I recently heard about a discussion among women business owners where one of the people there said: “The cause of overwhelm for women business owners is people-pleasing.”
And I’ll be honest: I bristled when I heard that.
Not because people-pleasing isn’t *a* factor in how women experience overwhelm in entrepreneurship. But because this statement, tossed out like a universal truth, places the problem squarely at the feet of women, as if we’re to blame for our own drowning. As if the solution is to simply “stop people-pleasing.”
But people-pleasing doesn’t deserve the bad rap we give it. And we need to go much easier on the people who engage in it. People-pleasing is what’s known in trauma theory as a *fawn response. Think of the dog showing its belly. It’s letting you know it’s no threat to you.
Fawning is a survival strategy that is learned early in our lives, when we didn’t have other options for surviving a dangerous situation (dangerous emotionally or physically). This is often in childhood or under prolonged extreme stress. When fight, flight, or freeze are deemed inaccessible by the nervous system, then fawning—appeasing others, avoiding conflict, trying to stay safe by staying small—becomes the only option that seems to keep us secure.
Before we critique people-pleasing, let’s recognize its value. People-pleasing is often a person’s best attempt to manage something that felt unmanageable any other way. It’s not a flaw, it’s an expression of intelligence that helped us stay safe in unsafe places.
If you find yourself engaging in people-pleasing, first and foremost, I invite you to offer yourself grace. This is a coping skill that formed long ago and was your very best attempt at the time to survive, and it comes forward today when you’re under-resourced and can’t find other ways to manage.
Because business often feels like a survival issue, it makes perfect sense that people-pleasing resurfaces in business. The demands of entrepreneurship are high, and when the pressure builds, old survival strategies often return. Overwhelm in women entrepreneurs is not, or not only, about people-pleasing.
Capacity and Cognitive Load
In truth, there’s a bigger problem with the concept of “overwhelm.” The term makes it seem like it’s an individual failing, like the issue is that you just can’t handle what everyone else seems (seems being the operative word) to manage. But let’s be real: business is demanding.
Running a business is cognitively more complex than being an employee or even a manager. It requires constant decision-making, multitasking, risk assessment, and creative problem-solving. According to research by psychologist Gerald Weinberg, each additional task or project you juggle can reduce your overall productivity by up to 20%. In many cases, especially in the early years, the demands of business will exceed your available capacity.
Sometimes that’s because of the nature of business itself. And sometimes it’s because we say yes to too much. Studies have shown that humans are consistently bad at estimating how long tasks will take and how much can be done in a certain period of time. That’s not a personal failing. It’s a common cognitive bias. And it’s a major contributor to overwhelm for women entrepreneurs.
As I considered what could be at the root of the experience for overwhelm for women entrepreneurs, I remembered so many clients who had shared their stories with me. I’ve drawn from that and my own experience to name some of the causes.
Cause #1: The First Year of Business
Let’s be honest: that first year is a beast. It’s overwhelming by its very nature. You’re learning on the fly. Everything is new: taxes, marketing, systems, client acquisition. There’s likely inconsistent income, cash flow anxiety, and the pressure of making it all work before your savings run out. And if you’re full-time in business for yourself, there’s no steady paycheck to cushion the mistakes that are an inevitable part of learning.
You’re not just doing the work. You’re building the business *while* doing the work. You’re the accountant, marketer, service provider, customer support team. Somehow you’re also expected to be a well-rested, self-regulated, emotionally available person at the end of the day. That’s not a business plan. That’s a recipe for nervous system overload.
No surprise that this stage often results in overwhelm in women entrepreneurs.
Cause #2: The Growth Phase
And just when you think you’ve found your rhythm, growth hits.
Here’s another myth we need to bust: that growth is easier than start-up. For many women business owners, the growth stage can be just as overwhelming, if not more. Now, you’re not only sustaining your work, you’re trying to scale it. You’re working to cross a gap. That means hiring or delegating, sometimes before you can “afford” it. It means taking on more clients, more exposure, more responsibility.
And if your systems aren’t ready to support that growth?
You’ll feel it… when you can’t take a day off without fearing the business will fall apart… when your inbox becomes a source of dread… when clients message you directly outside working hours…when your body starts whispering…then yelling… that this isn’t sustainable.
This is a common moment where overwhelm in women entrepreneurs surges.
Cause #3: Boundaries
That brings us to boundaries. Poor boundaries are one of the clearest, most common contributors to overwhelm in women entrepreneurs: boundaries with clients and boundaries with our businesses.
But poor boundaries are not our fault. Women are socialized to be available, responsive, accommodating. The message is clear: make yourself indispensable. Then add on the adage “the customer is always right” and you may find yourself saying yes when you mean no, bending your policies, overdelivering without charging more, letting scope creep turn small jobs into big ones.
This erodes not only your time and your income, but also your sense of agency.
You might also have poor boundaries with yourself (and/or your business). Your sense of urgency or high stakes might lead you to overwork. Working at a very intense pace during working hours, or having no “working hours,” instead answering your phone and checking sales day and night. The work and more importantly the stress never stops.
When we don’t have boundaries with ourselves and our businesses there’s always one more email, one more task, one more thing that must be done now or else. There is never time for the body and nervous system to enter the rest and digest phase. Without that you, and your business, are not sustainable. Burnout is inevitable.
Overwhelm isn’t a mindset issue. It’s a mismatch between demand and capacity. If what your life and business are demanding exceeds what your body, mind, and systems can provide, of course you will feel overwhelmed. Unless something changes—your boundaries, your systems, your supports—that overwhelm will never abate.
Cause #4: Lack of Systems
Let’s also talk about systems. Or rather, the absence of them.
In the early stages of business, it’s common to wing it. You don’t have time or resources to automate, to document, to set up workflows. But this becomes a problem as time goes on. You can’t reinvent how to do something ad infinitum.
It’s exhausting to figure out the process, or remember all the steps in a process, every time, especially when you are actioning that process daily. This gets exponentially worse when your business starts to grow.
Without solid systems (for many solopreneurs, this can be as simple as posting checklists, onboarding templates, and scheduling protocols, but can extend as the business grows into a full manual of policies and procedures) you are recreating the wheel every time. That costs you time, energy, and clarity.
Unclear systems often result in unclear expectations, for you and for your clients. That leads to more emails, more last-minute requests, more misunderstandings and, inevitably, more overwhelm.
For women entrepreneurs especially, the lack of supportive systems is a key source of persistent overwhelm.
Cause #5: When Life and Business Collide
We can’t talk about overwhelm without naming the intersection of life and business.
When things go sideways in your personal life—grief, illness, caregiving, relationship conflict—it impacts everything. It diminishes the overall capacity you have to run your business. Something has to give, and often it’s your business, because the emotional and cognitive capacity simply isn’t there.
And if you’re a mother? Let’s face it: women still carry a disproportionate load when it comes to household responsibilities and childcare. According to Statistics Canada, women spend an average of 50% more time on unpaid childcare than men. That’s not including all the other CEO-type household management responsibilities for which women are disproportionately responsible.
This means many women are building businesses in the margins of nap time, after bedtime, between school pickups. The weight of emotional labor and invisible work is real. It adds to the overwhelm in women entrepreneurs.
What Now?
I invite you to let self-blame and shame have a rest. They won’t help us with our overwhelm. In fact they’ll make it worse.
I invite you instead to offer yourself grace. I invite you to recognize that overwhelm is not your fault. Like most unpleasant emotions or sensations, it’s a signal. It’s inviting you to notice that something in the ecosystem of your business needs tending.
Here are some things to which you can bring gentle curiosity:
- Do I need to revisit my boundaries? (or Do I need to get support to begin implementing and maintaining them?)
- Are there ways I can automate repetitive tasks or hire help?
- How can I build in recovery time after client-heavy days?
- How can I care for the fearful part of me that says “I have to say yes to everything or I’ll fail”?
Overwhelm in women entrepreneurs isn’t your fault. And it’s not a sign that you’re not cut out for this.
It’s a sign that you’re doing a brave thing and also that it might be time to do it differently.
There’s nothing wrong with you. The system that taught you to fawn, to overfunction, to carry too much and ask too little, that’s what’s wrong. You get to build something more life-giving in its place. After all, isn’t that what you went into business for in the first place?
If you’re a woman business owner and you’re drowning in overwhelm, you’re not alone. Many women business owners feel this way. Let’s talk about what support could look like. I’m the person you hire when you want to protect your peace of mind so you can more easily navigate the real, and really messy work of running a business. If that sounds like something you need, you can book your free call here.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
