What Every Christian Woman Should Know about Burnout and Hormones

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Some mornings, anxiety weighs on my chest like a sandbag. Some mornings, the disconnection is so great that I feel unrecognizable. Then the next day, I can have so much bounce in my step, I’m pretty sure I’m unstoppable! Why is it that some days we feel capable of anything, and the next we can feel completely overwhelmed by it all? If you are a woman with emotions, you know this roller coaster rivals Six Flags. These ups and downs aren’t new to us, but I didn’t think they would continue at this intensity into our middle-aged years. What makes these waves so jarring is that we receive them while carrying the load of everyday life. The kids. The responsibilities. The house… Two friends called me just last week to tell me they feel “off.” Unable to put it into succinct words, they both shared similar threads that I relate to, too. One of them even went to the ER with heart palpitations, and when everything checked out as normal, she was left befuddled. What is going on with us? 

1. When Burnout Is More Than Being Busy

According to a 2025 McKinsey and LeanIn.Org report, 42% of women overall report frequent burnout, compared to 41% of men. The gap widens sharply in leadership, where 60% of senior-level women report burnout versus 50% of senior-level men. Care.com's 2026 Cost of Care Report found that 60% of moms report feeling overwhelmed juggling career and caregiving, compared to 42% of dads. When I look at these gender gaps in the above burnout reports, and I hear my friends and clients speaking the same struggle I too am experiencing, I know this isn’t a capability issue. I also know it isn’t a capacity problem, because women are wired to juggle all the things at once. Something else is at play here—our hormones. 

2. Understanding the Seasons of Our Hormones

If I were to describe hormones as a weather pattern, I would describe them as all four seasons rolled into a 28-day cycle. The luteal phase (the 10ish days leading up to your period) would be like those cold, depressing days in winter. You don’t want to talk to anyone, you wear layers and layers of clothes, crave comfort food, and sometimes the snowstorm is so strong you can’t go anywhere. Then we start our period, and like the early signs of spring, as estrogen and progesterone crash down, we start to see buds of life again. Thoughts like, “Oh wait! Everything is going to be OK!” start to bloom rationally like early spring buds. Then the follicular phase comes in like a refreshing summer! We are confident, active, and feel capable of anything. Then there are a few days (ovulation) that feel like that crisp fall morning. You know the ones where we can finally wear a sweater and boots again, and life feels sweet. But before we know it, that winter storm rolls in as estrogen and progesterone do their jump and dance, and what once felt wonderful and balanced feels out of control. It's exhausting.

What’s more is that this seasonal rotation packed into our monthly cycle starts to take on a new life of extremes in the perimenopause years. Where the winter may have once been cold for a few days, suddenly becomes like a blizzard for days! Those feelings of high highs and low lows are not necessarily a matter of circumstances, but rather this is the bounce estrogen and progesterone engage in in the perimenopause years. As our body winds down from the fertility years (typically late thirties to early fifties), we begin to have fewer eggs available. So when our body doesn’t release an egg at ovulation, follicle-stimulating hormone (whose job is to trigger the egg release) starts rising higher! And when the body isn’t responding with an egg drop, this hormone continues to try hard. This, in turn, causes estrogen to rise higher. Progesterone doesn’t always keep up because this precious hormone is all too easily converted to cortisol (our stress hormone) when stress is high. So if we are experiencing any stress (and who isn’t?), we are likely low in progesterone. There is then an exacerbated imbalance between estrogen and progesterone that causes many wild symptoms, an even more dramatic emotional roller coaster being one of them. 

No wonder we are more likely to feel burnt out when doing the same thing as a man. While performing the same tasks, we’re simultaneously weathering extreme hormone fluctuations. These rolling seasons also take us on wild rides in puberty, before or after pregnancy, and as we move through menopause. (Meanwhile, men will experience the same “weather” their entire lives, with the slight exception of a steady decrease in testosterone, and that’s it.)

3. What If God Designed These Seasons with Purpose?

At first glance, and based on the narrative on social media, these hormonal swings increase the risk of burnout. Here is where I love walking with Jesus. Hopelessness doesn’t run in our veins the way it does in the general public. When we take a step back, we can remember that God made women as “suitable helpers” (Genesis 2:18). The original word for “helper” is “Ezer Kenegdo.” “Ezer” appears in many places throughout the Bible, referring to God as Israel’s helper. “Kenegdo” means corresponding or opposite to man. Together, these two words suggest that women are equipped to support men in ways men can’t. When God designed women to be opposite of men, this included our hormonal seasons. So when I read the stats on our burnout levels, I can’t help but wonder: are we missing something miraculous in how God designed us?

C.S. Lewis’ book The Screwtape Letters brought John 10:10 to life, showing how calculated the enemy is when he comes “to steal, kill, and destroy.” If C.S. Lewis were alive today, I would ask him to write a sequel to this book in which Wormwood pursues a woman experiencing hormonal changes, because it makes sense to me that the enemy would be just as crafty and calculated here. And unfortunately, because so many women don’t understand what is happening hormonally, I believe the enemy is getting the better of us and taking away the foundational gift God gave us when he designed us. 

Our God made everything with intention (Ephesians 2:10). He goes before us (Deuteronomy 31:8) and has our best interest in mind, even when we don’t deserve it (Psalm 8:4). This includes our hormone cycles and transitions. 

There are so many pieces of the hormone puzzle. I think of it like swimming in the ocean, feeling all the fish brush up against our feet. Without knowing what they are, it can be terrifying! What was that! Will it bite?!?! But when we peek under the water and learn about all the ways our hormones swim around us, we can discover just how beautiful this array of fish can be. (We can also recognize which ones are a bit more aggressive so that we can move through that phase with grace and caution.) There is so much to this I could write a book on it (in fact, I am working on that right now)! In the meantime, consider this your invitation to think of what could happen if we stop ignoring this part of our intentionally designed body. 

4. Jesus Invites Tired Women to Rest

Mark shares my favorite angle on when Jesus fed the five thousand. It’s the only gospel that gives us insight into how the disciples were feeling before the miracle. They had just returned from being sent out by Jesus to spread the Good News, and when they did, we see that they were stretched. They came to Jesus, and the gospel tells us in Mark 6:31, “because so many were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat.” Sound familiar? How often are we so busy taking care of others that we neglect our own needs? What I love is what Jesus says next: “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” Until recently, I hadn’t seen this part of the story. Reading it now, I relate to those disciples.

We love the work we get to do as women. We love our families, our marriages, and our careers, and we wouldn’t want anything different. But we are tired and barely have time to take care of our own needs.  And the hormone changes are turning up the volume on it all. What Jesus did for the disciples here is astounding. He invited them into the boat to rest, but then took them straight to the next miracle. The disciples knew the people waiting for Jesus needed to eat, because they themselves needed to eat too! And isn’t it just like our sweet, awesome Jesus to do something we never imagined? He looked at the disciples and said in Mark 6:37, Luke 9, and Matthew 14, “You give them something to eat.” While Jesus blessed the five loaves and two fish and made the miracle happen, the disciples got to be a part of it. They ate too. 

I wonder if we women have the same invitation today, to be a part of God’s miracles in our own lives. We are invited to feed the people. Our families. Our communities. Our churches. But that doesn’t mean we override or ignore our own human needs. In fact, the very invitation Jesus had for his disciples in Mark 6:31 is the one I think he is also asking us today: “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” And if we don’t take him up on that invitation, we may miss the miracle. 

Reference:
1. McKinsey & LeanIn.Org, Women in the Workplace 2025 (Dec 2025)
2. Care.com, 2026 Cost of Care Report (13th annual)

Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/Prostock-Studio

Jess Brown is a registered dietitian, founder of The Well Collective, and host of the Fuel Her Awesome podcast — but the work she's known for rarely stays on the plate. People come to her for gut healing, hormone balance, or energy boosts; what they find is an invitation to stop white-knuckling their own bodies and trust the One who made them. A board-certified specialist in sports dietetics and eating disorders, Jess built her Empowered Eating Method^TM on a single conviction: healing is almost never just physical. Nutrition is really about the mission it fuels. She writes and speaks on hormone and gut health in addition to the imperative daily work of choosing calm over control when it comes to caring for your body. Jess lives in New Mexico with her husband and two boys, and is often found off on an adventure. She believes your health can be a place you meet God, too. Start here with her Spirit-Led & Well-Fed devotional.