Rev. Dr. A'Shellarien AddisonFounder & CEO, Bethel Bethesda Global · Board-certified Army Chaplain | Spiritual Clinical Trauma-Informed Theologian | Empowering Women to Accentuate Their Greatness in Spirit, Finances, Relationships & Business

The Strong Woman Tax: Paying for What You Never Chose

5 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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1:21

In this excerpt from the YouTube video "The Strong Woman Tax: Paying for What You Never Chose," speakers A and B discuss their experiences with self‑help books that address the "strong woman" phenomenon. They describe how the books identified an "inherited alarm system"—family‑passed scripts that generate stress, fear, and hyper‑vigilance—and how recognizing this naming helped them understand burdens they never chose. The speakers highlight two practical tools introduced in the books: the "Pause" technique (taking three breaths before responding) and "Pray," which reconnects them to God’s wisdom, peace, and presence. They emphasize that true healing requires compassion rather than self‑blame, and they reject spiritual bypassing, framing a cultivated, intentional state of grounded peace as essential for strong women who have been praised for merely surviving and adapting. Personal testimonies illustrate how these concepts shifted their self‑talk and provided space to choose responses instead of reacting automatically.

Chapters

I thought this was another self-help gimmick, but it named the weight I've been carrying and showed me how to stop paying for what I never chose. Reading the section on inherited alarm systems felt like seeing my family's scripted responses spelled out, and it hit me really hard. Pause helps us interrupt automatic reactions. Pray reconnects us to God's wisdom, peace, and presence. Dang. This work names the strong woman text. And shows that so many strong women have been praised for surviving, adapting. One quote stopped me: "Healing needs compassion, not blame." And that idea shifted how I talk to myself.
Pause became my first tool, taking 3 breaths before answering, which broke automatic reactivity and gave me space so I could choose my response, not just survive.
Have you ever felt exhausted by battles you never started? Have you ever found yourself carrying stress, fear, hypervigilance, and being unbothered is not denial or pretending pain never happened. It is not spiritual bypassing. It is a cultivated, intentional, grounded state of peace.
Together, these two books expose the wound and offered a way forward. Pairing them felt like therapy and a toolkit. They are an invit— If you have ever been the strong one, the dependable one, the one who kept going while carrying invisible weight, these books were written with you in mind.