Am I burnout, menopausal, have ADHD… or do I hate my husband?
You may think it privately, I'm just going to come out and name what I've been hearing in my therapy room all year:
The nightly routine where you try to figure out about why you're so ragefully tired but wired.
It goes a little like this:
Am I burnout?
Am I peri-menopausal?
Maybe have ADHD?
Oh, could it be the interest rates?
Or do I just hate my husband?
My thought is: it may be a little of all of it, or none of it. But here’s what I do know: the mental labour of trying to solve that nuanced Venn diagram every night is probably adding another layer of exhaustion to your plate.
So many women seem to arrive in this stage of life asking some version of the same question, and it has been fascinating territory to explore with our clients.
Your capacity feels lower, while somehow there is more than ever sitting on your plate.
Smaller things feel enormous.
Things you tolerated quite happily, or at least quietly, for years suddenly look completely ridiculous, harder, or vastly more irritating than they used to.
You can’t quite remember how half of them became your responsibility in the first place.
The people-pleasing that once kept you liked, useful and mostly out of trouble starts to disappear too.
Suddenly you’re yelling, “Who left the butter on the sink again?!” while wondering why a half-melted tub of $14 Lurpak from a mid-night snack you didn't even make has become symbolic of every invisible job you have ever done for another human being.
The internal ranting becomes surprisingly fluent, justified and yet, unfamiliar?
The strange part is that it doesn’t quite sound like the you you used to be, or the version you particularly want to become.
There can be something disorienting about this chapter because it can feel as though you’ve suddenly become less tolerant, less capable, more emotional or more difficult.
But perhaps you’re simply becoming less willing to keep swallowing what you want in order to keep everyone else’s life running smoothly.
And that can create quite a lot of disruption.
Because one of the hardest parts of re-evaluating your life is realising that the people around you may be fairly attached to the version of you who doesn’t need very much.
The high-functioning one.
The overly-giving one.
The 'don’t worry, I’ve got it' one.
The 'I'll remind you so you don't forget' one
The supportive wife who is also a neglected wife.
You start asking questions like, hang on -
How did I get here?
Why isn't this fun anymore?
Do I actually want this?
Why is this still my responsibility?
What would happen if I stopped doing everything for everyone else?
Here’s the difficult part: not everyone around you is necessarily going to love the experiment.
That can leave you feeling strangely stuck inside a life you worked very hard to build, and now occasionally fantasise about burning down.
You want more space, more honesty and enough room to hear yourself think, but every possible change seems to affect somebody else, which can bring you straight back to the starting point.
This is one of the reasons private counselling can become so valuable in this season.
Your therapist isn’t impacted by the choices you make. She doesn’t need you to remain exactly as you are because it makes her life easier.
There is room to say the things you haven’t quite been able to say anywhere else yet:
I’m exhausted and nothing in my life has technically changed.
I’ve never been this angry, and I’m not an angry person.
I don’t know if I want this anymore, but this is the life I wanted.
Or simply: Something needs to change, and I don’t know what yet.
You don’t have to arrive with the answer. Arrive with the rants, the confusion, the list of things you're done with, and your therapist will take it from there.
And no, you don’t have to burn everything down to find more space for yourself inside your own life.
This particular messy, questioning, slightly furious chapter of womanhood is an area our counsellor Jaci Panicker especially loves working in.
Jaci joined our team to support women navigating messy midlife, sensitivity, overwhelm, identity shifts, relationships, mother-daughter dynamics and that strange experience of looking at the life you’ve built and wondering:
Okay. What can I actually claim for myself now?
If you’re somewhere inside the great life re-evaluation at the moment, you can meet Jaci and explore working with her here.
Here are the easy steps to your first appointment:
Fill in the short enquiry form at the bottom of Jaci's page
Our Client Care superstar Bells will send you the info and links within 24 hours.
You schedule your first appointment using our online calendar.
That's it!
No GP needed, no complicated systems, no delays or waitlists.
You could be booked in as soon as next week.
Warmly,
Gabriella
Founder & Director
Registered Clinical Counsellor
Gabriella de Mori & Co Counselling
PS. Yes, we see international and Australia-wide clients. You don't have to be in Perth.
