Women Burning Out

In a post about a book by Dr. Joan Boysenko called Fried: Why You Burn Out And How to Revive, Dr. Helen Smith explains why modern women seem to be so prone to burn out.  

Dr. Helen also links a recent article about the book from The Daily Mail. It provides a very useful summary.

Why do women burn out?

In her book Dr. Joan Borysenko offers the usual explanations: women are people-pleasers and they don’t take enough time for themselves. Or better, they don’t like themselves enough.

Ah yes, if only they had more self-esteem. Of course, these are therapy-culture nostrums.

Dr. Helen has some better ideas.

Most important, from my perspective, is her point that these women do not who they are. They are living their lives as though they were men.

As Dr. Helen writes, this has been standard feminist fare for decades now. Too many women do not look at what is best for them and their families, but blindly obey the instructions that they are receiving from their feminist masters.

Then they claim that they have gained independence and autonomy!

Women have been told, or better, have had it beaten into them, that anything a man can do, a woman can do too.

They have learned this in indoctrination sessions masquerading as college courses. I doubt that any of their feminist teachers has ever asked whether it is really a good idea to try to imitate men.

This feminist mantra is not quite as harmless as you think.  A woman who makes decisions according to what a man would do is denying who she is.

Besides, if feminists are so pro-women why do they try to convince women to act like men. Doesn’t that suggest that there is something wrong with being a woman?

If so, who are the real misogynists?

Remember the line that was inscribed on the portal of the temple of the Delphic oracle: Know thyself. It should be obvious, but you can’t know yourself if you do not know which gender you belong to and do not embrace it.

If you conduct your life in order to deny who you are or in order to pretend to be someone or something you are not, Dr. Helen explains, you will burn out.

Regrettably, too many women are sacrificing their lives, their health and their sanity to make an ideological point.

Those women who were not seduced by the idea that they could act as though they were men might have succumbed to the idea that women could have it all. As Dr. Helen reminds us, feminists were instrumental in perpetrating this illusion.  

It sounds like a great idea-- who doesn’t want to have it all-- but it loses its appeal once women really try to have it all. Isn’t it a modern form of hubris, an arrogance so vast that it refuses to accept any limitations?

Women who buy the notion that they can have it all soon discover that they have made a Faustian bargain. As you recall, Faust’s story did not have a happy ending.

How do these women deal with the disappointment that befalls them when they follow the feminist program?

Dr. Helen explains that they complain about it, even to the point of turning themselves into martyrs.

Ironically, Dr. Helen notes, these complaints echo those that an earlier generation of feminists thought it was hearing from 1950s housewives.  

If, she adds, the original feminist solution to the “problem that has no name” was for women to put themselves first and to take more personal time, it is amazing that Dr. Boysenko offers exactly the same nostrums for the problems that feminism has been instrumental in creating.

I draw two lessons from this situation.

Lesson one: know who you are, and be who you are. Anyone who tells you that gender is a social construct, thus, that you can choose your own, is lying to you.

Lesson two: no one can have it all. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you.