The Work of Remembering
Power. Joy. Self-trust. And the slow end of self-abandonment.
When I was writing my first book, Good Girl Deprogramming, I got stuck on a question that seemed simple but wasn’t.
If you’re not a “Good Girl”… what are you?
At the time, I felt I had to give people an answer. Something neat. Something you could grab onto. A satisfying opposite.
And for months, I couldn’t find it.
I thought maybe the opposite was a “Bad Girl”. Or a “Boss”. Or a “Power Woman”. Or something a bit witchier, a bit louder, a bit more sharp-edged. Anything that could sit on the other end of the spectrum and make the model feel complete.
But the more I sat with it, the more it felt wrong.
Because you don’t need another identity to perform.
You don’t want Michelle’s Conditioning™ layered on top of the one you’re already trying to shed.
You don’t need a new name for your mask. You need your actual face.
And then it hit me - not all at once, but a slow realisation.
I am not here to take your Good Girl Conditioning and add another label to it.
I’m here to help you become the you-est you you can possibly be - underneath the shoulds, obligations, rules, and roles you were trained into.
That’s when the 5 Eras of Deprogramming crystallised, slowly, while mapping my own journey through this work.
It’s not a rigid ladder. Not a moral hierarchy. Not as “the correct way to be”. More a spiral that we spin up and down.
As a map of the stages I had lived through - and that I kept seeing in the women around me.
The 5 Eras - and the truth nobody tells you
Here they are, in plain language:
Good Girl - performing, pleasing, over-functioning (often without realising)
Awakening Woman - seeing the pattern and realising it was never “you”
Rebel Woman - furious, done with the system, but often turning that fire inward
Sovereign Woman - choosing yourself with clearer boundaries and voice
Unf*ckwithable - rooted enough in who you are that nobody can knock your crown off (and when it slips, you put it back on faster)
And I want to say something clearly: you don’t live in one era forever.
These eras are highly context-specific.
Even now - with all my work, all my training, all my practice - I still notice the Good Girl trying to come online around authority.
Medical professionals. Teaching staff at Oliver’s school. It’s a bit cringe.
In those moments, my nervous system wants safety. It wants approval. It wants to be seen as “a good one”.
So I can be deeply Sovereign in one context, and suddenly find myself people-pleasing in another.
That doesn’t mean I’ve failed.
It means I’m human.
And it means the model is doing what it’s meant to do - helping you notice where you’re performing safety, and giving you a way home.
How it was true for me
Good Girl (first 40 years, mostly)
For the first four decades of my life, I tried my hardest to be a Good Girl.
I was undiagnosed ADHD for most of that time, plus other layers that made life feel harder than it “should” have been. So I did what a lot of smart women do when their inner world is chaotic and demanding:
I over-functioned.
I performed.
I tried to be good enough to earn acceptance.
The weird part is that at work, I was different.
My job was to challenge and push. I was trained as an organisational psychologist - I knew what good practice looked like, and I wasn’t afraid to name when systems were broken or unfair.
So I was this strange hybrid: Good Girl in my personal life, Rebel(ish) at work.
You can probably imagine how that went down.
(It turns out “challenge and push” is not always welcomed when you’re a woman doing it.)
Awakening Woman (ADHD diagnosis)
Then came the awakening.
My ADHD diagnosis was a portal. It wasn’t the whole story - but it was a moment where I saw myself clearly and realised I’d been trying to live by rules that were never designed for my brain, my body, or my life.
And that is often devastating. I got really angry. I was furious. And the thought that kept bouncing around my head was ‘what would my life have looked like if I had this information sooner?'
Awakening is the era where you can’t unsee what you’ve seen.
Because you’re not only changing behaviour. You’re questioning what you thought was true about yourself, safety, loveability, and belonging.
Rebel Woman (Work Pirates and “unf*cking work”)
And then, naturally, I fell straight into Rebel.
We named our company Work Pirates and the strapline was “unf*cking work”.
Hilarious, given what I know now.
I enjoyed wearing that identity for a while - the energy, the defiance, the refusal to comply.
Rebel can be liberating because it breaks the spell.
But Rebel can also burn you if it becomes an identity you cling to, rather than a stage you move through.
Because if you stay in Rebel too long, you can end up turning all that fire on yourself - shame, self-attack, scorched-earth decisions, collapsing back into pleasing because it feels safer than being disliked.
Sovereign Woman (less rage, more clarity)
Over time, I became less angry at myself and clearer about what I was here to do.
That’s Sovereign.
Sovereign isn’t “nice”. It’s not “zen”. It’s not the absence of emotion.
It’s the practice of staying with yourself.
It’s boundaries that hold. Self-trust. Voice that returns. Choices that become cleaner. Less explaining. Less proving. Less abandoning yourself to keep the peace. More rest!
Unf*ckwithable (as a direction, not a claim)
When I first came across the word Unf*ckwithable, I kept the Urban Dictionary definition because it captured what so many women are longing for:
When you are truly at peace and in touch with yourself, and nothing anyone says or does bothers you, and no negativity or drama can touch you.
That’s my north star.
And I want to be clear: it’s a direction, not a permanent state.
I’ve worked on it through training, coaching, practice, and community - and it has changed me.
And it also revealed something else: as my work evolved, the company name no longer fit.
Work Pirates made sense for the Rebel era.
But the deeper work is deprogramming. It’s integration. It’s embodiment. It’s returning to yourself.
So we’re most of the way through a name change to The Deprogramming Company.
It’s not as catchy. It’s more true. And we love it.
The 5 Eras and the 5 stages of change
At some point, I realised something else.
These eras map beautifully onto the Transtheoretical Model (the five stages of change):
Good Girl - Precontemplation (the pattern is normalised, self-blame is high)
Awakening Woman - Contemplation (you can see it, but it’s wobbly and risky)
Rebel Woman - Preparation (and early action) (you’re ready, messy, experimenting)
Sovereign Woman - Action (you’re practising new choices and holding them more consistently)
Unf*ckwithable - Maintenance (the baseline shifts, and you return to yourself faster)
That’s why I’m so protective of the idea that you don’t need a new label.
You need a map.
A map helps you locate yourself without shame, and then choose a next step that fits the stage you’re actually in.
This also makes me smile - we’re no longer pirates, and now we have a map!?
Where I am now (and what I’m working on)
This year, I’m doing two things that matter deeply to me:
I’m spending serious time working with my nervous system - because this isn’t only mindset work, it’s embodied work.
I’m training in sex, love, and relationship coaching - because intimacy is one of the places Good Girl conditioning shows up most powerfully, and I want to deepen my practice there for my clients and for me.
It’s tough going.
There is so much self-love to learn after decades of neglect.
And sometimes I wonder if there’s a stage beyond Unf*ckwithable - where I simply inhabit my body as me.
Maybe this is what I dismissed in Maslow’s self-actualisation era.
Which is a phrase I used to roll my eyes at.
We’ll see.
Because I don’t think this is a journey where we “arrive”. I think it’s a journey where we return. Again and again.
And each return makes you a little more you.
If you want support with your own shift
If you’re somewhere on this map - Good Girl, Awakening, Rebel, Sovereign, Unf*ckwithable - you’re welcome here.
I coach women across all 5 Eras. Most private clients come to me in the Rebel → Sovereign transition - awake, done performing, learning to choose themselves without guilt.
If you want to work with me, you can start here:
https://www.michelleminnikin.com/work-with-michelle
Big love,
Mx
This is beautifully written and love how everything ties together! ❤️