Why High-Achieving Women Struggle with Anxiety (And How Somatic Therapy Helps)

High-achieving women often look put-together from the outside — reliable, capable, intuitive, and driven. Yet behind that impressive exterior, many quietly carry anxiety that feels disproportionate to what’s actually happening in their lives.

If you’re someone who triple-checks your work, overthinks conversations, or feels a pressure in your chest that never fully lets up… you’re not alone, and there’s a reason for it.

In this post, we’ll explore why so many high-achieving women experience anxiety — and how somatic, body-based therapy can help you unwind patterns that talk therapy alone can’t always reach.

The Hidden Burden of Being “The Responsible One”

Many high-achieving women grew up being the helper, the peacemaker, the responsible one. Early on, you learned to:

• anticipate others’ needs

• avoid making mistakes

• stay in control

• push down your own discomfort

These patterns often develop in childhood homes that looked “fine” on the outside — but were emotionally inconsistent, high-pressure, or where sensitivity wasn't fully understood.

As a child, you adapted. As an adult, that adaptation now feels like:

• chronic tension in your body

• feeling on edge even when nothing is wrong

• replaying conversations

• perfectionism

• trouble relaxing without guilt

• an internal voice that says, “Try harder.”

These are not personal flaws.They’re protective strategies your body learned to keep you safe.

Why High-Achieving Women Are Particularly Prone to Anxiety

1. You’re used to carrying more than your share.

Many high-achieving women learned early that love or approval came from being helpful, capable, or impressive. The nervous system stayed in a subtle “fight-or-flight” to maintain that identity.

2. Your inner critic works overtime.

Anxiety often hides beneath self-criticism:

• “Did I say the wrong thing?”

• “What if I disappoint someone?”

• “What if I don’t perform well enough?”

This internal pressure can be exhausting — and it often spikes during transitions, uncertainty, or when receiving feedback.

3. You’re highly intuitive — and you sense more than most.

High-achieving women are often deeply perceptive. You read micro-shifts in others’ tone, body language, or energy.But without grounding, intuition can turn into hypervigilance.

4. You disconnect from your body to get things done.

Many successful women learned to override fatigue, tension, hunger, and emotion.You learned to push, hustle, or “power through.”The body eventually interprets this as danger — and responds with anxiety.

5. Your nervous system was never taught how to downshift.

Culturally, women are taught to serve, perform, and look calm doing it.But few are taught:

• how to regulate their nervous system

• how to listen to bodily cues

• how to soften rather than brace

Anxiety becomes the default mode when the body never gets to finish the stress cycle.

What Talk Therapy Can’t Always Reach

For many high-achieving women, insight isn’t the problem.You know you’re overthinking.You know you’re hard on yourself.You know you're carrying more than you need to.

But awareness alone doesn’t shift the nervous system.

Anxiety lives in:

• the chest that tightens when you’re trying to rest

• the shoulders that creep up to your ears

• the clenching jaw

• the constant scanning for something to fix

That’s why somatic therapy can be so transformative.

1. Rebuilding Safety in the Body

Anxiety often stems from never having felt fully safe — emotionally, physically, or relationally.

Somatic therapy helps you:

• downshift out of chronic fight-or-flight

• release bracing patterns in the body

• feel grounded rather than on edge

• develop a felt-sense of “I’m okay right now”

Techniques may include:

• breathwork

• grounding practices

• gentle movement

• orienting and resourcing

• vagal toning

• Me assisting you in reparenting the inner child with compassion and support that it needed but didn't get at the time wounding or traumatic events occurred

When your body learns safety, your mind naturally becomes quieter.

2. Healing the Inner Critic Through Parts Work

High-achieving women often have powerful internal protectors — parts of you that push, pressure, plan, or perfect to keep you from being hurt. They developed specifically in response to an original wounding event that left you with a negative belief about yourself and/or others. Their strategy is designed to prevent you from ever experiencing that again. If you experienced rejection, and developed a belief of "I'm not good enough" as an explanation for why the rejection occurred, a critical, perfectionistic part may have stepped in to prevent rejection in the future.

But the thing is, if you had received support to help you make sense of the rejection in a way that didn't affect your self-esteem -- this is the missing experience that would've made all the different -- then this perfectionistic part wouldn't have had to take on this job. So, the healing process involves going back into the memory bank, and providing that wounded child the support they missed at the time, so they can revise their limiting beliefs, and therefore update the protective parts that their roles aren't as needed anymore.

In therapy, we:

• identify the protector parts

• understand what they’re afraid will happen if they relax

• support the younger parts holding anxiety or fear stemming from the original wounding event(s)

• integrate these parts so you feel more whole, rather than torn inside

When your protectors feel supported, they stop yelling.

3. Reconnecting with Your Higher Self

You have a deeper, wiser part of you that is calm, compassionate, and steady — what I call the Higher Self. It’s not about bypassing. It’s about accessing the embodied, intuitive presence that trauma, pressure, or self-doubt has covered.

Somatic therapy helps you:

• feel centered instead of scattered

• access inner guidance without fear

• make decisions from clarity, not anxiety

• feel spiritually connected in a grounded way

This is where deep healing — and deep empowerment — begins.

4. Learning How to Listen to the Body’s Signals

Your body speaks through:

• tightness

• pressure

• heaviness

• heat

• numbness

• impulses

• breath

Most high-achieving women were never taught how to read these signals.In somatic therapy, you learn how to translate them — so anxiety becomes a message, not a mystery.

5. Completing the Stress Cycle

Anxiety often comes from accumulated, unfinished stress responses.

Somatic work helps your body complete the cycle through:

• movement

• breath

• shaking or releasing

• micro-expressions

• grounding

Your system learns how to return to a baseline of calm — something it may not have known how to do since childhood.

What Healing Feels Like

As somatic therapy unfolds, women often describe feeling:

• more rooted in themselves

• less reactive to criticism

• more spacious inside

• less self-judgment

• easier time saying “no”

• more connected with intuition

• more confident and self-assured

Anxiety becomes a signal instead of a spiral.Self-worth becomes internal rather than performance-based.And the body becomes an ally instead of a battleground.

If You’re a High-Achieving Woman Struggling with Anxiety, You’re Not Broken.

Your system learned to survive — brilliantly.Now it’s ready to learn how to feel safe.

If you’re ready to reconnect with your body, soften your inner critic, and rediscover a sense of grounded peace, somatic therapy can help.

✨ I’d be honored to walk that path with you.Y ou can schedule a consultation here: