Join us for Community Learning Program – Stop Shoulding on Yourself: How Internalized Expectations Fuel Burnout, Overfunctioning, and Quiet Resentment in High-Achieving Black Women with Dr. Melissa Robinson-Brown on June 1, 2026 12-1pm ET

High-achieving Black women often arrive in therapy exhausted, resentful, and burned out—yet deeply attached to internalized “shoulds” that masquerade as responsibility, strength, and success. This training explores how these unspoken expectations are shaped by culture, gender, and survival, and how they quietly drive overfunctioning, self-abandonment, and emotional depletion. Participants will examine how “shoulds” show up somatically, relationally, and clinically—and how they are sometimes unintentionally reinforced in treatment. This session invites clinicians to deepen both client work and self-of-the-therapist awareness by disrupting narratives that equate worth with endurance.

Register here  to join Dr. Mel for this FREE Community Learning Program webinar!

Participants will learn to:

1. Identify how internalized “shoulds” function as culturally reinforced coping strategies that contribute to burnout and emotional dysregulation in high-achieving Black women.
2. Recognize common clinical moments where “shoulds” are reinforced and apply interventions that support choice, self-trust, and nervous system regulation.
3. Integrate culturally responsive language and strategies to help clients notice, interrupt, and release restrictive expectations.

Meet Your Presenter: 

Melissa Robinson-Brown, Ph.D. (“Dr. Mel”) is a clinical psychologist, speaker, and unapologetic advocate for high-achieving women navigating burnout, over-functioning, and the weight of internalized “shoulds.” Rooted in her Trinidadian heritage, Dr. Mel’s work centers how cultural conditioning, gendered expectations, and survival strategies shape identity, self-worth, and mental health—often at the expense of rest, boundaries, and authenticity.

With over 22 years of clinical experience and 14 years of supervisory expertise, she serves as an Adjunct Professor at NYU and an Assistant Clinical Professor at Mount Sinai Medical Center, training clinicians to practice with cultural fluency, nervous system awareness, and depth. After leaving a soul-crushing role, Dr. Mel founded Renewed Focus Psychology Services, a radically different therapy collective supporting women who appear “successful” on the outside yet feel depleted, unseen, or trapped by unspoken expectations.

Dr. Mel’s work challenges the normalization of self-erasure in the name of achievement and helps clients—and clinicians—disrupt narratives that equate worth with endurance. Her insights have been featured in Essence Wellness House, Vogue, New York Times, Therapy for Black Girls, Scary Mommy, Loveland Foundation (coming soon) and more. She lives in New Jersey with her partner AB and their three daughters, modeling what it looks like to live boldly, honestly, and without apology.

Don’t miss out on this live FREE event. Register here to join Dr. Mel!