THRIVE: EMPOWERING HIGH ACHIEVING WOMEN

I have worked with high-achieving professionally successful women for a long time, including women in fields such as medicine, banking, law, design, the corporate sector and more.

As women’s rights and social roles in society have changed, so has their identity. Women’s identity used to be tied up with raising a family in the home; as societal ideas shifted, so too did women’s place and they started working outside of the home. This brought, financial independence, agency, freedom, choice, opportunities, and a personal power. 

However, like anything, there have also been some struggles and psychological costs with this shift in women’s personal and social identity. Firstly, women’s role within the home has in many cases remain unchanged, and within hetero-normative relational systems, they often hold the larger responsibility of home and childcare compared to their male life partners. 

This has created a more intense burden of care and duties for women, often called the mother-load for those with children and called the mental or woman load for women without children. These expectations for women to hold so many responsibilities has brought relentless pressure. 

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In addition, women working in male dominated work environments are often exposed to both subtle and explicit forms of patriarchal (and often misogynistic) values that produce and reproduce patriarchal trauma, which women are often carrying from early experiences, before they even enter the workforce. So, work based patriarchal systems can amplify the patriarchal struggles and misogyny women have faced. In addition, the internalisation of patriarchal values, which is how oppression spreads, can make it difficult for women to lean on each other, as women have felt pressured to align themselves with the male ideology of performing and leading in work. This has impacted women’s relationship in complex and painful ways and in some cases created a sense of inauthentic existence for women when in work. 

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Through therapeutic work, it has become apparent, women face unique challenges in their career identity and within the workplace, which impacts and shapes their sense of self and how they navigate themselves in their respective workplace. This brings an array of complex emotions and experiences, including anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, identity crisis and more.
 
An aspect that doesn’t always get much attention, is how the work identity can be utilised unconsciously as a way to avoid painful experiences and emotions. Work can be used as a psychological balm against trauma and emotional pain, and to fill the void for feelings of loneliness and emptiness in other areas of life. This also creates a tricky dynamic with how women navigate their life and especially becomes complicated when women struggle at work, sometimes for the first time, and they discover that a wonderful career can be fulfilling but it can’t mask or “fix” underlying pain and trauma.