I’m Sorry For Being Great: Tall Poppy Syndrome in Women

Be. Play. Love.

If you’ve ever felt uncomfortable and squirmy about celebrating your accomplishments, you have tall poppy syndrome AKA an upper limit problem. Unfortunately, because of how we’ve been conditioned to focus on others, women are more likely to struggle with this.

You’ll often find us downplaying our greatness, making ourselves smaller, and having a lot of difficulty sitting in something we should be proud of. You might even go as far as apologizing for doing something well. We’ve been taught that if we rise up too high, we’re in danger of getting chopped down to size, so it’s safer not to draw attention to ourselves.

Where does this come from? How does it manifest and what can we do to change it? How do you stop twisting your aliveness to make everyone else comfortable? In this episode, we talk about tall poppy syndrome and why women are so prone to it.

Be careful, don’t bring too much attention to yourself - that’s the tall poppy syndrome. If you look at the stats, you’ll find that’s how most girls are raised. -Katie Hendricks

Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode

-Why women are uncomfortable in their muchness

Women are raised to believe that it’s our job to care for others, speak when spoken to, and not to declare too much. Is that why pride feels so unfamiliar and uncomfortable?

-How to stop abandoning yourself

It’s really easy to talk yourself out of celebrating your greatness. What are some of the ways women do that?

-Dare to be authentic

As women, we tend to spend time making the people around us comfortable, even if it’s at our own expense. How do we learn to take up the space that’s rightfully ours without apologizing?