Why High-Achieving Women Often Confuse Performance with Security
You’ve worked hard to build control into your life: schedules, teams, metrics, outcomes. In your high-stakes career you know how to manage risk, stay ahead of obstacles, exert influence, and deliver under pressure. Control has been your ally.
But here’s what many high-achieving women find: control doesn’t feel like safety. In fact, striving for control can keep you in a state of tension rather than rest, vigilance rather than ease, readiness rather than trust. Feeling safe is not simply about managing what could go wrong—it’s about being at ease enough to be seen, to risk, to connect, to rest.
In this article we’ll explore how control and safety differ, why control becomes a default for high-performing women, how it shows up in your mind and body, and what to shift if you want to move from managed competence to embodied safety.
Control vs. Safety: Two Different Nervous-System States
What Control Looks Like
- You monitor outcomes, anticipate failures, correct errors, maintain surveillance—externally or internally.
- You feel responsible for outcomes beyond your role (“If I don’t handle this, it falls apart”).
- You equate competence with influence, and influence with containment of risk.
- You may feel tense, alert, prepared—but also less able to delegate, less able to rest.
Control is anchored in the belief: If I act, then I can influence outcome; if I don’t act, it might fail. It often comes from good instincts, early messages (“You need to make sure everything is handled”), organizational culture (high stakes means low margin for error), or survival adaptations (you’ve been in a context where you had to manage threat).
Research confirms the psychological benefit of perceived control: people who believe they can influence outcomes tend to have better well-being and motivation. (thepositivepsychologypeople.com)
What Feeling Safe Looks Like
- You trust the environment, trust your system, trust your body enough to rest, recuperate, let your guard relax.
- You feel connected to yourself and others, your nervous system is in a regulated mode rather than constantly scanning.
- You feel grounded, not just because you can act but because you are held by your context.
- You’re willing to be seen, to be changed, to risk being vulnerable without fear of fundamental threat.
In the therapeutic and trauma-informed literature, “sense of safety” is described not simply as absence of threat but as a whole-person experience of coherence: body, mind, relationships, context. (Frontiers) One article puts it simply: “Feeling safe means you do not anticipate harm or hurt, emotionally or physically.” (Fostering Perspectives)
Why High-Achieving Women Often Prioritize Control Over Safety
1. Performance Culture Rewards Control
In high-stakes careers, your value is often judged by what you deliver, how you perform, how you manage risk. So you naturally become someone who controls. But the system may not reward your capacity to rest, to be vulnerable, or to reflect—those are invisible.
2. Early Adaptations to Threat
Women in leadership may have internalised the message that only when they’re in control will they be safe or seen. Childhood, career, or organisational contexts where control equalled survival can embed that script deeply.
3. Efficiency ≠ Safety
You may believe: “If I control this project, the risk is lower, the outcome is safer.” Yet safety is not simply risk‐management—it’s relational, somatic, ecological. You may still feel unsafe though you’re performing flawlessly.
4. Control Takes Urgency, Safety Allows Slowness
Control often demands doing, reacting, staying ahead; safety invites resting, receiving, trusting the process. The performance model doesn’t de‐value vigilance—it thrives on it. But your nervous system pays the price.
5. Safety Requires Trust in Others and Systems
To feel safe you must relinquish some control—trust your team, trust your body, trust your context. For someone used to being the one to manage, that can feel risky, unprofessional, or threatening.
How the Focus on Control Shows Up—and Why It Undermines Real Safety
- You delegate less because you worry “it won’t be done right.” This constant monitoring keeps your nervous system in activation rather than rest.
- You avoid meaningful risk (e.g., stepping into new leadership, being seen in a vulnerable way) because you’re busy controlling what you can. That stunts growth and burns energy.
- You feel calm externally but restless or tense internally—because your system still signals vigilance. Studies of sensed safety note that even when there is no immediate threat, if you don’t feel safe your body remains on guard. (Frontiers)
- You mistake your exhaustion for “just how it is when you lead at high stakes.” But the price of control is often hidden in your nervous system: poor sleep, irritability, difficulty fully resting, relational distance.
- You may neglect the relational and somatic dimension of safety—connection, attunement, rest—focusing instead on task and outcome. That means you’re functioning in performance mode, not regulation mode.
How to Shift From Being in Control to Feeling Safe
1. Notice the difference in your body
When you’re in “control mode,” what do you feel? Tightness, racing mind, scanning, “what-if” loops, need to stay ahead. When you’re in “safety mode,” what do you feel? Ease, openness, possibility, willingness to let others take part. Bring awareness to that difference.
2. Ask: “Am I controlling or aligning?”
Controlling = If I don’t do this, it may fail. Aligning = I will contribute strongly, and I trust the system/others/body to carry the rest. This subtle shift invites collaboration, trust, rest.
3. Create environments that signal safety
Safety is relational and ecological: your team culture, your sleep routine, your physical environment, your nervous system matter. Practices: short mindfulness or grounding pauses at the beginning and end of your workday; rituals that say “this is transition now, I am not on high alert.”
4. Practice letting go of small controls
Try releasing control over one domain you normally manage—delegate a task fully, allow someone else to lead a meeting, ask for feedback without pre-editing. Observe how you feel. What signals do you receive? Can trust increase?
5. Prioritise relationships and body cues, not just outcomes
Being safe involves connection with self and others. Ask: Who notices if I’m just “fine” but not fully present? When did I last feel truly at ease with a colleague, partner, team? What physical cues tell me I’m still in vigilance?
6. Integrate the language of safety into your leadership narrative
You might say: “My goal is not just to deliver this outcome, but to lead a team that can deliver and regenerate—that rests, learns, sustains.” Framing your leadership in terms of safety, resilience, growth shifts the paradigm.
7. Work with a therapist or coach who understands high-stakes performance and regulation
As a psychotherapist working with high-achieving women, I often guide clients through the shift from “doing to survive” to “being safe and thriving.” If this resonates, working relationally and somatically with the nervous system helps.
Closing Thoughts
Control is a potent tool—and for someone like you who thrives in high-stakes, high-visibility roles, it has helped you succeed. But control is not safety. Feeling safe is a deeper, embodied experience of trust, ease, connection, and genuine capacity to rest and lead without constant vigilance. When you prioritise safety as much as performance, you unlock not just sustainable leadership—but a more humane version of success.
If you are ready to move from a life of constant control to a leadership of grounded safety, to shift from vigilance to presence, from doing to being—book your first session today. Let’s explore together how you can lead with both strength and ease, clarity and rest, performance and safety.
Works Cited
Lynch, J. M., Stange, K. C., Dowrick, C., Getz, L., Meredith, P. J., Van Driel, M. L., Harris, M. G., Tillack, K. & Tapp, C. (2025). The sense of safety theoretical framework: a trauma-informed and healing-oriented approach for whole person care. Frontiers in Psychology, 15:1441493. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1441493. (Frontiers)
Wouters-Soomers, L., Van den Heuvel, M., & Schipper, G. M. (2022). An individual perspective on psychological safety: The role of basic psychological needs in influencing anxiety and recovery–the case of board members. BMC Psychology, 10, 240. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-022-00929-7. (PMC)
Veale, D. (2023). Personal View: No safety without emotional safety. The Lancet Psychiatry, 10(7), 435-436. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(22)00373-X. (ScienceDirect)
Preisler, J. (2013). Being Safe vs. Feeling Safe. Fostering Perspectives, 17(2). Retrieved from https://fosteringperspectives.org/fpv17n2/psychological-safety.html. (Fostering Perspectives)
Marano, H. E. (2024, April 11). Our Need to Feel Safe. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anxiety-another-name-for-pain/202404/our-need‐to‐feel‐safe (Psychology Today)
