WHY HIGH-ACHIEVING WOMEN STOP RESPONDING TO “SELF-CARE”

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Sometimes high achieving women reach a point where they realise they’ve become incredibly good at doing the restorative things, but without actually feeling restored by them. And I think this is important to talk about because these are often highly intelligent, highly self aware women, women who’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, downloaded the meditation apps, they regularly get a massage, their diet is clean, they’ve even started drinking herbal tea. They know that stress matters. They understand nervous system regulation. Intellectually. Some of them are the women everyone else comes to for advice about wellbeing. And from the outside, and even often to ourselves, it looks like we’re doing all the right things. But somewhere underneath all of that, your shoulders are still tight, your jaw aches.

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By the end of the day, you realise you’ve been clenching your teeth again. And it’s interesting because the jaw is one of the places where the body braces. Almost like your system is still preparing for impact, still biting down against pressure. Your mind keeps moving in moments that are supposed to feel restorative. And it shows up in these tiny little moments that are so easy to dismiss. Like going to yoga because you know it’s meant to help. But spending half the class thinking through a problem at work or planning tomorrow in your head. Or maybe you’re looking at the clock, wondering how on earth is There still another 35 minutes left of this? Your body’s technically there, but internally there’s this subtle agitation moving underneath the whole experience.

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And really, between you and me, you’d rather it was just over and out of the way. Tick that one off the list. Or maybe you’re sitting in the sauna at the gym after a long week. Now, you know this is supposed to be relaxing. This is your reward for making it through to the end of the week. But your brain’s already organising what needs to happen when you get home. That reply to that email that needs to get done. Prep for that meeting.

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Oh, remember to send that thing before tomorrow morning. Your mind is in preparation mode, running scenarios, getting ready for every imagined eventuality. But your mind doesn’t really know what’s real and what’s imagined. So for your body, all real. Or how about this? You’re dragging yourself to the gym because you know that movement’s important, even though your body actually feels exhausted. But somewhere inside, there’s still this belief that pushing through is the most productive thing to do. So every workout becomes about pounding it out. More discipline, more effort, more output.

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And then you leave feeling depleted instead of restored frustration. Because the thing that’s supposed to make you feel better, didn’t. It’s funny, I remember years ago, I was lying on a massage table during my lunch break and my phone rang because I’d forgotten to put it on silent. And instantly my brain went to, I bet that’s my boss. And then it went to, oh no, what’s happened? And then it went to, I shouldn’t even be here, I should be working. And this was during my lunch hour and I’d actually booked that massage because I felt stiff and tense on that phone call. Nothing was wrong, there wasn’t actually an emergency, but my whole body had already left the massage before I’d even consciously processed what was happening. And I never really came back to it.

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And I think this is where the conversation becomes really interesting. Because most women I work with would never describe themselves as having a control issue. They’d describe themselves as responsible, prepared, reliable, competent, good at what they do. Women who anticipate needs before they become problems, women who stay on top of things, women who carry a lot and carry it well. But physiologically, many high achieving women become extraordinarily skilled at anticipation. It’s staying mentally prepared, staying available, staying one step ahead of demand. And this is where the conversation around cortisol’s evolving as well, right? Because cortisol is increasingly being understood less as simply a stress hormone and more as an anticipation hormone. And this means that your body might not just be responding to pressure anymore, it may be becoming highly practised at preparing for pressure before it even arrives.

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And I think this is where the conversation around self care becomes more sophisticated. Because when your nervous system becomes highly practised at anticipation, even restorative practises can start being approached with that same energy you bring to work, the same efficiency, the same pressure, just get it done. Another thing ticked off the list. The same underlying sense that if you do this properly, maybe you’ll finally feel better or function better or cope better by Monday. So you meditate properly, you buy the supplements, you squeeze the walk into your lunch break, you do the yoga class, even though half the time you’d actually rather it was over and out of the way because your mind’s already onto the next thing. And underneath all of it, there’s often this low level dialogue running in the background. It sounds a bit like, why can’t I just get my shit together? Or I really don’t have time for this, or you’re feeling a bit poorly, right? I can’t afford to get sick right now. Why can’t people just do their jobs properly? So I don’t have to carry all of this now.

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It’s not all the time, but it’s often enough so that your system really gets a full break from anticipation. Because self care isn’t actually just about what you do, it’s about the state you’re in while you’re doing it. So for example, you can drink your herbal tea while mentally rehearsing tomorrow’s meeting, replying to emails and basically gulping it down between tasks. Or you can drink the same tea while inhaling the scent the same way you would your favourite fragrant flower. Letting yourself actually taste it. Noticing your breathing slowing down a little, feeling how tight your shoulders really are. Letting yourself arrive before your mind immediately moves onto the next thing. Same tea, very different conversation with yourself.

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And honestly, what if self care really was that simple? Sometimes, because I think we’ve been sold this idea that restoration has to be some big dramatic thing. The retreat, the perfect protocol, the complete life overhaul. And sometimes these things are beautiful. And sometimes restoration happens in very small moments where you stop preparing for what’s next long enough to actually receive where you are. And this is where I think we get to separate optimization from regulation, because they’re not the same thing. Options optimization tends to sound like how can I get myself functioning properly again as quickly as possible? Or how do I push through this? Or I don’t really have time for this shit, or how do I stop feeling like this before Monday? But regulation asks something very different. What’s happening inside of me right now? What am I carrying? What have I pushed past? Again, very different relationship with yourself. Right? Because regulation isn’t about being calm all of the time.

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And honestly, I think that misunderstanding creates a lot of emotional congestion in women because we start managing ourselves constantly instead of responding honestly to what’s actually happening inside of us. Sometimes you need rest, sometimes you need movement, sometimes you need to cry. Sometimes you need to stop pretending everything’s fine. And sometimes you need space to feel angry before that anger quietly hardens into resentment underneath everything else. And over time, many high achieving women become so skilled at overriding early biological signals that they stop noticing things until something escalates. The tight jaw, the Sunday dread, The waking at 3am, mentally running tomorrow before tomorrow’s even arrived. The exhaustion that no amount of self care seems to touch anymore. This is one of the reasons why I find adaptogens so fascinating.

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Adaptogens are herbs that support your system’s ability to adapt to stress and come back towards balance. But what’s really beautiful about them Is that they don’t aggressively force you in one direction. They support responsiveness, adaption, homeostasis. If your system needs lifting, they respond differently than if your system needs settling. There’s intelligence in that. They’re not trying to overpower you, they’re supporting your capacity to respond appropriately, to demand. And honestly, I think there’s something really profound in that for high achieving women, because so many women have spent years relating to themselves through force. Push harder, override the signal, keep going.

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While somewhere underneath all of that, there’s often been a quieter invitation towards responsiveness all along. And I think this is where something else starts happening for a lot of high achieving women, the very strategies that once created capacity can start producing diminishing returns. The coffee doesn’t quite hit the same anymore. So you start looking for the supplement that will. The thing that will finally give you the energy, the focus, the clarity, the motivation, resilience you used to seem to access so much more easily. More caffeine, stronger supplements, better protocols, more optimization. And even hearing that list feels exhausting, right? Because there’s this constant underlying pressure to maintain the same level of output, the same level of sharpness, the same level of reliability, even when somewhere underneath it all, your system’s quietly asking for something different. And it can be so frustrating because on paper, you’re doing everything right.

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You’re informed, you’re disciplined, you’re self aware, you care about your health. But many women have been taught to approach performance through a very specific model. Perform the habit, get the result. So when the coffee stops hitting the same, you increase it. When the supplements stop working the same, you look for stronger ones. When you feel exhausted, you push through, because that’s the strategy that worked before. But your body is amazing, it’s incredibly adaptive, which means eventually that the same inputs stop creating the same response. The coffee that once worked effortlessly well, now it barely touches that fatigue, the workout that used to energise you, maybe that now leaves you feeling a bit depleted, a bit down, a bit worn out.

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The hacks stop landing the same way that they once did. And often we compensate for that adaption by increasing force, when what our system is actually asking for is responsiveness. So the weekend disappears without feeling restorative. You come back from holiday and within two days you feel like you’ve never even left. You sit down to rest and almost immediately you feel the urge to cheque your phone, open your laptop, or just quickly get something done. And I think this is where the conversation around leadership starts becoming really interesting, because many High achieving women have been rewarded for overriding themselves early, pushing through tiredness, staying composed, holding everything together on the outside anyway, anticipating needs before they become problems, remaining functional no matter what’s happening personally. And those strategies often create success, competence and reliability. But they can also create a relationship with yourself, where responsiveness slowly gets replaced with pressure.

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And over time, you become so accustomed to functioning through anticipation that spaciousness initially feels unfamiliar, sometimes even uncomfortable. So you fiddle with your phone when it’s quiet, you open the laptop on holiday, just quickly you feel restless when there’s nothing urgent demanding your attention. Not because you’re incapable of resting, but because your systems become highly practised at staying prepared. And I think this is why coherent leadership is such a different conversation from performance optimization. Because it’s not asking you to abandon excellence, it’s asking whether excellence can exist without constant internal pressure driving it. Whether leadership can include responsiveness, whether success can include spaciousness, and whether your capacity expands more sustainably when your system no longer has to brace against life all the time. So here’s the thing. What if restoration isn’t something that you earn after depletion? What if it becomes part of how you lead? Because I think many high achieving women have unknowingly learned to relate to rest as something that happens after everything else is done, after the inbox is cleared, after the deadlines are met, after everyone else’s needs are handled.

[00:14:49]:
Except for many women, that pressure never really ends. There’s always another meeting, another decision, another thing, mentally sitting open in the background. So restoration becomes conditional, something you access once you’ve earned it through enough output, enough productivity, enough usefulness. And eventually you can start relating to rest, almost like a reward for performance, rather than something that actually fuels creativity, clear decision making, emotional capacity, sustainable energy and leadership itself. And I think this is where the conversation becomes really interesting. Because many high achieving women unconsciously believe pressure is what creates their performance. The urgency, the mental load, the multitasking, the constant anticipation, the internal pressure to stay sharp, prepared, productive. After a while, it becomes hard to separate the pressure from the performance because they’ve travelled together for so long.

[00:15:53]:
But often pressure is simply what’s accompanied performance. And that’s a very different thing. Because if pressure is not the source of your intelligence or your leadership, your creativity, your capability, then what becomes possible when your system no longer has to generate constant internal pressure to access those things? What if your sharpest thinking didn’t actually come from pressure? What if clarity returns when your mind’s no longer running five scenarios ahead? What if Your best decisions emerge when your system’s no longer constantly bracing for the next demand. And what becomes possible when leadership no longer requires constant internal pressure to sustain it. Because I don’t think coherent leadership is about becoming less ambitious or less driven or less excellent. I think it’s about no longer needing chronic internal force to access those qualities. It’s the ability to stay connected to yourself while leading, to notice tension before it escalates, to respond before your system has to shout. To create spaciousness inside a very full life.

[00:17:11]:
And honestly, I think this is why the smallest moments can become so powerful. Not because they’re hacks, not because they’re another thing to optimise, but because they begin changing the relationship you have with yourself throughout the day. Drinking your tea while it’s still hot instead of gulping it down, lukewarm between emails, taking one full breath before immediately responding. And my favourite thing at the end of my work day is to simply look out the train window. Tiny moments. But over time, they create a very different internal experience of leadership capacity and success. One where your system no longer has to stay in constant anticipation in order for you to function at a high level. So maybe self care stops working when it’s approached with the same internal pressure that created the depletion in the first place.

[00:18:12]:
Maybe restoration was never supposed to become another performance metric. Maybe your system hasn’t been asking for more force, more optimisation, more discipline. Maybe it’s been asking for responsiveness. And maybe tonight that doesn’t look like a complete life overhaul. Maybe it looks like drinking your tea while it’s still warm, taking one full breath before opening the laptop again. And my favourite thing at the end of the workday? Looking out that train window. Tiny moments. And sometimes tiny moments change everything.

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I’m sending you lots of love. Bye for now.