When Competence Stops Sustaining Us & Functioning Is No Longer Enough

Francesca Woodman, photographed by George Davidson

Many women arrive in therapy not because something has gone wrong, but because something that once worked no longer does.

They are managing their lives. They are showing up for their families, their work, their responsibilities. They are capable, reflective, often highly self-aware. From the outside, things may look stable enough. And yet, inside, there is a growing sense of strain—of effort without ease, motion without satisfaction. Life feels organized around getting through the day rather than inhabiting it.

These women often describe themselves in familiar language: anxious, depleted, distracted, overwhelmed, unmotivated, numb. Some have been told they are mildly depressed, chronically stressed, overly sensitive, or simply in need of better routines. Others blame themselves—assuming they should be more disciplined, more grateful, more efficient. Advice is plentiful: exercise more, eat differently, set better boundaries, relax.

But what brings them here is not a lack of strategies. It is the feeling that no amount of managing has resolved the deeper unease.

What is often being experienced is not pathology, but compression. A self that has learned to function under pressure—sometimes for decades—without sufficient room for full expression, relational truth, or embodied authority. Over time, the cost of this compression shows up not as one clear symptom, but as a diffuse exhaustion that touches mood, attention, relationships, and the body itself.

This is not a failure of coping. It is a signal of readiness.

The Body Knows Before the Mind Does

Long before a woman consciously questions her life, her nervous system has already begun to respond.

Chronic overfunctioning, vigilance, or emotional containment require physiological effort. The body adapts by holding tension, narrowing attention, suppressing sensation, or collapsing energy when the load becomes too great. What is often labeled anxiety may reflect a system that has learned to stay braced. What is called depression may reflect a system that has learned to shut down in order to survive sustained demand. Difficulty concentrating, indecision, or mental fog are frequently signs of a nervous system operating beyond its capacity to regulate.

These responses are not random. They are intelligent adaptations shaped by developmental experience, relational expectations, and cultural conditioning—particularly for women, who are often rewarded for endurance, attunement to others, and emotional availability while being discouraged from occupying authority, desire, or unambiguous selfhood.

When these adaptations persist long after they are necessary, life begins to feel effortful in ways that cannot be resolved through insight alone. The body continues to respond as if there is no margin for error, no room to arrive fully, no safety in resting into oneself.

The result is a lived experience of fragmentation: knowing what one feels but not being able to act on it; understanding oneself deeply while still feeling constrained; longing for change without knowing how to access it.

Why Insight Has Not Been Enough

Many women who seek this work are already psychologically sophisticated. They have reflected on their histories, named their patterns, and developed insight into why they are the way they are. And yet, insight alone has not produced the sense of internal shift they are looking for.

This is not because insight lacks value. It is because insight operates primarily at the level of understanding, while much of what organizes behavior, emotion, and identity is held at the level of the nervous system and the body. Without conditions that allow the system to reorganize, insight often remains informative rather than transformative.

Change becomes possible not when a woman understands herself better, but when her system no longer has to defend against being fully present.

This requires more than reflection. It requires containment.

Containment as the Condition for Becoming

Containment is not restriction. It is the presence of sufficient structure, safety, and relational steadiness to allow something deeper to emerge.

In therapeutic work, containment refers to a consistent frame—regular sessions, clear boundaries, predictable rhythm—within which the nervous system can gradually release patterns of vigilance and self-management. For many women, this is a novel experience. Their lives have often been shaped by inconsistency, over-responsibility, or the need to adapt to others’ emotional states. Within such contexts, composure and elegance are often mistaken for performance rather than natural states.

When containment is present, effort begins to soften. Attention widens. Sensation becomes more accessible. A woman may notice herself breathing more fully, speaking with less urgency, feeling emotion without being overtaken by it. These shifts are subtle but cumulative. Over time, they restore access to an internal center that is neither reactive nor withdrawn.

What emerges is not a new persona, but a return to an embodied sense of self that had been obscured by adaptation.

From Endurance to Composure

Composure is not control. It is not restraint, politeness, or emotional suppression. True composure arises when the nervous system is sufficiently regulated to allow clarity, responsiveness, and choice.

Similarly, elegance is not something added on. It is the natural expression of a self that is no longer fragmented by internal conflict or overextension. When a woman is no longer required to brace against her own life, her movements—psychological and physical—begin to organize themselves with greater coherence.

This is why the work often feels less like fixing and more like allowing. As outdated adaptations loosen, women frequently report feeling more grounded, more discerning, and paradoxically more expansive. Decisions become clearer not because they are forced, but because internal opposition has quieted. Relationships shift as self-abandonment gives way to presence.

The aim of the work is not constant calm, nor the eradication of discomfort. It is the restoration of internal authority—the capacity to remain connected to oneself across complexity, demand, and change.

What This Work Makes Possible

Over time, many women notice that the symptoms that once dominated their attention begin to recede—not because they are directly targeted, but because the system no longer requires them. Anxiety softens as vigilance decreases. Exhaustion lifts as overfunctioning becomes unnecessary. Focus returns as attention is no longer fragmented by internal strain.

More importantly, women often describe a shift in how they inhabit their lives. There is a growing sense of alignment between inner experience and outward action. A feeling of arriving in oneself rather than managing oneself. A capacity to engage with the world without self-erasure.

This work is not about becoming someone else. It is about creating the conditions under which a woman can finally live from the inside out.

Allow by Diana Faulds

There is no controlling life.

Try corralling a lightning bolt,

containing a tornado. Dam a

stream, and it will create a new

channel. Resist, and the tide

will sweep you off your feet.

Allow, and grace will carry

you to higher ground. The only

safety lies in letting it all in—

the wild with the weak; fear,

fantasies, failures and success.

When loss rips off the doors of

the heart, or sadness veils your

vision with despair, practice

becomes simply bearing the truth.

In the choice to let go of your

known way of being, the whole

world is revealed to your new eyes.