The Hidden Toll On Woman
When your body whispers before it screams …
3AM. Your heart races. Again. Whilst the world sleeps, your mind spins stories in the darkness. Perhaps you can feel that restless dance between overwhelm and numbness, the sensation of being simultaneously too much and not enough.
In these moments, you might wonder if anyone else lives in this space between chaos and control, if anyone else understands what it means to feel like a stranger in their skin.
I see you there. I understand the complexity of navigating the complexity of existing in a world that demands constant connection yet leaves us feeling more disconnected than ever.
A world where we're expected to process global tragedies between Zoom meetings, where our nervous systems cope with traffic jams and trauma responses before breakfast.
"How are you?" has become a greeting rather than a question, and "fine" is the only acceptable answer.
I know this territory intimately through my own body's journey and the women I've sat with, whose bodies hold stories of invisible battles. Stories that echo in anxiety attacks and chronic pain, chronic fatigue, cancer and autoimmune diagnosis, involuntary seizures and midnight panic.
Stories that whisper a single question: "Why can't I just feel okay?"
The truth is that we're trying to regulate nineteenth-century nervous systems in a twenty-first-century reality. No one handed us a manual for maintaining inner peace while navigating social media triggers, political upheaval, and the constant pressure to optimise every aspect of our existence. Yet somehow, we've internalised the message that if we can't maintain perfect equilibrium in this chaos, we're somehow falling short.
I see it every day - deeply caring, intuitive women arriving at a point where their bodies simply can't maintain the pretence anymore.
Years of being the family's emotional anchor, the team's steady presence, and everyone's safe harbour have created patterns of dysregulation that no amount of bubble baths or meditation apps seem to touch. These patterns begin in early childhood when many learn that our worth is tied to our ability to sense and meet others' needs.
As young girls, we're often praised for being "mature," "sensitive," and "helpful." These rewards shape our developing nervous systems to prioritise others' regulation over our own.By young adulthood, these patterns have become so automatic that we often mistake them for our personality rather than recognising them as learned survival responses.
In his book The Myth of Normal, Dr. Gabor Maté illuminates a profound truth—the rise in autoimmune conditions among women isn't merely coincidental. In their infinite wisdom, our bodies are mounting a physiological protest against the unsustainable expectations we're taught to accept as normal. These conditions often emerge during our middle years, precisely when the accumulated impact of chronic caregiving, emotional labour, and self-sacrifice can no longer be ignored.
Our immune systems, much like our nervous systems, eventually begin to reflect the cost of being everything to everyone while struggling to maintain our own boundaries.
Never enough, yet too nice.
A particular vulnerability comes with being wired for connection, empathy, and care. As women, our nervous systems are exquisitely tuned to read rooms, anticipate needs, and sense the subtlest shifts in emotional weather. This isn't just socialisation—though our culture has certainly shaped us into caretakers. It's also written into our neurobiology, hormonal systems, and way of processing the world.
Research shows that women's brains are wired for greater empathic response, stronger emotional memory, and more nuanced social awareness. We're designed to notice more, feel more, respond more. In a balanced world, these would be pure strengths. But in our current reality, these gifts often become burdens we carry silently.
Our heightened sensitivity means we don't just observe others' pain - we feel it in our bodies.
“ That distress in your stomach when someone else is upset? The tension headache after navigating others’ conflicts? The exhaustion after a day of managing everyone’s emotions? These aren’t signs of weakness - they’re the physical toll of being so exquisitely attuned. ”
The connection between nervous system dysregulation and autoimmune response reveals a fascinating truth: our bodies aren't betraying us; they are, in fact, trying desperately to protect us. Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Pain, Twitches, Tremors, Numbness, and Disconnection are messages of dysregulation in the body.
It's this same sensitivity that makes many women natural caregivers and also makes our nervous systems more susceptible to the impact of chronic stress.
When we view these symptoms through this lens, they become not just problems to be solved but messages to be understood. As Maté explains, this isn't a simple cause-and-effect relationship but a complex conversation between our life experiences and biology. The qualities that make us excellent caregivers as women, such as our sensitivity, attunement, and responsiveness, require us to develop and sustain equally excellent boundaries and self-care practices. It's the only way to balance the demands and the supply from our bodies and minds.
The path forward involves creating a new relationship with our nervous systems based on listening rather than overriding, responding rather than reacting, and honouring rather than ignoring.
This journey invites us to ask different questions: Instead of "What's wrong with my body?" Ask, "What is my body trying to communicate?"
Perhaps the most radical truth we’re slowly waking up to is this: Rest isn't just about recovery—it's about revolution. When women begin to honour their need for rest, take their symptoms seriously, and prioritise regulation over constant availability, they aren't just healing themselves. They're challenging a system that has normalised the abnormal.
The journey from dysregulation to regulation can also be about reclaiming our right to have needs, to have limits, to require care rather than give it and to understand that our bodies' responses deserve our attention and respect.
Your body's wisdom is waiting to be heard. Its signals, whether whispers or screams, invite you into a deeper conversation about what truly supports your well-being. In honouring these signals, we can begin to write a new story where sensitivity is strength, boundaries are beautiful, and our bodies' messages are not inconvenient interruptions but essential wisdom guiding us home to ourselves.