Episode 5

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Published on:

29th Sep 2025

Angie Hawkins on Surviving Rock Bottom, Dismantling People-Pleasing, and Writing Running in Slippers

Author and coach Angie Hawkins joins The High-Functioning Disaster to talk about surviving rock bottom, dismantling lifelong people-pleasing, and choosing radical self-love—the messy, real kind. We trace Angie’s journey from a Midwest childhood with emotionally unavailable parents to life in Hawai‘i, the day she survived an intentional overdose, the friend who said “It’s not your time,” and how that moment set her on a path to write her memoir Running in Slippers and help women break free from performance and perfection.

We also get into vulnerability vs. shame, why recording her audiobook was harder than writing it, signs you might be stuck in a people-pleasing loop (hello resentment and exhaustion), letting yourself be seen on social media, and leaving corporate burnout to live in alignment.

Content note: This episode includes candid conversation about suicide and an intentional overdose (approx. 06:00–10:10). If you or someone you know is struggling, in the U.S., call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

In this episode

  • Growing up with emotionally unavailable parents, and the belief “I don’t deserve love.”
  • The two-and-a-half-year cascade that led to Angie’s breaking point
  • “It’s not your time”: the sentence that shifted everything
  • Why she chose coaching when traditional therapy wasn’t working
  • Writing and recording Running in Slippers—grief, shame, and unexpected healing
  • People-pleasing as self-abandonment and how to spot it (resentment, exhaustion)
  • Radical self-love in practice, not Instagram
  • Allowing yourself to be seen: imperfect “walk-and-talk” videos, authenticity over polish
  • Enneagram cameo, big-energy Eights, and solution-mode brains
  • Walking away from corporate America to build a values-aligned life

About Angie

Angie Hawkins is the author of Running in Slippers and a women’s coach who helps high-functioning achievers break cycles of people-pleasing, perfectionism, and self-abandonment so they can live with authenticity, boundaries, and purpose.

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Key takeaways

People-pleasing recovery, overcoming perfectionism, radical self-love, authenticity, trauma healing, vulnerability, shame resilience, suicide survival story, audiobook memoir, corporate burnout, boundaries for women, Midwest to Hawai‘i.

Credits & CTA

Mention hearing this podcast and receive a discount on the coaching program. Email Angie at angie@runninginslippers.com or visit her website to schedule a 1-hour appointment.

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About the Podcast

The High-Functioning Disaster
High-functioning on the outside. Hot mess on the inside.
You’ve got the color-coded calendar, the competent job persona, the “I’m fine!” mask down to an art—and a mental load heavy enough to throw out your back. Meanwhile, life? That's a hot mess express—total chaos with zero chill and a full tank of emotional baggage. And what makes it even worse? Nearly no one’s talking about it.

Welcome to The High-Functioning Disaster, a podcast for people who are doing their best to hold it together while navigating burnout, grief, trauma, anxiety, caretaking duties, family drama, body image issues, and a to-do list that never quits.

Host Sacha Holder isn’t the disaster (neither are you!)—life is. And this show is about making space for that truth and giving ourselves permission to say it out loud. Every week, Sacha explores what it means to be deeply human in a world that keeps demanding more. Sometimes she’s flying solo, sometimes she brings along guests and friends—but the vibe is always real, raw, unfiltered, and grounded in radical self-acceptance and permission to be human.

We talk boundaries. Body image. Mental health. Emotional labor. The moments where everything feels like too much—and the ones where we catch our breath and keep going.

This isn’t a self-help podcast. It’s a self-permission podcast.
Permission to be exhausted.
To not have it together.
To be honest about what’s hard—without needing to package it as a “lesson.”

Because you don’t need fixing.
You need space to fall apart—and still be seen.
Because some of us are just trying to make it through the day.
And here? That’s more than enough.
New episodes every Monday. Come as you are. Seriously.
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About your host

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Sacha Holder

Sacha Holder is a project manager, podcast host, and bariatric patient who’s not here to pretend it’s all perfect. With over a decade of professional experience and a whole lot of lived experience, she creates podcasts that tell the truth about what it means to live, heal, and grow — through chaos, and curveballs, while keeping it together (mostly).

She’s the voice behind Life in the Bari Lane, a bite-sized bariatric podcast for real people navigating post-op life, and The High-Functioning Disaster, a show about showing up even when everything feels like too much. Through humor, honesty, and zero judgment, Sacha builds community through conversation — because no one should have to figure it out alone.