Society’s levels of emotional exhaustion are reaching epidemic proportions. Presenting as depletion, fatigue, dissatisfaction, burnout, anxiety, depression, or having a sense of emptiness—women are more likely to be affected than their male counterparts.
Is it possible for a woman’s intuition to become a burden? Might our conditioning and proclivity to care for others supersede caring for ourselves? Why do we seem aware of our myriad roles to others but less so for ourselves? Why, when I ask women what they really want, do they often answer “I have no idea?”
In working with women for decades as a psychotherapist, and interviewing countless more for my book, “The Emotionally Exhausted Woman,” it’s become evident that, despite the progress we’ve made on social, political, and economic fronts, many women, are still driven by the desire to be likable and pleasing to others. The cost of this underlying desire—to our authenticity, vitality, and quality of life—is profound and too often ignored. Our need to be pleasing, to be what we believe others want or need us to be, may leave us depleted and disconnected from our very selves….