrent of "it's laziness, you're avoiding, you're not willing to work hard."
And I still have guilt about that. Like you were just saying earlier about how you sat and rested for a minute on a trip — I think when I sit and rest and I'm not being productive, I'm not writing anything or planning anything or cleaning anything or preparing, that's when my guilt comes out. Because it pushes that button of "a good woman or a good person in this moment would be using this time productively." So I think that's the one in particular that I notice a lot and have been working on, because it's just everywhere.
**Meghan (04:42):** Yeah, I have that on the weekends. My husband will be like, "I'm gonna take the kids out for a bike ride," and I will have two hours home alone, and I will sit on the couch, and within five minutes I pop back up and go look to do the laundry. I need to do something. I can't just sit.
What was the moment for you where you realized that you needed to write this book because the current literature was not enough to be able to explain what you were seeing?
**Jennifer Reid (05:15):** Well, that was the big issue. During COVID I switched my private practice and psychiatry from all in-person in Philadelphia to my home office, which is where I still am — all telehealth. And I was just feeling overwhelmed. There was so much need. Obviously so many people were scared and anxious and struggling with depression and isolation. I couldn't see all of them in my individual practice — I'm one person — but I just kept having to refer people out and try to help them in any way I could without being able to bring them into my practice. Meanwhile my kids were at home trying to attend classes online and knocking on the door like, "Mom, we're bored, we want to hang out with you."
So I was feeling so much guilt. And when I'm working with patients, it helps me too — I'm like, okay, how are they figuring this out? What resonates with them? How maybe I could apply that in my own life. And I was hearing from so many women in particular this feeling of guilt. This feeling of "I just never feel like I'm doing enough." Meanwhile we're surviving this massive social experiment of COVID. "I'm never doing enough. I'm falling behind. I'm not organized enough. I'm not productive enough. I'm not learning how to make sourdough" — like all my time.
So I was like, I have to figure this out. What are some different treatment modalities, some ideas, to try to help them and myself? And I really didn't find much out there specifically addressing guilt — what it even was, this type of guilt. We talk about it in depression as one of the main symptoms of major clinical depression, but it's always been a vague question. I wasn't even sure how to ask patients. Like, "do you feel guilty?" and they'd be like, "about what?" And I'm like, "everything."
So that's really where this began. Okay, this is a complex emotion — but how can I simplify it and clarify it for myself and for the people I'm taking care of?
**Meghan (07:15):** I talk to so many women who say, "I can't do the thing because I'm not the world's top expert on the thing," or "I don't consistently do this a hundred percent of the time, so I can't advocate for it." Was that a part of your journey — looking at this issue of perfectionism and working through your own as you wrote the book?
**Jennifer Reid (07:35):** Absolutely. Over and over again it was, "okay, why am I writing this?" There are some books that talk about guilt and mention guilt, but I wasn't finding answers in them. And so I was like, "well, my book is from my voice and my decade of clinical experience and my training and my background. Of course I'm the only one who could write it this way."
But let's be honest — in the publishing business, there's a lot of pressure put on "how is this special? How is this unique? Why would people want to buy this? What are the comparative titles? How does yours compete?" So you're socialized to think that way, and think, "well, maybe it's not good enough or not different enough." And in the end I just said, "I'm just gonna write it."
And that's kind of how I feel about my next book. I want to write it because I want to research it, I want to learn about it. It's gonna change my life, and it certainly has — but also the lives of those I'm working with. And so that's worth it.
This will never be perfect, as I will never be perfect. But I think that's okay. Doing things that are really engaging and exciting — to see my name on a book is still like the coolest thing. So I just try to take those steps to do "good enough" in each of those steps.
**Meghan (08:52):** Yes — the good enough. I used to have a team member who told me one of my superpowers as her boss was just walking around and saying "it's good enough" and pushing people into the deep end of the pool. So when I was learning about the "good enough mother" and how helpful the concept of good enough can be, I was like, this isn't an unhealthy characteristic that I have — to be able to just say it's good enough.
The "good enough" concept came up a couple of times in your book — can you help us understand some of the ways you think about good enough at this point?
**Jennifer Reid (09:28):** So the good enough concept was really developed around mothers — this idea that we can't, nor do we need to be, truly perfect mothers, perfect caretakers in order for our children to thrive. And this sense of: what does it actually take?
One of the really hard parts about parenting, at least for me, is allowing your children to have moments where they don't do well, or they're hurting, or they're disappointed, or maybe they make a mistake you perhaps could have prevented for them — maybe initially, but not for the rest of their lives. Allowing them to discover things themselves a bit, to step back and not do the hovering helicopter parent or the snowplow parent moving everything out of the way. A good enough mother knows there are times when you have to just sit back and watch.
That's something that's really important for us — not to jump in right away or try to protect our kids from feeling disappointment. Because disappointment is a normal emotion. And if we're trying to prevent it, if we're working so hard to take it away, understandably our kids fear it — like, "this is supposed to be really bad, because mom is really worried about me feeling this way." Well, it's not dangerous. Disappointment is a human emotion. It doesn't last forever for any of us.
**Meghan (10:52):** Yeah.
One of the things you and I have in common is we like to describe the systemic reasons people are feeling the way they do. My first chapter of my book is literally called "It's Not You, It's the System." And then I was reading your book — the second chapter about why women experience so much guilt — and there's a lot of overlap between the things we talk about: why women are suffering in the workplace and why women experience so much guilt. And you talk about the Four Furies.
At a high level — what are these systemic causes that are making women feel so much guilt?
**Jennifer Reid (11:28):** Yeah, the Four Furies — which is so funny. I had a male interviewer ask me recently, "Why furies? Why that word?" And I'm like, "because they are really upsetting." It was an interesting dynamic.
So the idea I came up with to try to simplify guilt was just this equation: **guilt equals our expectations of ourselves minus our perceived reality.** Perceived reality, meaning the way we see that reality — which, as we know, may not be accurate. We might be downplaying all the things we're doing well. So guilt lives in the gap between what we think we should be doing and how well we think we're meeting that expectation.
But I wanted to figure out — okay, what *are* these expectations for women? Because these aren't just one-offs. It's not each of us coming up with our own individually and then punishing ourselves. There are these broad categories that really stood out from my clinical experience — from sitting across from thousands of women over the past ten or fifteen years of training and practice.
The four are:
**Constant caretaking** — that we really are expected to take care of everyone. Not just parenting. Friends. Colleagues. Parents. Et cetera.
**Hyperaccountability** — this idea that we can and should manage other people's emotional experiences. This is a key one where I see a big difference between men and women, which we can talk more about.
**Seeking perfection** — the perfectionism. The belief that I must be in perfect self-control as a woman. I must be able to control my appetites, my weight, my interests, my time, my sleep, my aging.
**Having it all** — this idea that we can have all these new opportunities we've been granted because of our foremothers really pushing, really charging, facing a lot of pushback. But the expectations on us haven't changed that much. They haven't been removed. We haven't extracted some of those tasks. They've just been added on to the new opportunities. So "having it all" really is doing it all.
And there's also this layer — this ugly layer — of: you need to do it all without showing you're exhausted, or anxious, or overwhelmed. And certainly not ask for help. So I think it's just this added burden. Those are kind of the Four Furies as I describe them.
**Meghan (13:52):** Since you mentioned it — let's go into how you've seen those be different between men and women based on gender.
**Jennifer Reid (14:01):** Yeah, that's a question I'm getting a lot — "what about with men? It seems like you're focusing these a bit more on women." And I think a lot of the ideas I write about — guilt is a universal emotion and an adaptive one actually. One of the reasons we as a species have done so well is that we have the capacity to feel empathy, experience someone else's emotions, and to feel guilt if we've done something to harm them. And what does that guilt do? It pushes us to do more, move toward them, repair, apologize. So there are good aspects of guilt. It can be adaptive.
But this maladaptive guilt seemed more common in women. As I'm thinking more about how men and women face these expectations — men have some caretaker guilt, depending on the individual. There certainly are dads who are the primary caretaker. There are sons caring for elderly parents. This isn't just a woman's issue.
But the hyperaccountability piece — I just don't notice as many men in my practice or in my life, certainly my husband, who feel like they need to manage someone else's emotions, that they need to say the right thing so they don't upset someone. And I think there's something really primal about that for women. When I'm reading about our evolution — thinking about how we would compete for prestige, compete for status, compete for safety for ourselves and our offspring as we were evolving — there were a lot of these machinations between women where you needed to be liked and accepted and part of the in-group for survival. You see it in middle school girls and how complex those dynamics are. I certainly remember being flummoxed by the whole process in my day.
That psychological warfare that can happen in groups of young women — and even, you know, at our age — is based on this sense that "I'm trying to manage how you're feeling about me. I'm trying to manage your emotional experience. If you get mad at me and I'm kicked out of the group, that really triggers something." Men evolved a little bit differently.
So that's what I'm seeing anecdotally — hyperaccountability is just not as common in men. But also guilt-wise, I think it comes out differently. In fact, I was in my office with my husband and I'm like, "do you have a lot of guilt?" And he's like, "I think it comes out as anger for me. If I've done something I know was maybe wrong, or I messed up and I'm feeling badly about it, it then comes out as anger."
And think about what emotions we culturally, socially are allowed to feel, allowed to express. For men, they have just as many limitations on what is "manly" as we do. They're just different. So I do think those are some of the differences I've been seeing and thinking about with men and women in guilt.
**Meghan (16:55):** Do you see difference in perfectionism and the "having it all" narrative as well, between men and women?
**Jennifer Reid (17:03):** Yeah, the perfectionism — the concerning thing is it's rising among men from a body image standpoint. We have to admit we're living in this GLP-one universe, and things are changing for men and women as far as what is an ideal body, what is an ideal version of health, what is an ideal career, what is an ideal amount of money one should make to be successful. Perfectionism may take a little bit of a different path for men. But I do think it is increasing over time for them as well.
The "having it all" — I think there is less of "men are just the natural caretaker and therefore should do that; if they can work in addition, great; otherwise they should just do the best job raising their kids." I don't think that dynamic is there for them. You can be a very, very successful man, seen as a very successful man, having either a wife that stays home and takes care of the kids primarily, or — if they're both working — hiring someone to help with kids, nanny, things like that. I don't think that's questioned by peers or by society in the same way it's questioned if a woman does. Who can't win, right? "Wow, she's got this big career, like her poor kids." Or, "Wow, like her kids — she's home with them all the time. I wonder if she wishes she'd done something…" The narratives around this are infuriating. Because we can't make the right choice. I think men are not living with that kind of conflict to the degree women are.
**Meghan (18:39):** One of the things you talked about — I was like, this is the best line ever — was that you can't push back against a shadow. You're helping us understand why we feel all of this guilt, which is all of this social conditioning that's put on us and all these expectations on women. And when you understand what they are, then all of a sudden it's not your fault that you feel all this way — which so many women are just walking around gaslighting themselves about all day, that they are not good enough, not doing enough.
I have a specific friend of mine who, if I were to give her your book, I know the first thing she would say is: "Well, if I don't get it done, it's not gonna get done. And that's gonna make me even more stressed out." How do you respond to that instant pushback that "it is my responsibility, and if I don't do it, no one else is going to"?
**Jennifer Reid (19:35):** I think that speaks to — when we say socialization, sometimes people are like, "that's how I was raised." Well, yes — but it is happening all day, every day today. Someone's suggesting, "I don't know why you don't feel guilty that you just took time for yourself and you didn't go volunteer at…" So this is happening every day. Those forces are upon us. Just really emphasizing that: we're not doing it to ourselves.
But in that case, I would say — when we feel guilty, as I said before, adaptive guilt moves us toward someone. It asks us to take on more. We say, "I need to apologize, I need to make up for this." So when we're feeling this constant guilt, what is it pushing us to do? More, more, and more.
And when we're doing that, guess what the other people in our lives are doing? They're saying, "Awesome. I'm gonna just step back because you are crushing this." And because we don't feel like we can show that it's hard, or that we're suffering — "she's doing great. She doesn't need any help. She is like a superwoman." How many times have you heard someone say that? "My wife's a superwoman. My mom's a superwoman." And you kind of are like, "oh my god, what was she doing with however many kids at home and you working?"
So that's the piece I would point out — yes, guilt pushes you to be hyper-competent and other people around you to pull back and be less competent. I have this conversation with my sister all the time. She's like, "if I don't do it, then maybe the kids won't have a meal because they don't eat." If you were to start to step back — what might surface there? Of course we go to catastrophic outcomes. "My kids will starve." Right? We know that's not going to happen for us in our very fortunate country.
So if I take a step back — yes, there might be some pushback. Some upheaval. Some ups and downs. Some complaining or disappointment. But what could grow from that? And I think it's also looking at what would less guilt — less being overwhelmed and hypercompetent — give you back. It's worth it. You are worth it to make this change. To say, "I'm going to do less. I know you're capable of doing more." Certainly our kids are. I think about this all the time — I'm always trying to come up with something to have them do, because it's really good for them to have those responsibilities. I could easily take care of it myself. But the more I write about this, think about this, I realize what it does to me when I do that: I just accept responsibility for it for all time.
Like, "mom, you need to keep track of every item of clothing I need on that particular day." No, I don't, actually. You will be okay if you don't have the right shirt for Spirit Day.
So I think those are some of the ways I would push back. Emphasize that it's worth it for her to have less guilt — because it gives her more of the other things she really wants. And part of that is in her relationships. In her dynamic with kids or partner or family. Because she's not so resentful and exhausted and frustrated all the time.
**Meghan (22:41):** You and I have another area of overlap. I quite literally had an entire story in my book about a holiday where I was trying to do everything. I was hanging the stockings and making the cookies — and my husband walked into the room as I'm hanging the stockings. I'll never forget — I'm like nailing them to the wall — and he said something to the effect of, "do you have to use nails that are gonna make a hole, instead of using something less permanent?" And I looked at him — I had nails stuck between my teeth — and I looked at him like a velociraptor. I was ready to explode. I ended up having to walk out into the freezing cold night. I live in Colorado — I was in a t-shirt — just walked around the block to cool off.
And it was in that moment I had this realization: this isn't what the holidays are about. The most important thing I can do right now is control the *quality of my being* instead of the *quantity of my doing*. And this became this revelatory thing — in leadership at work, the way you show up is way more important than how many things you get done.
You specifically talk about this at the holidays — looking at, instead of "what do I have left on my to-do list," pulling it back a bit and being, "what do I need to do to support myself to show up as my best self?" How does that look for you in practice? I'm curious — because we are great at telling other people to do this, but have you been able to build this into your own holiday schedule?
**Jennifer Reid (24:14):** Yeah — that's the thing about holidays, and I would say other big family events, weddings, new baby, graduations — it almost hits all four of these expectations. We need to take care of everyone involved, make sure everyone's having a really good time. It needs to go perfectly, because then people won't be disappointed, they'll be impressed, they'll be happy. And we have to be able to do it all kind of ourselves and maybe delegate some, but only if we really know they're gonna do as good a job as we want them to. (We can talk about delegation for a bit as well later.)
For me, I was feeling that especially around Christmas and buying all the gifts and thinking I needed to Pinterest a bunch of recipes. It's one of my favorite things to see — Pinterest fails — because it's so validating. I've had some really epic ones. And I think it was about: okay, what's the feeling I'm trying to reach in this moment? Why do I enjoy that holiday? Why do I enjoy Christmas, for example? Well, it's because maybe we're a little more settled, the kids aren't quite as busy right around that time, we're having a little more family. There are some traditions, some traditional tastes or smells or sounds that we do every year. What is it I want to feel? I want to feel connected. I want to feel loving. I want to feel a little relaxed. And how do I work backward from that goal to make choices that could actually get me there?
And I think what women will immediately say is, "well, that's so selfish. Why am I worrying about what I'm gonna feel?" Well — I think women, for better or worse, are this sort of central hub, like the center of a wheel. We are the central hub of the family, and our emotional experiences and output set the tone a lot of times for that family. So yes, we are doing it for our own feelings — in my case, connection and love and support — but we're also doing it because that's then what we create. What we bring into the room. As opposed to a really frantic, frustrated, angry energy, it's a more grounded one.
Yeah, there are gonna be ups and downs. There'll be moments. But that's that broad sense of: it's not about that perfect gift. I can't control what other people's experiences are. But how can I show up and have the best chance of really living these moments that my kids will remember? Because you can't determine what anyone attending your party is gonna remember. You could have all these elaborate details Pinterested-up to perfection, and they're gonna remember this video of me falling off a gift box. And like that was the image of the holiday — just me toppling off the box.
So letting go of some of that control and saying, "it's gonna be what it's gonna be, and we're gonna find connection no matter what." If it rains on my wedding day, or if there are different challenges throughout our lives, even in those wonderful moments — we're gonna get through them and be stronger potentially at the end.
**Meghan (27:09):** There's a statistic that constantly blows my mind — that 70% of people say their manager or leader has as much or more of an impact on their mental health as their spouse does. So when you look at the way you show up — the quote-unquote "weak ties," the relationships we have with our coworkers, matter just as much to our mental health as our strong ties, the ones we have with friends and family. Even if you aren't in a management role, how you show up every day matters in the workplace. And this concept of supporting my *quality of being* as a way to feel better in my own skin — but also to be a better person for the people around me.
You talked about how lowering our sense of guilt doesn't lead to all the things we're worried about. Like, "if I don't feel guilty about this, I'm not going to be seen as this ideal woman." And you talked about: you're not going to be the ideal woman. You're going to be your whole self. And I was like, "yes, that's the thing" — letting go of the story of the ideal woman and stepping into the whole self for the first time.
The long and winding question is: I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience with that, and if you feel as though you've been able to step in and be the whole self version of Jennifer up to this point.
**Jennifer Reid (28:32):** Yeah — that's a lovely question.
I think one of the hard pieces of us as humans but as women is we are in this world of culture that other animals don't deal with. So we have this idea of culture, and over time what is expected and what is ideal changes dramatically, sometimes so quickly. Like an example: however many years ago, it was considered risqué if a woman showed her ankle. And if you were the only woman on the block that showed your ankle once in a while, people would be like, "girl, what are you doing?"
I think it's recognizing — when we look back at some of those what almost seem like silly cultural ideals back then, in Victorian times, what was ideal — it was like staying alive long enough to marry wealthy and have kids that survived. So these things have changed so much. We're living in this world where it's all these different pressures coming together. So it feels like if I start to be more of myself — if I start to do things without saying "but I feel so guilty for that"… Or if women start being successful, someone compliments them and we say, "thank you, I worked really hard" — not "thank you, but that means I haven't been working out enough, or I haven't been with my kids."
If we can really take compliments, if we can be confident in ourselves, proud of what we've put into it — that doesn't mean we're dismissing all the others who have helped and supported us along the way. That's really important too. But allowing ourselves to be proud of our efforts and proud of who we are — that has a ripple effect.
I think a lot about the intergenerational trauma that can happen, that can be passed down from family member to family member. But I think the opposite also is so important — this intergenerational agency and confidence and healing.
I had the feistiest grandmother. She'd get so mad if the pretzels she got were broken when they arrived. She'd send them a letter and say, "these pretzels are all broken, I am so…" — she didn't say "pissed off," but she was. And then they sent her another bag of pretzels, and she says, "what do I want with these damn pretzels? They're broken too."
So I think there's this intergenerational passage of women saying "no, I'm not going to allow these ideals" — whether it's being stick-thin, whether it's being totally accommodating to everyone in my life, whether it's not being too ambitious. Biologically, we developed to be very ambitious. **Ambition and motherhood went hand in hand, because we needed to have high status to keep our kids alive.** The idea that ambition and motherhood are two separate things or competing is modern. It's wrong.
So being part of that change — maybe you're at the front of that change, in that movement, and it feels like you're alone, but you're not. You're just really spread out. And as more of us join that line, I think we come together and we're able to push forward and push back on guilt that tells us individually we're doing something wrong, and lets us look out into the world and say, "no, no, no — that's the systemic issue, as you said. That's what's really creating this problem. And let's be part of the change as much as we can."
**Meghan (31:44):** This is so important that you're presencing all this and talking about this — because once we start to see it, all of a sudden we can be more intentional about how we show up.
Before we started recording, I was telling you about this new practice I have — my joy trip. For the last four years, I have taken a trip one week by myself to just go do whatever I want. I do have young kids, I have a husband, I have a career — I have all the things. The first time I took it, it felt so miserably uncomfortable to me to just do something because I wanted to do it, and go do something by myself, and just experience what it felt like — for really the first time ever — to meet my own needs and my own desires for a full week.
When you talked about stepping into your whole self, and you said this feeling of "not only will you feel less guilt, but you're gonna feel more energized and more connected and more confident" — this most recent trip I took, a week long in the UK, I felt like it was the first time I ever felt what it felt like to be stepping into my whole self. I had two days where I was actually doing a little leadership retreat with a bunch of people I'd never met before. And their experience of meeting me was fascinating. Multiple humans saying something to the effect of "you have inspired me to experience joy." Or one of the men who was 54 said, "you've given me permission to feel like it's okay to have fun as an adult." And I was like, *what?*
I had this story that if I was to let go of my guilt and just go be my whole self for a full week, that one — it was selfish — and I would be judged. And what I've experienced is that it is not selfish — because when I return, my cup is full. I'm energized, I'm excited, I'm a much more present mom. And I'm not necessarily being judged by other people. I'm actually modeling to other people what this could look like, and it's inspiring them to show up in a different way.
One of the coolest parts about this was I got home and one of my best friends was like, "look at what you're modeling for your daughter." And I was like, yes — that part right there. I'm showing my daughter that a quote-unquote "good mother" isn't someone who self-sacrifices, deprioritizes her joy, is constantly resentful because she's taking care of everybody else and so tired she doesn't even have a… I'm showing her that when you prioritize yourself, you show up, and you can be super healthy and happy and your whole self. And that is what I want for you.
So the question being: as parents, how do we stop these stories, especially for our daughters?
**Jennifer Reid (34:23):** Well, I think there can be transparency. Age-appropriate, as your kids get older — about you trying to manage some of these things, and actually having guilty thoughts, for example. People will say to me, "do you have any guilty thoughts anymore?" Like, all day. But I know how to manage them now. I can plug in this equation. I can think about where these expectations are coming from.
I might just have to sit with that guilt. **I just don't want it to make the decision for me about what I'm going to do next.** I might still feel it. I might feel guilty. I have a week coming up where my husband and one son are doing camping, and my other son is going on a school trip, and I have a week — "week of joy." I like this. I might have to call it that. Where I have to decide for myself. And there's a part of me that's just like, this is so exciting.
I think it's really important to model that freedom and to model ambition and to model managing guilt and doing things even though it might be hard. It's having those conversations and maybe saying, "there's a part of me that's having this kind of thought as I'm making this plan — and this is how I'm trying to cope with it." Our kids, especially teenagers, have these huge feelings and they're not really sure what to do with them. And I think if we can show them, "we have these feelings and we survive — they're just part of life," again, it takes that fear away. It takes the mystery away. It's not something so forbidden. You can feel really lost sometimes. You can feel lonely sometimes.
My son says, "I feel lonely today." I'm like, "that's really hard. But I don't have to fix it, because it isn't going to last forever. And he might come up with something to fix it." So it's modeling, having communication where we're allowed to be human in front of our kids.
And my husband, to his credit, will say that to me. He'll say, "the boys need to know that you have limits — and that you're gonna get really mad sometimes when they push past them." Because I really want to maintain patience. I don't want to be yelling at them. He's like, "they need to know they can cross the line and you're gonna get really angry. That's healthy." I'm like, "you're right. You know, he's not a psychiatrist. He's just got these great ideas. I'm like, fine."
That's really important. And not just for our kids — I mean, we're talking about this as a parent — but for our colleagues at work. Modeling what it's like to respect ourselves enough to ask for what we're worth. And then if we don't receive that, making tough choices. Saying, "I am valuable enough to ask for what I want and what I deserve." We can model this in all of these ways and really support women — because that's naturally how we do work. "I'm part of this. I want to rise with this group of people. I want to mentor. I want to raise everybody." The rising water raises all ships. As we're helping ourselves, we're helping them, and we're showing them that path. I find that really motivating and empowering, even on those tougher days where I'm doubting, "will this ever really change?"
**Meghan (37:31):** Yeah. Speaking of solutions — you have this concept of SPEAK. And everyone just needs to go get the damn book, *Guilt Free*, because it's so good. But high level — what is SPEAK, and where do most people get stuck?
**Jennifer Reid (37:49):** Well, SPEAK is just my shorthand for what the process of maybe psychotherapy is like, working with somebody. I wanted to describe it in really simple ways that people could apply at home. Because that's the goal — even when I'm working with someone in therapy, eventually we're going to finish together. I want them to have the tools they carry with them everywhere.
**S is for *Show up.*** That's what I was saying earlier — to be able to say to yourself, "I'm valuable enough. My life is important enough. To show up for myself to make these changes. Put time and effort into making these changes." That can be a big hang-up. It's seen as selfish, self-indulgent. "I'm turning away from someone else. How would I do that?" So the idea that showing up — I put that in there because it's a really tough point for a lot of women who've been taught to care for others.
**P is for *Pay attention.*** That really is just noticing. Like I said, I have guilty thoughts a lot. Anxious thoughts. Worried thoughts. They just come into my mind. It's starting to pay attention to what they're saying. What is my internal voice saying to me? Some people don't even notice it. Our attention is so in demand right now, and there's so many people and tech wanting our attention, that it can be very hard to turn inward and just pay attention to what we're thinking or feeling.
**E is for *Examine* those** — what are those thoughts that come up? How can I plug in that guilt equation and think about what are the expectations at play here? Do I feel guilty more commonly right when I get home from work? Right after I get off the phone with my parent? Right after I look at social media and compare my body to someone else's? What are the times and places where guilt is so common?
**A is for *Action.*** I really wanted some actionable changes. One is within — changing ourselves, changing our way of thinking. The distorted thoughts we talk about in cognitive behavioral therapy, like "I always get this wrong," or "I should be perfect," or "I never seem to do this the right way." Really critical voice. Or "you're such a lazy POS." These are kinds of thoughts that come to mind. How do we start to shift those to more neutral or more positive thoughts? That's really the work of CBT. But I incorporate some self-compassion, which is such a powerful and motivating force — even more motivating than guilt. Thank goodness.
And then also — yes, we're changing ourselves, but we're changing how we relate to others too. That interpersonal dynamic is really important. There's room — and that's where the allowing disappointment we've talked about already is so important. Learning how to delegate without being overly sensitive to the emotional response we get. You know what I'm saying? Where I ask my kid to help me with something, he's like, "mom, that is the worst. I don't want to do that." And then I say, "fine, I'll just do it myself." I very rarely do the "fine, I'll do it myself." I just say, "yeah, I know it's tough, but I think you can do it. Thank you so much." Because good talk — it's just kind of ignoring the emotional tone of their response. If they say, "yeah, I guess" — great, done.
So learning to delegate, and then also boundaries are so important. I hear this a lot in caretakers — caring for ill family members, aging family members — who never feel like they're doing enough. They just feel guilty because they can't go back in time. They can't fix them, they can't take away their illness or their decline. So it's just this constant feeling of guilt. We talk about what are boundaries? The structure, the scaffolding that allows you to safely interact with other people. It's not a barrier between you and them — it's literally the scaffolding that we meet on, and we know it's safe, and we can talk here because these things are met, these rules or ideas are met. So that's really important — to learn how to set reasonable boundaries, because you need to take care of yourself in addition to being a caretaker.
And then the **K is probably most important — just *Keep going.*** This is a daily practice. You're having to make this switch, to do this work. It's not going to happen overnight. But you see that growth. You see the dividends as they start to come in when you're investing in making these kinds of changes. I've seen it in hundreds of thousands of women probably — just making these changes, brightening up. You can see that light sort of coming back. And they feel like, "this is my life. I just have one. This is it." And they start to really live it.
**Meghan (42:22):** So you also talk about this concept of the rough draft of your idea and then the final draft — and changing the way you're thinking about it. The real-world example I mentioned at the top: it'll be a weekend, my husband takes the kids out to go do something, I sit down for five minutes, and it's like my butt turns on fire and I pop off the couch and I'm looking around like, "okay, I should do the laundry, I should do some food prep, I should, I should, I should, I should…"
In that example — where's the rough draft to final draft?
**Jennifer Reid (42:55):** Yeah — I would say an example of a rough draft there, the first thought that came into your mind, which is what you've sort of been trained to do and has been adaptive in a number of ways — being highly productive, as you clearly are, is adaptive. It's just when it never relents, when there is no time for anything else. So that critical thought might be: *I should never need downtime, or I shouldn't need to take a minute for myself, even when I'm alone.*
And so think — what would be a more neutral thought? Sometimes it can just be commenting on what you're thinking. Like, *"I'm having the thought again that I must be productive 24/7."* That's pretty neutral. It's not that you're not actually thinking it — you're telling yourself, you're noticing it, and you're saying, "okay, that's what my guilty brain is telling me." Which is not the same as your decision-making brain. That's what's so interesting about consciousness — we can notice our anxious thoughts, notice our guilty thoughts. But who's noticing? Our brains are so interesting. So that would be a neutral thought.
And a positive thought would be: *"I'm noticing this pressure to be productive. And so now I can make a different choice."* And what I think would be lovely is — whatever it might be. Sitting and staring at my bird feeders. Sitting on my porch. Taking a walk. Maybe it is productive in a way that I actually really enjoy. The positive thought is like: *"This is a great opportunity for me to break one of these rules that I set years ago that I don't wanna follow anymore."*
That's how I would describe that more positive, final… and you know, if you've written a book, you know how many edits there are. But maybe this would be your second or third try.
**Meghan (44:36):** Love it. All right — if you could give people a permission slip to unbehave in any certain way, what would be the key permission slip you would give them?
**Jennifer Reid (44:47):** You know, my mother has this amazing ability to truly laugh at herself. She doesn't seem to take herself that seriously. I mean, she copes with guilt — we've certainly talked it through. But I think the idea that we could allow ourselves to just be free to be goofy, or ridiculous, or a little embarrassing — the ability to laugh at yourself, to get into a situation where you're just cracking yourself up.
I think giving yourself permission to be your own best audience and laugh and have fun. It's a very specific one, but I just think there's so much power in that. There's something so wonderful about it when she's just cracking herself up with some silly thing she did. And I find myself doing the same thing with my own kids. They tease me about things, but I welcome it and I laugh. The other day they were like, "you don't have to cook, mommy — you make soup, I guess, but otherwise it's okay if you don't cook." And I was like — I love it. Yes. A hundred percent.
So giving yourself some permission to not take yourself so seriously.
**Meghan (45:52):** I love that. All right. So we've got your book, *Guilt Free*. We've got Substack — *A Mind of Her Own* — and your podcast under the same name. And you're working on another book.
**Jennifer Reid (46:06):** So I wanna try to find a way to describe the stage we go through that's not exclusively menopause or perimenopause — because that's a biological change, and actually a fairly adaptive one if we go through the history of menopause — but that's a part of it. I really want to think about what are some very positive, aspirational paths women can take as they're moving into this next part of their life, this new era, if you're a Swifty.
**Meghan (46:34):** I love it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I cannot recommend your work and this book enough. So thank you for your work and thank you for showing up here.
**Jennifer Reid (46:42):** My goodness. Thank you. Thank you, Meghan, for having me — and such great questions.
---
## UNBEHAVED LESSONS
**Meghan (46:46):** All right, my friend, before we wrap up, here are the key Unbehaved Lessons of the day for this one.
**Lesson Number One: The guilt you're feeling probably isn't healthy or necessary.**
One of the most important things to remember about guilt is that there's actually a healthy version of it. If you've genuinely harmed someone and need to repair, that's adaptive guilt. That's why we feel it. It's useful. It's doing its job.
But most of the guilt that so many women feel is maladaptive — and it's conditioned. Jennifer boiled it down to a single equation: **guilt equals our expectations of ourselves minus our perceived reality.** The gap between what we think we should be doing and how well we think we're doing it — that's where the guilt lives. And most of us are measuring ourselves against unrealistic societal expectations that have been placed upon us.
Jennifer calls these expectations the **Four Furies.**
Number one: **constant caretaking** — the belief that we need to take care of everyone and everything around us.
Number two: **hyperaccountability** — the belief that we're responsible for everyone else's emotions.
Number three: **perfectionism** — the belief that we need to be flawless in control of our bodies, our time, our aging, our everything.
Number four: **having it all** — which, as Jennifer so beautifully reframed, really just means *doing it all*. Because while working opportunities have expanded, the expectations on women outside of work were never reduced.
So next time you feel your guilt rising, pause and ask yourself: *is this one of the Four Furies?* I am imagining nine times out of ten, you're gonna find that it is. That's your cue to remember: it's not you, it's the system. You don't need to feel guilty.
**Lesson Number Two: Being overcompetent is harming you and others.**
Jennifer told us that when we constantly carry guilt, we do more. And often when you do more, the people around you learn to do less. They just say, "wow, she's a superwoman," and they step back and let you keep doing it. And then this gets you trapped — because now you're not just doing everything. You're the only one who knows how to do everything.
Jennifer explained that when you stop doing everything, you're not failing those around you. You're actually making room for them to step up and learn how to do things as well — both for others and for themselves. It might not happen on your timeline or look exactly how you'd like it to, but it will never happen if you don't give it the space to.
**Lesson Number Three: Releasing guilt can help break the cycle.**
We talk a lot about intergenerational trauma — the stuff that gets passed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter. But Jennifer flipped this script, talking about intergenerational healing and intergenerational agency.
Every time you choose joy without apologizing for it — or take the trip, or ask for help without guilt — you're not just doing this for you. You're modeling to every woman and girl in your orbit that they can do the same.
So the next time guilt tries to talk you out of something that would fill you up, remember who's watching, and what it is that you actually want them to see.
**Lesson Number Four: Feel the guilt, but don't let it sit in the driver's seat.**
After a lifetime of conditioning, you're not just gonna wake up tomorrow and never feel guilty again. It's not realistic. And frankly, pretending otherwise is just another thing to feel guilty about.
The goal isn't to make it disappear. The goal is to not let it drive the car. As Jennifer put it: *"I might have to sit with that guilt. I just don't want it to make the decision for me about what I'm going to do next."*
So feel it, notice it, name which fury it belongs to — and then move forward without letting the guilt make the decision for you.
That's the whole game.
---
## OUTRO
**Meghan:** That's it for today, my friends. I imagine there's probably a lot of women in your life who struggle with guilt. If this episode resonated, passing it along to them will go a long way.
As always, I am so incredibly grateful you spent the time with me today.
Until next time.
---
*End of transcript.*
*Full transcripts are included for accessibility and SEO. People searching for "guilt free," "Jennifer Reid psychiatrist," "women's guilt framework," "the four furies," "SPEAK framework," "hypercompetence trap," or "guilt equation" can find this episode here.*
TRANSKRIBEERI 🔗
---
## COLD OPEN
**Jennifer Reid (00:00):** When we're feeling this constant guilt, what is it pushing us to do? More, more, and more.
And when we're doing that, guess what the other people in our lives are doing? They're saying, "Awesome. I'm gonna just step back because you are crushing this."
And because we don't feel like we can show that it's hard, or that we're suffering, "she's doing great. She doesn't need any help. She is l…
