Read an excerpt on how women pay a "passion tax" from my new book, Fired Up

Martyrdom is one of the many emotional traps we can fall into when criticism triggers feelings of guilt and shame

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Martyrdom

When you decide to prioritize your desires over your obligations, it’s inevitable that you will be criticized and that those criticisms will trigger feelings of guilt and shame, but falling into the traps those emotions lure you into is avoidable. In my book, I outline the emotions that blowback gins up, the traps those emotions set, the reasons it’s so easy to fall into them, and how you can stay out (or get out) of them. By learning how to avoid these emotional traps, you’ll realize that almost every solution for bypassing them requires you to accept the discomfort that comes from saying no, standing by a boundary, or unapologetically going after what you want. Certainly, that’s no easy task, but it’s better than the pain of betraying your values, your needs, your wants, and—ultimately—yourself.

One of those emotional traps is martyrdom. In our culture, there is a pervasive belief that a woman cannot do well unless she’s doing good, unless she sacrifices her own needs and desires for the good of others at all times. So once you begin to grow your fire, it’s logical that you might be tempted to try to prove that you can do both: be a good girl and live on fire. But when you position your fire as a service to others at your own expense, you fall into a trap that can put out your fire: Because you feel ashamed of focusing on yourself, you begin making sacrifices that can be harmful, including forgoing ­ self-care or glorifying your suffering to get validation. You convince yourself that to grow your fire, you have to make sacrifices that not only ward off blowback but also engender recognition, attention, and validation. Martyrdom can serve as a security blanket, a way to protect you from judgment and criticism.

Because, after all, who will criticize a victim or a hero?

I know this trap firsthand because I fell into it as soon as I started Moms Demand Action by deciding early on that I wouldn’t take any pay for my work. That was partly because we hadn’t raised enough money to pay anyone but also because it felt noble to be seen as a volunteer rather than a lobbyist. For eleven years, I stuck with that narrative: I was a good girl whose credentials couldn’t be doubted because I was volunteering out of the goodness of my ­good­ girl heart. And, to be honest, it did help me avoid the blowback that would have come with being a woman leader who wasn’t just ­high-profile but also highly paid. And because my husband was able to financially support my family, not taking pay helped assuage the guilt and shame I felt about my privilege.

This is what’s called a “passion tax.” Women who are passionate about their work are exploited by employers who convince them to work longer hours, take on additional tasks outside their role, or accept lower or no pay because “the work is its own reward.” Just because you are paid for work you love doesn’t mean you are commodifying your passions in a way that betrays your fire. Even if—especially—if you are passionate about your work, you deserve to be paid for your labor.

During my tenure as Moms Demand Action’s leader, I sacrificed hundreds of thousands of dollars in income while working longer hours than I ever had in my previous career. All the while, the organization’s male leaders were paid handsomely for doing less. And yes, I can see now that I was taken advantage of by the leaders who never offered to pay me, even after the job became all­ consuming, but I also allowed myself to be taken advantage of. I built a cross, fastened myself to it, and then looked down at everyone else and proclaimed, “Look at me, a good girl whose intentions are pure. How dare you criticize anything I do when it’s for free?”

I told myself my sacrifices were for others when, in reality, they were in my own self- interest. The problem with not taking pay for all my hard work wasn’t just that it was harmful to me; it was a poor standard and a bad example for other women who deserve to be compensated for their labor. I deserved to be compensated for my labor.

Society celebrates the selflessness of women leaders and how much they’re willing to sacrifice. As a result, martyrdom is the only kind of hero status that’s acceptable for women to attain, and we don’t talk about it because it might make us look like narcissists (another common criticism of women) or, worse, our status might get taken away from us. Sarah Hartley, the woman who started a magazine focused on women’s issues, says it wasn’t enough that she thought what she was doing was ­ important— she needed everyone else to know how hard she was working and, like me, that she wasn’t getting paid.

“I posted a lot on social media about how hard it was to run the magazine; that in addition to working at a full time job and taking care of a newborn, I was up until all hours of the night packaging up magazine issues, designing the next issue and editing essays,” Sarah says. “Otherwise, I worried my work would be seen as a silly hobby or something that wasn’t valuable and took too much time away from my family.”

For the first three years she published her magazine, Sarah repeatedly told her subscribers that every penny her magazine brought in didn’t go to her but to keep the magazine afloat. Because it was a goodwill project to share women’s stories, Sarah felt it could only be considered authentic and valuable if her work was undervalued. Sarah now realizes she was also trying to avert the criticism she’d seen other women creators get for trying to make a living from their creations. But the magazine eventually folded because she didn’t promote herself or her magazine’s success, including its impressive number of subscribers.

“I’d witnessed the blowback women get when they not only dare to lead but actually make a living from it, and I think a part of me believed that if I was doing this heart and soul work, that meant I shouldn’t be making money from it,” Sarah says.

To determine whether you’ve veered into the trap of martyrdom, ask yourself if you’re masking your desires and accomplishments with ways to dismiss or diminish yourself and your actions, like claiming that all your actions are fueled by selflessness for fear that you will appear self-interested. That could include staying out of the spotlight or failing to take credit for your successes.

Also, take stock of how your sacrifices make you feel; selflessness can make you resent others who aren’t martyring themselves, too. Self-sacrificing is often profoundly engrained in women and embedded into our lifestyle, making it difficult to parse out. Still, there are steps you can take to shift your thinking away from selflessness and toward valuing and caring for yourself.

Stop Being Selfless

Women are told in so many ways—overt and subtle—that if they’re not being selfless, they’re being selfish. It’s right there in the words: loss of self. But selflessness is a trap that requires you to prioritize the wants and needs of others over your own to the extent that you eventually lose sight of yourself and the fire you were growing. But you’re not obligated to sacrifice your well-being for others; you have the power to make choices that prioritize yourself.

In her book Untamed, Glennon Doyle writes about this trap—how women are so conditioned to martyr themselves, especially as mothers, they learn to live as though “she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.” Glennon goes on, “When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who have detoxed themselves so completely from the world’s expectations that they are full of nothing but themselves. What we need are women who are full of themselves. A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say and do what must be done. She lets the rest burn.”

Reframe Your Thoughts

One way to diminish your desire to martyr yourself is to replace the negative self-beliefs telling you women should be selfless with more balanced and realistic perspectives. This takes practice and time, but when you can create a pause through reflection, you can use that beat to better understand the beliefs and emotions driving your behavior.

Dr. Jessi Gold, a psychiatrist who specializes in treating burnout, says that noticing these thoughts, many of which are ingrained and subconscious, is the first and essential step to breaking the pattern.

“Because women don’t have many role models of what leadership looks like, and because we’re inclined to want to lead differently than men do, it can turn into a catch-22 where we worry our assertiveness will look like arrogance or narcissism,” says Dr. Gold. “But by noticing those thoughts, it’s possible to reframe them and to switch from someone who is always sacrificing or selfless or over-burdened to someone who is aware of and values their unique contributions.”

Remember That You’re a Role Model

If you’re a mom struggling with putting yourself first, remember that you’re setting an example for your children. If you teach them that you don’t value your worth or put yourself first, they will learn to do the same. But if you show them by example that everyone benefits when they have meaning in their lives, they’ll also treat themselves that way. And you’re not just a role model for your family— other women are watching you, too. See your fire as a gift to yourself and others.

Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the mom of two who became a firefighter in her forties, has the same mindset; she believes that when mothers feel guilty, they teach their children to perpetuate self-punishment. “I don’t want my children to learn to feel guilty because they’re not enough, or they didn’t do enough, or they have to be everything to everyone else,” she says. “I don’t need to be a perfect parent; my love is consistent. I want them to see me pursue my passions, I want them to see me be brave, and I want them to see me support them but also follow my dreams. That is the biggest gift I could give them.”

This was an excerpt from my book, “Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age”, available now! Order your copy today

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