The pressure to have it all together (when none of us really do)

There’s a strange pressure that seems to come with being an adult. At some point, we apparently decided that we should know exactly what we’re doing.

We should have our finances sorted, know what we want from our careers, have a lovely home, maintain our relationships, look after our health, exercise regularly, drink enough water, remember everyone’s birthdays, keep on top of the washing, be present with our families and somehow still find time to have a social life.

Preferably while looking well rested and completely unbothered by any of it. Yet the more women I meet, the more convinced I am that almost nobody actually feels like they have it all together.

We see everyone else's highlights and all of our own reality so it’s incredibly easy to look at someone else and think they’re doing life better than we are.

We see the holiday, but not the months they spent saving for it. We see the lovely family photograph, but not the argument everyone had while trying to get out the door. We see someone doing well in their career without knowing what they’ve sacrificed to get there.

And then we compare those little glimpses with everything we know about our own lives, the worries, the unfinished jobs, the things we wish we’d handled differently and the parts we’re still trying to figure out.

It’s hardly a fair comparison.

Something I hear from women all the time is the feeling that they should be doing more. They should exercise more. They should eat better. They should spend more time with their family. They should see their friends more. They should be further ahead financially. They should have more energy. They should be better at switching off.

Even the things that are supposed to make us feel better can become another item on the list of things we think we’re failing at.

Self-care can very quickly become another “should” and when our heads are already full of work, appointments, family life, health, bills, shopping lists, school emails and everything else we carry around with us, adding another expectation isn't always particularly helpful.

Different seasons require different things from us ✨️

There will be periods of life when you feel completely on top of things. There will also be periods when life feels messy, uncertain or just really, really busy....Neither says anything about how well you’re doing.

Sometimes looking after yourself might mean exercising, cooking beautiful meals and feeling incredibly motivated. At another point it might mean cancelling something, asking for help, buying the easy dinner and getting yourself into bed early.

What you need today might be completely different from what you needed six months ago and that doesn't mean you've gone backwards. It means you're human.

Your body doesn't expect perfection either

Our bodies are constantly responding to what is happening around us. Stress isn't only the big, dramatic things that happen in life. It can also be the accumulation of all the smaller things like rushing from one place to another, constantly thinking ahead, never quite switching off, carrying responsibility for everyone else and feeling as though there is always something else that needs your attention.

This is one of the reasons I talk so much about the nervous system at Sage & Blossom.

Looking after ourselves isn't about creating a perfectly calm, stress-free life. I'm not sure that even exists. It's about recognising when things feel like a lot and finding small ways to support ourselves through those periods rather than expecting ourselves to cope perfectly with everything.

My thoughts....Maybe we're all just figuring it out.

Behind the treatment room door, I meet women from completely different walks of life. Different ages, different careers, different families, different health concerns and completely different things happening behind the scenes. Yet there are so many conversations that sound remarkably similar.

We worry that we aren't doing enough. We wonder whether everyone else is coping better. We feel guilty about the things we haven't done and sometimes forget to give ourselves any credit for everything we have. The reality is that nobody has every part of life beautifully organised at the same time....and perhaps we're not supposed to.

Life changes, circumstances change and we change with them. There isn't a point where we suddenly arrive and think, “Perfect. I've got adulthood completely sorted now.” We're all learning, adapting and figuring things out as we go.

So the next time you catch yourself thinking that everyone else seems to have their life together while you're just trying to make it through the week, remember that you're probably only seeing a tiny part of their story.

Give yourself a little bit of grace. You don't need to have everything figured out.

None of us do. 🤍

Emma x

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