Why success costs women more
Some of us pay a higher price for the same product.
It is difficult to teach nervous system regulation, self-esteem “techniques,” or therapeutic skills when the woman in front of you is carrying an entire system on her shoulders — a system designed to keep her functional. Functional enough to work. Functional enough to reproduce. Functional enough to please. And still, never quite enough.
Never good enough, no matter how you cut it.
Beautiful?
But aging.
Smart?
But not valued.
Ambitious?
Nobody cares about your degree.
Pregnant?
Look how her body changed.
A mother?
She’s no longer taking care of herself.
To work with women on self-esteem is not to offer confidence tricks. It is to help dismantle centuries of inherited beliefs — beliefs etched not only into individual minds, but passed through mothers and grandmothers, absorbed long before language.
There is no honest way to pretend that therapeutic work with women is identical to therapeutic work with men. Both can suffer. But one lives inside a system that was not built for her benefit, and is judged at every turn for failing to adapt to it.
Winning the game for women
While, on paper, women now have rights, votes, and access to opportunity, there is a quieter current I see repeatedly in my work. One that prevents many women from enjoying their success once it arrives.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard women say they are afraid their success will narrow their dating pool. That being competent, ambitious, or financially secure will make them less desirable. That success comes with relational risk.
Here the double bind appears.
On one hand, women grow up absorbing the message that they are not natural leaders, not built for hierarchy, not structured for the kind of success men are encouraged to pursue. Doubt becomes internalized long before any real competition begins.
Yet when success does arrive, whether modest or substantial, the doubt does not disappear. Instead, it is reinforced by a social reality many women quietly encounter. Success in women is still unsettling to many men.
Some respond by denying it. Others minimize it. Others distance themselves from it. Not always consciously, and not always maliciously, but consistently enough to be felt.
At the societal level, women are shaped to believe their success will never quite matter, or that it will come at a personal cost. Men, meanwhile, are often raised with the expectation that leadership and dominance are natural entitlements. When those expectations go unmet, when women compete and succeed, resentment can emerge, framed as injustice rather than adaptation.
The result is a system in which women hesitate to fully inhabit their success, and men struggle to reconcile theirs.
Both suffer. But only one is asked, repeatedly, to make herself smaller in order to be loved.
The super woman: mother, career woman, seductress
Lauren is a 35-year-old woman, a mother and a small business owner. Her daughter is six years old and an only child. Her husband is an architect. Her relatives are continuously making jokes about how Lara, their daughter, is growing up alone, while her husband, Mark, casually mentions that they could afford another child.
What her husband and her relatives do not know is that Lauren loves her daughter. She is happy to see her grow and become less dependent on her, as she is now able to return to her daily activities. Lauren continues to cook, clean, and share some of the household duties with Mark, but the emotional labor is mostly her job. The tantrums, the doctor’s appointments, the stomach aches at night, and the sudden hatred of broccoli.
Lauren sees herself caught in a double bind. She thinks of giving Lara a sibling, but it is not that easy. Pregnancy is not easy, nor is the toll it would take on her body. She fears being out of shape and finding it even harder to lose the baby weight again, now with two children.
She knows her body will change again and wonders how it will change this time. Is it going to be worse? She looks at the scar from her C-section and imagines another line on top of it.
When choice still carries a cost
Janet and Sarah are friends. Janet is 29 and overworked, yet earning well and running on ambition alone, fearing that at any moment she might lose the opportunity she has now and never find a similar one again. Sarah is 42, fresh from a divorce, sending out resumes while also working on a clinical study. Both are childfree.
On weekends, when they have free time, they often go for brunch. Sometimes they organize something more elaborate. They travel to Europe for a few days and return with a tan and a handful of souvenirs. They are free, unchained, and both seem to have made this their mantra.
Yet something remains unspoken, though sometimes hinted at over brunch. They feel excluded. Their choice not to have children has sent both of them into overdrive, into a perpetual need to always be doing something.
Both feel pressure to excel at work far beyond the expectations placed on colleagues with children, simply because they have more time.
Both also feel pressure to “have more fun,” which quietly ruins the idea of fun when it becomes an expectation, imposed simply because they do not have a two-year-old at home.
Janet and Sarah have made choices toward living life on their own terms. Yet somehow, they feel the pull to punish themselves for doing so. They move through life with the persistent unease of a small stone stuck in their shoe.
Navigating the complexity of women’s challenges
Psychological work does not happen in a vacuum. Men and women share many struggles, yet some struggles are statistically more prevalent in certain populations. Keeping nuance in mind when addressing common concerns such as self-esteem issues, anxiety, impostor syndrome, attachment wounds, and codependency in women versus men matters.
Language matters as well. The sociological conditions that contribute to the development of unhelpful patterns in women can differ from those affecting men. Ignoring these differences does not create neutrality. It creates blindness.
Want to work with a woman who gets women?
Visit my about page to learn more about how I help women work through attachment wounds, self-criticism, impostor syndrome, overfunctioning, low self-esteem, codependency, and other unhelpful patterns