Tag Archive for: trauma healing with shadow work

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

Nice girls don’t heal

Nice is what’s killing you. Slowly. Quietly. Like a good girl should.

Nice is swallowing your rage until it turns to acid in your gut.

Nice is slow suicide in sensible shoes.

Nice is what makes you apologize while someone’s stabbing you in the back.

Nice is what has you tone policing your own screams.

Nice is what keeps you bringing casseroles to people who’d watch you drown.

Nice is letting people cross your boundaries because making waves isn’t polite.

Nice is trauma wearing a pretty dress and a fake smile.

Nice is a death sentence with a smile.

Nice is why you’re popping Xanax in the bathroom at work with another panic attack.

Nice is why you’re on your third autoimmune disorder, while your digestive system eats itself alive.

Nice is trauma wearing lipstick, and calling itself love.

And I’m done being nice.

Last week, a woman came to me shaking. Not crying. Not screaming. Shaking.

She’d spent so many years being nice, she forgot how to speak. Her voice was trapped under decades of “good girl” and “be kind” and “don’t make anyone uncomfortable.”

Know what happened when she finally broke? She remembered every single person who told her to be “nice” while they were destroying her. Every. Single. One.

Your shadow remembers too.

  • Every time you swallowed your rage and called it peace.
  • Every time you froze instead of fought.
  • Every time you made yourself smaller, smaller, smaller, until you almost disappeared.

That darkness you keep trying to heal? That’s not darkness. That’s your power breaking through nice’s prison walls

That anger you’re afraid of? It knows where the bodies are buried.

That bitch you keep caging? She knows how to save your life.

Nice girls end up as statistics. In hospitals with mystery illnesses.
In relationships that feel like slow murder.
In therapy groups wondering why being good didn’t protect them.

Our Shadow Integration Workshop is for women who are done dying politely. Done turning their trauma into an inspiring Facebook post. Done pretending their rage isn’t holy.

For two hours, we’re going to descend into your shadow and wake up every not-nice part of you that’s been keeping your truth company.

No spiritual bypassing. No toxic positivity. No more f*cking gold stars for making yourself digestible.

$97 gets you the pre-recorded workshop and workbook. Because this work is as messy as the truth, and you’ll need to witness it more than once.

Go here to snag your seat.

P.S. They told you “nice” keeps you safe. But nice is what’s keeping you sick, scared, small. Nice is what’s keeping you in therapy trying to heal wounds that need rage, not reflection.

P.P.S. When nice girls snap, they don’t break. They remember. Every slight. Every betrayal. Every time they chose being liked over being alive.

P.P.P.S. Your shadow isn’t dark magic. It’s every truth you buried trying to be nice. And it’s long past time to dig them all up.