I recently attended a local International Women’s Day networking event hosted by Communitech.
The atmosphere was thoughtful and carefully curated. There was a live orchestra performance during the networking portion of the evening. Drinks and appetizers were served. Attendees received complimentary gift packages—beautifully assembled, complete with notebooks and small tokens meant to inspire reflection and connection.
The room itself was diverse. Women of different ages, cultural backgrounds, and professional stages moved through the space—some early in their careers, others deeply established.
There was a large whiteboard divided into two sections:
- What I need help with
- How I can help
It was a simple but powerful structure—an invitation into mutual support, not just self-promotion.
The staff were warm, attentive, and clearly invested in creating a positive experience. At the end of the event, there was even an option to rate your experience by pressing an emoji on a feedback stand—an almost symbolic gesture toward emotional visibility in professional spaces.
And still—beneath all of this—I found myself paying attention to something deeper.
Why Professional Spaces Still Feel Performative for Women
Events like this matter. They create space. They signal progress. They attempt to counterbalance environments that have historically excluded or marginalized women.
But what they don’t automatically undo is the internal experience many women carry into these spaces.
Because for many high-achieving women, networking doesn’t feel neutral.
It feels like:
- being seen and evaluated at the same time
- managing how you come across while trying to stay authentic
- calibrating warmth, competence, and likability—often all at once
- performing confidence, even when anxiety is present underneath
This isn’t a personal failure.
It’s a learned adaptation to systemic conditions.
The Psychological Cost of Being “The Helper”
In my work, I often see how women are shaped by overlapping internal roles—patterns that aren’t random, but deeply conditioned.
Three archetypal patterns show up again and again:
The Helper
Women are often expected to be accommodating, emotionally attuned, and relationally responsible.
To anticipate needs. To smooth things over. To carry emotional labour.
The Scapegoat
When those expectations are not met—when a woman sets a boundary, expresses a need, or disrupts the status quo—there can be subtle or overt consequences:
- being labeled difficult
- being excluded
- being misunderstood
The Orphan
And underneath both of these is something quieter:
a sense of aloneness.
I explore this more deeply in my article on the emotional orphan archetype.
Because constantly being the one who helps—without being fully met in return—creates a kind of relational deprivation.
Why High-Achieving Women Experience Anxiety at Work
Even in environments that are explicitly designed to support women, these internalized patterns don’t just disappear.
They show up as:
- hyper-awareness of how you’re being perceived
- second-guessing what you say (or don’t say)
- difficulty accessing your own needs in the moment
- emotional exhaustion after social or professional interactions
This is where anxiety often lives—not just as a symptom, but as a signal.
A signal that your nervous system has learned:
There are consequences to taking up space.
Why External Support Doesn’t Always Reduce Anxiety
What stood out to me most at the event wasn’t what was missing—it was the gap between:
- external structures of support
- and internal experiences of safety, worth, and permission
We can create better environments (and we should).
But if someone has spent years adapting to systems that required self-suppression, people-pleasing, or over-functioning—
those patterns don’t dissolve just because the room is more welcoming.
For those wanting to work more directly on these patterns in a focused way, you can learn more about my Relational Reset Therapy Intensive.
Therapy as a Path Toward Emancipation
This is where therapy becomes more than symptom management.
At its best, therapy supports something deeper:
emancipation
Not in a one-time, dramatic sense—but as an ongoing process.
Emancipation from:
- internalized expectations
- chronic anxiety responses
- relational patterns that no longer serve
- survival strategies that once protected—but now restrict
Freedom isn’t a final destination.
It’s a gradual expansion of what becomes possible—internally and externally.
How Therapy Helps Shift These Patterns
In my work, I draw from several approaches that support both insight and change. A few of them are:
Schema Therapy
Helps identify long-standing patterns—how you relate to yourself and others—and offers concrete ways to begin shifting them.
Emotion-Focused Therapy
Supports deeper awareness of your emotional experience, helping you reconnect with your needs and respond to them with clarity and self-compassion.
Clinical Hypnotherapy
For those who feel comfortable with it, hypnotherapy can help bypass entrenched critical patterns and access more adaptive beliefs and emotional states.
Each of these approaches works differently—but they share a common goal:
helping you relate to yourself and the world with more flexibility, agency, and choice.
For those wanting to start healing the inner critic, you can learn more about my Inner Reset Intensive here.
Healing, Growth, and the Ongoing Work of Freedom
One of the things I often emphasize is that therapy isn’t just about healing what’s been painful.
It’s also about continuing to grow beyond it.
Healing and growth aren’t separate processes.
They move together.
And over time, they create something meaningful:
- more internal steadiness
- more relational clarity
- more capacity to take up space without collapse
More freedom.
A Final Reflection
What I saw at this event was not contradiction—it was complexity.
Efforts to support women are real, and they matter.
And at the same time, many women are still carrying internalized patterns shaped by systems that required them to adapt in very specific ways.
Both are true.
The work, then, isn’t just external.
It’s also deeply internal.
And it’s ongoing.
If you recognize yourself in these patterns—whether in professional spaces, relationships, or your internal world—therapy can be a place to begin shifting them.
Not all at once.
But meaningfully, and over time.
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Meet Rebecca Steele, Registered Social Worker, Psychotherapist (MA, MSW, RSW, CCC)
Rebecca is an Ontario-based therapist offering virtual care across the province. She works with adults navigating anxiety, trauma, intrusive thoughts, and repeating relationship patterns. Her approach, Smart Therapy™: Insight-Driven Depth Therapy, integrates the Enneagram, attachment, and depth-oriented modalities to support deeper self-understanding, self-worth, and lasting change.
Book an appointment or learn more about her online therapy services.
Located outside Ontario? You can explore Rebecca’s coaching offerings here.
