Episode #22
Women, AI, and the Shame-Blame Game | WOBBLE with Dr. Claire Jacobs
Apparently, women have been handed another purity test. Learn AI, but don’t rely on it. Keep up, but don’t take shortcuts. Use the tools, but prepare to defend yourself if one of them makes your work easier. And if you’re disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, or running a business without seventeen assistants and a snack-filled corporate break room? Please submit your justification in triplicate. Meanwhile, the woman who has built her identity around being competent opens an AI tool, doesn’t immediately know what every button does, and feels the floor shift beneath her. That wobble can feel like proof that she is too old, too late, or one software update away from becoming obsolete. But wobbling isn’t failing. It’s what learning feels like before the new balance arrives. Dr. Claire Jacobs brings more than 45 years of experience as a clinical psychologist and coach to a conversation about AI, ableism, corporate-sized damage being repackaged as individual guilt, and why shame is a spectacularly lousy teacher. Together, she and Kirsten make room for a more useful story: AI can be scaffolding. A skill gap is information. And becoming a beginner does not erase the woman you already spent decades becoming. FERAL SNACKS “The wobble’s honest. It’s not collapse, but it’s also not mastery. It’s somewhere in between.” “Wobbling is what adaptation feels like before you find the new balance.” “It saves energy for the parts of your life that only you can do.” “A skill gap is just that. It tells you what to learn next. It doesn’t say anything about who you are or about your worth.” IN THIS EPISODE • The newest purity test women are somehow expected to pass before lunch • Why AI can shake the identity of a woman who has always been “the competent one” • The difference between wobbling because you’re failing and wobbling because you’re learning • Why shaming someone for using AI as scaffolding can sound a whole lot like shaming her for using glasses, a ramp, or a cane • The recycling-can bait and switch that leaves ordinary people carrying corporate-sized guilt • Why your brain cannot learn the shiny new tool while it thinks a tiger is eating your face • Safety as a raincoat, a map, and somebody to call • The single word that changes “I don’t know how to do this” into a future: yet • What becomes more valuable when AI makes some tasks faster: judgment, taste, trust, and knowing which questions to ask ABOUT DR. CLAIRE JACOBS Dr. Claire Jacobs is a clinical psychologist and coach with more than 45 years of experience helping brilliant, high-achieving, often neurospicy women hear themselves clearly and trust their own judgment again. Her work supports the women everybody else leans on—the ones who appear completely fine while quietly beginning to run on empty. She helps women separate facts from the stories wrapped around them, build enough safety to remain curious, and find their footing while the rules keep changing. Dr. Claire is the author of Burnout-Proof, Not Bulletproof and Mind on Repeat. Website: https://Dr-Claire.com LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/dr-claire-jacobs-56a0889 ABOUT THE FERAL ERA The Feral Era for Women Over 40 with Kirsten Bombdiggity is a weekly live show for successful women who are tired of feeling invisible in their own daggum lives. Because mindset is useless if our nervous systems are fried. Live every Wednesday at 1pm ET, Kirsten sits down with one featured guest for a fast, fun, ferociously unfiltered conversation about people-pleasing, burnout, masking, imposter syndrome, aging bodies, ambition, relationships, identity shifts, and launching our individual comeback tours. Subscribe and follow so the next conversation can find you. And if one particular woman came to mind while reading this-the one staring suspiciously at AI as if it may revoke her entire résumé - send this episode her way. She may not be falling behind. She may just be wobbling toward what comes next.
