Between careers, parenting, and the day-to-day mental load, so many women become the one everyone relies on—often operating in a constant state of “on.” Over time, that chronic responsibility can take a toll, leaving little space to reconnect with themselves.
We spoke with Beth Brissette, nervous system coach and founder of Elizabeth Anne – Life Alchemy, who works closely with high-functioning women navigating burnout and overwhelm. Through a blend of nervous system science and somatic life coaching, Beth helps women move out of chronic stress, reconnect with their authentic selves, and build a more sustainable sense of balance, belonging, and self-trust.
You know that feeling when everyone assumes you’ve got it handled… so you just do? Not because you necessarily want to, but because it would honestly take more energy to explain what needs to happen than to just take care of it yourself. You’re already thinking about it anyway. The form, the appointment, the email you need to send, the thing you need to remember to remind someone else about because if you don’t, it probably won’t happen. It’s like your brain just quietly runs logistics in the background all the time.
And the annoying part is… you’re actually really good at it.
You are capable. You are reliable. People trust you. Things tend to work out when you’re involved. But somewhere along the way, being the one who can handle things slowly turned into being the one who does handle things. All of them, automatically, and without discussion. Without anyone really noticing that your brain never fully stops tracking what’s needed next.
It doesn’t always feel stressful in an obvious way. It just feels… constant. Like your system doesn’t ever fully put the bags down. Even when nothing is technically wrong, there’s still this subtle sense that something could need you at any moment, so part of you stays on. Alert. Slightly leaned forward into life. Ready to catch whatever might drop.
Most of the women I talk to don’t even question this anymore. It just feels like adulthood. Like motherhood. Like just being a high-functioning woman in a life that requires approximately 4.7 versions of you at any given moment. Heck, it’s probably part of what made you the successful woman you are… so you justify it by saying, “It can’t be all that bad, right?”
Except the nervous system keeps score in a different way.
When your system spends years subtly scanning, anticipating, adjusting, staying prepared… the baseline quietly shifts. The body begins to assume the lion is always somewhere nearby. Maybe not actively chasing, but close enough that fully relaxing would feel irresponsible. The gas pedal stays slightly pressed, all day, every day, and instead of gently braking when it’s time to rest, we tend to wait until we’re completely depleted and then collapse. We push through, stay organized, keep things moving… and then find ourselves on the couch at the end of the day, phone in hand, too tired to even enjoy the break we needed hours ago.
Over time, being constantly “on” causes the system to lose its flexibility. It forgets how to move smoothly between effort and recovery. Everything becomes a little more all-or-nothing. Highly productive or completely drained. Calm can start to feel unfamiliar, even slightly uncomfortable, like there must be something you’re forgetting or a future fire starting somewhere in the distance you’ll inevitably have to put out.
The part that slowly wears many women down is how invisible this becomes. How invisible she becomes. No one is handing out awards for remembering everything. No one is noticing the constant mental tracking of schedules, emotions, details, logistics. It simply becomes the role and the expectation. Other people begin leaning back slightly, not because they don’t care, but because it has become clear — you’ve got it.
This is how very capable women end up feeling strangely alone inside very full lives, unsure of who they are outside of everything that needs them. When you are always the one holding things together, it can
feel like there isn’t space to admit that the holding is getting heavy. There isn’t always room to say that you are tired too, or unsure too, or that sometimes you don’t want to be the one quietly managing everything in the background. For most, this pattern didn’t start in adulthood. It started much earlier, in environments where being perceptive, helpful, easy, or mature made life go more smoothly. You learned how to anticipate needs, how to adjust quickly, how to avoid adding stress to people who already seemed overwhelmed. Being capable didn’t just make you successful later in life, it likely helped you feel steady when you were young, too.
Eventually, the same wiring that made you so competent can begin quietly treating your needs as secondary variables. Things to circle back to later. Things to minimize. Things to justify before allowing. Meanwhile, the pace of adult life keeps accelerating, and many women know what it feels like to technically have support but still feel like the operational center of everything. Delegating still requires tracking. Asking still requires follow-up. Letting go still requires tolerating the discomfort of things being done differently… or not done at all.
So the system continues doing what it has always done: it adapts by carrying more. For many women, especially in this season of life (you know, that delicious sandwich of perimenopause/young kids/aging parents), the tolerance for constantly over-functioning starts to wear thin. The body becomes less willing to quietly absorb everything, less interested in being endlessly accommodating, less convinced that this pace is sustainable long term. Not because you can’t handle it, but because somewhere inside, a part of you is done pretending this is working. But is burning it all to the ground actually an option?!?!
If you had a magic wand, maybe, but for most of us, the shift isn’t necessarily about suddenly finding perfectly reliable support everywhere around you. Many women are partnered with people who simply do not track life the same way. Some requests will still fall through, some help will still require energy, but something critical changes when you decide your own needs are no longer negotiable, secondary, or a burden.
When you begin allowing your needs to take up space in your own decision-making, the system gradually experiences something different. You might notice yourself pausing before automatically saying yes. For example, declining the completely unnecessary pressure to bake three dozen homemade cookies for the PTO fundraiser when absolutely no one was going to complain about store-bought. You might let something be good enough instead of exceptional. You might allow someone else to be mildly inconvenienced instead of automatically absorbing the impact yourself. You might begin choosing rest without first proving you’ve earned it.
Start with messy little baby steps. Just enough to show your body that it is safe for you to take up space in your own life.
Subtle changes over time allow the constant background bracing to soften. The system becomes more flexible again. Effort and recovery begin to feel less extreme. Reliability becomes something you offer, not something you have to prove, and your life begins to feel less like a constant group project you didn’t volunteer for. You remain deeply capable, but no longer at the cost of becoming invisible in your own life. This is the kind of shift that nervous system work makes possible… the capacity to build a life that includes you, too.
Other Resources
My free nervous system assessment with free regulation tools www.lifealchemy.net/quiz
My website www.lifealchemy.net