Why Do High-Achieving Women Struggle With Shame?

How Shame Shows Up in High-Achieving Women

High-achieving women experience shame because they believe their value is tied to what they accomplish. If they complete tasks or meet goals, they feel a brief sense of relief that they finished what they started. If they don’t complete tasks or meet goals, they feel like they’re not good enough.

This often flies under the radar because other people assume that if you’ve got your shit together on the outside, you’ve got your shit together on the inside. The shame is a well-kept secret because no matter what life throws at you, you continue checking off the to-do list. This means you do a great job at managing your household chores - laundry, dishes, groceries, AND you excel at your work - administrative duties, client meetings, communicating with the team. You’re the person everyone relies on, whether it’s your friends, family, or co-workers.

How many times have you heard: “If anyone can do it, it’s you!”

Being efficient and reliable is how so many high-achieving women cope with stress. But having everything together doesn’t automatically mean you feel a confident sense of self-worth.

Myth: Doing Enough = Feeling Like We’re Good Enough

Before we deal with the shame, we need to know exactly what it is and what it isn’t. Here’s a helpful way to look at it:

“Guilt = I did something bad. Shame = I am bad.” -Brené Brown

High-achievers don’t delineate between guilt and shame. We think: “I didn’t get the report in on time, my boss is going to think I’m lazy.” or “I forgot to buy a birthday present for my niece, I’m such a bad aunt.”

But the thing is… we don’t apply this same logic to other people! When something goes wrong for other people, our first instinct is typically to gather more information or give others the benefit of the doubt. If we’re waiting for some information about a project from a co-worker we’ll say something like, “Hey Ashley, is the project delayed? Let me know if there’s any kind of support I can offer you!” If our sister forgot to buy a birthday present for our daughter, we text something like, “Hey just checking in! Wanted to send a friendly reminder that it’s Monique’s birthday today!”

High-Achieving Women are so much harder on themselves than they are on anybody else… but why?

In our relentless grind culture, high achievement is one of the most prized traits we can have. We are living through a period of history where women are socially (and unfairly) expected to take on the majority of the mental load at home AND hold down a full time job (or two). The women who can keep up are praised for their grit, but they are rarely understood as also being overwhelmed by the weight of the responsibility they hold. In order to cope, we start to identify with our achievements. Our accomplishments become part of our character. We believe that if we continue to perform, we are successful. But the illusion falls apart when we inevitably realize that underneath all the achievements and admiration, we still feel like garbage.

High-Achieving Women Were Once High-Achieving Girls

Not only are these patterns ingrained by society, but they often begin in our family of origin. For many high-achievers, we started learning we were special when we excelled in a sport, artistic talent, or academic focus. We received attention and encouragement from our parents when we scored a soccer goal, got the lead in a school musical, or received straight A’s. Being told we did a “great job” felt amazing! We kept seeking out that praise, but something else happened in the process. When we didn’t score a soccer goal, when we didn’t get the leading role, or when we got a B, we felt like we did a bad job. We felt like we weren’t doing well enough to make our parents proud.

What’s more? Some parents tend to fixate on or live vicariously through their child’s talent. The more pressure that is placed on a high-achieving child, the more self-worth that child will attach to their ability to perform beyond normal expectations. If the child does an outstanding job, the parent will spotlight their gifts, and the child will feel so loved and worthy! But it’s fleeting, because the next day will come, the next goal will be set, and that child will fall right back into thinking she needs to prove her worthiness by achieving the goal. This pattern is carried directly into adulthood where there often isn’t any celebration of achievements because there are so many goals to achieve and responsibilities to fulfill at once that stopping to celebrate feels like a waste of time or a barrier to success.

What Helps High-Achieving Women Know Their Worth?

This is something I help clients work through using EMDR and IFS therapy. EMDR allows us to get to the root of the issue by processing early memories where these patterns and beliefs began. IFS helps us get in touch with different parts of ourselves - for instance, the inner child who learned these behaviors in the first place, or the inner critic who constantly tells you you’re not good enough if you can’t keep up with the pace of life. We bring our adult selves (often the adult energy that was needed but not provided in childhood) to these parts of us. We acknowledge and hold space for the inner critic who is trying so hard to help us manage a million tasks in a day. We invite her to share her worries and we offer her the insight that she is valuable regardless of the to-do list she keeps us so focused on. We allow the inner child a space to grieve for the days where she took on more responsibility than any child is meant to carry. In sum, we slow down enough to really sit with the feelings and the thoughts that have been buried deep, down below the never-ending task list. Once those feelings are acknowledged and processed through our body, the weight of high-achievement doesn’t feel so heavy anymore. We can believe in our hearts that our value comes from who we are, not what we can get done.

Getting Started

Need more support? I’m Danielle, I specialize in helping high-achieving women create real, lasting change through EMDR and IFS therapy. Reach out for a free intro call to learn more about individual therapy.