Why High-Achieving Women Struggle With Bad Days

I once went off on a client. Nope, it was not my finest professional moment.

I was working as an account manager at a marketing agency, and this particular client and I did not get along. She pushed every button I had. I had already told my boss that I didn't think I should be the person managing her account, but nothing changed.

Then one weekend, she started calling and texting me about a social media post.

On a Sunday.

It wasn't an emergency. The company wasn't in crisis. Nobody's business was going to collapse if the post waited until Monday, so I lost it on her. I had enough abuse.

I said things I shouldn't have said in a way I shouldn't have said them. My frustration took over, and almost immediately afterward, I became convinced I was going to get fired, because that's what I'm used to when something goes wrong on the client side.

I didn't think: Well, that didn't go well.

My brain went straight to: Oh shit. What have I done?

Then came the replay.

• What did I say?

• What should I have said?

• Why did I react like that?

• What is my boss going to think?

• How am I going to explain this?

• Am I going to lose my job?

I could take one bad moment and turn it into the end of the world before anyone else had even decided what the moment meant, and I don't think I'm the only high-achieving woman who does this.

When a Bad Day Starts Feeling Like Evidence

There's a difference between knowing you made a mistake and deciding that mistake says something about who you are. For a long time, I wasn't particularly good at separating the two.

I grew up in a home with a very fixed idea about ability. If you were good at something, keep doing it. If you weren't good at it right away, quit.

Stick to what you're good at.

I don't think my parents were intentionally teaching me to fear failure, but that's what I took from it.

Struggling didn't feel like part of learning. It felt like evidence.

• Maybe I'm not good at this.

• Maybe I shouldn't be doing this.

• Maybe I can't do it.

So I learned two ways to deal with the possibility of failure. Sometimes I wouldn't do something because I thought I might fail. Other times, I would do it scared, hoping I'd get it right and wouldn't get in trouble if I didn't.

You can become very successful operating that way. You can also become absolutely exhausted, because once being capable becomes part of your identity, having a bad day doesn't always feel like having a bad day.

It can feel like proof that maybe you aren't who you thought you were.

Why High-Achieving Women Can Be So Hard on Themselves

We talk a lot about perfectionism and high-achieving women, but I think we sometimes make perfectionism sound too obvious. It isn't always obsessing over every detail until something is flawless. Sometimes perfectionism shows up after something isn't.

• You have one bad meeting and replay it for three days.

• You give an answer you don't love and spend the drive home thinking of all the better answers you could have given.

• You make a mistake and immediately start figuring out how you're going to prove it won't happen again.

• You take a needed day off and somehow decide you need to be twice as productive the next day.

Nobody asked you to make up for anything, but somewhere in your head, you're already building the recovery plan.

Look at you. Problem solver!

Except sometimes there isn't nearly as much to solve as you're about to give it.

That's where I think we have to ask a different question.

Not just: What happened?

But: What did I make what happened mean about me?

Those are two very different questions.

My Boss Did Something I Didn't Know How to Do for Myself

When my boss found out what happened with the client, she called me in. I was expecting a lecture, possibly worse. Instead, she had a conversation with me.

She asked for my point of view. She wanted to understand why I had reacted the way I did, so I told her the truth, like an adult.

I told her about my history with the client. I explained what had been happening, how I'd already felt about the relationship and what had happened over the weekend.

She listened.

That didn't suddenly make the way I spoke to the client okay. I was still responsible for that, but my boss also didn't take one bad reaction and turn it into a judgment about my entire character or my ability to do my job.

She looked at the context.

Ultimately, she fired the client for harassing me over a non-emergency. That experience stayed with me because my boss did something for me that I wasn't very good at doing for myself yet.

She asked: What happened?

Instead of: What's wrong with you?

There is a big difference.

Understanding why you behaved a certain way doesn't excuse the behavior. It gives you enough information to take responsibility for the right thing. I needed to take responsibility for losing my temper. I didn't need to take responsibility for the entire situation.

That's a distinction I didn't always know how to make.

Accountability and Self-Punishment Are Not the Same Thing

Even now, I know my tendencies.

• I can replay something over and over again.

• I can lose sleep thinking about what I did, what I should have done, what I should have said or what I could have said differently.

• I can over-explain.

• I have a tendency to apologize even when, if I'm being truthful with myself, I'm not actually sorry.

That last one has taught me a lot, because an apology can come from accountability.

I hurt you. I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry, but sometimes an apology comes from discomfort. You're unhappy with me, and I need to make that feeling go away.

Those aren't the same thing.

For high-achieving women who are used to being capable, dependable and professional, someone being disappointed in us can feel disproportionately uncomfortable, so we rush to repair it.

• We explain.

• We soften what we said.

• We apologize again.

• We promise we'll do better.

• We work harder.

• We make ourselves extra available.

And sometimes we're not repairing the situation at all. We're trying to repair how we believe the other person now sees us. That's when accountability can quietly turn into self-punishment.

Why Fear of Failure Doesn't Always Look Like Fear

Fear of failure isn't always standing on the sidelines because you're too afraid to try. Sometimes it looks remarkably successful.

It can look like:

• Overpreparing.

• Working late.

• Triple-checking everything.

• Being the person everyone can count on.

• Never wanting to say, “I don't know.”

• Thinking about a mistake long after everyone else has moved on.

• Working twice as hard after one off day.

• Feeling like you have to prove yourself again every time you don't perform at the level you've come to expect from yourself.

That's why this can be difficult to recognize in successful women. The behavior gets rewarded. People call you driven, responsible and committed.

But it's still worth asking: Am I working this hard because I want to do excellent work, or because I'm afraid of what it means when I don't?

That answer can tell you a lot.

What Happens When a Leader Can't Have an Off Day?

This doesn't stay in your head. It follows you into leadership. If every mistake feels like a threat to your competence, uncertainty becomes much harder to tolerate.

• You may overprepare because you can't stand being caught without an answer.

• You may over-explain decisions because someone's disagreement makes you wonder whether you made the wrong one.

• You may struggle with feedback because you're hearing something much bigger than what's actually being said.

• You may take on responsibilities that belong to someone else because letting something go wrong feels more uncomfortable than simply doing it yourself.

• You may start creating the same expectations for the people you lead.

If you don't allow yourself to be imperfect, how comfortable are you when someone on your team is?

• Can someone tell you they don't know?

• Can they make a mistake without immediately trying to prove they're still valuable?

• Can they have an off day?

• Can they ask for help before they've exhausted every possible option themselves?

Or does everyone start learning that being competent means never letting anyone see you struggle?

This is where leadership gets personal, because sometimes the standard we're unconsciously creating for everyone around us is the same impossible standard we've been using on ourselves.

A Bad Day Is Not a Character Assessment

My boss at that agency used to tell me when I was getting too far into my own head.

I needed that then. I needed someone outside of me who could look at the situation without all the emotion I'd attached to it and essentially say: Biana, it's fine.

Why? Because once I got inside the spiral, everything felt important. Everything meant something. One bad interaction could become a career crisis. One mistake could become evidence that I wasn't as capable as I thought. One person's frustration with me could become something I needed to fix immediately.

I've gotten much better at catching that now. Not perfect, better; and part of that has come from learning to listen to myself differently.

I pay attention to my body, my mind and my emotions.

I know there are days when I need to work and days when I need a break. There are times when I have the energy to push and times when pushing isn't going to produce anything worthwhile.

There are things I'm ready for and things that simply aren't right for me right now. I don't automatically interpret those things as failure anymore. I've become much more in tune with myself personally so I can grow at my own pace professionally, without making fear or judgment the thing driving me.

That doesn't mean I don't want to improve. It means improvement no longer has to begin with proving there was something wrong with me in the first place.

What Does This Say About Me?

This may be one of the most important questions I've learned to stop asking. Something doesn't go the way you wanted.

• You make a mistake.

• You lose your temper.

• You don't get the opportunity.

• You give the presentation and it falls flat.

• You make a decision and later realize you would have made a different one knowing what you know now.

And immediately: What does this say about me?

What if you asked: What can this teach me?

That doesn't let you off the hook. Sometimes the answer won't be particularly comfortable.

• Maybe you handled something badly.

• Maybe you weren't prepared.

• Maybe you owe someone an apology.

• Maybe you need a better boundary.

• Maybe you need more practice.

• Maybe you need to have a conversation you've been avoiding.

• Maybe you're exhausted and had a shitty day.

You're allowed to discover that too.

Growth doesn't require turning every mistake into a referendum on your ability to lead. It requires being able to look at what happened clearly enough to learn from it.

The RISE Method™: When One Bad Day Starts Becoming Everything

This is exactly the kind of moment when I use the RISE Method™, not to talk myself into believing everything is fine because sometimes everything isn't fine.

The goal is to create enough space between what happened and what I'm making it mean that I can respond to the actual situation.

Recognize

What actually happened?

• Strip away what you think everyone is thinking about you.

• Strip away what you're afraid might happen next.

• Strip away the imaginary conversation you've already had twelve times in your head.

What are the facts?

Interrupt

What am I making this mean about me?

• Did you make a mistake, or have you already decided you're a failure?

• Did someone give you feedback, or have you decided you've disappointed them?

• Did you have a bad day, or have you turned it into evidence that you're bad at what you do?

Catch the story before you start responding to it as though it's fact.

Self-Lead

What does this situation actually require from me?

• An apology?

• A correction?

• A conversation?

• A boundary?

• More practice?

• Rest?

• Maybe nothing right now.

Respond to the situation you actually have, not the punishment you've invented for yourself.

Evolve

Take the lesson without turning it into an identity.

That's growth, not becoming the woman who never screws up, but becoming the woman who can screw up, learn, adjust and keep moving without believing she has to earn back her own respect.

Maybe It Was Just a Bad Day

There's something almost embarrassingly simple about that sentence. Maybe it was just a bad day.

• Maybe the meeting wasn't great.

• Maybe you weren't as articulate as you normally are.

• Maybe you lost your patience.

• Maybe you made the wrong call.

• Maybe you need to fix something tomorrow.

Before you stay up half the night replaying it, write the three-paragraph apology nobody asked for, volunteer to take on more work or decide your entire career is collapsing before breakfast, ask yourself: Am I responding to what happened, or am I punishing myself for what I think it says about me?

• You are allowed to take responsibility without taking yourself apart.

• You are allowed to learn without humiliating yourself first.

• You are allowed to be excellent at what you do and occasionally not be excellent at it.

I spent a lot of my life believing growth meant proving I could do something well. I see it differently now. Sometimes growth is being willing to do something imperfectly, listen to what the experience teaches you and trust yourself enough to try again.

No punishment required.

About the Author

Biana Lerman is the founder of Your Growth Leader, a leadership strategist, executive coach, startup operator, and author of The Rise of Scarlet Rose.

For more than 20 years, she has worked inside startups and growing businesses across marketing, operations, strategy, leadership and growth. Today, she works with founders, executives and women leaders to uncover what's actually happening beneath the problems they're trying to solve.

Her work combines practical business experience with a psychologically grounded approach to leadership, because sometimes what looks like a performance problem is actually a belief about what being imperfect means.

FAQs

Why do high-achieving women struggle with failure?

For many high-achieving women, competence becomes closely connected to identity. When that happens, a mistake can feel like more than something that went wrong. It can feel like evidence about your ability, credibility or worth. Learning to separate what happened from what you've made it mean can make it easier to respond without spiraling into self-criticism.

Why do I overthink mistakes at work?

Replaying a mistake can initially feel productive because your brain is trying to understand what happened and prevent it from happening again. The problem is when reflection turns into rumination. If you're no longer discovering anything new and are simply replaying the event, imagining different outcomes or criticizing yourself, you're probably not problem-solving anymore.

What's the difference between accountability and self-punishment?

Accountability asks what happened, what responsibility you have and what action is appropriate. Self-punishment adds unnecessary suffering. It can look like excessive apologizing, overworking, repeatedly criticizing yourself or trying to prove your value after a mistake.

How can fear of failure affect women in leadership?

Fear of failure can show up as overpreparing, difficulty delegating, over-explaining decisions, struggling with feedback or feeling pressure to always have the answer. Over time, these behaviors can affect both a leader's well-being and the culture she creates for her team.

What is Psychological Leadership™?

Psychological Leadership™ is Biana Lerman's approach to understanding the beliefs, patterns, expectations and conditioning underneath the way we lead, communicate, make decisions and respond to pressure.

Instead of simply asking, “What am I doing?” Psychological Leadership™ asks us to understand what may be driving the behavior, and then intentionally decide what deserves to lead us next.

Ready to Stop Turning Every Mistake Into a Verdict?

If you're successful on paper but find yourself replaying decisions, over-explaining, second-guessing yourself or holding yourself to standards you would never expect from someone else, there may be more underneath it than perfectionism.

That's the work I do through Your Growth Leader.

Together, we look at what's actually happening beneath the issue—across your leadership, your work and the beliefs influencing how you're responding—and turn that clarity into practical change.

You don't need someone to tell you what you're doing wrong.

Sometimes you need enough distance from the problem to understand why it feels so much bigger than it actually is.

Book a free 15-minute consultation with Your Growth Leader.

Your Next Step

Explore Psychological Leadership™ and the RISE Method™ to better understand the beliefs and patterns underneath the way you lead.

Take the RISE Method™ Quiz to identify where you may be reacting automatically and where there may be an opportunity to respond differently.

Or, want Biana Lerman to speak to your teams about Psycological Leadership and The Rise Method, including leadership coaching and consulting. Let me know. We can uncover what's really happening beneath a challenge in your leadership, team or business.

Your Growth Leader: Personal growth written for professional impact.