The Superwoman Syndrome

Considering the meaning of health for women today

I am often asked what the most common conditions are that I see and treat in practice everyday. Besides hormonal imbalances, stress and burnout, particularly in women, has become so prevalent that I now start to refer to it as The Superwoman Syndrome.

This is the woman who has 3 kids, 2 dogs, a hamster and a fish. She juggles zoom meetings during school runs, has 5 calendars on her phone for each family member, does a grocery dash between dentist appointments including the gluten free, dairy-free, sugar-free, nut-free goodies required for lunchboxes, pops in to see granny or grandpa in the old age home, bakes cupcakes for charity at night between sorting the household accounts and has 40 people coming for dinner on Friday night (well, pre-covid at least) and she does this all on a protein shake a day (ok and maybe a glass of wine at night.)

Sound familiar?

Of course, the scenario I describe may be one of many versions of the Superwoman Syndrome but what all the stories have in common is that we are busy… too busy and in fact, psychologically and physically stressed because of it.

As you very well know, we juggle so much as women. Constantly torn between career, family, community and societal needs. We are, the universal caregivers, the universal nurturers. But we are struggling… I see this every day in my practice and it is a constant conflict within my own life as well. At times, the load is just too heavy and we are spread wearyingly thin.

Women’s health is very precious indeed, for without it the world would truly be lacking in love and nourishment. And yet women’s health, especially today is more precarious than ever as our roles become more and more complex and life becomes faster and more instant.

Of course, this psychological and physical stress can have a real and measurable impact on the body… causing changes in our biochemistry and depletions in vital hormones and neurochemicals.

There are many aspects of our health to consider but perhaps we should just take a moment to ponder more deeply about the concept of health itself. What does this mean to us and how this evolving… how this must evolve if we are to support not only our physical needs as women, but our emotional and spiritual needs as well.

For too long, the perception of health has been merely the absence of disease. If you do not fit into a specific box of symptoms that represents a disease, well, then there is nothing wrong with you and you must be well.

But this could not be further from the truth – with so many people complaining of fatigue, brain fog, sleep disturbance, anxiety, weight gain, pain, chronic inflammation and hormonal symptoms – we are certainly not in sync and not in balance. But we may not necessarily have a specific disease either.

Health is a state of being, a state of balance or homeostasis. The body has, inherently, an exquisite intelligence and will always strive to maintain its balance through a series of reactions or compensations or counter-regulatory forces.

We really can only damage it significantly if we completely overwhelm its mechanisms of homeostasis.

And this is, sadly, very possible considering how out of balance our external lives are and how heavy our stress loads have become.

I feel there needs to be a greater paradigm shift in healthcare and medicine that acknowledges we can feel unwell and lose our vitality without necessarily being diagnosed with a disease.

This paradigm shift starts and has, in fact, already started, by patients such as yourselves. People who are striving for more out of health and know how they want to feel. People who don’t want to accept feeling ok, but who want to feel great. People who have had routine bloods come back as normal, but who don’t feel normal.

A shift from a disease-focused model to a patient-focused model and a shift away from “I will see my doctor when I’m sick and he/she will tell me what to do” to “I will see my doctor when I am well or losing balance and together as a team effort, we will restore that balance to safeguard my health and prevent disease to come.”

Perhaps this shift is more important, now than ever and particularly so for women. For we are complex… just ask the men! And we should be viewed through an appropriate lens of complexity as such… even all the different systems within our bodies are intimately linked and communicate with each other, sharing information all the time. Women go through periods of radical hormone shifts from the postnatal period to peri-menopause and menopause and can experience a roller coaster ride of hormonal symptoms.

And because our roles are many and so varied and because we often put our own needs last, we are particularly vulnerable to chronic stress and burnout… a chain of biochemical events that can ultimately lead to chronic disease.

What does health mean to you now? Is it a full and restorative night’s sleep? Is it enough energy to get through the day without feeling like you are wading through lead? Is it dropping the excess weight that causes you discomfort? Is it a sense of inner sparkle and joy or a deep sense of calm and groundedness? It is the experience of calming down your PMS or getting rid of hot flushes?

And what will health mean to you ten or twenty years from now? Will it be preventing the heart disease that runs in your family or making sure your mobility is robust so that you can continue to enjoy physical activities or perhaps you would like to ensure that your memory and neurological function is preserved.

It is time to re-frame our perception of health – we don’t need to wait to fall ill and it is not a static state of being. We must actively pursue it and nurture it with conscious thought and action. It is a continual journey that requires and most of all, deserves our attention. We simply must prioritize it to hold the things we hold and juggle the roles we juggle. And most of all, we can take control of it and feel empowered by doing so.

My message to us, precious women, is a message of love. Let’s pause for just a minute in the middle of the chaos and consider what our health journey looks like to each one of us. For we already are Superwomen. We don’t need the syndrome too.