Intense. Demanding. Perfectionistic. Too sensitive. Too emotional. Angry. Aggressive.

These are my words. The ones that have been handed to me over the years, in rooms where I was the boss, by men and by women in equal measure. Say them about a man who runs a company and watch them transform. Driven. High standards. Exacting. Passionate. Decisive. Assertive.

Same behaviour. Different judgement.

Because when someone tells you you’re too much, too demanding, too sensitive, too old, they’re not describing you. They’re describing themselves. Their judgement, their limits, sometimes the life they didn’t Dare To Want. You’ve upset the order of things, and the words are how they take you down a notch, back to a size that fits comfortably into their world.

I’ve been through a bumpy season recently, and one thing carried me through it more than anything else. Not what happened. The words I told myself about what happened, and what I decided to do with the words other people handed me.

So today, let’s talk about the script. Because it has changed, and I don’t think we’ve noticed how much.

The war we already won

For most of history, the script said one thing to women: you can’t.

Can’t do math, can’t lead, can’t be trusted with money or power or a vote, can’t manage without a man to provide. And the script worked. In 1999, an experiment showed just how little it needed. Women sat down to a hard math test, and one group was told, in a single sentence beforehand, that the test had shown gender differences in the past. That sentence alone was enough to sink their scores. The other group was told the test showed no gender differences at all, and the women matched the men.

But here’s what happened since. Women broke that script; we walked straight through it. Today, girls outperform boys in school across most of the world, and women take the majority of university degrees. The You Can’t war is, by the numbers, won.

So you’d think all would be good by now. It isn’t. Because the script didn’t die. It just changed its words.

The new script

The script stopped saying you can’t and started saying you’re too much.

It no longer questions whether a woman can run a company. It calls her aggressive when she does. It doesn’t say she can’t choose who to love and how. It calls her needy when she states what she wants. It stopped policing what women are able to do, because that argument was lost, and started policing how much of a woman is acceptable. Her appetite. Her tone. Her feelings. Her age.

You know this joke? A woman walks into a restaurant and orders a piece of bread. The waiter shouts to the kitchen: she wants the whole menu.

That’s the script in one line. Show the smallest wanting, and be accused of wanting everything. Ask a question in a meeting, you’re difficult. Say what you need in a relationship, you’re insecure, you expect too much. Want anything visibly after a certain age, well. We’re coming to that.

The old script tried to keep women out of the room. The new one lets you in, and then criticises how much space you take. And unlike You Can’t, which could be disproven with a grade or a title, being “too much” can’t be disproven at all. There is no certificate for being the right amount. The only defence is recognising it for what it is: a report on their comfort and capacities, not a description of you.

The one that really stings

One version of the new script goes deepest, and for many of you reading this, it’s the closest to the skin.

If you’re a woman past 45, hell even 40, you live inside the most relentless script our culture writes. You know its lines. Past your prime. Invisible now. Cool that you still do that, at your age. It arrives through screens and shop windows and fake smiles and the sudden way a room stops registering you. It’s the too-much script with a clock attached: too old to want, too old to start over, too old to take up more room instead of gracefully taking up less.

And this script doesn’t just insult. It costs. Becca Levy, professor at Yale, has spent twenty years measuring what it takes from the women who absorb it. Women who took in the negative beliefs about their own ageing died, on average, seven and a half years earlier than those who didn’t. Seven and a half years. From beliefs measured decades before.

It goes further. Much of what we file under inevitable ageing, the fading memory, the slower recovery, even the shrinking will to live, turns out to be absorbed belief, not fate. The script moves through the body. In the wrong direction.

Because the same mechanism runs in reverse, and this is where I want your full attention. In Levy’s studies, older adults who held positive beliefs about ageing were 44% more likely to fully recover from serious disability. Change the story, and the body follows it there too.

The word is the work

One thing before I finish, because it matters to me. This is not a letter against men. I love men. And women say these words to other women just as often. But something else is true too: while women were rewriting their rules, the old rules for men quietly expired as well, and many men feel lost in ways we don’t talk about enough. That’s a real story, and it deserves care, not blame.

Here’s what I want you to take away, because I know the urge. The first path is to fight. When you’re constantly challenged, half-heard, and pushed back into your box, becoming aggressive feels justified. It’s also exactly how the script ends: she got angry, see, we told you.

The second path is the fashionable one. The “Let Them” theory, if you’re familiar with it. When people disappoint you, let them, stop trying to change them, detach. I understand the appeal, but look at how it gets used: as permission to never ask, never explain, never have the uncomfortable conversation. Escape dressed as self-respect. Too easy, and in the long run too lonely. Letting go of everyone who fumbles is not empowerment; it’s arithmetic that ends at zero.

The third way is slower, and it asks something of both sides. Listening with an open heart and less defence. Ego a little to the side. Honesty about the wounds instead of armour over them. Otherwise we end in a screaming contest between two deaf parties, both tired, both certain the other one started it.

It can be tricky… I don’t deny that. Catching a script mid-run needs a pause, a small space between the thought and your reaction. That space is what the whole Mabel program was built on, and it’s now growing into something of its own: a new program we’re calling The Reset. Not becoming someone new. Just enough stillness to notice the old line before you say it, and to remember what Levy measured: the story can move your body in two directions. Choose yours wisely.

So this week, catch one script running in the dark. A sentence or a word you’ve been carrying as if it were a fact about you. Too much. Too needy. Too old. Say it out loud, once, and look at it in the light. Then write the next line yourself.

And if someone hands you a fresh remark this week, a colleague, a friend, a partner, try this before anything else: ask them, gently, what they mean by it. No edge, no speech. Just the question. You’ll be surprised how rarely a script survives being asked to explain itself.

And then write to me, your age moments, the jokes, the fake smiles, the sentences you were handed. I want to hear them.

Mush love,
Pernille