Why SuperWoman is not so super, is not your friend and why she won't leave without a fuss!

Recently I delivered, along with my friends at the Life Sciences Access Academy, a webinar. The title of the event was 'Superwoman is a Myth' and so I thought it timely to revisit her and her legacy again in article format

Who is she?

She is the archetype of our times. She is great, she gets stuff done, she takes charge, she has boundless energy. She appears so attractive, be her and you can have it all and who doesn't want it all?

She feels like a really good way to operate and to succeed especially when you are trying to juggle home, work, children, relationships and so much more.

But she is not sustainable, she will eventually drive you into the ground and when this happens, energy and motivation leave and productivity declines. 

If you're tired, exhausted even, feelings of failure, inferiority and fear begin to grow,  procrastination may show up at this point.  Executive function in general reduces and this includes the ability to plan and organise, concentrate and focus (brain fog), remember details, manage our emotions, manage time and solve problems etc. In other words, everything you need to do your day job and be a functioning human!

When we are very depleted our inner critical voice gets louder and louder, saying things 'like you're not good enough'. Perfectionism, which is the fear of failure and criticism appears at this point for some people. If you have ever been described as 'scary' or had similar feedback, chances are it is Superwoman that is being seen, not the authentic you

Some people just can't say no, they dare not, they have not learned how which means that their boundaries are poor. However, because you are so capable and a high achiever you get offered more and more work, special projects or development opportunities and you can't decline and so you get more exhausted and then start to become resentful.  We can lose confidence and self doubt grows, we feel overwhelmed quite often and feel helpless. 

.....and then someone say things like ''you are amazing, I don’t know how you do it all …..'' and then the thought of falling from this place, high up on a pedestal feels terrifying, so you keep going and Superwoman is born

She's a product of our national cultural paradigm. Here in the UK we have a culture where masculine traits are rewarded and celebrated (more of that later) Sometimes company culture will influence, especially where overwork and sacrifice are rewarded. Sometimes our upbringing and the beliefs we adopt within our families support it too. It's often subconscious or subliminal and we're not aware that we are operating in the mode of Superwoman and that she is burning us out

Subconsciously we learn that to be a successful woman in business we need to adopt some more masculine traits. You'll have heard women sometimes described as ‘oh she's too emotional' or 'she's too soft' or 'she's not focused enough’ or something like that and so we begin to adopt behaviours that are more masculine in nature and over time it just doesn't sit very well with our biology. 

These traits are things like achievement, aggression, assertiveness, material rewards, independence,  win at any price, not asking for help or even refusing help when it's offered. 

Alternately, more naturally feminine traits such as nurture, collaboration, cooperation, modesty, empathy and compassion are the things that come to the feminine much more easily but do not feel valued in the workplace. I'm not saying they're not but sometimes we don't feel that we are and so Superwoman can occur when women become more masculinised. We can be very very focused and very competitive but sometimes the wins that we have feel really hollow, they don't feel well won and we feel unsatisfied

I want to be clear that this is not about men v women in any way, this is about traits and behaviours and are not gendered. 

Superwoman is relentless, she will not rest, she expects you to keep going and after a while you start to get really depleted and tired and just really wrung out. You are likely sensing your high stress levels. You are certainly not looking after yourself. You can't stop, too much to do, not enough time, everything is important and urgent. It is at this point that her three cousins might show up. 

They are slightly different facets to Superwoman. They are the Bitch the Martyr and the Victim. 

To elaborate, the inner voice for the Bitch is 'everyone around here is an idiot, no one can do it as well as I can,  get out of the way let me get on with it.'

For the martyr it's about ‘’well if I do everything for everybody and see to everybody's needs no one will be nasty to me nobody will criticise me everyone will like me and then I’ll be safe' 

For the victim the inner narrative, unconscious though these things always are, is more like 'I just want someone to see me, hear me, acknowledge me, understand me, help me, but i’ll never ask for it… they should just know'

 The Bitch, Victim, Martyr are deeply dis-empowering archetypes 

How does all this happen ?

Essentially we are the exact same animal as we were hundreds of thousands of years ago as we evolved. The male has about 13 times more testosterone than the female, this was needed to support hunting and killing prey and fighting of predators

Today, when women are feeling stressed, under pressure, working very long days etc etc they will run on testosterone for a while but it runs out pretty quickly and when it runs out our bodies can start to feel very anxious and bothered about failing, maybe not keeping our job, keeping all these balls in the air, all these tabs in our brain running. It's very threatening and in the brain our amygdala senses this.The fight/flight/freeze mode is activated and via the HPA axis we flick to Adrenaline and then Cortisol production. If this doesn't stop, over time our bodies and our organs are essentially bathed in stress hormones. This can be the case for many weeks, months, even years, sometimes even decades and there will likely be an impact on one's health because of that.

Sleep can be very heavily impacted. For those of us that go to bed at night and feel physically tired but mentally wired will know this. Our bodies and minds are exhausted but we have adrenaline and cortisol still buzzing round and we can't switch off. 

The body uses the same raw ingredients to create Cortisol as it does to create a sex hormones and it will prioritize Cortisol and that might be the reason why our reproductive systems, fertility and menopause are becoming such a challenge for many

A whole host of other undesirable stuff can occur too because Cortisol creates more inflammation in the body and as we know that has an impact on possibly cancer and possibly autoimmune disease and other metabolic disorders as well.

Women are 60% more likely to burnout or develop a chronic exhaustive condition like CFS/ME and Fibromyalgia than men. Is there a connection between stress hormones and these outcomes ? 

There is a better way, a much better way to operate which means you can leave Superwoman behind, and her cousins. It means you can take back your power and be the person you know you have the potential to be