Hypnotherapy for highly intelligent women builds on what could’ve started at an early age.
When Being “The Smart One” Becomes a survival strategy often begins as a childhood survival strategy, particularly in environments where high-achieving, teacher-approved behaviour ensures safety, love, or validation. Over time, this role evolves from a mechanism to cope with insecurity or chaos into a rigid, exhausting identity that can hinder emotional growth and lead to burnout.
In other words it can be really tiring being a woman and doubly hard if you’re highly intelligent.
For example, there’s the "burden of competence" (or "curse of competence”), sometimes called performance punishment. Where highly intelligent women are rewarded for their high performance with more work, increased responsibility, and higher expectations, often leading to burnout, resentment, and chronic stress.
And it’s more common in women because they’re more likely to be people pleasers. At home and at work. And intelligence is not immunity for this.
How else does this high intelligence work against you? There’s the hidden loneliness of your ability.
The strong intelligent ones are the ones no one checks in on. You’re the one people come to.
The steady one. The sorted one. You’ve built a version of yourself that can hold pressure, lead under stress, and smile through storms. And it works. At least it looks like it does.
But there’s something no one sees. Not the audience, not the fans, the clients, not even your closest people. You carry a kind of loneliness that doesn’t come from being alone. It comes from being unseen.
Somewhere along the way, you learned that performance wasn’t just a skill. It was a shield. You became the one with answers, the one with composure, the one who never lets the cracks show. And the truth is: you’re good at it.
You’ve built a strong outer game. But that game has a cost. Especially if you’re in a male dominated macho culture.
And to pile more on top of this who are you without the achievement? It’s why highly intelligent women struggle to switch off.
Are you allowed to be a woman?
Yes, it’s obvious women are different from men. And you can hide behind your intelligence. But for a large proportion of women you still have to ‘fit in’.
The lads talk before the meeting about last night’s match.
The so-called ‘banter’
The waiting for the coffee to be poured (by you)
You can think faster than the conversation, but don’t want to show the men up. You’re dimming to belong.
And what makes you a highly intelligent woman can also hurt you:
- as you feel a biological clock tick
- stay at home with a baby
- feel guilty about going back to work
- feel confidence drain as you hit the menopause.
But why should this affect highly intelligent women more?
Because you can think longer, deeper, harder, procrastinate to a greater level. In effect hurt yourself more. Your intelligence becomes your curse.
Why Hypnotherapy for highly intelligent women has answers
Hypnotherapy for highly intelligent women recognises that insight alone is not enough. You know there’s something wrong, but how do you address it?
What hypnotherapy does is work with your subconscious, not against it. You already understand yourself, it’s now acting on that information to change for the better.
How does hypnotherapy work?
Hypnotherapy is simply a state of calm where it’s easy for me to talk to your subconscious and land a message there calmly that is easy to understand and can make. Change for the better at the deepest level.
Think of it as a software up grade. 2.0 you.
You’re always in control through out the process and it usually takes fewer sessions than a traditional talking therapist, or a business coach.
What do I know about the challenges that highly intelligent women face?
My mother was the daughter of a farm labourer. She was expected to be a milk maid. She ended up with two degrees in medicine and one in physics.
I also have two daughters. One a physicist in the MoD where she’s still expected to pour the coffee.
If you feel like a chat you can contact me at jamesthomas@thegentlemind.co.uk or call me on 07787563099.
