The Cost of Coping

Why High-Functioning Women Are Rethinking Resilience.

Research consistently shows that women in leadership experience disproportionately high levels of chronic stress, emotional labour and burnout, yet are far less likely to access psychologically safe support.

A 2023 McKinsey study found that women leaders are 1.5 times more likely than men to report burnout symptoms, while neuroscience research from Dr Bruce McEwen’s work on allostatic load demonstrates that prolonged “high-functioning stress” quietly reshapes the brain, immune system and decision-making capacity over time.

For Black and minoritised women, scholars such as Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw and Dr Joy DeGruy have long shown how cultural expectation, racialised resilience and historical trauma compound this burden, often rendering distress invisible precisely because performance remains intact. This is the paradox Breaking Free exists to confront.

One of the central questions we ask is about the hidden cost of resilience. In leadership cultures, resilience is often celebrated as strength without interrogation. Psychologist Dr Gabor Maté reminds us that resilience without repair becomes adaptation to harm, not health. Women who are praised for coping frequently internalise the belief that asking for support represents failure.

Over time, this erodes confidence, narrows decision-making and normalises exhaustion as the price of leadership. The absence of support does not create stronger leaders; it creates silent attrition, disengagement and long-term health consequences that surface years later.

Another question goes deeper into how unresolved trauma quietly shapes leadership behaviour.

Neuroscience tells us that trauma does not disappear when we succeed. It reappears in risk appetite, hyper-vigilance, people-pleasing, over-control or fear of rest. Dr Bessel van der Kolk’s research shows that the nervous system continues to operate from survival patterns long after danger has passed.

For high-performing women, especially those who lead teams, families and communities simultaneously, this can look like competence on the surface while self-trust slowly erodes underneath. Breaking Free creates space to examine these patterns without judgement, recognising that performance is not proof of healing.

We also ask why trauma and recovery conversations are failing high-functioning women.

Many wellbeing initiatives rely on exposure, oversharing or generic self-care narratives that feel unsafe or irrelevant to professionals who carry responsibility, reputation and cultural scrutiny.

As Black feminist thinkers such as Bell Hooks have argued, healing must be contextual, not performative. When recovery spaces ignore power, culture and identity, women disengage quietly, not because they do not need support, but because the support offered does not meet them where they are.

This leads to another critical question. What does trauma-informed leadership actually look like beyond policy and compliance.

Trauma-informed practice is not a checkbox or a training slide. It is a way of leading that understands psychological safety, accountability and boundaries as strategic assets.

Organisational psychologists such as Professor Amy Edmondson have shown that psychologically safe environments improve learning, ethics and performance.

Breaking Free moves the conversation from awareness to application, asking leaders how they embed safety, clarity and compassion into real decision-making, safeguarding and culture.

Finally, the Breaking Free webinar confronts how we break generational and cultural cycles without shame or spectacle.

In many communities, silence is framed as strength and endurance as duty. Dr Joy DeGruy’s work on post-traumatic slave syndrome and intergenerational trauma highlights how unspoken pain is often passed down as behaviour, expectation and silence rather than story.

Breaking Free does not seek to expose or sensationalise, but to offer language, structure and leadership pathways that allow women to interrupt these cycles with dignity, wisdom and agency.

This initiative exists because leadership, recovery and wellbeing cannot be separated without cost. Breaking Free brings them back into the same room, not as a trend, but as a necessary recalibration for women, organisations and communities who are ready to lead without self-erasure.

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If this resonates, we invite you to stay engaged with the Breaking Free conversations, webinars and reflections. Like this post, comment with your perspective and share it with someone who understands that strength should never require silence.

Interested? Secure your place at Breaking Free. Registration is now open. This is not therapy. It is leadership literacy for the realities women are navigating today.