The PERFORM Experience

I want to talk about something that takes up far more mental space than most people realise, especially if you’re a woman.

A few weeks ago I was out with clients and, as the evening ended, I was told I shouldn’t walk to my car alone. It was barely dark. And the thing is, nobody was being dramatic. They were being realistic.

As a solo woman and a widow, I go places by myself all the time. It’s not a choice, it’s my life. And underneath that life runs a constant, quiet calculation. Where did I park. Is it lit. Who’s around. Text when you’re home. It never fully switches off.

That calculation has a cost, and we almost never name it. It’s mental health load. It’s capacity, real, finite capacity, spent on vigilance instead of on the things that actually make a life.

I’m writing this in a week when women’s safety has been impossible to ignore, and the messages we send young men about how women should be treated feel more urgent than ever. I won’t turn something serious into a hot take. But I’ll say this as a psychologist: when half the population carries a permanent low-grade threat assessment just to exist in public, that’s a mental health issue, and we don’t treat it as one.

If this is you, I want you to know the tiredness you feel isn’t in your head. Carrying invisible vigilance is genuinely depleting. Naming it is the first act of looking after yourself.

And if you’re someone who doesn’t carry this load, the kindest thing you can do is believe the people who do, and never make them justify it. We shouldn’t live in a world where getting to your car is a risk assessment. While we work to change that, let’s at least stop pretending the load isn’t real.