Reclaiming Professional Presence for Menopausal and Neurodivergent Women with Impact and Integrity
- Brainz Magazine
- Jun 24
- 7 min read
Bianka is a Dramatherapist and Systemic Leadership Consultant with extensive experience in empowering female leaders through innovative therapeutic techniques and leadership strategies. She created bravely.B to support female leaders navigating the complexities of menopause effectively and maintain their leadership edge.
Have you ever left a meeting and thought, “Did I actually say anything useful?” Or worse, “Did I even sound like myself?” For many menopausal and neurodivergent women in leadership, this isn’t an occasional wobble; it’s a quiet, constant hum. The words don’t always land. The memory skips. The sharpness you’ve previously been able to rely on feels muffled. And instead of stepping back, we step up with extra prep, longer hours, and a carefully curated professional mask.
We perform competence. We camouflage brain fog. We smile through the sensory overload. And while we may still be achieving, the personal cost is mounting.
Let’s talk about that. And more importantly, let’s explore ways to change it.
Masking means leading from stress, not self
Masking is a survival strategy that many women learn early. For neurodivergent women, it often starts in childhood. For menopausal women, it can kick into overdrive as cognitive symptoms increase. But masking is more than just surface-level professionalism. In a leadership context, it’s the invisible work of performing the version of ourselves we think others expect. It’s the energy we spend curating tone, hiding symptoms, or second-guessing every response energy that could be used to actually lead, be present, and make an impact. It’s exhausting and may start as self-censorship, but over time, it can become self-erasure.
From a neurological perspective, masking activates our stress response. Chronic self-monitoring, emotional suppression, and hypervigilance trigger heightened cortisol, which in turn affects memory, focus, and emotional regulation, the very functions menopause already compromises. The result? A loop of burnout, shame, and self-doubt.
In leadership, this hits hard. When we can’t trust our minds to perform the way they used to, we question our presence, our power, and our potential. This has a natural impact on not just how we perceive ourselves, but on how we are perceived. Can we fully lean into the authority that comes with our role and that our teams need us to hold when we are leading from this position of stress? But here’s the truth: leadership isn’t about perfection, it’s about presence. And presence starts with authenticity, allowing us to lead from our own sense of self, with all its experience, expertise, knowledge, and internal changes. To get to that point, we need to understand those changes, look behind the mask, and be clear about our role again.
Being a Dramatherapist and Systemic Leadership consultant, I have used my experience as a senior leader to develop a few techniques that support this process. Below are 4 that will give you an immediate shift of perspective and impact.
Name the Mask
We all wear those masks of competence, calm, humour, and helpfulness. The first step isn’t to rip them off, but to name them. Remember, these masks help us in our day-to-day lives. Let’s get to know them better. One powerful tool adapted from my dramatherapy practice can help here: role exploration.
Start by naming one mask you wear regularly at work. You can start as creative or as cognitive-based as you like. So, either draw the ‘mask’ that you are aware of using in your leadership role or describe it in writing.
Ask yourself:
What role am I performing when I feel most disconnected from myself?
Which parts of me show up only in private?
What would my leadership sound like without the mask?
This isn't about abandoning professionalism, it’s about making space for your full range of expression. The next step is to think about what is behind that mask. What is it hiding or protecting? What would it feel like to put it down? If you feel ready, you can try setting it down, just for a moment, in a space you trust.
If you’re using a leadership journal, you can also incorporate the following prompt: “The role I perform most at work is. The part of me I’d like to bring forward more is.”
Rewrite the script
We’re handed scripts early on or have developed our own internal scripts that we follow to the letter: “Keep it together.” “Be the strong one.” “Don’t let them see you sweat.”
In my work, I often explore these as adopted roles with my clients. The scripts we were either handed in childhood, by society, or developed for ourselves throughout life, that we unconsciously perform. Leadership thrives on them until it doesn’t. And menopause or neurodivergence can make them feel suffocated.
Rewriting these internal scripts doesn’t mean chaos. It means consciously choosing lines that reflect who you are now, not who you were ten years ago. Try this:
Write down three leadership scripts you’ve internalised.
Cross out any that no longer serve you.
Write one new line that feels closer to your truth; allow yourself to be playful and be clear – is this what you want the script to be, or is there still some external expectation of what you think the script should be?
For example: “I must always be available” might become “My boundaries are part of my leadership.”
Listen to your body
Masking lives in the body. So does truth, and your body will always let you know the truth eventually. Yet our body is often the hardest part to connect with when we’re talking about leadership. It’s the part that often earns me a raised eyebrow when I bring it up in a session. But we live in our body, and we feel our experiences in our body. We cannot separate the physical from the cognitive. Therefore, if we’re truly trying to transform how we approach authentic leadership, our body is part of that conversation.
When we’re constantly over-performing, our nervous system doesn’t know when it’s safe to rest, for example. Over time, this creates chronic tension, hyper-alertness, and emotional fatigue. No amount of positive thinking or work on our mindset can override a body trapped in stress mode. Our nervous system needs space, not slogans. We need to give our body space and time.
Physical grounding is a simple yet really effective step we can take.
Try this before a meeting:
Place your feet flat on the floor.
Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for six.
Drop your awareness to your hands, then your shoulders.
Give your body permission to be present, not just perform.
Fun fact: Research shows that slow, deliberate exhalation activates the parasympathetic nervous system, your body’s rest-and-digest mode. It literally helps your brain focus and your voice to stay steady.
Build a presence practice
Instead of trying to hold yourself together, try anchoring yourself in who you are. One reason this is so important is that it offers you another perspective, especially when we’re prone to negative self-appraisal. The way we are feeling about a situation isn’t necessarily reflective of the situation itself. It’s easy to take a hypercritical analysis of a situation as a hard truth or fact, letting that influence how we appraise our performance. Feelings aren’t facts, but they are worth listening to. Therefore, giving yourself space for a form of presence practice allows you to get in touch with a situation, your performance, or create clarity, whether that is reflective or planning ahead.
A presence practice might include:
A 2-minute daily voice note reflecting on how you really felt today.
Using creative writing to capture your leadership “tone” before a high-stakes meeting. Equally valuable is mind mapping or another form of free-flowing creative recording of your thoughts. It helps free up mental space to enable you to be fully present.
Choosing one word each morning to guide how you want to be, not just what you want to do. This can set the focus for the day.
This activity isn’t about adding more to your plate. It’s about coming back to yourself so you can lead from a place of clarity, not compensation. Presence doesn’t just calm your system, it helps you hold a room, make clearer decisions, and model the kind of grounded leadership others trust.
Dramatherapy tip: Role rehearsal isn’t just for actors. Try stepping into the version of yourself that leads with both softness and strength, and see what changes.
From masking to showing up
If you’ve ever felt like you lost your voice in a meeting or left a room wondering who you became in order to be taken seriously, you’re not alone. But you’re also not stuck.
Unmasking doesn’t mean unraveling. It means realigning. It means moving from survival performance to sustainable presence. From scripts to self-trust.From leadership as armour to leadership as expression.
Your life and leadership are built on strength. Masking may have helped you get here, but it’s not the only way forward.
If it’s starting to feel too heavy, too lonely, or too far from who you really are, maybe it’s time to try something else. Not all at once. Just for today.
So, before you rush into your next meeting or tick off that next thing from your to-do list, pause for a second.
Ask yourself: “Who’s leading right now?” And if she’s wearing a mask, what would happen if she didn’t need to?
You might just like the answer.
Read more from Bianka Kuhn-Thompson
Bianka Kuhn-Thompson, Dramatherapist and Systemic Leadership Consultant
Bianka is a distinguished Dramatherapist and Systemic Leadership Consultant dedicated to enhancing leadership resilience among female professionals. With a deep understanding of mental health, menopause, ADHD, and trauma-informed practice, Bianka empowers women to navigate professional challenges effectively. Through bravely.B, she offers unique, creative approaches to profoundly reduce stress, foster well-being, and develop protective strategies against professional challenges.
