Podcast Episode 332: Confessions of a Recovering People Pleaser Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

JoAnn Crohn (00:01.553)

Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. am your host JoAnn Crohn joined here by the lovely Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker (00:08.385)

Why, Hello, hello everybody, how are you?

JoAnn Crohn (00:10.707)

We get to talk all about people pleasing today, which is great because I feel like I am in breathe this recovering people pleasing mode where like I am starting to do all the things to not try to upset people, but to try to like really make sure my needs are met. And there’s some backlash. And so I feel like this, this is a great conversation to have today because I’m currently feeling all the pain of being not a people pleaser.

Brie Tucker (00:38.381)

pain. feel your pain. think that it is very well seen when you have teens. like to they like to bring the my favorite my favorite flavor of the week this week of guilt for my teenager is do you not love me? Come on. And I’m like, stop I can say no and I still love you but the puppy dog eyes and the whiny voice gets me every time.

JoAnn Crohn (00:44.271)

Yes!

JoAnn Crohn (00:53.907)

They bring it all. They bring it all.

Well, our guest today is Amy Wilson. Amy is the author of the memoir When Did I Get Like This and her latest book Happy to Help. Since 2016 she has been the co host of the Webby honored podcast “What Fresh Hell” laughing in the face of motherhood. Amy is also an actor who appeared on Broadway and as a series regular on TV sitcoms. She lives with her family in New York City. And with that, let’s get on with the show.

Okay, you’re ready to go in? Here we go. Welcome, Amy, to the podcast. It is so good to talk with you again.

Amy (01:42.53)

Thank you for having me both. Thank you both for having me, I should have said again. It’s one of those days. 

JoAnn Crohn (01:46.419)

It’s one of those days we’ve had trouble saying things all day all day

Brie Tucker (01:48.835)

Yes, I’m on my third coffee hoping that it’ll do a better job.

JoAnn Crohn (01:55.603)

You should have seen Brie when she was trying to order her first coffee and she couldn’t get any words out.

Brie Tucker (01:59.375)

And I just stared at the barista and I’m like, this is why we need our coffee in the morning, I think. So, yeah.

Amy (02:05.55)

That’s right.

JoAnn Crohn (02:06.715)

Yeah. Well, I have been reading your book, Happy to Help for the past few nights. And it is like brings up so many emotions for me, because as a people pleaser, like I could see exactly like where you were coming from, and especially your stories about being taught by nuns, because I was also taught by nuns. And they’re terrifying. They’re terrifying.

Amy (02:34.542)

Well, and wonderful. mean, I always feel like I have to say like I had some wonderful women teaching me who were religious and they were right there. It’s such a stereotype that they’re all terrible and I don’t think they are but but my book does start with one that was.

JoAnn Crohn (02:36.773)

and wonderful. They’re not all terrible, you’re right. I could say like Sister Mary Claire and Sister Alicia, wonderful, wonderful. Sister Mary Louise, you ran from her. And I’m guessing that was like the one in your book too.

Amy (02:57.902)

That’s right. I mean, I think it was a time when women had fewer options. And so like I’m thinking of this teacher in particular I had in the book, like being a teacher was not really what she was cut out to do. But that was one of like three things that nuns could do. And she didn’t get assigned to a hospital. She was assigned to a school. And so she had to teach kids, which she had neither aptitude nor interest for. And she did it for 40 years. So no wonder you’d get a little impatient with the children, right?

JoAnn Crohn (03:22.599)

I think I would be a little grumpy with the children as well. But do you like feel like that was one of the first stories in your book? Do you feel like your people pleasing instincts really started then or when do you feel like they started?

Amy (03:24.214)

Yeah, yeah, a little bit.

Amy (03:35.458)

Yeah, you know, I mean, even though it’s on the cover of my book, I have a lot of issues with the term people pleaser because it is something that women are told to be, that are assigned to be, that are raised to be. And we do it and we’re good at it. And then when we say, I don’t think I can do this anymore. I don’t think I should be putting people first all the time. Like, well, you stop being such a people pleaser.

becomes the first and only fix. Like go away and think about what you’ve done and stop people pleasing and then come back, right? And that is a fix that’s one, not a fix and two, something that nobody obligates themselves to participate in. It’s just all put back on you. Like just change how you are then. Just change how you are and then get back to us.

JoAnn Crohn (04:25.959)

That is true.

Brie Tucker (04:26.627)

Yeah, just reach down to the core of you and your personality that you recognize right.

Amy (04:30.294)

Yeah. Yeah. We don’t really want to change. Yeah. We don’t really want to change the, the imbalance of who’s doing what. We just want to change you being annoyed about it. So stop being a people pleaser and get back to us. I think, is that always the case? No. I mean, is there, are there times when we need to look at putting other people’s wants and needs before our own? Yes. But that’s also very much our assignment as mothers. And there’s a lot of times when it’s not optional. If you’re putting your like,

Amy (04:59.866)

sick kids wants and needs before your own. You don’t have a choice about that, right? And you’re pretty happy to do it because you love your kid, but it can still be overwhelming. So that’s what I guess this book is about. Like when you come to the end of your rope and change who you are, change your outlook on the world, it’s not really sufficient to fix the situation that you’re in.

JoAnn Crohn (05:04.787)

It’s very true.

JoAnn Crohn (05:11.537)

Yeah, well, I feel like the situation that we’re in is like very socialized with us from the beginning, like you said. And like I can speak from my experience as like a people pleaser and like trying to come out of it right now. When you get into, I mean, outside in the real world, I always say this as an entrepreneur. I’m like, I wish I was back in school and like somebody was telling me exactly what I should do every single day to get my A because it was like so clear and it was like, do this, don’t do that and when you get into your career, especially with your entrepreneurial, like you’re the boss, nobody is telling you those things anymore. And so you’re upsetting people left and right. You don’t know what to do to get your gold star. Like you were raised to do in school and it’s so confusing. mean, how, how did you feel about like school and how like you tended to be there versus like how you are now and how you relate to the world?

Amy (06:19.296)

It’s such a good point, JoAnn, that in school, the goals are concrete and certain. And that, you know, when you’re the A student, Girl Scout, class president, valedictorian, I can do that, and I can do that too, type of person, it’s very gratifying to be, to be like the blue ribbon kid who gets the A on the paper if you just work hard enough. And I actually talked about this in my first book, I tried to apply that

JoAnn Crohn (06:32.561)

Mm-hmm.

Amy (06:48.142)

If you just try hard enough, you’ll get it right to parenting, which was the place where I unlearned that lesson, let’s say. Like if you just try hard enough, you’ll do it right. So this book is kind of about the same thing because I’m still that person. I’m still unlearning those things that if you, if you try hard enough, you can make somebody love you. You can make a, a dead end job. Wonderful. You can make an unfixable situation.

JoAnn Crohn (07:03.654)

Yeah.

Amy (07:17.166)

fixed, you can make a, you know, chronic situation solved. And of course you can’t do any of these things, but I tried.

Brie Tucker (07:25.615)

to say, I, I both love John Hughes and blame John Hughes for that narrative. No, yes, yes, because I just like come back to like the 80s. And I mean, granted, he did the teenage movies, but still, it’s just it was that thought process. And I feel like a lot of us got that message growing up. That was a lot of like the 80s type things were that you could do enough love and it would like

Amy (07:33.612)

Because why?

JoAnn Crohn (07:34.023)

The fixing.

Brie Tucker (07:53.933)

melt other people’s hearts and they would change who they are and the situations would change. And like you said, you would get the big job promotion because you baked cookies for the right person. I don’t know, but I mean, it still came with that like thought process that you could mold things into what you wanted by making everybody happy around you and loving you, right?

Amy (08:15.084)

That, yeah. I see what you’re saying. Yes, like, if Molly Ringwald, she’s just so misunderstood, but one day Jake is gonna look at her and he’s gonna be like, wow, she’s really, she’s really pretty. There’s really something special about her. You’re sitting there waiting to be noticed and then they turn and they notice you. You’re right, that that’s something that’s in movies and it doesn’t happen in real life. That’s right.

Brie Tucker (08:21.7)

Yes! God. Yeah. Yes.

Brie Tucker (08:36.279)

Yep, yep, yep.

JoAnn Crohn (08:37.553)

I feel like that was my whole high school career right there, just waiting to be noticed as like the good girl. Someday.

Amy (08:40.31)

Yeah, someday he’ll notice me. Yeah, I talk in the book about being in eighth grade and trying to apply the rules of Young Miss Magazine, which doesn’t exist anymore, but it was around back then. I got it in the mail every month and it would tell me like, have boy probs, you have figure problems, you know, and I had to fix all my boy probs and figure problems. And all it did of course was to serve to like, I thought that I had to.

put on this antique disposition and act in this boy crazy way because I thought that was what I was supposed to be doing and I was going to be good at it if that’s what I was supposed to be doing and I think it just baffled the the boys in in my eighth grade class but I thought I was being super you know super intriguing.

Brie Tucker (09:10.19)

Yep.

JoAnn Crohn (09:24.307)

That you mentioned your eighth grade class. You start out the book with the story about you and grammar, which I, as a grammar nerd, I really got into it when I was a teacher. taught English language learners, and so they taught us all the structures of grammar, which I had never learned before. I could look back in my Facebook memories, and I’m like, I’m teaching modals today. I’m just so excited about it. So first, that appealed to me.

Also, when you were there in class and you were balancing, I feel like, two identities, two things you wanted to achieve. You wanted people to like you, and you also knew the answer. Could you tell us that story really quickly?

Amy (10:08.864)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. The book starts with the day that I decided to stop raising my hand because some of the boys in eighth grade had started calling me Brainiac, which I decided was not a loving nickname, was not a cool nickname, and I needed to be cool. And so the answer was very simple. I would stop raising my hand. And I really did love grammar, which JoAnn, like, thinking about, like, we both crave certainty, sounds like. So grammar, like, there’s a right answer, right?

Brie Tucker (10:24.259)

Yep.

JoAnn Crohn (10:33.585)

Yeah, there you go.

Amy (10:35.884)

I loved grammar back then we were diagramming sentences and learning like the 87 tenses of every verb. And I loved it. Nesting categories and subcategories and it all made sense to me. Even in the most like irregular language in the world, it all made sense to me and I knew the answer, but that one day I’m like, okay, I’m not going to raise my hand because I do know the answer, but I have to stop raising my hand all the time. So people will like me and this sister, called on me anyway, I didn’t have my hand raised, she could tell I knew the answer, she called on me and when I did have the answer, she basically like said, who do you think you are not to raise your hand? Do you think you’re better than the rest of the people in this classroom? Do you think you’re better than your classmates? And I didn’t know what to say, still don’t know what one’s supposed to say. I know it’s terrible. And of course I had been doing that so people wouldn’t think I thought I was better than everybody. Then here my teacher was telling everybody I thought I was better than them. And so the…

The misapprehension I got that day is like, can’t not raise your hand. You have to raise your hand. Even if people won’t like you for raising your hand too much, you have to show up with everything you have all the time.

JoAnn Crohn (11:46.099)

See, I felt so bad for you in that moment from the teacher, because being a middle schooler, that is a hard, socially awkward kind of phase. I want to know, how did you deal with that feedback from the teacher? Did you keep raising your hand after that? Or were you like, she has no idea what’s going on?

Brie Tucker (11:54.306)

Yeah.

Amy (12:06.862)

You know, there’s a whole part too that I didn’t even tell in the book because it just got too long. But I went to another teacher in that school, a nun who I loved, like picture of Maria Von Trapp early years, right? And I met with her after school and I cried to her, Sister Colleen, and like, Sister, you have to help me. She’s being so mean to me. And she’s in front of the whole class. I don’t know what to do. And it was the first moment I realized that I kind of was on my own because Sister Colleen, who was very nice, said like,

Okay, all right, I’ll try, I’ll talk to her. And I could see in this adult’s face the terror and like, she’s just as afraid of Sister Benedicta, not her real name, as I was. And she was saying to like, I’ll go talk to her for you. You know, I just thought they were like, they’re both nuns, they’re both grownups, like they’d see eye to eye on everything. And instead, like the nice nun was like totally like pale faced at the idea that she had to go advocate for this crying student to the mean one.

JoAnn Crohn (12:45.988)

Jesus.

Amy (13:06.528)

And I realized that, she thinks she’s afraid of her too. we’re all afraid of her. And that made me, think, both feel like I was on my own and also feel like, it’s not me. You know, at least I got out of that like nothing personal. She’s just me. And I just have to get through this year. Yeah. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (13:17.981)

Mm. She’s just me. That’s funny. So in you used to call yourself a perfectionist and then a recovering perfectionist, but you’ve come to reject those definitions. And I think that a lot of no guilt moms out there also call themselves perfectionists. So I want to get into that right after this. Okay. Bri always gets so happy with me when I get an ad break. It’s the segue. Okay.

Amy (13:40.045)

Mm-hmm.

JoAnn Crohn (13:51.357)

Here we go. Okay, Amy, let’s really dig into this topic of perfectionism, because I think it goes along with the term people pleasing really hand in hand. So you used to call yourself a perfectionist and then a recovering perfectionist, and now you come to reject those definitions. So like, tell us more about that.

Amy (14:08.588)

That’s right. I honestly, like the more I think about it, yes, perfectionism is like people pleaser. It’s another one of those things that people tend to call women.

JoAnn Crohn (14:21.373)

Mm-hmm.

Amy (14:21.77)

not men, that people that women tend to take on for themselves. Studies show that many more women than men self identify as both perfectionists and people pleasers. But I think it’s because we respond to the ways that others categorize us in some ways like, you’re such a perfectionist. If my life is not going great, and you tell me it’s because I’m such a perfectionist, I will probably come to believe that whether or not it’s really true. But hand in hand with the perfectionist is that same sort of like it’s optional, right? Your struggles are optional. If you’re a perfectionist, just wrap the present and don’t care if the boat looks perfect. Just leave the house and don’t care what your hair looks like and then your problems will resolve or lessen. You’re making everything harder than it needs to be. And when I would really stop and look at all these things, I mean I was a high achiever.

JoAnn Crohn (14:53.811)

Mm-hmm.

Amy (15:16.088)

But I didn’t find myself crippled by my, can’t get this done because I have to triple proofread every email I send before it goes out. That didn’t really resonate for me. People pleaser and perfectionist both also seem to go with me. Like you can’t get out of your own way. You’re spinning your wheels and you’re stuck and you don’t do anything. I’m like, that doesn’t apply to me. I am a busy, productive woman as are most women I know who gets a lot done. I can’t do it all because I have more to do than I have time to do it.

JoAnn Crohn (15:32.371)

Mm-hmm.

Brie Tucker (15:33.263)

Right?

Amy (15:46.05)

But that’s a logical puzzle that has solutions besides stop being such a perfectionist, you idiot. And I feel like too often that’s where we stop. I need help, I need to change the way things are. Well, you need to lower your standards and you go away like, right, right, I’m gonna lower my standards, I’m gonna read a book, I’m gonna, and then it doesn’t work, right? It’s not sufficient fix.

JoAnn Crohn (15:54.001)

Mm-hmm.

Amy (16:09.354)

So I guess I’m sort of radically saying like throw all that out. Like what if you’re not a perfectionist or a people pleaser? What if you just somebody with too much to do?

JoAnn Crohn (16:17.905)

Yeah, I feel like that is like the whole of womanhood right there. You’re just somebody with way too much to do and have so many expectations placed on you, including like our own expectations, which are not our fault. Like there are societal expectations which are ingrained in us to like do the things we do and keep it going. And I could like go into such a tirade now against the patriarchy, but I’m going to hold that.

Amy (16:21.431)

Mm-hmm.

Amy (16:29.858)

That’s right. Right. Not our fault.

Brie Tucker (16:43.663)

mean, you bring up a really good point and we discussed this recently on another podcast episode where we talked about like you had mentioned that what is the ideal mom, right? What are the standards that society says is a great mom? You’re somebody who always has it together. You can always whip up like delicious food and host a party with no problem and.

Everybody loves you and you make everybody happy all the time. And with those kinds of standards, both that like a good mother can do all of that, which also then leads into a good woman. Yeah, we have these insane expectations. And then it’s so patronizing, like you just said, for people to be like, well, then just chill out more. You don’t need to do it all. I’m so happy that you’re saying that.

JoAnn Crohn (17:14.547)

Mm-hmm.

Amy (17:32.994)

Right.

Right, right, right. Just it’ll all get done, says the person who knows that you will make sure that it all gets done. Did you know that there are actually three types of perfectionists? This was researched on the 90s. I talk about it in the book.

JoAnn Crohn (17:36.541)

Mm-hmm.

Brie Tucker (17:42.02)

Exactly.

JoAnn Crohn (17:42.33)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brie Tucker (17:48.653)

Maybe, what are they? Let’s hear.

Amy (17:49.836)

Dr. Gibbs and Dr. Flett, I forget their first names and they wrote a huge paper on perfectionism that’s been very influential ever since. So there’s three types they say, there’s self-directed, a self-oriented, others oriented and socially prescribed. So self-oriented is, I can’t leave the house. I have to wash my hair and start over again because it’s not perfect. That’s self-oriented. Others oriented might’ve been sister Benedicta, you know, being mad at everybody all the time that we weren’t perfect.

And then socially prescribed is the perfectionist who believes that the people around her, either society or her partner or the system she exists within, micro and macro, hold her to unreasonable standards. And I read that and I circled it like, yeah, that’s me. Okay, yes, I am a perfectionist if that’s what a perfectionist is. But their research, and they’re both male, but their research said that that was imaginary.

JoAnn Crohn (18:36.317)

Yeah.

Amy (18:43.362)

that that perfectionist only believed that society was holding her to high standards, but that wasn’t true. And so the fix was her getting over that false perception. I’m like, okay. Like there’s nothing false about that perception. It is true. I mean, you can reject it, but the idea that you’re only imagining that those expectations exist. I mean, I don’t know any woman who would say, yeah, yeah, I’m making it up in my mind. Right. It’s just me.

JoAnn Crohn (18:49.649)

No.

Brie Tucker (18:50.649)

Mia

JoAnn Crohn (18:57.611)

my gosh.

Brie Tucker (19:09.229)

Yeah, yeah, nobody else thinks that. It’s just me.

JoAnn Crohn (19:12.627)

So it’s really interesting that it was a male who did that because we’re doing interviews right now for our Happy Mom Summit in March. And I just got off one yesterday with Dr. Jane Morgan, who is a cardiologist in Atlanta. And we were talking about how women in health care are underrepresented. And she’s told me that most people who are in medical trials are like 170 pound men and they get all their results from that and then they have to kind of like skew things the other way because in a lot of like these drug trials and a lot of everything like recruits like. So like these companies are headed by men. So then they like recruit like a male doctor who’s like very well connected. They know well to like run the study and then they, there’s women are unrepresented in healthcare as well.

So it was funny that you said that the men were like, this is all made up because obviously women are under studied in things. Yeah.

Amy (20:10.142)

Yeah, right. So again, the fix was, so then the problem is you just have to convince that socially prescribed perfection is to stop thinking that and then it all will be well. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (20:17.233)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brie Tucker (20:17.343)

my gosh. Okay. It’s like a conversation I had with my husband the other day where I was talking about like how somebody was making me anxious or whatever. And I’m like, what do you do to not be anxious? He’s like, honey, I don’t know. I just don’t worry about that stuff. He’s like, but it’s, you know, I feel you that you do. But still I’m just like, gosh, dang it. Like where was the ticket to say I want a male’s like sense of…

things I have to be done. I’m not saying that they never do, there are many that do, but when you compare it on a societal standard, Men could just kind of coast.

Amy (20:47.02)

Right, right.

JoAnn Crohn (20:58.757)

always have something I tell myself when I don’t have the confidence to do something and this is something my husband tells me as well. He’s like, JoAnn, you just need to go into it with the confidence of an average white male. Just go. It’s true.

Amy (21:12.46)

That’s true. There’s a study, I’m making up the exact percentages, but it showed that a male would apply for a job if he had 20 % of the listed requirements, but a woman, average woman wouldn’t apply unless she has 80 to 90 % of that job’s requirements. So one study, but yeah, interesting.

Brie Tucker (21:31.949)

Right. I’ve seen that. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (21:32.083)

Mm hmm. No, that’s totally true. Yeah. So Amy, I was a theater major when I went to college and I dropped out because I could not handle the rejection. knowing your career and knowing that you’re a self, you were a self proclaimed perfectionist and all the people pleasing, we’re going to get into that one right after this because I want to know how that went and dealing with all of these.

So Amy, you spent a lot of time in theater. You were a regular on TV sitcoms. In your book, you’re talking about like doing sketch comedy every night, like putting yourself out there on stage. Being a performer, I feel, is one of those careers where you face so much rejection and so much other people’s opinions. How did you deal with these aspects of yourself with wanting to constantly like please and like help and do what’s like best for other people and to succeed as a performer too.

Amy (22:34.24)

It’s a really, I mean, it’s a good question because I mean, talk about like a fertile ground for a people pleaser. When you’re auditioning, you, mean, now more auditions are online post pandemic. Everybody started taping themselves in the living rooms and sending in the MP4 and now, you know, that’s kind of how it’s done, which I haven’t acted much since the pandemic, but that sounds lonely and hard, but it was also hard.

JoAnn Crohn (22:45.562)

That’s interesting.

Amy (22:56.936)

back in the day to wait in the hallway and hear the other people through the wall and pretend you couldn’t hear them and go over your lines and then you go in and there’s three or four people sitting behind a table and you get up and you do your thing and learning, which I did learn over time pretty well, was not to gauge their reactions during your audition, right? So there’s like

Brie Tucker (22:58.127)

You saw their face.

Amy (23:19.96)

there’s you reading your scene and then there’s also you on the ceiling looking down at you doing the scene and the guy eating his lunch and the person looking at the back of your resume and saying like, how am I doing? How am I doing? Are they smiling? Are they laughing? You don’t get parts when your attention is fractured that way. And so over time I learned to go in and do my thing and erase that how am I doing? How am I doing?

while I was in the room for the most part. And then also, how’d do, how’d I do, did they like me, did they like me. Like as soon as you leave the room after the audition, you have to just put it out of your mind. You have to stop thinking about it because you won’t find out if you didn’t get it. You’ll only find out if you did get it, a phone call or email that comes as you can imagine far, far less frequently. So you have to learn to stop.

JoAnn Crohn (23:51.366)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Amy (24:08.448)

caring what other people think or trying not to care while you are like under the microscope and they’re deciding if they like you more or less than somebody else. It’s not easy, but it might’ve helped me. Yeah, it might’ve… Yeah, I think it is difficult, but I think it probably also helped me in other areas of my life. Like you gotta let it go. You gotta stop wondering what everybody’s thinking while you’re talking, because you won’t get anywhere. So I think it was probably good for me in a way, but it is like, it’s hard for the self-esteem. You have to do lots of…

Brie Tucker (24:14.019)

Right? That’s got to be so hard. That seems like that would be so difficult.

JoAnn Crohn (24:37.235)

to do a lot of. Yeah, I guess when you go through it over and over again, I could see how you may like be able to overcome those parts of yourself to want to please and to like want to get out of your head. I remember like I heard you talk at mom 2.0 like a few years ago about an audition you did where like this like big famous director who I don’t know if you want to talk about this story or not. But like, it was the yeah, could you tell us that one? Do you know what you want to talk? Yeah, the Woody Allen one. Yeah.

Amy (24:37.814)

self-talk around it that you’re good anyway.

yeah. It was Woody Allen. was Woody Allen. So yeah, I got, mean, this is a long time ago now, but I got very far along in to play like a big part in one of his movies, you know, the young, the, the, the enginu they would call it. So I got the call and the night before at home, they,

were prepping me over the phone. said, no, he’s like, he’s not gonna be super warm in the room and we just don’t want anything he does to be distracting or strange. You’re just gonna go about your audition. And I’m like, okay, I found one. listen to us. And I was like, yeah. I was so excited I had an audition to meet Woody Allen that I wasn’t really listening to what they were telling me. And I got in the room and he was, you know, I won’t go into too much detail, he was.

just as off-putting and strange in his affect as I had been told that he was going to be, which immediately threw me. And then he said something to me like, so I thought you might like to audition for this part, as if like it had just occurred to him and then not like that’s why I was there and I’d had eight auditions already. And then he went and sat, I mean, it was like an airport hanger sized room and he sat so far away. I mean like 20 feet away and.

And I didn’t know, I’m still not sure telling the story today. Like, was I supposed, am I supposed to act big enough so he can read it? Because he’s really far away. Or am I supposed to do a film, you know, keep it pretty small and tight, which how, I wasn’t mic’d or anything. Like, how is he gonna get anything? I didn’t know the answer to that question. And now I will probably say like, I’m sorry, I need a minute, I talk? And I would go take somebody out in the hallway and just ask them that question. Instead.

There I was, me reading the scene with somebody else looking, with me also looking down at me trying to be loud, but also not that loud and also like trying to be all things to all people, trying to guess what he thought. And the look on the casting director’s face as I was reading with her was just like, I could just tell I was just blowing it in real time and I didn’t know what to do about it. But it definitely was a part that I lost because yes, I just completely started worrying about.

Amy (27:11.822)

how I was doing from a person who was not gonna give me, he wasn’t gonna be effusive anyway. They had told me that, like, don’t worry about what he’s doing or thinking, just do your part, and I couldn’t do it. I was too thrown.

JoAnn Crohn (27:25.683)

it’s so interesting when you get into those situations. I had something very similar to that happen to me too, a big job interview. And you’re just trying to figure out what everybody else wants, and you get it wrong, and then you abandon yourself. And I think that’s always what I look back on my job interview experience as. I abandoned myself in that moment, and that’s what I’m upset about.

Brie Tucker (27:25.902)

wow.

Amy (27:39.191)

Yeah

You abandon yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you’re exactly right. When I look back on that now, and then it’s just a funny story now, it was a long time ago. But yeah, when I look back on it, I’m more mad that I abandoned myself than I am that I didn’t get X part, you know, because at some point you have to let things go.

JoAnn Crohn (28:03.345)

Yeah, yeah. like as a parent now, like Bri and I were talking about how hard it is to be a parent of teenagers when you like to make everyone happy because they will tell you everything that you’re doing. What if you like taken from parenthood that may have like changed your perception of and brought you to where you currently are today in terms of people pleasing and perfectionism and you?

Amy (28:29.196)

Well, so the second last essay of the book is about the college application process, which I think is yet another example where if you’re the default parent, which I am and I’m the mom and in most other families I knew going through this, it was the mom, not necessarily, but the default parent has to…

assist in this college application process, which has gotten so complicated. Everybody’s applying to 20 schools. They have to write 50 essays. They have to this and this. They all have to be saving the rainforest at the same time. And it’s gotten so out of hand. And yet, when people talk about it, what do they circle as the real issue? It’s the annoying uptight parents.

Brie Tucker (28:55.375)

Mm-hmm.

JoAnn Crohn (28:55.891)

Mm-hmm.

JoAnn Crohn (29:01.587)

you

Amy (29:12.088)

that it’s really the parents making everything worse. And yes, there’s like diversity blues people, like they made things, they definitely made things worse, but it was out of a desire to do what was right for their kids. And you are put in this situation where you feel like you have no choice but to try to help them spreadsheet this impossible thing while they’re getting ready to leave the nest. So everything you suggest is the stupidest idea they’ve ever heard. It’s really high stakes, high stress.

JoAnn Crohn (29:12.401)

Hmm.

Amy (29:40.47)

And then on top of that, it gets thrown that what’s really the problem is the annoying, overbearing moms that are ruining the whole process. And not that like schools have 4 % acceptance rates and disappoint. You know, it’s also preposterous and in fact, the FAFSA form is broken. Like that’s what’s wrong with the college application process. The process, not the annoying moms trying to circle some of the problems with the process and saying this seems really unfair and unwieldy to me.

JoAnn Crohn (29:53.553)

Mm-hmm.

JoAnn Crohn (30:03.059)

Yeah.

Amy (30:09.634)

but you have to kind of walk that gauntlet anyway. And at the end of it, you have the prize of letting your child walk away from you. And so I write in the book too about that when I said goodbye to my oldest kid, it felt like it was gonna be such a moment. And in the actual moment, I mean, he did hug me, but then he got on the bus back to the, you know, the shuttle bus back to the main campus and he didn’t even wave goodbye. Like he looked at his phone and the bus, it just was the most anticlimactic goodbye.

JoAnn Crohn (30:37.011)

I think, yeah.

Brie Tucker (30:37.023)

Nothing like what the movies have told us. Again, this is all John Hughes. I know he’s not making movies anymore, but it’s still his fault.

Amy (30:38.994)

nothing like the movies have told us, right? Right. And I could only laugh that it was so dramatic to me. It was so non-dramatic to my kid, but it was also as it should be. Like my kid was so set, so ready to leave me that he could right away looking at his phone instead of waving goodbye to me. was in the new world already. He’s moved on. Good job, mom, but you’re patting yourself on the back at that point.

JoAnn Crohn (30:39.985)

It’s like the cry.

Let’s go!

Okay.

Brie Tucker (30:54.863)

So secure. Yep.

JoAnn Crohn (30:55.037)

Mm-hmm.

JoAnn Crohn (31:03.377)

Mm-hmm.

Brie Tucker (31:05.913)

Yeah. While you’re crying, sobbing. I don’t know. I have a senior. I have a senior in high school right now. So I’m hearing this story going, my God, all the feels.

JoAnn Crohn (31:06.245)

Yeah, that’s interesting.

Amy (31:08.12)

Yeah.

Amy (31:11.63)

You know, it’s so much, it’s like a big birthday. It’s like turning 40 or turning 50. It is so scary when it’s in the road just in front of you. And then when it’s behind you, it’s like, my God, what was that? Why was I so upset about that? Your kid leaving for college, I always feel obliged to tell parents that it definitely seems way bigger when it’s in front of you, when the emptying nest moment is approaching. It seems huge. And then…

JoAnn Crohn (31:25.523)

What was that? Yeah, you’re like, it’s all good. It’s all good. It’s fun.

Amy (31:41.55)

And then you’re texting with them and talking to them and it’s okay. It’s really okay and you’re so proud of them and it’s way better. It’ll be way better a year from now than it is now.

JoAnn Crohn (31:49.491)

That’s very encouraging advice because I have a junior who’s about to start with it. I’m a little bit scared, but also I feel like I am looking forward to that freedom. I am looking forward to being able to go out to restaurants that are my choosing. All of those things again. So it’s a good thing.

Amy (31:53.368)

Yeah.

Amy (31:57.334)

Yeah, the hard parts now. Yeah.

Amy (32:10.494)

Right, right. It’s okay. It’s really okay. Yeah, good times lie ahead.

JoAnn Crohn (32:15.153)

Yeah, well, tell me what’s coming up for you, Amy, that you’re really excited about.

Amy (32:19.724)

Honestly, this book coming out into the world and getting to do podcasts and book clubs and just talk to people who are reading the book. It’s really interesting as I’m having different conversations, people pull on really different threads and I’m just loving it. It’s so fun. Some authors would find this part really draining and really stressful and I’m sort of a ham, so I find this part really fun. So I’m really looking forward to this.

JoAnn Crohn (32:47.069)

Well, that is exciting. listening to this now, go out and buy Amy’s book. It is out in the world. You can find it everywhere that books are sold. And thank you, Amy, so much for coming on and talking with us. It’s always a joy.

Amy (33:00.034)

Thank you, JoAnn. Thanks, Brie.

JoAnn Crohn (33:00.967)

So in, in that interview with Amy, she was talking about her audition with Woody Allen. And I was reminded of this, this interview I had, it was at Warner Brothers television studios and I had aced the pre interview. Like I had so bonded with like the assistant who interviewed me and I was like, my gosh, this is going to be amazing.

Brie Tucker (33:12.696)

Mm-hmm.

JoAnn Crohn (33:21.573)

And then the day of the interview, I had gotten so in my head. First of all, like I was sitting at a coffee shop and I’m like, my nails are awful. I should really go get like a manicure before the interview. And I didn’t, I didn’t go get a manicure. and so like I walk into Warner Brothers studios and there’s like an assistant at the desk and he’s a guy and I don’t know why I’m so like self-conscious about my nails. And then like, usually I would chat people up.

Like I’m like very friendly and I’m like, well, what are you doing? But for this instance, I’m like, no, this is Warner Brothers. I shouldn’t bother him. I shouldn’t like ask any questions because they kept me waiting for like 40 minutes there in that chair for the interview. And then when I went into the interview with the exec, she was so nice, but I was so nervous, so concerned about my nails. I ended up calling my sister a townie because she stayed in Tucson, like all these things that I would never say out of my mouth.

because I was so worried about making a good impression there. I like abandoned myself and my entire personality in that interview. And of course no one called me about it. But I mean, I was reminded of that. Like as a people pleaser, you try to like make things happen and do the right thing. And then like nothing good happens.

Brie Tucker (34:30.114)

Yeah. There is, in my opinion, interviews are the epitome of people pleasing. Because you’re just like, say the answer they want to hear. Say the answer they want to hear. But in general, yeah, the whole people pleasing thing, it is a difficult role that many of us moms take on. So.

JoAnn Crohn (34:46.823)

Yeah. It is. And especially with our kids, like I realized I do it actually more with my son than my daughter. And I was reading recently that there’s like, when you have a child who is very like, outwardly emotional, sometimes the parents try to protect those emotions from happening. And that’s something that I realized I was doing. And so like, I had to stop doing that the emotions have come out. I’m like, I am not scared of your emotions. I am not scared of your emotions.

Brie Tucker (35:10.2)

Okay.

JoAnn Crohn (35:24.475)

I’ve been doing, but it’s totally abandoning that people pleasing and that trying to control and yet and seeing all of the repercussions. So it’s hard.

Brie Tucker (35:32.162)

I’m working on it, know me, I’m recovering. They’re crying, it’s okay. People can cry, they can feel their emotions. I don’t have to fix it, I don’t have to make it all better. They can cry because when I’m sad, I wanna cry. just, seriously, the voices in my head, so many, so fast. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (35:48.379)

but you’re talking yourself through it. I mean, I was crying on a team meeting this week and you’re like, and I have difficulty with these emotions and I’m okay.

Brie Tucker (35:58.19)

I would just let you cry and tell you, tell you as your friend that I love you. And that’s all I could tell you. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (36:00.967)

Don’t let you cry. You can get it all out. You can get it all out. Yes. Exactly. That’s all people need. People just want to be seen. And I’m realizing that more and more. They just want to be seen. go out and buy Amy’s book. It is phenomenal. She is such a gifted writer. And I say that because when you read her book, it just flows so easily. And I easily spent an hour before I even realized what the time was. So.

Go get it. It’s full of delightful stories that I know that you will definitely love, including one where she was a personal assistant to an actress. And the stuff that the actress had her do was insane. So go get the book for that.

Brie Tucker (36:47.471)

And then, and then tell us who do you think the actress is? Hmm. she-

JoAnn Crohn (36:50.855)

Yeah, she says she says who well she says her first name, but maybe maybe she did change the name like sister Benedicta. She just she said not her real name, so she might have changed the name there. I would imagine I would imagine. Remember the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you. Happy 2025 everybody and we’ll talk to you later.

Brie Tucker (37:12.12)

Thanks for stopping by.