Anxiety in Professional Women Today: Personal Growth is the Solution

The gold standard we use to evaluate our lives is changing. Anxiety is a call for us to change.

Well Educated Professional Woman's Anxiety and Worry 

An intelligent, educated professional woman is anxious.  Her meals last as long as the movie she is watching. Her sleep is disrupted. She's not interested in sex with her husband. She can't see how to make a safe and secure future for her children.

She built her career, her marriage and her life with a thoughtful appraisal of hopes, risks and requirements. She planned to maintain the life she values. She has, or had, at least a general picture of what obstacles she would need to face to move into a satisfying future. The future she anticipated is crashing. Deeper personal growth is needed now.

Today she suffers from anxiety 

1.  Will her children be safe from a pandemic if they go away to college?
2.  Is her daughter's life at risk if she is pregnant and needs an abortion?
3.  Does the descending stock market mean the family savings is dwindling as major costs rise?
4.  Is her husband willing to face these issues with her or is he living and spending as if we were living decades ago?
5.  Will the air remain safe to breathe?
6.  Will water remain available?
7.  Will storms damage her home and financial base?
8.  Will her career survive?
9.  Will her husband be a strong partner as the unknown and precarious future unfolds?

During the 20's of the year 2000 we are experiencing more shock, stress, disequilibrium and fear than we have for a long time. Every base of our various life foundations seems under threat. Financial, medical, political, environmental,  emotional, even core identity seem in flux with no end in sight.

Psychotherapy to help her grow and find more resources within

Can psychotherapy help with this anxiety and help with the real problems she faces? Yes, deep psychotherapy is called for now. She and we are using the tools we have found, designed and relied on to build our lives and our relationships. Those tools were effective in the world we lived in just a few years ago. But the world is changing fast. Those tools are not adequate for our current challenges.

One major tool, one major resource, in fact, the most important resource we possess, is our own identity. Our core strengths, our beliefs in ourselves, our fundamental grounding that creates our stability and allows us to move into the unknown is vital. And that sense of identity is being shaken these days. 

When we rely on who we think we are and have been while facing new challenges we can miss our untapped resources. We are more than we think we are. We have depths we don't know about. We didn't need to plumb the depths before because we got as far as we needed for the life we had.  Our changing world demands that we go deeper to recognize and respond in new ways to the changes around us. Anxiety is a call to grow. 

With the help of a depth psychotherapist, using dreams and guided imagery, discovering the unknown metaphors in our lives that exist to guide us, we can to grow beyond our current limits. And yes, it's possible. The unfolding journey of growing consciousness and competence continues.

 
Joanna Poppink, MFT, is a depth psychotherapist in private practice. Her specialities are working with adults dealing with eating disorders, PTSD, anxiety and depression.  All appointments are virtual. She is licensed in CA, UT, FL, AZ and OR. For a free telephone consultation e-mail her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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