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The Stress Hangover Working Mothers Rarely Name

By Sarie Taylor

If you’re a working parent, and especially if you’re a woman, you’ve likely become exceptionally skilled at holding things together and feeling that a lot of responsibility falls on you.

You manage deadlines and dinner. You switch between strategic thinking and emotional caretaking in the space of minutes. You absorb tension in meetings and soothe it at bedtime. You remember the school trip form, the client follow-up, the birthday present, the food shop, the subtle shift in your child’s mood. Much of what you carry is invisible, but it can be constant.

From the outside, you appear capable and composed. You are the reliable one and often the one who “just gets on with it.” And then, usually when everything looks fine, your body responds. This can show up in many different ways.

A headache that won’t quite lift. A wave of exhaustion that feels disproportionate to the day. A tight chest while you’re unloading the dishwasher. Hot flushes. (Or maybe that’s just me!) Brain fog. A flat, heavy feeling that makes even small tasks feel like hard work. Sometimes it arrives with a quiet judgment: What’s wrong with me? I was doing so well. Everyone else seems to manage.

Sarie Taylor is a formidable mum of two, a trained psychotherapist and a life coach who works with people across the world with a wide range of issues.

Having suffered with severe anxiety for many years herself, Sarie also has personal experience and an understanding of what it feels like to struggle.

Insta: @sarietaylorcoaching
www.worldwidewellbeing.co.uk

The real shift isn’t eliminating discomfort — it’s learning that you can feel it without believing you’re failing.

Many women assume this means they aren’t coping as well as they thought, or that they should be stronger, more resilient, better at managing their time, their mindset, their hormones, their boundaries, it’s never ending!

But what if none of that is true?

What if what you’re experiencing isn’t failure but actually physiology?

The Invisible “Second Shift” in Your Nervous System

There’s a phrase often used to describe working motherhood: the second shift. The unpaid, unseen labour that begins when the formal workday ends, and there’s another second shift that rarely gets named the one happening internally.

Throughout the day, your nervous system is constantly responding to perceived demand. It’s responding to the physical demand, and also the emotional and cognitive demand. The meeting that we believe really matters, the difficult conversations, the background noise of logistics: pick-ups, meals, messages, appointments.

We can find that sometimes we manage these moments really well as we seem to stay composed, problem solving, you just keep moving. We don’t always realise though that coping in the moment doesn’t mean your system isn’t activated.

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Often, your body mobilises quietly to help you meet the demand. What does that even mean though? Stress hormones rise, muscles brace subtly, your world shrinks, you become focused and efficient which from the outside, it looks like strength.

Then the deadline passes. The children are in bed. The house quiets. And instead of relief, you feel depleted.

This is what I call a stress hangover; it’s the after-effect of sustained internal activation that often only becomes visible once you finally pause. The body releasing what it held while you were busy surviving the day.

It doesn’t show up during the crisis.

It shows up after.

And because it arrives late, many women misinterpret it.

When Discomfort Feels Like Danger

The physical sensations themselves are rarely the full story. What intensifies them is the meaning layered on top, the thoughts that you have about yourself that you believe to be true. If you had a racing heart at the gym its interpreted be true. If you had a racing heart at the gym its interpreted as exertion and yet the same sensation at 3am. can be interpreted as threat. The body hasn’t changed, just the story has.

Your exhaustion may not be evidence that you’re doing life badly.

It may be evidence that you’ve been doing it bravely.

Working mothers are often running a quiet narrative beneath the surface: I have to hold this together. When a symptom appears like fatigue, anxiety, irritability, it can feel like evidence that you’re dropping the ball somewhere and that you’re not managing as well as you thought. That something is wrong.

The mind begins scanning. Analysing. Predicting.

Am I burning out? Is this hormones?

Am I failing at work?

Am I being unfair to my kids?

The moment your system registers danger, even conceptually, it stays on alert and you may find you monitor the sensation, resisting it and trying to fix it quickly.

Ironically, that urgency prolongs the very activation you want to end.

Your nervous system isn’t malfunctioning. It’s responding intelligently to the interpretation it’s given.

The Hidden Cost of Being the Capable One

Modern motherhood, particularly for women who also work, carries an unspoken expectation of seamless performance, being ambitious but available. Driven but present. Successful but selfless. Organised but relaxed. That balancing act requires a tremendous amount of internal and unrealistic management.

When life is powered by low-level urgency, everything feels slightly more important than it needs to be, you may recognise this when small problems feel heavy and rest feels indulgent rather than necessary. Asking for help can feel inefficient or like an admission of weakness and even your downtime (if you are lucky enough to get it!) is often filled with mental planning.

You become highly functional.

But rarely deeply rested.

Over time, the nervous system begins to live in a subtly alert state, not necessarily panicked even just quietly on guard. When the body doesn’t get regular opportunities to reset, it will eventually demand one and make it a non-negotiable. This isn’t a punishment or a sign you are failing it’s simply that your system requires and will seek out balance always.

Neutral Is Not Boring — It’s Powerful

We often assume the ideal state of being is energised, productive, and enthusiastic but the most sustainable state for a working parent is something far less glamorous: neutral. When we are much more neutral and grounded moment to moment, we feel steady, clear and can respond without being too reactive. In a neutral state, you can hear yourself thinking for me I know I experience everything from a much more enjoyable and comfortable space, for example I can tolerate my three year old child’s meltdown without absorbing it as a personal failure, I can approach a difficult email without my stomach flipping and I can rest without feeling guilty.

Neutral is where wisdom and gut instinct lives.

And it’s also where your nervous system recalibrates.

Peace isn’t the absence of responsibility, but it is the absence of unnecessary internal pressure.

Rethinking the Goal

Many women tell me they just want to “cope better.” But beneath that is often a deeper desire: to never feel this way again.

No one can promise a life without discomfort, as hormones will fluctuate, children will have hard phases and work and life will bring challenges. The real shift isn’t in eliminating those experiences but rather seeing that you can feel discomfort without making it mean you are unsafe, incapable, or failing.

You can experience activation without spiralling.

You can be tired without being broken.

That understanding changes the relationship you have with your own nervous system and when that relationship softens, the system itself often follows. If you recognise yourself as the capable one, the reliable one, the woman who keeps everything moving, consider this a gentle reframe.

Your exhaustion may not be evidence that you’re doing life badly.

It may be evidence that you’ve been doing it bravely.

Your nervous system is not your enemy. It is your operating system. And it deserves the same care and attention you so readily give to everyone else.

This is what I call a stress hangover — the after-effect of sustained internal activation that often only becomes visible once you finally pause. It doesn’t show up during the crisis. It shows up after.

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