In the complex and competitive world of professional careers many women find themselves doing multiple tasks at the same time. The role of wife, mother, caregiver, daughter, and professional with performance expectations create an unending pressure to achieve. Even though stress is considered a part of daily life, a chronic workplace stress that is not recognised and dealt with, can eventually lead to emotional exhaustion, anxiety, and burnout.

The World Health Organization states burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” It is associated with “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy.” For many women, this can develop over a period of time making it hard to identify when stress has become beyond normal day-to-day occurrences. Therapy is available to assist women in many of these stresses, help emotional states recover, and avoid the onset of burnout.

Understanding Workplace Stress in Women

Stressors women commonly experience include the combined load of both work and home. Many women continue to manage a majority of the household responsibilities, care giving, and the emotional labor of family and work relationships. Research from the APA shows women report experiencing more stress and being more likely to perceive their stress as “overwhelming” than men (American Psychological Association, https://www.apa.org).

Some of the stressors high achieving women encounter are:
Perfectionism
Imposter syndrome
Leadership pressure
Caregiver roles
Work life balance pressures
Fear of disappointing others

Overtime these pressures can add up to form chronic stress that can be physically and emotionally exhausting.

Why High-Achieving Women Are Particularly Vulnerable

Successful working women can have inherent positive traits such as being ambitious, diligent, dependable and thorough. These same traits, however, can be disadvantageous when placed under high expectations.

A common issue for many high achieving women is the mindset of having to constantly be efficient, capable, available, etc. And therefore having difficulty delegating, requesting assistance, or setting a healthy limit.

Studies done by the Harvard Business Review conclude that many women in executive positions face increased emotional labor because of the demands on their time and expanded responsibilities (Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org). This pressure without proper resources and support system, begins to establish a cycle of increasing stress.

How Therapy Helps Manage Workplace Stress

By going to therapy this provides a confidential which identifies why there is stress and l helps you to learn coping strategies to mitigate their impact. The first step in therapy is to recognise behaviours and thought patterns that contribute to feeling emotionally exhausted. Women frequently operate in high-stress situations without recognising its toll effecting your life.

Understand Triggers: Identifying the expectations, environments, and thought patterns that perpetuate stress is an important part of enacting change. Build healthy boundaries: Women often have trouble saying “no” and neglecting their own needs. In therapy women can learn the appropriate way to establish boundaries that protect their time, energy and mental health.

Change perfectionistic thoughts: Perfectionism contributes significantly to stress and burnout. Through CBT therapy and other methods, women can unlearn unhealthy standards (National Institute of Mental Health, https://www.nimh.nih.gov).

Increase resilience: Therapy equip women with strategies to manage overwhelming emotions and job stress. Become more self compassionate: Work done in therapy can transform the harsh and critical inner dialogue that women engage in. Self compassion has been proven to increase resilience and decrease stress and anxiety (Self Compassion Research, https://self-compassion.org).

Long-term benefits: Therapy is designed to build a stronger set of coping skills, not to remove stress from women’s lives entirely. Women who utilize therapy consistently show improved work-life balance, more effective coping mechanisms, higher self confidence, more effective emotional regulation, stronger relationships, better self-control, decreased stress and anxiety, and job satisfaction.