Are You Mad at Me?: How to Stop Focusing on What Others Think and Start Living for You

Encourage readers to reflect on how the book relates to their own life or work and how its lessons could help them.

1. Which of the childhood roles Josephson describes—Peacekeeper, Performer, Caretaker, Lone Wolf, Perfectionist, or Chameleon—felt most familiar to you? How does recognizing this role shift your understanding of your current relationship patterns?

2. The book emphasizes that trauma doesn’t require a single catastrophic event but can accumulate through repeated small moments of feeling unsafe. How does this framing change your relationship to your own experiences, particularly if you’ve minimized your struggles because they seemed less dramatic than others’ stories?

3. Josephson describes experiencing physical symptoms (acid reflux, hair loss, health anxiety) as manifestations of unprocessed trauma. Have you noticed connections between emotional stress and physical symptoms in your own body? How might you interpret these differently after reading this book?

4. The author discusses the challenge of grieving relationships with living parents who were emotionally unavailable. If this resonates with you, what feels most difficult about holding both gratitude for what they provided and grief for what they couldn’t offer?

5. Josephson suggests that quality alone time—without constant information consumption—creates space for your inner voice to emerge. When was the last time you spent meaningful time alone without distractions? What might you discover about yourself if you created more of this space?

Prompt readers to explore how the book fits into today’s professional or social landscape.

1. Josephson argues that constant digital communication paradoxically intensifies insecurity by creating more opportunities for perceived rejection. Do you think the fawning response has become more prevalent or simply more visible in the age of social media, texting, and instant messaging?

2. The book explicitly addresses how fawning operates differently for marginalized groups—women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals—who face systemic pressures to conform and appease. How effectively does Josephson balance acknowledging these structural realities while offering individual healing strategies? Are there tensions between personal healing work and collective liberation that the book doesn’t fully address?

3. How does this book fit into broader cultural conversations about mental health, trauma, and therapy that have become increasingly mainstream, particularly among millennials and Gen Z? What makes this moment in time particularly receptive to discussions about childhood wounds and people-pleasing?