Deepa Purushothaman had a huge corporate career. She described herself as a “productivity junkie” and said her “superpower was outworking everyone else around.” For decades, Deepa ignored pain and signals from her body, and just pushed through, until she couldn’t ignore it anymore. Undiagnosed Lyme disease, exacerbated by burnout and exhaustion, took her down and forced her to look for ways to heal. 

Curious, Deepa started talking to other women of color at the highest rungs in corporate America. Many expressed exhaustion and anger from years of excelling, but quite never feeling powerful. One told her, “I finally have a seat at the table, but there isn’t a happy ending.”

Deepa thinks that women of color are “ingesting” corporate ideologies that lead to injury and illness. “There's a lot of covering, there's a lot of conforming, there's a lot of messaging, direct and indirect, and what's acceptable, what's appropriate, what's executive ready. Those things don't look like people that look like me. So a lot of us have unconsciously adapted and edited to get ahead.” In over 500 interviews, she found two out of three women of color had physical manifestations of illness. “It's showing up in their bodies. Maybe it's a migraine or maybe it's hives…heart issues, stomach disorders. I think a lot of us take the stress in and it shows up in our body. 

Women are “acting in” on their bodies.

Deepa shares, “When I work with women of color, I'll say: listen to your gut. If someone says something and you feel uncomfortable or a fluttering in your stomach, there's probably more to that. You need to unpack it. You know, I choose not to fight every single battle when someone says something inappropriate or, you know, racist or microaggressive. But I will sit with it now for about 10 or 15 minutes if I still feel uncomfortable. If that comment still doesn't feel right, I feel a little bit of heat or anger. I know now enough of that connection. And if I still feel bad in 10, 15 minutes, I will say something because I know that I'm gonna ruminate on that for the next few days.” Listening to the body is a good radar detector for what our emotions want to say. But we don't always listen to it.

I asked Deepa where she feels anxiety. She feels it more in the limbs, “a little bit of that flighty feeling. And so much of it is tied to how we grew up and where we felt those feelings when we were little. And a lot of us disconnect from those feelings in order to cope. And so it's, it's kind of realizing, no, those are actually signals, and we should pay attention.”

I couldn't agree more, and I suggest you start learning about how we store emotions in our bodies. When I’m angry, I clench my jaw and my throat gets so tight. When my power is stripped away or undermined, I lose the ability to talk in a meeting. And when I’m anxious, my fingers are so jumpy they look like grasshoppers on my keyboard.

What signals is your body sending you?

Morra

PS: Every two years, Thinkers50 salutes the leading business and management ideas of our age with its Ranking of Management Thinkers and Distinguished Achievement Awards. The Financial Times dubbed it “The Oscars of management thinking.” 

I have been shortlisted for the 2023 Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership. Thank you always for supporting me and The Anxious Achiever! The awards gala is in London in November, but I feel I’ve already won!