When layoffs loom, career uncertainty can send us into overconsumption overdrive. We consume career advice, productivity hacks, self-help books, LinkedIn posts, podcasts, and 60-second videos, hoping the next piece of information will finally tell us what to do. Creators make their tidbit of knowledge very enticing. Many have worked in a variety of seductive fields or companies that, on the surface, make them sound like an authority because hearing a career hack from an ex-Google, Apple, fill-in-the-blank leader of the field company.
We live in a world that is addicted to consuming. We overconsume to fill a restless yet never-satisfied hole in our minds. Consuming has been pushed and rebranded as progress when, in fact, we are just deepening our connection with what doesn’t bear gifts.
Over the years, I've considered myself a die-hard self-help connoisseur. I ferociously consumed book after book, thinking it would give me the secret to unlock a career that would catapult me into the limelight. I envisioned being requested for comment and interviews. However, over the past two decades, I noticed that the more I consumed, the less I used.
When you overconsume knowledge, like hoarding food, it eventually spoils. Dealing with spoiled food sucks, especially when you reflect on the cost and effort it now renders useless. The same happens with overconsuming knowledge. We can watch and parrot back all the latest self-help or therapy speak, yet still not live a life that shows transformation.
A typical tip I have seen for those who have been laid off or are grossly underemployed is to follow thought leaders in your field to educate yourself. Like anything in life, moderation is the name of the game. But when you spend your morning scrolling instead of doing what you could be doing, ask yourself: what am I actually getting out of this?
Overconsumption can feel like mentioning goals to friends over brunch and getting the same euphoria as if you actually made the goal a reality. We can feel good about doing something, but it's an illusion that can cause compounding fractures in our confidence and our ability to go the distance in our searches.
I am an advocate for upskilling and learning as having as I’m allergic to narrow-mindedness. You must examine all those saved articles and TikToks and assess whether any of this information is new or helpful, or if it's just fanning my need for comfort. Free knowledge can take you surprisingly far. But knowledge without implementation eventually becomes another form of procrastination. At some point, you have to invest your time and energy into doing the thing that could actually change your circumstances.
How to Turn Career Advice Into Action
One of the best ways to alchemize the knowledge you have acquired is by experimenting. So let's say you're consuming a lot of LinkedIn content; I would take 2-3 tips you have learned and experiment with them. That could mean updating your resume through a more strategic lens, actually sending coffee invites, or upskilling. Once you do that, observe if you are getting closer to your desired outcomes. Experimenting with or applying what you've learned scares most people, and if you're dealing with a layoff or underemployment, that can feel insanely exhausting.
You can also take what you have learned and help others who may be in the same boat. Mastermind groups have been around for decades, and the core idea is bringing together two or more minds to build momentum through shared knowledge. Sometimes we need to actually mingle with others to make the knowledge practical and executable.
Stop Consuming and Start Applying
As 2026 wraps up, I am more focused on ensuring that everything I consume can materialize in my life, or it’s ruthlessly removed. The comfort of spinning my wheels is not comforting. You can blow out your energy by constantly overconsuming content or books.
If you’re ready to stop consuming more advice and actually move on one goal, book a Strategic Game Plan Session.
We’ll take one goal that matters, clarify what’s really standing in the way, and leave you with a practical action plan you can execute.
Can you have PTSD after a layoff? You can’t escape any major social media platform without seeing some news report or personal post about being laid off. Many women who have sacrificed much of their lives to their career had it wiped away in 30 seconds. When this became a recurring thing, I began to wonder how the short-term and long-term impacts would color a woman’s world.
After experiencing a few layoffs in my career and being someone who has not been able to ascend into the ivory tower of greatness, I have noticed something that I tried to ignore. Layoffs can cause PTSD, and that can impact your ability to enjoy life in its current state, but also color the future in 50 shades of grey.
When PTSD comes into the conversation, most still think of our military who served their country and the atrocities they witnessed. However, this can be expanded to a larger audience as well. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that's caused by an extremely stressful or terrifying event — either being part of it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety, and uncontrollable thoughts about the event. (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - Symptoms and Causes, n.d.)
After a layoff, people who are not wealthy have to become extremely scrappy. You may begin to analyze what parts of your life can be disconnected and begin updating your resume. The complete destruction of what was someone’s life, especially if you have been in your career path for 10+ years, is gone. Those familiar faces, the morning routine, and the possibility of that project getting you the shiny promotion are all now a past dream. This abrupt disturbance to normalcy and the swift shift to survival is chaotic.
Depending on how long it takes to find a new role, this can prolong the pain.
Understanding PTSD After a Layoff
A scan on LinkedIn may show you a post of someone saying they have been out of work for 9 months and may lose everything. You may begin negotiating with your sense of self-worth and standards and think any job is better than no job.
Once you're in your new job, you may overcompensate and feel constantly on edge, but may suppress it. Inside your mind, you feel that any small infraction could lead you back to the unemployed streets. For those with any intersectionality, the discomfort and anxiety are even higher because you're in a new place and don’t know the way of the culture.
Layoffs can make you begin to rethink your self-concept and value. You begin to second-guess every choice you have made and wonder if you're even competent. If I had worked harder, I wouldn’t be out of work. For many women, their job is their life. Many use work to escape their personal lives that are unsatisfactory, and for others, their work is what allows them to provide for their family, which may rely on them. The looming pressure of debt and lack of retirement traction can become intrusive.
When you encounter this experience, based on the Mayo Clinic, you may start to exhibit symptoms such as :
Negative thoughts about yourself, other people, or the world.
Ongoing negative emotions of fear, blame, guilt, anger, or shame.
Memory problems, including not remembering important aspects of a traumatic event.
Feeling detached from family and friends.
Not being interested in activities you once enjoyed.
Having a hard time feeling positive emotions.
Feeling emotionally numb
This, over time, can make it harder to settle into your new job, especially if the work isn’t ideal or in the field you once adored. You may also begin to have resentment towards yourself and others who were spared.
The connection between layoffs and ptsd when I work with clients also shows up in a self-limiting restriction for growth. A woman who once felt she could take on the world may take this blow to the chin and eliminate or severely wound her confidence in her ability to have what she desires. This also can make one more prone to burnout, which can then impact one’s performance. In some cases, this can set one up for a repeat layoff, which is not a reflection of the woman’s true performance but rather the lasting impact of past layoffs.
How to navigate layoff aftermath
Extend grace to self
Often we want to ruminate on the past transgressions, as we may have come from a toxic job where we sustained a lot of hate; then to be discarded feels like an extreme blow. I know in my last layoff I felt so much shame as I dealt with a lot of misogyny and covert racism. This took a lot of time while I was searching for a role, so I didn't bring those old pains into the new.
Give yourself grace that something very traumatic occurred, as losing one’s source of income is essential for survival in a world that doesn’t value human life is scary. If you are someone who experienced financial trauma growing up, this can reactivate those pains as well. You are a human who deserves empathy, and it’s ok that you can’t be over it in 3 business days.
Do weekly check-ins
This was one of the key things I did while navigating my last layoff, as I am single and with no support. I would sit up on Monday morning and reflect on the past week's progress and notice if I was doing my essentials for survival: moving my body at least 3 times a week, sleeping no more than 8 hours, and finding something to laugh at.
There were some weeks things went smoothly; those typically were the ones where I had an interview that looked promising, but in weeks where those were snatched, I would see a decline. I also grounded myself when I would spiral by saying, “Right now your rent is paid, and you are not on the streets” out loud. This often re-oriented me to the current reality.
Created a bridge plan
Being someone who is a woman and who happens to fall under the racial construct of being Black, I had to be very mindful of what I needed if I could not find a role that was compatible with what I had before. I have made sacrifices since I was a teen to have a normal life. To honor those sacrifices, I made a bridge plan that would ensure I had my absolute needs taken care of, which would then allow me the space to continue searching for a role that was more aligned with my career and financial goals.
I developed this plan immediately after getting the layoff notification, as it’s easier to do before the anxiety and shame may kick in. This also allowed me to know, from a numbers perspective, what my absolute lowest is to maintain dignity.
Layoffs are sadly a very common occurrence in the state of our world. I am a firm believer that even in the midst of chaos, there is some gift in it. Through layoffs, I was able to see my skills more clearly and hold myself accountable for where I may have suppressed my needs because of old, outdated ways of operating. As someone who is also very spiritually inclined, I can see navigating such perils, as it helps me when working with clients who have experienced this and are grappling with becoming their 2.0 version of self.
If you're at the point where you don't need more advice—you need someone to help you see what you're actually doing with your life—my Sovereignty Session, a 90-min focused session to develop your next steps concisely, is for you. Click the link and book a session.
A toxic work environment keeps you underpaid beyond just the money. Women have grown in the workforce by leaps and bounds, doing work that elevates the world. Over time, a woman may begin to feel depleted as she works outside her natural flow. We are taught that to be a boss babe, one needs to do what it means to do it and do it at the highest level. This unfortunately leaves many women vulnerable to toxicity in the workplace, which very covertly begins to chip away at their self-value and confidence.
I remember at a past company, I was so ecstatic to have a role that hit a number I wanted and had been on my vision board for a while. Reaching that milestone, I went after the work aggressively, taking on anything that needed to be done with a smile. Over time, I began to burn out and noticed covert pushback when I spoke up. I was shoved off the cliff once I was no longer useful. Those experiences don’t go away after you start your next role; it often exacerbates those wounds.
Now you're in a new job, trying to mask the wounds of the past by appearing in control, yet inside you are a mess. You are betraying yourself left and right as you are now operating out of fear from toxicity. We often hear about those who come out of narcissistic relationships, but I find a big correlation to toxic work environments as well. Often they eat at your self-concept and, over time, erodes your self-perception and self-trust. You don't fight what you know is wrong; you answer emails when you're off work; you tell yourself a toxic job is better than no job.
In this economy, I will never judge a woman who stays in a role to sustain herself and her family. If anything, I handle these women with extra care, as you sacrificed yourself to try to navigate a world that hates women. The way toxic work environments are set up is completely with disregard for women. It's a churn and burn, and often women who climb the ladder are the fiercest to enforce, as ultimately scarcity is running the show.
Working in a toxic work environment hinders your growth beyond just money, but I will hit those areas as often as that is the part that excites. When working with clients, I often notice a sneaky pattern. Women are the greatest storytellers of all time, and you might ask why I think this. We will rewrite reality to make it more palatable, as no one wants to sit under the weight that they betrayed themselves, allowed some random folks who probably aren't that great to degrade us, so we can pay our mortgage. We will search to the ends of the earth to find something positive or to brutally criticize ourselves as to why things occur.
To make this more impactful, here are 3 ways working in a toxic environment can affect us beyond money. I find that seeing things through a holistic lens helps make short-term and long-term goals richer and more embodied.
1. You Start Leaving Money on the Table
This is the obvious financial consequence, but it happens in several ways.
A toxic environment can make you:
stop negotiating because you're already exhausted
accept the first offer because you desperately need out
stay underpaid because you've normalized being undervalued
stop applying for higher-level roles because your confidence has taken a hit
take on responsibilities without asking for the corresponding title or compensation
become so focused on surviving your current job that you stop looking at the market
The real damage isn't just what you're earning today.
It's the raises, promotions, equity, bonuses, better opportunities, and negotiating leverage you may never pursue.
The most expensive thing about a toxic workplace may be what it convinces you not to ask for.
2. You Start Betraying Yourself to Stay Employed
Toxic workplaces can slowly teach you to override your own judgment. You know the deadline is impossible, but you say yes. You know you're being treated differently, but you tell yourself you're imagining it. You know the workload is unreasonable, but you prove you can handle it. You know you should leave, but you keep waiting for the environment to become what it has repeatedly shown you it isn't. Eventually, self-abandonment starts masquerading as professionalism. And that's dangerous because the behavior doesn't necessarily stay at work.
You can begin becoming the woman who:
overexplains herself
asks for permission instead of making decisions
minimizes her accomplishments
tolerates disrespect because she's used to it
confuses being needed with being valued
performs competence instead of exercising authority
The paycheck is only one part of what you're trading. You are potentially trading pieces of yourself for the privilege of remaining employed.
3. You Lose Years You Cannot Get Back
A toxic workplace doesn't just consume your workday. It can consume the version of your life you were supposed to be building. You spend Sunday dreading Monday. You spend Monday angry at all the fun you didn't have. You spend Tuesday putting out fires that will never result in anything meaningful. You spend Wednesday fantasizing about quitting. By Thursday you're exhausted. By Friday you're too depleted to do anything with your evening. Then you spend the weekend recovering enough to do it again.
And suddenly three years have passed.
Three years you could have spent:
building a business
pursuing a new credential
developing relationships in your industry
moving into leadership
investing
relocating
traveling
dating
creating
figuring out what you actually want your next chapter to look like
This is the part people don't calculate when they say, “At least I have a job.”
You have to ask:
What is this job preventing me from evolving into? Because sometimes the greatest cost of a toxic workplace isn't the money you're losing.
It's the life you're too exhausted to build.
How to move from a toxic work environment?
The above points may have made you feel a bit seen and left you with more questions than answers. It's hard to accept that we have a part in this reality, yet we don't take on more accountability than we should. Unless you are of the elite class, you are more than likely in the working class, which means systems were designed to allow only so much freedom. Even those who may be high-earning, if they were honest, are often in a hamster wheel of toxicity, and it also involves maintaining a certain lifestyle.
You can make 250K a year, but if the work isn't meaningful and holds you with dignity, you are taking poison and can lose everything. I believe all women can earn a higher wage, but that higher wage doesn't just show up in your bank statement; it also reflects your own healing and evolution.
I want to work with you to develop a strategy for your life where you are the driver. This isn't some magic fix that will instantly solve all your problems, but it will bring you back in alignment with life. Book a consultation so we can align, and let's make the rest of 2026 and beyond healthy holistically!
Burnout, especially burnout in women, is a subject everyone is really acquainted with these days. I have written about it a few times; you can find those here. There are coaches now focused on helping you be all you can be with burnout. In the corporate world, your ability to suppress is called maturity, and being a woman means you are not linear, which often pushes women throughout their lives, but even more so those who hit their final stage of womanhood.
Often, when women don't know who they are, as society does a really great job of constantly giving a moving target, you will burn out fast out of a deep need for validation. Validation then can provide an olive branch of safety. When we become beyond exhausted, we, on a subconscious level, understand why, but the conscious mind will kick in out of a safety warning.
Who am I to say that how I'm being treated is wrong? What will happen if I do respond with truth I have bills to pay? What will people think of me if I say that how things are going isn't truly nourishing? We will remain stagnant, not out of lack of skills, but out of fear of the consequences.
Burnout in Women
In a past post, I mentioned how misogyny impacts all, but today I want to be direct about how it impacts women in the workplace and how it boosts burnout. We live in a patriarchal society that is powered by capitalism. Women often opt into the girl-boss mentality, which I often see as a tech bro in pink. This co-optation is a survival tactic, as we often hear that women are emotional vs men. In order to climb the corporate tightrope, women often will take on a persona of policing other women and punishing them for their existence if they aren't aligned.
Misogyny creates conditions that make women's burnout distinct. Women aren't just expected to produce. They're expected to produce while nurturing, emotionally regulating others, remaining likable, attractive, agreeable, and endlessly accommodating. The exhaustion isn't simply from working out of alignment but from overperforming.
When you are a woman who operates more in her feminine or even teeters more on the integrated way, you will find the work environment hostile unless you suppress and also put on the big cosplay act. When we operate for decades outside of our organic nature, we burn out fast. Once we finally have no choice but to see reality, we are faced with a hard choice: continue or pivot?
In all my past jobs, I have not been able to be myself, leaving me to mask for more than half the day, 5 days a week. The fear of homelessness often supersedes my desire for human dignity and respect. However, the most damning is that this also impacts your ability to move into new chapters, as burnout isn't just some cutesy word; it has real-life physical damage.
I want to leave you with this question: Are your days leaving you so exhausted that you can't even fathom thinking beyond Where is my wine glass? This is in no way meant to shame you, as having a realistic view can help you feel supported in your next chapter.
If you want to work to improve compliance in a life that you have outgrown, sign up for a 15-minute consultation to see if we are aligned.
Your degrees won't protect you. Your degree doesn't make your life more valuable, but sadly, our society, even in the most innocent ways, often feels that one needs to parade one's credentials when tragedy strikes, and even more for a woman of color. The murder of Dr. Cerina Fairfax by her estranged husband hit me deeply as a life was taken violently, and the aftermath that was left. Before the grief had time to land, people started reciting her accomplishments.
The degrees, the dental practice, and the community work are pushed as part of a marketing campaign to validate her life and legitimize her agency, as if the goal were to establish that her life had been worth something before someone took it. That impulse revealed more than it intended to.
We have been collectively taught that credentials are a form of protection. If a woman builds enough proof of her value, the world will respond accordingly. Dr. Fairfax had done everything that promise required of her.
Your degrees won't protect you. What I want to examine in this post is why so many of us are still operating as if they will, and what it costs us to keep running that program.
The Legitimization Reflex
There is a particular pattern that shows up whenever a woman is harmed publicly, and it is especially visible when that woman holds intersecting identities.
The response almost always includes a recitation of what she accomplished. What she built. What she contributed. The implicit logic being: look at what she was. Look at what we lost.
I understand why people do this. It comes from grief. It comes from wanting to make the loss register in a way that demands a response. But underneath it lies an assumption that deserves questioning: that value requires evidence. A woman's life becomes more worth protecting once it has proven productive.
That assumption is one that many of us have absorbed and act on daily, often without realizing it.
What I Was Taught to Believe
I was raised on a very specific promise. Get the grades. Go to college. And the years of poverty, the weight of being a woman navigating spaces not designed for you, would somehow resolve. You would finally be taken seriously. You would finally be safe enough.
That promise has not held up. I know this not just intellectually but from two decades of trying to honor it. For most of my corporate life, I operated by suppressing the parts of myself that felt like liabilities. I adjusted how I dressed, how I carried myself, how much I revealed. The goal, beneath it all, was to communicate that I was acceptable. That I was not a disruption. That I had earned my place.
I recently completed my MSW, and I am in the middle of intentionally not pursuing the traditional path that would follow. Part of what made that decision difficult was confronting how much of my ambition had been driven not by genuine desire but by a need to be legitimized. To have enough proof that my perspective was worth taking seriously.
Imposter syndrome in high-achieving women often has less to do with actual competence and more to do with the internalized belief that you are always one credential away from being enough. That belief does not go away when you add another degree. It waits for the next threshold.
The Real Cost of Operating Outside of Alignment
When you spend extended time performing a version of yourself built around what is acceptable rather than what is true, it shows up somewhere. It shows up in health. In the quality of your relationships. In a persistent sense of disconnection from your own desires that is difficult to name but impossible to ignore.
This is not abstract. Research consistently links chronic identity suppression, particularly for women navigating structurally hostile environments, to elevated stress responses, burnout, and long-term health impacts. The body keeps an accounting even when the mind has convinced itself that it is fine.
The fastest way to lose access to what is genuinely good in you is to spend your energy maintaining a version of yourself designed for someone else's comfort.
That is not strength. It is a slow erosion dressed up as discipline.
Women are conditioned from early on to tie their value to what they produce or prove. This shows up differently depending on the path, career, motherhood, and relationship, but the underlying structure is the same. Worth is something you demonstrate. Safety is something you earn by becoming legible to the people who are deciding.
The intersection matters here, and I do not want to move past it. As a woman, identity is where I begin. But the data on what happens to women, specifically to women who also carry the weight of racial identity in a society still working out what it believes about that, is not something I can responsibly leave out.
The conditioning that contributes to this is not only external. We also pass it to each other and to the next generation. When we communicate directly or indirectly that a woman's value lies in what she accomplishes, we are not preparing young women for the world. We are preparing them to exhaust themselves trying to earn a safety that was never up for exchange.
A woman is worthy as she is. Not as she proves herself to be.
Reflection
I want to leave you with two questions, and I'd ask that you stay with them rather than answering quickly.
Where in your life are you pursuing achievement primarily as a means of feeling safe or finally enough, rather than as an expression of what genuinely calls you?
There is no wrong answer. But there is often a difference between the two, and it is worth knowing which one is driving you.
In what ways have you reinforced — in the women around you or in yourself — the idea that worth must be demonstrated before it is real?
This one tends to show up in small moments more than grand gestures. The way we respond to a woman's accomplishments versus her struggles. What we lead with when we describe ourselves. What we teach without meaning to.
Legitimization is not protection. It never was. And building our sense of value around it is a framework that will ask more of us than it ever gives back.
Closing
Your accolades are real. The work you have put in is real. None of that is the point. The point is that none of it was ever the source of your worth. It was always already there before the degrees, before the titles, before you had anything to prove.
Pursuing a career, a doctorate, or a business because it genuinely calls you is a worthy thing. Pursuing it because you believe it will finally make you enough is a different pursuit entirely, and it tends to lead to an exhausting place.
Your degrees won't protect you. But knowing, actually knowing, that your value is not contingent on what you achieve might be the most clarifying shift you can make. Not because it changes the world. The world has its own work to do. But because a woman who is not confused about her worth is not easily convinced she has to earn the right to take up space.
That is not something a credential gives you. It is something you return to.
I go deeper on this on my podcast, Mystique Femininity. The conversation there picks up where posts like this leave off.
Good girl syndrome in women doesn’t disappear with age. It matures. It professionalizes. It learns how to sound reasonable. By adulthood, it no longer looks like obedience. It looks like exhaustion, self-editing, and a life that technically works but does not belong to you.
If you feel like you are functioning but not fulfilled, productive but disconnected, polite while quietly resentful, good girl syndrome in women is often operating beneath the surface. Not as a personality flaw, but as a survival strategy that outlived its usefulness.
How Good Girl Syndrome Shows Up in Adult Women
The good girl does not vanish when childhood ends. She simply adapts to adult environments.
At work, she becomes dependable to the point of depletion. She anticipates needs before they are voiced. She avoids being “difficult,” even when something is clearly wrong. Praise comes easily, but authority does not. I am running a few minutes late; my previous meeting is running over. People pleasing in adulthood is often rewarded just enough to keep the pattern alive.
In relationships, she over-functions emotionally. She translates discomfort into understanding. She offers patience where boundaries are required. Silence becomes a way to preserve connection, even when it costs intimacy.
In social spaces, she edits herself instinctively. Tone, expression, opinion. Chronic self-editing in women becomes so automatic that it no longer feels like a choice. It feels like maturity.
Good girl syndrome in women carries a physiological cost. Somatic exhaustion is common. The body absorbs what the mouth refuses to say. Tension settles in the jaw, the shoulders, the gut. Fatigue becomes chronic because rest never reaches the root.
Delayed anger is another consequence. Rage doesn’t disappear when it’s suppressed. It calcifies. It leaks out sideways as irritability, numbness, or sudden withdrawal. Many women mistake this for burnout when it is actually unexpressed refusal.
The most insidious loss is self-trust. When you habitually override your instincts to remain agreeable, you slowly disconnect from your own internal authority. Life begins to feel narrow, even when it looks successful.
When Compliance Hardens Into Identity
Goodness is not neutral. For many women, especially Black women and other marginalized women, being the good girl is tied to safety. Visibility has consequences. Assertiveness can be misread. Authenticity can cost access.
The desire for psychological safety is human. It is also how unhealthy programming sustains itself. Historically, women who survived did so by accommodating power. That strategy was never about virtue. It was about protection.
Even modern empowerment narratives have not fully broken this pattern. The “boss babe” archetype often manifests as people-pleasing in a different form. Performance replaces submission, but the self remains externally oriented. Approval is still the currency.
Good girl syndrome in women simply evolves with the times.
How Good Girl Syndrome Shows Up at Work—and How to Interrupt It
In the workplace, good girl syndrome often looks like over-preparing instead of asserting, over-explaining instead of stating, and waiting for permission instead of claiming space.
To interrupt it:
Stop preemptively softening your position
Practice stating needs without justification
Notice where competence has replaced visibility
Women who people-please in adulthood thrive on anticipation. Disrupt it by allowing others to meet you halfway.
Conclusion: The Good Girl Deserves Evolution, Not Erasure
The good girl is not something to shame. She formed to keep you safe. She deserves compassion, recognition, and release. But she is not meant to run your adult life.
Good girl syndrome in women becomes untenable when it prevents expansion, pleasure, and self-definition. Exhaustion is not a personal failing. It is information.
If you’re ready to go beneath the surface of these patterns and explore what comes after compliance, I unpack this more deeply on my podcast—where we talk about what women are no longer willing to carry.
