The Emotional Cost of Carrying It All

Why the women who seem to be coping best are often struggling the most

Not long ago, a woman sat opposite me and told me she was tired.

At first, there seemed to be nothing unusual about that. Most women I meet describe themselves as tired at some point. Tired has become part of our everyday language. We say it casually, almost dismissively, as though it is an inevitable consequence of modern life. Yet the more we talked, the more I realised that what she was experiencing went far beyond tiredness.

From the outside, she appeared to be coping well. She was working, caring for her family, supporting friends, remembering appointments and managing the countless responsibilities that filled her days. People described her as capable and resilient. She was the sort of person who always found a way through difficulties and rarely asked for help. There was nothing in her outward appearance that suggested she was struggling.

What became clear, however, was that she wasn’t exhausted because she had had a particularly busy week. She was exhausted because she had spent years carrying responsibilities that never seemed to end. She carried expectations, worries, family commitments and the emotional wellbeing of those around her. Like many women, she had become so accustomed to carrying things that she no longer recognised the weight she was holding.

Over the years, I have met countless women whose stories follow a similar pattern. They are mothers, carers, professionals, helping practitioners, community leaders and business owners. Their circumstances are different, yet many arrive describing the same sense of depletion. They often tell me they feel disconnected from themselves without fully understanding when or how it happened. Somewhere along the way, they stopped paying attention to their own needs and became experts in meeting the needs of everybody else.

Much of this burden is invisible. It isn’t simply the practical responsibilities of everyday life. It is the mental load of remembering, organising, anticipating and worrying. It is the emotional labour of keeping relationships running smoothly, noticing when somebody is struggling, remembering what needs to happen next and trying to ensure everyone else is OK. Although conversations about the mental load have become more common in recent years, there remains an underlying assumption that this level of carrying is simply part of being a woman.

Eventually, though, many women begin to notice a growing sense of disconnection. They find themselves feeling exhausted despite resting. Activities that once brought enjoyment begin to feel like obligations. The things that once helped them feel alive gradually disappear beneath the demands of everyday life. What often emerges underneath the stress is something much deeper than overwhelm. It is a quiet loss of connection with themselves.

I recognise that experience because I have lived it too.

Like many women of my generation, I grew up believing that I could have it all. I wanted a meaningful career, strong relationships, purpose and the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives. In many ways, I achieved those things. I built a career that I loved, raised a family and became someone people relied upon. What I wasn’t prepared for was how easy it would be to lose sight of myself whilst taking care of everything else.

Without really noticing, my own wellbeing slipped quietly to the bottom of the list. I became increasingly focused on what everybody else needed. I knew the details of my children’s lives. I knew what support other people required. I knew exactly where everybody needed to be and when. Yet when it came to understanding my own needs, I found myself drawing a blank.

The hardest part was not knowing what was wrong. I sensed that something needed to change, but I couldn’t identify exactly what that change should be. Every attempt to improve things seemed to generate another list of things I should be doing. The world of wellbeing felt overwhelming. There always seemed to be another strategy, another practice or another expectation. Looking back, I can see that what I was searching for wasn’t another solution. What I was really searching for was a way back to myself.

What eventually helped was not a dramatic transformation. It wasn’t a complete reinvention of my life. It was learning to slow down long enough to notice what was happening. It was learning to pause and pay attention to my own experience rather than simply pushing through it. It was making small changes that felt manageable rather than overwhelming. Over time, those small moments of awareness created space for something important: reconnection.

That experience changed the way I think about wellbeing and continues to shape the way I work with women today. I have come to believe that many women don’t need more advice or more expectations placed upon them. They don’t need another reminder to work harder on themselves. What many women need most is permission. Permission to acknowledge that they are carrying too much. Permission to rest. Permission to matter. Permission to recognise that their needs deserve the same care and attention they so readily offer to everyone else.

The women I meet are rarely lacking resilience. If anything, they have spent years relying upon it. The challenge is that resilience can sometimes keep us going long after we should have paused. It can convince us that because we are coping, everything must be fine. Yet there is a significant difference between coping and flourishing.

Perhaps that is why conversations about burnout, boundaries, identity and self-worth resonate so deeply. They are not really conversations about becoming somebody different. They are conversations about returning to ourselves. About reconnecting with the person who existed before life became so full of responsibilities that we quietly disappeared beneath them.

Perhaps true wellbeing is not about becoming somebody new at all.

Perhaps it is simply about remembering who you were before life convinced you that everyone else’s needs mattered more than your own.