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As a self-confessed people pleaser, I needed this book. Josephson talks primarily about the “fawn” response (a lesser-known panic response akin to fight, flight, or freeze), which sees you trying to appease other people as a way of making yourself feel safe. Sometimes, in fact, you can get so stuck in fawning that it becomes your default state, and you lose connection with your own emotion and identity. In this current season of my life, I’m trying to work on decreasing my first-response tendency to assuage other people before assuaging myself. Josephson is clear that this is a long process, and there’s no way to do it “wrong.” The important thing is just to pause and notice. Josephson returns a few times to a framework she calls NICER: notice, invite, curiosity, embrace, return. In short: you notice what’s happening, invite the feeling, get curious about it, embrace it (instead of trying to shove it away), and return to something that’s real (like your breathing). Even if I can’t always remember to do the full cycle, I’m trying hard to at least pause and notice when I’m falling into people-pleasing habits. The first step is always just to notice what’s happening, and if that’s all I can do, then it’s enough for now. In short, a great book for a specific subset of people – a subset which happens to include myself.