Beyond the Good-Girl Jail: When You Dare to Live From Your True Self by Sandra Felt, LCSW

“I was once a very good girl. I did what was expected of me. I cleaned my room and got good grades. I kept quiet and didn’t brag. I tried to be nice, like everyone, and be cooperative. I thought I was living life right and didn’t yet realize I had already shut down my precious aliveness. I didn’t yet know that being good is not the same as being fully alive. I didn’t know I had already landed in the Good-Girl Jail.” – Sandra Felt, LCSW

Sandra Felt, a board-certified diplomate in clinical social work, has had more than thirty years of experience in dealing with trauma and discovering the true self. In Beyond the Good-Girl Jail: When You Dare to Live From Your True Self, Felt teaches women how to break free from the expectations of others and from the pressure to be “good” to find their true selves and live the life that’s right for them. 

Felt writes that there are four ways to get out of the good-girl jail: recognize, reconnect, rebuild, and return. Women need to recognize their inner selves and learn to listen to it despite their fear. They also need to reconnect with their selves by acknowledging their bodies, their feelings, and their need for safety. Rebuilding is about developing the true, inner self through time alone, emphasizing choices, and updating core beliefs. Finally, returning home to the true self involves letting go of everything that does not align with that self. Each section in Beyond the Good-Girl Jail explains these concepts through Felt’s personal experiences and client stories.

Beyond the Good-Girl Jail is a guide for investigating women’s true natures and helping them find the right way to live based on their own wants and needs, not the wants and needs of others. Aside from being an essential self-help read for women of all ages, Felt states that her book is vital for clinicans as well. She writes, “Beyond the Good-Girl Jail is also the text I wish had been required reading in graduate school to teach me what is critical as a psychotherapist, especially when treating trauma survivors. I know now that coming home to self is the underbelly of healing from trauma.” 

Through the questions Felt asks of readers, as well as her advice on how to listen to the inner self, she presents Beyond the Good-Girl Jail as the solution to discarding the good-girl mask, finding the inner self, and becoming fully alive. 

Praise for Beyond the Good-Girl Jail  

“This is a book every woman must read. Sandra Felt is correct, it has not been written before and it speaks to all of us women. I started reading it and didn’t want to put it down. It is a book that you will keep and reread. It is our ‘get out of jail’ card! It’s not a free get out of jail card—we have to do the work—but Sandra offers the path.” – Claudia Black, PhD