Women’s Hidden Anxiety: Breaking the Silence around Women’s Anxiety

Updated: 11-08-2025; Author: Dr. Sneha Sharma 

Women at home are often expected to be strong, carry themselves with grace, nurture and handle household chores, as well as have an ambitious career to support the family financially.

Dr. Sneha Sharma, MBBS, MD (Psychiatry) explained about anxiety symptoms and great tips to overcome anxiety in this solution-based article.

But who takes care of them?

Boardroom success, childbirth, and Instagram-worthy weddings are all openly praised. Here are some things that go unnoticed.

 

The hormonal disruption that happens every week, the unspoken stress of staying safe, ugly gender-based comparisons, and more.

In this article, we will try to break the silence around a woman’s anxiety and try to bring a new perspective, awareness, and an open conversation.

Anxiety from the POV of Women

Explaining anxiety from a woman’s perspective, it is more than just a feeling of tension or overwhelm.

It is as if your inner self is foretelling something that you cannot predict. Often accompanied by feelings of uneasiness and fear, it hampers the smooth functioning of everyday activities.

However, when it comes to womanhood, they have mastered the art of hiding their nervousness with their sweet smile and everlasting habit of putting others first.

Though there may be many reasons why a woman silently suffers from anxiety, it can be classified into biological, psychological and social factors.

Why is Women’s Anxiety Overlooked?

For generations, the women of the household have often been expected to be the caretakers and not expect care in return.

It has somehow been ingrained in their minds that it is their responsibility to wear fresh clothes, put hot food on the table, look good even if they tire themselves out with household chores all day long, and say nothing.

Years of social patriarchy have taught almost everyone this. Femininity is often a symbol of emotional resilience, of keeping calm and composed even under pressure.

Eventually, this has become an expression of anxiety.

We are taught not to speak up or else we will be labelled as “fragile”, “dramatic”, “cry-cry”, and “too emotional”.

Through this article, we will try to uncover the hidden forms of anxiety that a woman often faces.

The root causes, the stigma surrounding them, and the path to recovery. We aim to convey that it is okay to seek help.

Causes of Anxiety in Women

As previously discussed, the causes of anxiety in women can be widely categorised into three factors, as explained in detail below:

1. Biological Factors

✅ Hormonal Fluctuations
From menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum changes, to menopause, hormonal fluctuations in a woman’s body are insane.

✅ A woman is subject to regular hormonal changes. These biological cycles make a woman highly prone to anxiety, which makes them more vulnerable to mood swings throughout their cycle.

✅ Genetics
Women who have a family history of anxiety disorders are often more vulnerable, especially when combined with factors of environmental and psychological triggers.

2. Psychological Factors

✅ Burden of Perfectionism, Self-image, and Constant Societal Pressure
Relevant to even today’s time, women (in fact, girls) carry this burden to look perfect, dress up perfect, struggle constantly with body image issues, and the constant societal pressure of “Oh, you’re too fat, too thin, too white, too dark, too short, too tall,” and the list goes on.

✅ The beauty standards set by the industry have somehow not even spared celebrities, who are now often in the news more for not having a perfect body or a perfect nose than for their skills or whatever they do.

✅ This constant striving for perfection plays a huge role in ingraining self-doubt and insecurity, which leads to social anxiety.

✅ Fear of Judgement
The fear of societal judgments is also a trigger for many women out there.

✅ Be it being judged for having male friends, or having a choice about marriage, or about the choice for an epidural during birth, the list to be judged is never-ending.

✅ How often have you come across women dressing a certain way to not be labelled as “asking for attention”?

✅ Anxiety is often rooted in this fear of being judged. Societal judgments often internalise shame and guilt over bizarre stuff that might not even be relevant, leading to alarming cases of women suffering from anxiety.

3. Societal and Cultural Expectations

Gender Bias
The patriarchy is so deeply ingrained in everyone that even today, many continue to follow those traits.

✅ A woman’s role is often shaped to be a homebody. Women are, to this day, expected to excel in all roles, whether in professional life or balancing personal life.

✅ Many working women who live in a setting that includes in-laws are burdened to be back at a certain time to take care of them, irrespective of being exhausted. Lack of support on top of this gender bias, often makes women anxious.

✅ The societal expectation of being the perfect daughter, perfect girlfriend, perfect wife, and perfect daughter-in-law is more than exhausting.

✅ But it is more troubling to be handled when one is expected not to be taken care of, to be a selfless giver, and to mask her wants.

Stigma of Needing Help with Mental Health
According to established standards, expressing the need for help is often looked down on and is a sign of being weak.

✅ It is an even bigger taboo for women to express their distress, their emotions, or their needs to be heard.

How is Women’s Anxiety Different?

To begin with, the stark difference between female and male anatomy is one of the reasons.

However, the emotional needs of a man and a woman are quite different, and so is processing everything mentally.

Unique Symptoms and Manifestations of Anxiety in Women

1. Emotionally
Women often manifest anxiety in forms of overthinking, persistent guilt, and heightened fear of being judged or rejected.

2. Physically
Anxiety in women shows up as headaches, muscle tension, digestive issues, stomach problems, difficulty waking up due to lethargy, or even insomnia.

The Impact of Silent Anxiety on Women’s Well-being

Silently enduring chronic anxiety often manifests itself and exhibits conditions like insomnia, weakened immunity, digestive issues, increased risk of heart attack, and palpitations.

Women suffering from anxiety have reported decreased motivation, self-worth, and emotional imbalance.

If a woman is suffering from anxiety, it will often strain her relationships. Anxiety fogs your mind and will strain communication, trust, and one’s emotional well-being.

Anxiety in the workplace is often accompanied by impostor syndrome, burnout, and the constant pressure to outperform to avoid being labelled incompetent.

Coping Strategies and How to Support Women

1. Therapeutic Approach For Anxiety 

✅ Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
This can help one identify and reframe their pessimistic inner thoughts and help them reconstruct healthier ways to cope with anxiety.

✅ Mindfulness and Acceptance-Based Therapies
These kinds of therapies help in equipping women with the tools to exist in the present and help them navigate the loop of anxiety.

If you or someone you know is struggling with anxiety, contacting a psychiatrist for anxiety can be an important step in finding treatment and relief.

2. Self-Care Practices

If you’re someone who wants to build healthy habits of self-care, you can start with journaling, Yoga, mindful walks, and deep breathing techniques to pacify moments of anxiousness.

More importantly, you should start practising saying “no” and prioritising your peace of mind over anything else.

3. Building a Support System

✅ Surround yourself with people whom you can trust emotionally.
There are tons of support groups online, especially women-led groups, where you can vent or provide support to others as well.

✅ This can help you detach from anxious thoughts and reinstate the feeling that you are not alone in this.

Moving Forward: Changing the Narrative

We are fortunate to live in a time when the importance of mental health is openly communicated.

However, many women still suffer in silence. Creating awareness should be our responsibility.

Great Tip 

By prioritising open conversations in schools, workplaces, and wherever possible, you can help empower someone who is silently battling the demons of their mind.

Don’t make someone feel weak by labelling them as weak or invalidating their concerns.

Take responsibility for being understanding and creating a safe environment for mental health discussions. And most importantly, be kind to yourself as well as others.