Tag Archive for: Rebecca T Dickson

Why Women Resist Leadership (and How Shadow Work Sets You Free)

Let’s just name the thing:

A lot of brilliant, capable, intuitive-as-hell women secretly resist leadership.

Not because they don’t want it.

Not because they’re not qualified.

And not because they’re “too emotional” or “too much” or “not enough.”

They resist because leadership – as we’ve been shown it – is often traumatizing.

Yeah. I said it.

So if you’ve ever:

  • Delayed launching the thing
  • Procrastinated on claiming your title
  • Dimmed your voice in a meeting
  • Opted out of visibility
  • Felt exhausted at the thought of leading anything

You’re not broken. You’re not lazy. You’re not lost.

You’re responding perfectly to a system that wasn’t built with your nervous system – or your soul – in mind.

Let’s unpack it, trauma-informed style. Then I’ll show you how to work with your shadow to lead without betraying yourself.

First, the Why: What’s Really Behind the Resistance?

1. Generational Trauma Says Power = Pain

For centuries, women in power were burned, banned, mocked or silenced. That energy lingers. Even if you weren’t punished for speaking up, someone in your bloodline probably was.

So when you think about stepping up, being seen, leading a movement? Your nervous system isn’t thinking, “Hell yes.” It’s thinking, “Am I gonna die?”

Shadow Work Prompt: Where did I first learn that power was dangerous? What happens in my body when I imagine being fully in charge?

2. The Nervous System Sees Leadership as a Threat

Leadership is exposure. Visibility. Responsibility. All of which can trigger the same trauma responses as a bear attack: freeze, fawn, flight or fight.

If your system is stuck in survival, leadership feels like a death sentence. Not because you aren’t “ready,” but because your body still thinks the spotlight is a sniper.

Shadow Work Prompt: What parts of me believe that being seen equals being unsafe? What do those parts need to feel protected and empowered?

3. We Inherited a Patriarchal Model That Doesn’t Work for Us

Most leadership we’ve seen is forceful, rigid, extractive. It leaves no room for softness, for cycles, for the sacred. So we reject it – because it feels wrong. But then we shame ourselves for not wanting it.

Shadow Work Prompt: What leadership qualities have I exiled because they were “too feminine,” “too emotional,” or “too much”? Can I reclaim them as strengths?

4. Imposter Syndrome Is a Trauma Echo

Nearly 70% of women in leadership roles report feeling like frauds.

Translation? We’re leading while dissociated. Leading while afraid. Leading while hiding parts of ourselves. And that’s not leadership. It’s performance.

Shadow Work Prompt: What part of me believes I’m unworthy or fake? Whose voice is that, really? What truth lives beneath the mask?

5. Hyper-Independence Keeps Us Stuck and Small

Many high-achieving women are secretly terrified to be supported. Why? Because being let down, betrayed or dismissed in the past taught us not to trust anyone. So we do it all alone, and then wonder why leadership feels heavy as hell.

Shadow Work Prompt: Where did I learn that needing help was weak? What part of me still believes that if I lead, I must do it alone?

Now, the How: Using Shadow Work to Lead Like Yourself

Shadow work isn’t about fixing you. It’s about finding you—the version you hid to stay safe.

Here’s how it rewires your relationship with leadership:

🔥 1. You Build Safety in the Body, Not Just the Mind

Instead of forcing confidence, shadow work helps you feel safe being seen. That changes everything. When your nervous system feels secure, your brilliance stops hiding.

🔥 2. You Lead With the Parts You Used to Hide

Your rage? Sacred fire.

Your grief? Deep empathy.

Your sensitivity? Strategic edge.

Shadow work teaches you to bring all of it to the table, so you lead as your whole damn self.

🔥 3. You Redefine Leadership on Your Terms

You stop mimicking old models. You birth new ones. You build a business or movement that feels like you, not a costume.

Still With Me? Good. Let’s Burn It Down.

This isn’t about fixing your leadership gaps.

  • It’s about grieving the old stories.
  • Calling back the exiled parts.
  • And leading from wholeness, not hustle.

Leadership doesn’t have to feel like a betrayal.

With shadow work, it becomes a coming home.

5 Stats That Prove You’re Not Alone:

  1. Only 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women
    You’re not imagining the gap. It’s real.
    (Fortune, 2024)

  2. 60% of women say they’ve never had a leadership role model who looked or lived like them
    Visibility matters.
    (LeanIn, 2023)

  3. One in three women globally experience gender-based violence
    Trauma isn’t rare. It’s common, and it shapes us.
    (WHO, 2021)

  4. Women are twice as likely as men to say they feel burned out
    The cost of performing leadership is real.
    (McKinsey, 2023)

  5. 70% of women report imposter syndrome in leadership
    It’s not a personal flaw. It’s a cultural symptom.
    (KPMG, 2022)

Final Note

If you’re craving leadership that lets you breathe, rest, rage, and rise—

Shadow work is your map.

You’re not behind. You’re not broken. You’re on the edge of remembering who the fuck you are.

P.S. Check out SHADOW RISING, my exclusive mastermind for women who want an approach to business and life that gets real results. (Bonus: your clients will RAVE.) As I type this, we have 3 seats remaining for the entire year.

You are your own permission. Take it.

P.P.S. I created a brand new FR∑∑ guide to help women reevaluate – and burn down – dysfunctional businesses. Do you feel like you’ve changed more than your biz? Outgrown your clients? Are you ready to take a more aligned leap in the direction you want? GO HERE.

It’s called THE COACHING INDUSTRY EXPOSED, 15 questions that will likely shatter your coaching practice in a GREAT way. You’ll love it. xo

WOUND WORSHIP: THE COACHING INDUSTRY’S FAVORITE ADDICTION

They sold you healing like a cure.

What they didn’t tell you is they need you broken to stay in business.

Mainstream coaching thrives on your perpetual brokenness, packaging “healing” as an endless journey where you’re forever chasing wholeness but never quite arriving.

They’ve built empires on your trauma, convincing you that your wounds need gentle care, endless processing and constant attention.

Bullshit.

Your wounds aren’t delicate flowers to be watered with gratitude journals and affirmation practices. They’re not treasures to be displayed in sharing circles where everyone competes for who’s most damaged.

I watched a client spend three years with a “trauma-informed” coach who kept her locked in processing loops, revisiting her childhood pain weekly. Three years of “honoring her wounds.” Three years of being the eternally broken one. Three years of paying someone to keep her stuck.

That’s not healing. That’s wound worship.

And it’s a f*cking business model.

You know how I know? I was that coach once. I kept clients in those loops because I was taught that’s what healing looked like: endless introspection, constant processing, perpetual pain exploration.

Here’s what they don’t want you to see… The coaching industry has monetized your brokenness and rebranded it as “the healing journey.”

Every time you hear:

  • “This takes time”
  • “Healing isn’t linear”
  • “You’ll always be working on yourself”

Translate it: “Keep paying me forever.”

The wound-worship paradigm positions you as permanently damaged, always in need of another workshop, another program, another fucking breakthrough session.

They’ve built a religion around trauma where the only sin is thinking you’re done healing.

My approach? We don’t heal wounds. We forge weapons.

Your trauma isn’t your cross to bear. It’s the fire that tempers your blade.

Your darkness isn’t something to process endlessly. It’s power waiting to be unleashed.

When you come to me feeling broken, I don’t see someone who needs years of gentle healing circles. I see raw material for something dangerous.

A client came to me after four coaches and six years of “trauma work.” She’d been taught to cradle her abandonment issues like a sick child. Within three months with me, she’d transformed that abandonment into radical self-reliance that terrified everyone around her.

She didn’t heal her wound. She weaponized it.

The mainstream wants you soft, vulnerable, and eternally processing. They want you identifying as your trauma, wearing your diagnosis like a personality.

I want you lethal.

Stop worshipping at the altar of your wounds.

Stop paying people to keep you broken.

Your darkness isn’t something to overcome. It’s something to unleash.

The wound-worship coaches need you broken to validate their existence.

I need you dangerous to validate mine.

Don’t know where to start? Right here. The Trauma Paradox is the gateway to weaponizing wounds, and to no longer trying to “fix” something that was only ever there to empower you. We don’t worship wounds here. We weaponize them. #TraumaAsWeapon