Crab Culture Among High Functioning Women: Why Other Women Pull You Down When You Rise!

Hey, beautiful souls. Welcome to Reclaim Your Inner Rockstar, the space for high-capacity leaders who lead boldly yet often feel overstimulated beneath the surface. I'm Amy Robinson, aromapsychologist and cognitive coach with more than 25 years of helping others find emotional clarity through scent and science. My work began when I realized scent could instantly shift my thoughts and regulate my entire inner world. And I knew women like me needed access to that same power. Each week you will receive grounded tools and conversations that help you steady your nervous system and think more clearly. Are you ready to feel like yourself again? Then you're in the right place.

Hey, hey, hey, beautiful soul. Welcome back to Reclaim Your Inner Rockstar. This podcast is where high-functioning women learn how their mind, nervous system, and emotional patterns actually work. So that they can stop carrying the invisible pressure that comes with being capable. Because many strong women look calm on the outside, but internally they are constantly regulating environments, people, expectations, and emotional undercurrents. If you enjoy grounded conversations around emotional regulation, relational dynamics, and feminine leadership, make sure that you follow the show. That these conversations reach you when you need them. My Rockstar Regulation Collective is a self-led space filled with high-value coaching tools, sense psychology practices, and nervous system regulation resources for women who are used to being the strong one. Is that you, beautiful soul? I get it. And maybe you're looking for a one-on-one coach, somebody who can help you to transform and help you to understand where your energetic inconsistencies are, I can support you with that. Apply for my private coaching and we can go ahead and explore what that looks like for you and bring you back into emotional balance and clarity in your life. Let's say you're not ready to work with me yet and you need something instant. Make sure to check out my 5-minute reset guide that will allow you to be able to find something quick and easy and within 5 minutes to help you support your nervous system. All those links are in the show notes. Today we're gonna talk about something that many women feel, but almost no one names this out loud. It's that subtle energetic expression that you catch in midair, but you don't really know what it is when you're around a group of women. Honey, I wanna talk about crab culture. And what that looks like. Let me start you with something that you yourself may recognize. You share a new idea, you make a decision for your life, you start stepping into a stronger version of yourself, and suddenly the room feels different. No one says anything directly, but the energy shifts. Someone makes a small comment. It feels like a dig. Another person becomes distant. Someone who used to support you now seems slightly irritated by you. And you find yourself thinking, "Did I do something wrong? Did I say something wrong? Did I make them uncomfortable? Should I tone this down?" Many capable women experience this moment, and what they are feeling is something called crab culture. It's funny, I've been in rooms with women where I could see this clear as day, but they aren't aware of it in themselves. Most women who feel this level of jealousy, frustration, irritation will not recognize it in themselves, but you do. You feel it. You feel that undercurrent. So really, what is crab culture? Crab culture comes from an old metaphor. If you put crabs in a bucket, none of them are able to escape because the moment one starts climbing out, the others pull it back down. This is instinctive. It's not a personal thing. There's no thought process on it. It's instinctual. And this dynamic shows up in human relationships as well, more often than we allow ourselves to admit, especially among women. And this isn't because women are bad or we are vindictive or we are you know, out with a vendetta. It's because humans are wired to scan for status, belonging, and comparison. And so when someone nearby begins expanding, it can unconsciously activate insecurity in others. So why do high-functioning women trigger these type of events? Often, high-functioning women, we carry these traits that naturally stand out. We are decisive, we are capable, we have emotional awareness, we have emotional intelligence, we move forward when others hesitate. And while these qualities are really powerful, they can trigger comparison in the people around them. So when that comparison activates, The nervous system begins protecting the ego. The protection can look like dismissive comments. Ooh, I've had my share of those. Subtle criticism, little digs that people throw at you. People start to separate themselves from you and you start to feel lonelier. Passive tension, energy shifts in conversations. Most of the time, this is not a conscious behavior. It is simply a nervous system responding to perceived threat. So how do you handle that? What is the cost in our nervous system for us, for capable women, women who love to step outside the norm, women who love to expand? Capable women are usually extremely perceptive. We learn how to read rooms very, very well. We sense micro shifts tones. We notice facial expressions. We pick up on subtle emotional undercurrents. So when that relational tension appears, our nervous system starts to scan. Did I do something wrong? Should I soften my voice? Should I slow down? Should I share less? Over time, many strong women begin unconsciously shrinking their expression, just to maintain relational harmony. And that creates internal tension because parts of you want to grow, but the other part wants you to keep the peace. So that's a really difficult place to live. That is emotional dysregulation. That is nervous system frustration. So how can you expand? What can help you with this? Because healthy feminine energy naturally expands. It creates, it expresses, it evolves. But when women grow up in environments where expansion triggers tension from others, their nervous system starts associating growth with relational risk. You begin learning things like, don't shine too brightly, Don't move too quickly. You're being presumptuous if you do it. Do not outpace the group. You're bad if you do that. And without realizing it, women begin editing their own energy to avoid making others uncomfortable. That is one of the quiet ways that crab culture limits expansion. And if you live in this space for too long, it will chip away your identity. So let's go a little bit deeper. Where does this dynamic come from? There are deeper roots to this. Historically speaking, women were placed in systems where approval, safety, and opportunity were limited. So comparison between women became a survival technique. Add to that relational trauma, and there you've got yourself a fine mixture of craziness. Many women have experienced criticism from other women, competition in friendships. One thing that I personally have been triggered by in the past is when a person comes to you in the name of collaboration when really it's competition. And I will not compete. I step away from competition personally. And if that means I'm at a financial loss, if that means that I step away to another space and I expand in another space, and that's what I do, because to me it's not worth my energetic space and energy to compete in a friendship. Other things that come up are judgment around success or confidence. I've had coaches tell me things. Coaches who I pay for tell me things to keep me quiet, to keep me down. And I thought, wow, this is different than helping me expand. You're starting to get jealous of my success. So those are things that really happen. The nervous system learns to anticipate it. And that's what happened to me. It burned me right out. So even when you surround yourself by good people, your body remembers that pattern. On the opposite end, what regulated women learn to do is we eventually stop trying to manage everybody else's emotional response in our life. We learned something very powerful, that other people's reactions belong to them. So give it back to them. We do not become cold. We stay soft. We stay anchored. We allow ourselves to expand without apologizing for it. We allow other people to have their emotions without taking responsibility for them. That is a very different nervous system posture. It's calm, it's steady, it's grounded, and that is real feminine authority. So how does scent psychology play into all of this? What can it do to help and support us? This is where it becomes incredibly helpful, because relational tension activates our limbic system immediately, before logic, before reasoning, before conversation. And scent has a direct pathway into the limbic brain. So certain essential oils can stabilize emotional tone when relational environments become tense. For example, frankincense can help anchor internal authority. Bergamot supports emotional openness without defensiveness. Sandalwood deepens grounded presence. That's where cognitive restructuring and retraining can come in, and that's where they help. That's where I'm able to support my clients in a neuroaromatic way. Scents do not solve relational dynamics, but they help your nervous system stay steady inside of them, and that changes how you show up. So if you've ever felt subtle tension when you grow, if you have ever wondered why certain people react to your expansion, you're not imagining it, love. You are not doing anything wrong. Sometimes growth simply reveals the emotional capacity of the environment around you, and the work is not shrinking. The work is learning how to stay regulated while you continue rising. If this episode resonated with you, it likely means your nervous system has spent years managing other people's reactions to your strength, and that is exhausting. Inside my Regulation Collective, I coach women how to retrain emotional steadiness using cognitive tools and scent-anchored regulation so that they can stop shrinking their capacity and start leading their lives with calm clarity. You can explore the collective, my private coaching, or my 5-minute reset guide in the show notes. And if this episode helped regulate something inside of you, hit follow so you don't have to search for these tools the next time you need them. I love you, beautiful soul. Catch you in the next episode.