Psychological Tips that Can Help Women Build Confidence
“Once we give up searching for approval, we often find it easier to earn respect.” Gloria Steinem
The modern world puts a lot of pressure on women. We all know that. Women are often expected to balance their jobs with family responsibilities, relationships and everything else that comes with being an adult.
This means that the everyday responsibilities many women have can leave too little space to reflect on how we may actually be feeling.
Research has explored this overlap between our working and personal lives. For example, a 2024 three-wave longitudinal study involving 568 participants looked at work-family conflict, self-compassion, self-control and burnout. The researchers found that self-compassion and self-control were associated with lower burnout through reduced work-family conflict.
The trick is not to get everything completely right. Rather, it is about developing the psychological skills you need to help you succeed at work, better understand yourself and respond to challenges as best as you can.
At My Family Psychologist, I specialise in working with women who may be struggling with previous relationship trauma, emotional abuse, anxiety, low self-esteem or other long-term emotional difficulties.
My aim is to help women develop the skills they need to navigate life successfully, understand themselves better and become the best version of themselves that they can be.
So, let’s have a look at some of the psychological skills that may help women in the business world and their personal lives.
And don’t worry! This isn’t a tick-list article.
Boundaries. Keep Them!
Boundaries allow us to communicate what we are and are not comfortable with. If we can’t take any more on at work, saying so is a boundary.
For some women, setting boundaries can feel uncomfortable and fill their minds with worry. There may be concerns about disappointing people or being seen as selfish or incompetent.
However, what we need to be aware of, ladies, is that consistently putting other people’s needs before our own can become exhausting, particularly when we are already juggling competing responsibilities.
So, when faced with a conundrum, ask yourself: are you engaging in something because you genuinely want to, or because you are worried about how somebody else will react if you say no?
Learning to identify and spot the differences in your inner world and perception can help you recognise when you may be overextending yourself. It can also be an important step towards developing healthier relationships and addressing difficult relationship patterns.
Boundaries don’t mean that you don’t care about other people. Sometimes, they simply mean recognising that your needs matter too.
Spot Your Own Stress Signals
What we need to remember is that experiencing some stress in challenging or unfamiliar situations can be perfectly normal. However, prolonged or overwhelming stress can begin to affect our psychological and physical wellbeing.
If you’ve had a promotion at work, for example, feeling a bit stressed during those first few weeks isn’t necessarily unusual. You are learning new things, adjusting to different responsibilities and probably putting some pressure on yourself to do well.
However, if you are becoming increasingly irritable, struggling to concentrate or experiencing disrupted sleep, it may be worth paying attention to what your mind and body are telling you.
It’s also OK to recognise that your personal stress signals may be completely different from somebody else’s.
And try not to blame yourself for becoming stressed.
Life is hard and, sometimes, it throws curveballs repeatedly and for no apparent reason!
So, rather than focusing solely on:
“Why am I so stressed?” try asking yourself “What has changed recently?”
This can help you spot situations, environments or patterns that may increase your stress. Recognising those patterns earlier can give you more time to respond rather than waiting until everything feels overwhelming.
If anxiety is beginning to interfere with everyday life, speaking to a psychologist can also help you understand what may be driving it and develop strategies for managing it.
Try to Build Your Emotional Resilience
Resilience is sometimes confused with being able to cope with absolutely anything without becoming upset.
That’s not what it means.
Emotional resilience isn’t about avoiding or ignoring difficult emotions. It is about our ability to gradually adapt when we experience disappointment, uncertainty, stress or adverse events.
And that can be hard, so don’t worry if it doesn’t come naturally at first.
Interestingly, research suggests that resilience isn’t necessarily something that we either have or don’t have.
A four-year longitudinal study published in 2024 followed 1,137 university students and explored the relationship between stress, self-compassion and resilience. The researchers found that when increases in stress occurred alongside increases in self-compassion, participants subsequently demonstrated greater resilience.
Another 2024 longitudinal study explored the relationships between mindfulness, self-compassion, resilience and psychological distress, providing further evidence for the relationship between self-compassion and resilience over time.
Therapy can also give you somewhere to explore difficult experiences, recognise patterns and develop healthier ways of responding to them.
Remember, resilience can involve recognising that:
- A difficult experience does not have to define you.
- Setbacks are not necessarily permanent and are part of life.
- You can feel distressed and still take constructive action.
- You do not have to have everything figured out immediately. Reinventing the wheel isn’t something you need to do on your own or in a day.
Resilience can develop through experience. Learning how you respond to difficult situations, recognising what helps and developing healthier coping strategies can gradually make future challenges feel more manageable.
If previous experiences continue to affect the way you see yourself or respond to situations today, trauma-informed psychological support can also provide a space to explore them safely.
Practise Self-Compassion
Have you ever heard the statement:
“Would you speak to someone else the way you speak to yourself?”
It is often easier to speak to other people with compassion than it is to speak to ourselves.
You might tell yourself that you should have known better. You might convince yourself that an error is catastrophic. Or one mistake at work can suddenly become:
“I’m terrible at my job.”
Self-compassion is a useful psychological skill that may help us respond differently when things don’t go according to plan.
A 2023 meta-analysis of 56 randomised controlled trials found that self-compassion-focused interventions produced small-to-medium reductions in depression, anxiety and stress immediately after treatment compared with control conditions. However, the researchers also noted that the overall risk of bias across the included studies was high, so the findings should be interpreted with some caution.
Another 2023 meta-analysis examining 42 randomised controlled studies specifically looked at self-compassion interventions and anxiety. The researchers reported reductions in anxiety symptoms, although treatment approaches and study populations varied considerably.
Self-compassion doesn’t mean ignoring mistakes or refusing to take responsibility for them. Quite the opposite. It means recognising what went wrong without turning an individual mistake into a judgement about your entire worth.
There is an enormous psychological difference between thinking:
“I made a mistake.”
and:
“I am a failure and deserve nothing good to happen to me.”
The first allows you to look at what happened and decide what you might do differently next time. The second simply attacks you.
Develop Psychological Flexibility
Speaking of sayings and statements, a particularly good one in this area is:
“When we plan, God laughs.”
Religion aside for one moment, the point is that life rarely goes completely according to plan.
Things can change in the blink of an eye. Children mature. Careers change. Relationships change. People move away. Unexpected opportunities appear and sometimes things we were certain about simply don’t happen.
This can force us to accept the uncomfortable fact that some circumstances are outside our control.
Psychological flexibility is about being able to adjust when circumstances change without completely losing sight of what matters to you.
That doesn’t mean liking the change.
You can be disappointed that something hasn’t worked out while also asking yourself:
“OK. Given where I am now, what can I do next?”
That distinction is important.
Psychological flexibility allows us to acknowledge what we are thinking and feeling while considering whether there are other ways of responding to the situation in front of us.
Identify When Things Need to Change
If something isn’t working long-term, something may need to change.
Perhaps intimacy has disappeared from a relationship.
Maybe a plan at work isn’t going as expected.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that you have lost confidence in yourself.
Or maybe anxiety has started interfering with everyday life and you’ve realised that you need some help.
The hard part is often knowing what to do next.
And here’s the good news: change doesn’t have to be overtly dramatic.
It might involve having a difficult conversation, trying to change a habit, setting a boundary or simply approaching a familiar problem differently. Small changes still count.
At My Family Psychologist, I see women who may have lost confidence in themselves at work, in their relationships or while parenting their children. This doesn’t mean these women are failures. It means that life is hard. My aim is to give women a confidential space to talk, understand what they are experiencing, rebuild their confidence and develop psychological skills that can help them navigate the challenges in their lives.
If you would like to have a confidential chat about some of the issues you have been experiencing, drop me a line and let’s chat.
FAQs
Why is setting boundaries important for your mental health?
Healthy boundaries help you communicate what you are comfortable with and recognise when too much is being asked of you. This can be particularly important when you’re balancing work, relationships and family responsibilities. Setting a boundary doesn’t mean you’re selfish or difficult. Sometimes, it simply means recognising your own limits. If saying no fills you with guilt or anxiety, therapy can help you explore where those feelings come from and develop healthier ways of responding.
What does emotional resilience actually mean?
Emotional resilience doesn’t mean being unaffected by difficult experiences or coping perfectly with everything life throws at you. It is our ability to gradually adapt to stress, disappointment and change while continuing to move forward. Research suggests that qualities such as self-compassion may be associated with greater resilience. Importantly, resilience can develop over time rather than being something you either naturally have or don’t have.
How can self-compassion help when things go wrong?
Self-compassion means responding to yourself with understanding rather than immediately attacking yourself when you struggle or make a mistake. It doesn’t mean ignoring mistakes or avoiding responsibility. Instead, it allows you to recognise what happened without turning one mistake into a judgement about your entire worth. Research into self-compassion interventions has found promising effects on anxiety, stress and depressive symptoms, although the quality and design of studies vary.
References
Chow, T. S., Tang, C. S.-K., Siu, T. S. U., & Kwok, H. S. H. (2024). Examining the roles of self-compassion and self-control in managing work–family conflicts and preventing burnout during the pandemic: A three-wave longitudinal study in China. International Journal of Psychology, 59(6), 1015–1025. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.13226
Han, A., & Kim, T. H. (2023). Effects of self-compassion interventions on reducing depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress: A meta-analysis. Mindfulness. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-023-02148-x
Luo, X., Che, X., & Lei, Y. (2023). Characterizing the effects of self-compassion interventions on anxiety: Meta-analytic evidence from randomized controlled studies. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 30, 132–141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2023.10.004
Park, J., Bluth, K., Lathren, C., Leary, M., & Hoyle, R. (2024). The synergy between stress and self-compassion in building resilience: A 4-year longitudinal study. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 18(7), e12978. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12978
Ueno, Y., & Amemiya, R. (2024). Mediating effects of resilience between mindfulness, self-compassion, and psychological distress in a longitudinal study. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 42, 896–906. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10942-024-00553-2