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🎄 Holiday Expectations, Emotional Triggers & Radical Acceptance: How Your “Manuals” Are Ruining Your Holidays

What if the thing making the holidays so stressful isn’t your family… but your expectations?

In this special holiday episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on something that quietly runs our emotional lives—manuals. These are the invisible rules we carry about how people should behave, how holidays should look, and how we should show up. And during the holidays? These manuals go into overdrive.

When technology issues cut short my holiday interview with fellow coach Kellyn Legath, I had a choice: spiral into frustration—or practice what I teach. This episode became a real-time lesson in radical acceptance, emotional regulation, and reclaiming your peace when life doesn’t go according to plan.

Together, Kellyn and I explore how holiday manuals create resentment, burnout, and emotional reactivity—and how learning to recognize them can help you feel more grounded, empowered, and emotionally free this season.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• What a “manual” really is—and how unspoken expectations create resentment
• Why the holidays intensify emotional triggers for highly sensitive people
• How manuals silently put other people in charge of your emotions
• The difference between reacting emotionally and responding intentionally
• How to identify your own holiday manuals (for others and yourself)
• Why communication—not mind reading—is the key to healthier holidays
• How to set realistic, measurable expectations for how you show up
• Practical ways to navigate family dynamics without people-pleasing
• How radical acceptance helps you find peace even when things go “wrong”
• Why letting yourself be human is more powerful than trying to be perfect

Challenge for the Week

Before your next holiday gathering, pause and ask yourself:

1. What am I expecting here?
2. Have I communicated that expectation—or am I assuming others should know?
3. What are three realistic ways I can measure that I showed up well—without needing perfection?

Notice every time the word should pops into your thoughts. That’s your manual asking for attention.

Work With Me

If this episode made you realize how much emotional energy you spend managing other people’s feelings—or how often your happiness depends on things going “just right”—you don’t have to navigate that alone.

I support highly sensitive people and recovering people-pleasers in learning how to:

• Regulate their emotions
• Set boundaries without guilt
• Stop feeling responsible for everyone else’s experience

Apply to work with me here: https://maryannwalker.life/contact-me

Don’t Forget to Subscribe

If you found this episode helpful, make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss future conversations on emotional regulation, boundaries, and creating more peace in your relationships—especially during emotionally charged seasons like the holidays.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

MaryAnn Walker: life coach for highly sensitive people & recovering people-pleasers

Contact MaryAnn: https://maryannwalker.life/contact-me

Contact Kellyn: https://www.instagram.com/daydreamercoaching/

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If you’ve ever felt like you had to keep it all together, even when you were running on empty, this episode will feel like a deep exhale. Together, we explore how letting go of perfection and focusing on feeling just 10% better can become a gentle, sustainable path toward healing and self-connection.

In this episode, I’m joined by my friend, author, and public speaker, Marissa Campbell, for a heartfelt conversation about burnout, emotional exhaustion, and learning how to come back home to yourself.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why burnout often hides behind busyness and people-pleasing
• The power of checking in with your emotional battery before you hit empty
• How to let go of thinking healing takes time and shift to feeling “10% better” today.
• Simple, somatic ways to reconnect with your body and emotions
• How to identify your early warning signs of emotional depletion
• What it really means to lead — and live — from the heart

Challenge for the Week

Pause once today to ask yourself:
🩵 "How full is my battery and what emotion am I experiencing right now?”

Then give yourself permission to honor whatever answer arises with no expectations.

*Bonus* Ask yourself what might help to charge your battery, and give it to yourself. Small steps count. They build momentum. And they remind you that you are worthy of care, even in the smallest of ways.

Work With Me

If you’re ready to stop running on empty and start rebuilding from a place of peace and self-trust, I’d love to help.
You can book a free clarity call to explore how coaching can support you at calendly.com/maryannwalkerlife/freeconsult

Don’t Forget to Subscribe

If this episode resonated with you, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode!

Links Mentioned in This Episode

• Connect with guest Marissa Campbell on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mc.speaks/
  
  
• Purchase your copy of Lead With Heart: https://amzn.to/3JxdByw

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Understanding the Family Scapegoat: Healing, Identity, and People Pleasing

Today I am joined by Elle Boone, host of The Family Scapegoat Chronicles. Elle dives deep into a role that many empaths and highly sensitive people unknowingly carry—that of the family scapegoat—and how it shapes identity, people-pleasing tendencies, and emotional well-being.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• What it means to be the family scapegoat and how this role is assigned in dysfunctional and narcissistic family systems.
• The three key dynamics of scapegoating: blame, shame, and rejection, and how these affect long-term emotional health.
• The concept of “family mobbing” and how siblings and other family members may unconsciously or consciously participate in scapegoating.
• Differences between the scapegoat, golden child, and lost child roles—and how these roles can rotate over time.
• How scapegoating contributes to people-pleasing, overgiving, and identity confusion.
• Signs that you might have been scapegoated, including minimized successes, silent treatment, backhanded criticism, and heightened responsibility for family dysfunction.
• Practical strategies for healing: observing patterns, pacing your recovery, and reclaiming your personal identity.
• Recommended resources, including Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed by Rebecca C. Mandeville, and the documentary The Wisdom of Trauma by Gabor Maté.

Challenge for the Week:
Take a compassionate pause to observe your patterns. Notice how often you apologize, overgive, or seek approval. Write down at least three recurring behaviors and reflect on where they might have originated. This is the first step toward reclaiming your identity and untangling the people-pleasing and scapegoating patterns in your life.

Work With Me:
If you’re ready to start identifying the roles that hold you back and learn to set healthier boundaries, you can book a free clarity call with me here: https://calendly.com/maryannwalkerlife/freeconsult

Don’t Forget to Subscribe
Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss future episodes. Each week, we dive deeper into the practices that help recovering people pleasers create balance, self-worth, and authentic connection.

🎯 email me now at maryann@maryannwalker.life to work with me!

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Links Mentioned in This Episode:

• Elle Boone’s podcast: The Family Scapegoat Chronicles https://thefamilyscapegoatchronicles.podbean.com/e/the-family-scapegoat-chronicles-i-true-stories-of-survival-and-healing-after-narcissistic-and-family-scapegoating-abuse/
• Elle Boone on Substack:https://thefamilyscapegoatchronicles.substack.com/
  
  
• Book: Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed by Rebecca C. Mandeville – https://a.co/d/7kLN3lG
  
  
• Documentary: The Wisdom of Trauma by Gabor Maté – Watch here https://thewisdomoftrauma.com/