Anxiety: When You’ve Been Strong for Too Long

I recently saw a post on Instagram that asked, What’s a luxury you would always pay for if it felt worth the money?   

I don’t often read the comment section as it can feel heavy, but this post pulled me in. I wanted to understand what women were saying.

You’d think that they would name designer bags, luxury cars and flashy jewelry. Not that there is anything wrong in wanting those things, but the answers were fascinating and extremely revealing.

Most of the women wanted someone to help with laundry, childcare support, upgrading a flight seat when traveling for work or pleasure. 

On paper, these things don’t sound luxurious. But in your nervous system, they feel like relief and a little less weight on your shoulders. 

We live in a society that glorifies doing it all. Many of the women I know hold multiple jobs, emotional labor, caregiving, household management, spiritual growth . . . and all while trying to heal themselves away from the noise.

And then we wonder why anxiety is everywhere.

From the nervous system’s perspective, anxiety isn’t just about thoughts.

It’s about capacity.

When your system has more demands than it can handle and when you feel responsible for holding everything together, your body doesn’t interpret that as being busy. No. It actually interprets it as being unsafe at a cellular level.

A chronically activated stress response doesn’t always show up as panic attacks. It often shows up as patterns that feel normal but are signals that your system is overwhelmed. You probably know what I mean . . . those nights when your to-do list plays on repeat in your head or the moments you snap at someone you love.

So when women say their dream luxury is meal prep or help with laundry, they’re not being indulgent. They are naming a truth we all need to hear and that is that we were never meant to carry this much alone. 

Support is a natural, biological need, especially now, when many of us are in the space between who we were and who we’re becoming. We're collectively releasing patterns that no longer serve us and exhaling from burdens we carried for far too long.

This feels especially powerful as we stand at the edge of a new lunar year. And I couldn’t be more excited about this!

2025 was the Year of the Snake, a time of deep letting go that has been moving through our nervous systems and our hearts. And on February 17, the Year of the Horse begins. A year that carries forward motion, freedom, greater spaciousness, and most importantly, the courage to run in the direction of what feels alive.  

If you’re still feeling the pieces of old skin falling away and the heaviness of release, please know that this is part of the cycle.

Your body, your heart and your beautiful soul are reconfiguring your capacity for safety and spaciousness, and asking you to ask yourself right this very moment: Where in my life can I create a bit more breathing room and stop demanding superhuman capacity from a human nervous system?   

Maybe the real luxury right now is a place where you can finally breathe.

You don’t have to wait for burnout to make a change. This is the perfect moment to choose more space and more support. For YOU.