You can feel it, right? Something’s off with your wife. She’s more irritable than usual. Less affectionate. Shorter. Tired in a way sleep doesn’t seem to touch.

You’re fighting more than you used to, and the worst part is when she finally loses it over something small and the fight somehow time-travels backwards. Suddenly, twelve years of history is coming up on a Tuesday night over the pan you left to “soak” in the sink.

Here’s what’s going on.

You are the most responsible person you know.
You are also the most exhausted person I know.

And I know you tell yourself that if the people around you would just get their shit to-damn-gether, you’d finally feel better. 

But what I need you to hear is that while that used to be true (really, it did), it’s not the only thing that’s true anymore. And I want to help. 

Eldest daughter syndrome is officially a thing. The jokes, the memes, the “eldest daughter starter pack” reels…it’s everywhere right now. I mean, Taylor Swift even wrote a song about it, and if that doesn’t mean it’s gone mainstream, I don’t know what does. 

But what if, as a woman who is equal parts tired, capable, and quietly furious, you resonate with all the eldest daughter stuff but you’re not the oldest daughter in your family? What does that mean? 

I saw this post from Dr. Becky the other day — the one about how we’ve overcorrected from “kids’ feelings don’t matter” to “kids’ feelings decide everything.” It stopped me.

Dr. Becky (Kennedy), the psychologist behind Good Inside, has become something of a millennial mom whisperer. Her take on parenting isn’t just about raising kids — it’s about how we were raised. And that post, in particular, nailed something I see in almost every millennial woman I work with in therapy - the tension between feelings and boundaries.

Eldest Daughter Syndrome. Firstborn Daughter Burnout. Whatever the internet is calling it this week, it all ends up sounding like cute branding for a life that’s slowly suffocating you.

Before your feet even hit the floor, you’ve already run three mental checklists: yours, your kid’s, and your partner’s (plus your mom’s, because someone has to). You respond to texts, make mental edits to your work presentation, try to remember if there’s milk left, if the field trip form is due, if you ever switched the laundry last night—and somehow, none of that counts as doing anything yet.

You are high-functioning. Hyper-responsible. Chronically needed. Loudly capable. Quietly on the verge.

Can you remember when you first became “the responsible one”? Most women can’t - because there wasn’t one singular moment when they shifted from being cared for to being counted on.

The internet calls it “eldest daughter syndrome”. I call it what happens when a little girl becomes her family’s emotional shock absorber.

You don’t need to be less reactive—you actually need to be better at it.

Some version it always comes up with new clients: “I just want to be less reactive.” Not less hurt. Not less unseen. Just…less reactive. 

Sometimes it’s buried under paragraphs of context. Sometimes it’s the whole damn paragraph. Either way, it’s one of the most common reasons my clients cite for starting therapy—the thing they think will make everything feel more manageable. 

“So… what kind of clients do you see?” It’s a simple question, but I never quite know how to answer because the truth is, I don’t think in diagnoses or demographics. I think in nervous systems. I think in spirals. I think in her. Women just like you—the ones who are smart, high-functioning, and secretly unraveling.

When she first came to see me, Brooke didn’t talk about grief or loneliness - she talked about logistics. She told me she had a good partner, a stable relationship. No real fights. No red flags. “We get along,” she said, in a way that sounded like both a celebration and a resignation. And then one day, a month or two in, she told me a story that changed everything.