There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from experiences you cannot always name clearly, let alone prove.
It is the comment that was probably not meant the way it landed. The meeting where your idea was ignored and then repeated by someone else five minutes later. Being asked where you are ‘really’ from. Being told you are so well spoken. Being the only person in the room who noticed any of it.
Racial microaggressions are often described as small, which is part of the problem. They are not small. They are cumulative, they are persistent, and they carry a specific kind of weight because you spend as much energy deciding how to respond as you do absorbing the thing itself.
What microaggressions actually are
The term was coined in the 1970s and refers to indirect, subtle, or unintentional expressions of bias directed at members of a marginalised group. In a workplace context, they often include comments or behaviours that communicate, usually without the person realising it, that you do not quite belong, that you are an exception rather than the rule, or that your race is the most notable thing about you.
They are different from overt discrimination, which is why they are so difficult to navigate. There is nothing to formally report. There is often no clear intention to harm. And yet the impact is real, measurable, and accumulates over time in ways that affect both mental health and professional performance.
The specific cost to Black professional women
For Black women in corporate environments, the cost is compounded by the fact that you are often managing the impact while also managing the room. You calculate, usually in a split second, whether to address it, let it go, laugh it off, or raise it later. Each of those decisions has a cost.
If you address it, you risk being seen as difficult, oversensitive, or someone who makes things awkward. If you let it go, it sits with you. If you raise it formally, you spend months in a process that rarely resolves in your favour and affects your professional relationships regardless of the outcome.
There is no clean option. That is the point.
I experienced this during my years in recruitment and pharmaceutical sales. The calculation becomes automatic. You carry it so efficiently that other people, and sometimes even you, do not notice how much energy it is using.
What this does over time
The research on chronic exposure to racial stress in the workplace is consistent: it contributes to anxiety, burnout, reduced job satisfaction, and the decision, which too many talented Black women make, to leave industries where they have worked hard to build their careers.
It also feeds imposter syndrome in a specific way. When you are regularly made to feel like an outsider, it becomes harder to separate the external message from your internal sense of yourself. The two bleed into each other, and the doubt that was installed by your environment starts to feel like something that belongs to you.
What you can actually do
I want to be honest here: coaching does not fix the environment. It does not make the microaggressions stop or hold anyone accountable for them. What it can do is help you separate what is yours from what has been put on you, so that you can make decisions from a grounded place rather than from depletion.
Some of what comes up in coaching around this includes: identifying which situations are costing you the most, understanding your own patterns of response and whether they are serving you, rebuilding confidence that has been worn down by repeated exposure, and making clear-eyed decisions about whether to stay in a role or an organisation that is not investing in your wellbeing.
That is not the same as telling you to just be more resilient. Resilience that is only ever applied to other people’s behaviour is not sustainable. This is about getting your own footing back.
If this is where you are
If any of what I have described is familiar, you do not need to have it fully figured out before reaching out. You do not need to have decided what you want to do or how serious it is. You just need to have a sense that something has been costing you more than it should.
Book a free 15-minute clarity call at anniecampbell-lifecoach.com. It’s a conversation, not a commitment.
