When Strength Becomes a Burden: Unpacking the Superwoman Schema for High-Achieving Women of Color
Everywhere you look, something is demanding your strength. The headlines are heavy, politics feel personal, and the cost of living keeps climbing while access to care keeps shrinking. For many Black and Brown women, the pressure to hold it all together is constant. We show up for our families, our work, our communities, and the world at large. But who shows up for us?
At Yemaya Wellness Center, we see what that looks like up close. The sleepless nights, the “I’m fine” smiles, the emotional burnout masked as motivation. This pattern has a name, first identified by Dr. Cheryl L. Woods-Giscombé, PhD, RN, PMHNP-BC, FAAN, a nurse scholar who developed the framework known as the Superwoman Schema.
✨ What Dr. Woods-Giscombé Discovered
According to Dr. Woods-Giscombé’s groundbreaking research, many Black women internalize a cultural expectation to be “strong” at all costs. The Superwoman Schema describes a set of beliefs and behaviors that include:
An obligation to appear strong, even when struggling
The suppression of emotion and vulnerability
Reluctance to depend on others
A drive to succeed despite limited resources
A deep commitment to care for others before oneself
For generations, these traits were survival strategies. They were born from racial injustice, gender inequity, and the ongoing fight for dignity in systems that too often overlook our humanity. But what helped us endure the past can quietly harm us in the present.
💭 How the Superwoman Schema Shows Up Today
Carrying this “strong Black woman” identity often leads to chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, depression, anxiety, and physical health concerns. Research links it to disrupted sleep, high cortisol levels, hypertension, and shortened telomere length—biological signs of accelerated aging.
Now add the stress of ongoing political and social instability:
The rollback of reproductive rights
Anti-Black racism and state-sanctioned violence
Attacks on mental health funding and DEI initiatives
Global conflict, climate grief, and financial and nutrient insecurity
For Black women who have always had to perform resilience, these crises aren’t abstract headlines. They hit home. They activate the very survival instincts the Superwoman Schema describes, making it harder to rest, to feel, or to trust that ease is safe.
🌸 Introducing the Superwoman Schema Assessment by Jasmine Dowery, LMHC
Inspired by Dr. Woods-Giscombé’s foundational work, Jasmine Dowery, LMHC, founder of Yemaya Wellness Center, created the Superwoman Schema Assessment as a culturally affirming self-reflection tool for high-achieving women of color.
This free assessment helps you identify how often you lean into “strength mode” and how those habits affect your emotional well-being. It invites awareness, not judgment, so you can start choosing balance instead of burnout.
🌸 Take the Superwoman Schema Assessment
🌸 Guided Journal Prompts: Reconnecting with Softness and Self-Trust
Use these prompts after completing the assessment to help you process what surfaced and begin softening your relationship with strength.
When did I first learn that being strong meant being silent?
Where in my body do I hold tension when I feel I have to “keep it together”?
What would it look like if I allowed someone to care for me the way I care for others?
What parts of me are craving rest, softness, or gentleness right now?
When was the last time I said no and felt free instead of guilty?
What stories about strength am I ready to release?
What new definition of strength feels aligned with my healed self?
If ease was my birthright, how would I move, speak, and love differently?
Who in my life reminds me that I am safe to slow down? How can I lean into that relationship?
What daily ritual can I create to remind myself that rest is sacred, not selfish?
You can journal on one prompt each morning or choose the ones that call to you most. The goal is not perfection, it’s presence.
🌿 Step Into The Ease Society™
Healing is not meant to be done alone — and now, you don’t have to.
The Ease Society™ is a monthly coaching and community membership created by Jasmine Dowery, LMHC, for high-functioning women of color ready to unlearn survival mode and embody softness, rest, and self-trust.
Inside The Ease Society™, you’ll gain access to live group events, monthly coaching gatherings, and our private online lessons hub, where you can explore guided practices in journaling, movement, breathwork, and emotional regulation.
This space is where you learn to slow down without losing your spark, reconnect to your body, and reclaim the ease you were never meant to live without.
This content is available exclusively to members of The Ease Society™.
🪶 Healing as Resistance
Choosing rest and ease is not laziness. It is resistance. It’s how we reclaim power in a society that measures our worth by how much we produce. Every time a Black woman chooses to pause, to breathe, to say “I can’t carry it all,” she disrupts generations of expectation and begins to rehumanize her story.
Healing the Superwoman Schema means recognizing that your strength was never meant to be your only story. You deserve support, softness, and safety too.
🌿 Your Next Step
Take five minutes today to complete the Superwoman Schema Assessment and begin your Rehumanizing™ journey with us.
✨ Book a Free Consultation with Yemaya Wellness Center
You do not have to keep proving your strength to be worthy of rest. You already are.
📚 References
Woods-Giscombé, C. L. (2010). Superwoman Schema: African American women’s views on stress, strength, and health. Qualitative Health Research, 20(5), 668–683.
Abrams, J. A., Maxwell, M., Pope, M., & Belgrave, F. Z. (2014). Carrying the world with the grace of a lady and the grit of a warrior: Deepening our understanding of the Strong Black Woman Schema. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 38(4), 503–518.
Donovan, R. A., & West, L. M. (2015). Stress and mental health: The moderating role of the Strong Black Woman Schema. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 21(4), 604–612.
Woods-Giscombé, C. L., & Black, A. R. (2010). Mind-body interventions to reduce risk for health disparities related to stress and strength among African American women. Complementary Health Practice Review, 15(3), 115–131.
Perry, B. L., Harp, K. L. H., & Oser, C. B. (2013). Racial and gendered perceptions of the Superwoman role among African American women. Gender & Society, 27(5), 731–753.
Woods-Giscombé, C. L., et al. (2021). Superwoman Schema and biomarkers of health among African American women. Ethnicity & Disease, 31(2), 251–260.
© 2025 Jasmine Dowery, LMHC | Yemaya Wellness Center LLC
The Rehumanizing™ Method and the Superwoman Schema Assessment are proprietary works of Jasmine Dowery, LMHC, and the intellectual property of Yemaya Wellness Center LLC. All rights reserved.