Women’s Issues
Do any of these sound familiar?
You feel like you're always taking care of others, but no one’s taking care of you
You’ve lost sight of who you are outside of your current role - either as a wife, mother, or in your career
You’re always sacrificing and putting your own needs last
You carry invisible weight of past trauma, societal pressure or unspoken pain
You always feel tired and like you’re battling burnout
Being a woman in today’s world can be incredibly overwhelming. You’re managing work, relationships, family and responsibilities. On top of all that, you’re expected to take care of yourself too. Make time for self-care, age gracefully, and smile even when you are burnt out and feel empty inside.
Millions of women around the world feel like this. There is an invisible weight that women bear: the burnout, the mental load, and the quiet pressure to hold everything together.
More than 1 in 5 women in the U.S. experience a mental health condition each year, and women are nearly twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with anxiety and depression.
Women Are Expected to Juggle Everything.
There’s gender bias in the workplace, our postpartum hormone shifts, and the reality that we live in a society that does not honor women’s natural cycles of energy and rest.
Now add in everything else that’s going outside of our day-to-day lives: a constant stream of devastating news, climate anxiety, wars, injustice, and the helplessness that comes with watching it all unfold from a screen you can’t seem to escape from. If you're a mother, you're likely asking yourself what kind of future your kids are inheriting. It’s no wonder you're overwhelmed.
Even when you’re feeling off, you’re expected to act like nothing’s wrong. But there is something wrong with a system that expects you to be endlessly productive with no time for yourself. It’s not just you, it’s not in your head and it makes complete sense that you’re feeling this way.
Some Common Reasons Women Seek Therapy
The Mental Load of Womanhood
Even when it looks like things are “fine,” many women are struggling with the weight of everything they’re holding together.
Some mental load categories include handling the finances, making doctor and dentist appointments, keeping track of kid’s school needs (permission slips, field trips, etc), paying attention to when kids grow out of their clothes, taking them to friends’ birthday parties, handling extracurricular activities, planning vacations, household management, and paying attention to household member’s emotional needs. This list is not comprehensive and you may even have other areas of the mental load that you are carrying.
When you are carrying the mental load, you make sure that everything is running smoothly…but at what cost to yourself? It’s hard to find room for your own needs when you’re holding everything together for everyone else. Not only that, but the mental load tends to be invisible and unrecognized by others. But that doesn’t make it any less real.
Trauma
Trauma isn’t simply about what happened. It’s also about how your mind and body learned to survive it. You might notice yourself shutting down, feeling on edge, stuck in self-blame, or overwhelmed by emotions that feel out of proportion to the moment. Trauma can come from a single event or build over time through chronic stress, unsafe relationships, or feeling unseen and unheard.
It lingers in ways that are hard to explain and even harder to heal alone. Therapy can help you gently process those experiences, understand how they’ve shaped you, and start to reclaim a sense of safety and control. For some people, approaches like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) can be especially helpful in working through trauma that feels “stuck,” offering a structured way to release distress without having to relive every detail. Please know that healing is possible and you don’t have to rush or do it all at once.
Postpartum Changes
Whether you’re months or years into motherhood, you might still feel like you haven’t fully come back to yourself or like you’ve changed in ways that no one else seems to notice.
Postpartum depression and anxiety can show up in quiet, sneaky ways. You might feel hollow, angry, lonely, or numb. You might miss who you used to be before becoming a mother. Maybe you feel guilt and shame for feeling this way and you’ve never said it out loud or told anybody how you feel.
It’s okay to feel this way and it doesn’t mean you are a bad mom. You’re a person going through a massive physical, hormonal, emotional, and identity shift. It’s okay to need help. You deserve support and somebody to help you through this new chapter.
The Work-Life Balance
Work-life balance is marketed to women as a cute goal to strive for, with color coded planners, highlighters, and a little self-care and pampering that theoretically should make it all sustainable.
But the reality is that you are expected to show up to work like you don’t have a family, then show up at home like you don’t have a job. There’s never enough time or energy for what you’re expected to be carrying. It feels impossible to be fully functional in both worlds.
Work Stress and Career Uncertainty
Balancing work and family life can feel like a juggling act, especially when you’re expected to show up at work like you don’t have a family and show up at home like you don’t have a job. You may find yourself second-guessing career moves, wondering if you’re doing enough, or fearing that taking time for your family will set you back professionally. Gender bias and discrimination in the workplace is common and is mentally exhausting.
If you're a woman of color, queer or trans, or living with a disability, you may be navigating additional layers of discrimination at work, often code-switching or shrinking parts of yourself just to feel safe or accepted. You may feel overlooked, underestimated, or unsure whether you're even in the right place.
In many workplaces, there's unspoken pressure to show up as polished, agreeable, and endlessly capable. Women also frequently face an emotional burden at work, where they’re expected to manage and regulate both their own and others emotions as part of their job. This may include tasks such as maintaining positive client relationships, mediating conflict, and offering emotional support to coworkers.
Relationship Challenges or Loss
Relationships can bring deep connection and joy, but they can also be complicated, painful, and uncertain. You might be dealing with the end of a relationship whether it’s a breakup, divorce, or loss, or you’re struggling within one you’re still committed to and are hopeful for its future. Maybe communication has broken down, trust has been damaged, or you feel more like roommates than partners.
Parenting Stress
Many women carry an immense emotional and logistical burden when it comes to parenting and family responsibilities. Women are frequently expected to manage the household’s emotional climate, navigate their children’s needs, and maintain family relationships, often with little to no support. This can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, and a sense of isolation. On top of that, expectations around what it means to be a “good mom” or a “strong woman” can make it hard to ask for help, even when it’s most needed.
Body Image and Negative Self-Esteem
Struggles with self-esteem can affect every part of your life. Low self-esteem can affect how you show up in relationships as well as how you speak to yourself when no one else is around. Maybe you constantly second-guess your worth, replay past mistakes, or feel like you’re not measuring up in different areas of your life.
Body image and disordered eating might be part of it, or maybe it shows up in perfectionism, people-pleasing, or a fear of being vulnerable and truly seen by those closest to us. These patterns often form slowly, shaped by early experiences, cultural messages, or past hurt.
How Can Therapy at RelationshipStore Help With Women’s Issues
Therapy offers a space where you don’t have to hold everything together. You can find support from someone who isn’t directly involved in any of your problems and therefore can offer unbiased reflection. Having a therapist in your corner means you have someone who’s on your side and whose life’s goal is to help others heal. Whether you’re navigating work stress, parenting challenges, relationship struggles, low self-esteem, or past trauma, therapy gives you room to slow down, reflect, and be honest, without judgment or pressure to “fix” everything right away.
It can help you recognize patterns that no longer serve you, reconnect with your values, and build tools for setting boundaries, coping with stress, and trusting yourself again. Many women also carry invisible burdens—from caregiving and perfectionism to medical issues, reproductive health concerns, and generational trauma. You don’t have to navigate it all alone. Therapy can be a place to feel seen, supported, and empowered to create change on your own terms.
Why RelationshipStore?
RelationshipStore Counseling and Coaching Center has a number of therapists who specialize in women’s issues. All of our therapists work from a trauma-informed approach and regularly complete group trainings to stay up-to-date on best practices for helping our clients. We also have therapists who are EMDR-certified.
We believe in a holistic approach to healing. We know that your struggles don’t exist in isolation - they’re connected to your relationships, your roles, your identity and the systems and society around you. We help our clients examine how their past experiences have shaped their current reality. Our goal is to promote your long-term healing so that you can move on with your life from a more balanced place. We are dedicated to providing caring and compassionate care for our clients.
You May Still Have Questions About Counseling for Women’s Issues
I’ve been through a lot. What if it’s too much to talk about?
You don’t have to dive in all at once. You set the pace. Your therapist will follow your lead and help you feel safe and supported in every session.
That’s okay. You don’t need to have a clear plan before starting therapy. Let your therapist help you unpack your burdens. We will provide a space to untangle the overwhelm and figure out what feels meaningful to you.
I don’t even know what I need.
If you’ve been trying to hold it all together on your own, therapy can offer the relief of not having to do that anymore. You deserve to have someone in your corner as you start asking the questions that matter.
Is therapy really worth it?
YOU DON’T HAVE TO CARRY THIS ALONE.
