Burnout in mid-life women - the signs and solutions

“At a certain point, the lights literally went out,” is a quote from a qualitative study in the Netherlands exploring midlife women’s experiences. It’s consistent with a lot of people’s experiences of burnout. And it’s also something that a number of women in mid-life who come for resilience coaching have told me they feel. 

Anyone can burn out at any time, but there is a specific set of circumstances relating to being a mid-life woman that I think can push us too far in the wrong direction. Especially because we tend to tell ourselves ‘everyone else’ is dealing with them fine, and so we should be able to handle them too. And, as a result, ignore the signs that we need help. 

How can you help yourself?

Your underlying mindset makes a big difference here because it’s what you’re using to respond to these circumstances. The connection we have to our nervous system and its calming and soothing response - and how easily we can access this - is also a really key factor in whether we end up in a place of burnout or not. The good news is that both mindset and mind-body connection can change through a process like resilience coaching, making you not just more able to cope but more able to enjoy your life, even with all this going on too.

I want to highlight the unique challenges of being a mid-life woman at risk of burnout first, to acknowledge that if you’re going through any of these, you’re not alone. And, second, because women have a tendency to blame ourselves for these things, or criticise ourselves as being too sensitive, weak, etc, if we’re struggling with them. But if you want to avoid burnout, it’s really important not to do that - the support for tackling this has to start with you being honest and compassionate about where you are. 

Hormones 

Let’s start with the first and most obvious. Hormones are hormone-ing in mid-life. But what’s actually happening? Other than the most generalised of answers to this, we still don’t have enough accurate information about what is happening on an individual level as we enter perimenopause to really help ourselves. But we do know that hormones affect:

• mood
• sleep
• brain function
• energy levels
• skin health
• metabolism and weight gain
• pain levels
• focus and brain power
• libido

So, all these things are being overturned by the balance of hormones in your body changing from what you’re used to. And every one of those things can make life harder and more stressful when they become unpredictable, disturbed or slightly chaotic. There is also a whole list of symptoms of hormonal changes that aren’t widely acknowledged but are increasingly being recognised as hormone-related. This can mean you suddenly develop vertigo or itchy ears, but all anyone can really tell you is that “this might be perimenopause/menopause.”

As a result, this can be a time when many women feel unseen and undersupported by the medical profession. Worse, many have had experiences of simply being dismissed or being offered antidepressants as a solution to everything. Which can make you feel very alone with your challenges, something that creates the perfect environment for burnout.

The pressures of life

Mid-life tends to be when women are dealing with the most. We still live in a society where women bear the bulk of the emotional and physical labour when it comes to having children. Maybe you’re also working and trying to balance the demands of parenting and the office, and the guilt that this can create. Perhaps your relationship is being affected by life stress, life changes, or you are starting to see relationships differently.

If you aren’t in a relationship and don’t have children, you don’t get to escape either. This is the age when women can feel incredibly isolated if everyone they know has abandoned friendships when they’ve had a family. It can be when we start to feel isolated in the workplace. We may be dealing with mental or physical health issues. Caring for parents or others. And if you’re single and child-free, you’re paying the ‘single tax,’ covering all the expenses that are shared by couples on your own, which is a stressful financial burden often unacknowledged.

Identity shifts - who am I?

A lot of women hit mid-life and experience a sudden, huge loss of identity (I definitely did). Maybe you’ve done marriage and babies, but you feel like you’ve lost yourself in the process. Maybe you never knew who you were, but those things hid that. Now is the time when social conditioning around what a woman “should” be can feel really uncomfortable. If we don’t undo it, it can trigger feelings of shame and failure, whether that’s around being a mother, not having had kids or not being where you thought you’d be.

Mid-life is when a lack of clarity over yourself becomes obvious and painful. There is little to hide it now. And you suddenly realise how it’s affecting you to not have an authentic sense of self that is separate from the roles you play, such as mother, wife, and job title. This loss of identity can be hugely unsettling and trigger self-doubt and powerlessness.

Changes to your body

Weight gain is something a lot of us experience in mid-life, and it can be a real source of shame and feeling like a bit of a failure. You might feel like you’re in a body that doesn’t seem like yours anymore. I think the worst thing about this is that the weight gain often makes no sense. Which can make us feel confused and powerless. Insulin resistance, cortisol, lack of protein - these are all potential reasons for this, but there’s no straight answer and no one to give it. I know, for me, that made me feel alone with the issue. With a different body can come a loss of your sense of style and enjoyment of fashion. Feeling like you no longer know what to eat because your body isn’t functioning the way that it used to. Losing connection to your sensual self. Disconnecting from pleasure. These are things that get written off as superficial, but they are actually fundamental to our experience of life.

Grief

My dad died as I was entering perimenopause, and the grief was like an earthquake. No one talks about death until we have to. We aren’t prepared for grief. Mid-life is when we are most likely to start experiencing it, whether it’s parents, a partner, friends, etc. We’re also often grieving the loss of things or situations, friendships or our previous selves. Grief is not a normal emotion; it’s intense, earth-shattering, and its ripple effect is often difficult to spot. It can sometimes be the push that many of us didn’t need along the burnout path. 

Neurodivergence

Trying to cope with the interplay of hormones and life, plus neurodivergence, can just become too heavy in mid-life. We still know very little about how autism, ADHD and AuHD affect mid-life women. But we do know that this is a time of life when the challenges of neurodivergence can feel too much. Long diagnosis waiting lists, struggling to cope, and the self-criticism and shame that can come with feeling different all make life harder.

The 2025 Burnout Report found that a third of adults have experienced burnout in the past year, but that women were more likely to be affected. Maybe because of the factors above - or maybe due to a whole other set of influences.

What we do know is that women in mid-life are coping with huge shifts and pressures that society has yet to fully recognise or support. And for most of us, that means taking steps to get help ourselves. Mindset and mind-body connection are fundamental to this because they underpin our emotional responses, self-perception, confidence and how we cope with stress. Which is why, if you’re a mid-life woman and you feel like you’re struggling, that’s often a good place to start. 

Resilience coaching can support mid-life women to not just avoid burnout but to develop a powerful mindset for this time of life. It can help you find new ways to cope and to survive the challenges of this time. But also to tap into all the exciting shifts that come with perimenopause and menopause. To trigger the ‘spring forward’ and start intentionally creating the life you want from now on.