Beyond the Hamster Wheel: Naming the Hidden Stressors We Carry
- sallydaley8
- Mar 17
- 3 min read
So many of us are living this story.
We keep going. We’re juggling our own neurodivergence, our kids’ needs, partners, work, furbabies, appointments, emails, life — and from the outside it looks like everyone else has it together. Here’s the truth: they don’t. But as neurodivergent women, the load we carry is different.
We hold our own cognitive load, our children’s, our partner’s, our friends’, our colleagues’. Not always, not for everyone, but for many of us it’s the default. And it’s heavy.
I often picture it as a hamster wheel — running and running, never getting ahead, always chasing my tail. Sometimes I fall off. I rest, I patch myself up, I do the things people tell me to do — the coffee, the movie, the night away, the chocolate. But those are band‑aids, not solutions. They don’t touch the “little‑t” stressors that grind us down every single day.
These “little‑t” stressors are the invisible ones: choosing what to wear, worrying you said the wrong thing, managing chronic health issues, cooking dinner, trying to sleep, keeping track of emails, remembering school events. They accumulate. They shape our nervous system. They create very real trauma. And because they’re constant, we stop noticing them — until we fall off the wheel completely.
And when we do, people ask “What happened?” as if it was one thing.
We keep going because we feel like we have no choice. Kids still need us. Life still needs us. But over time, we feel less and less like we can keep up. The wheel gets faster. We get smaller.
A few years ago, I hit that point. I was away for work, sitting on the edge of a hotel bed, frozen. My brain said “get up,” but my body couldn’t. My husband talked me through it, and yes — I still did a brilliant job that day, because that’s what we do. But when I sought help, before my AuDHD diagnosis, I was told I was “fine,” “functioning,” “looking for something that isn’t there.” The gaslighting is real. So many women know this story.
So I put on another band‑aid and got back on the wheel. Until I couldn’t.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
We shouldn’t have to live like this. And there is a better way.
It starts with recognising the “little‑t” traumas — naming them, validating them, understanding how they shape our days and our bodies. Only then can we make small, meaningful changes that reduce the load.
For me, that meant finding AuDHD professionals who truly saw me and saw my burnout. It meant unlearning years of minimising my own needs. And it led me to develop the Clarity Card Sort — a tool to help neurodivergent women identify the invisible stressors, articulate them, and make changes that actually help.
This isn’t about resilience.
This isn’t about trying harder.
This isn’t about you failing.
This is about living in a world that asks too much of you — and finding ways to reclaim yourself.
Everyone deserves the chance to live well. To work without burning out. To enjoy parenting instead of just coping. To feel good about daily life. To understand what affects you so you can say, “This is enough.”
And you deserve that too.
If part of you is whispering (or screaming) that something needs to shift, consider this your permission to take one small step toward yourself. If a calm, no‑pressure chat would help you make sense of things, you’re welcome to reply to this email or book a free, no obligation Clarity Call whenever you feel ready.
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