Women | Mental health | Relationships

When Your Mental Health Struggles Won't Shift: What Might Your Anxiety and Depression Trying to Tell You?

You've tried everything, haven't you?

You've read the books, downloaded the apps, practised the breathing exercises, tried to ‘reframe’ your thoughts. You've been to the GP, perhaps tried medication. You've journaled, meditated, done the self-care Sundays. And still, the anxiety clings to you like a second skin. The depression pulls you under again and again. The overwhelm doesn't budge.

And somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice whispers: What's wrong with me? Why can't I fix this?

But here's what I've learnt in over a decade of working with women: you're not broken. And you might not need fixing.

What if your ‘anxiety’, your depression, your persistent struggles with mental health aren't signs that you're failing at recovery? What if, instead, they're your internal alarm system doing exactly what it's supposed to do, telling you that something in your life, right now, isn't right?

Your Symptoms Are Messengers, Not Malfunctions

We've been taught to see anxiety and depression as problems within us, faulty wiring, ‘chemical imbalances’, personal inadequacies. The focus becomes: How do I fix myself?

But in my work, I see something quite different. I see women whose bodies and minds are responding perfectly reasonably to unreasonable situations. I see anxiety that is screaming, ‘This doesn't feel safe.’ I see depression that is whispering, ‘I've given up trying to be heard.’

When we only address the symptom, whether it's the panic attacks, the low mood, or the constant exhaustion, we're applying a plaster to a wound that's still being reopened, day after day. We're telling ourselves to calm down whilst standing in the middle of a storm.

The Relationships We're in Right Now

Here's the uncomfortable truth that often goes unspoken: you cannot heal in the same environment that made you unwell.

Many women I work with are trying desperately to ‘get better’ whilst remaining in relationship dynamics that are quietly retraumatising them. And I'm not just talking about obviously abusive relationships (though sometimes it is that). I'm talking about:

• The partner who dismisses your feelings or needs, leaving you questioning your own reality

• The parent who still treats you like a child, undermining your autonomy

• The friendships where you're always the one giving, never receiving

• The workplace where you're undervalued, overworked, or subtly bullied

• The family system where you're expected to keep the peace at the expense of your own wellbeing

When You Can't Trust Your Own Mind

Perhaps one of the most damaging dynamics I see is gaslighting, when someone repeatedly denies your reality, making you question your own perceptions, memories, and sanity.

You know something happened. You felt hurt by what they said. But they tell you you're ‘too sensitive,’ ‘overreacting,’ ‘remembering it wrong.’ They twist things until you're the one apologising. They make you doubt the evidence of your own experience.

And here's what's so insidious about gaslighting: it doesn't just damage the relationship. It damages your relationship with yourself. You stop trusting your own feelings, your own judgement, your own reality. You become anxious because you're constantly second-guessing yourself. You become depressed because you've lost touch with what you know to be true.

If you're exhausting yourself trying to heal your anxiety whilst someone in your life is constantly undermining your perception of reality, your anxiety isn't the problem. The gaslighting is. Your body is trying to tell you: ‘Something here is wrong.’ But you've been taught to doubt that voice.

Your anxiety might be telling you: ‘I don't feel valued here. I'm not safe to be myself.’ Your depression might be saying: ‘I've stopped fighting because nothing changes anyway.’

These aren't failings. These are intelligent responses to difficult relational realities.

The Echo of Past Relationships

But it goes deeper still. Often, the relationships we're in now are unconsciously recreating dynamics from our past.

Perhaps you grew up walking on eggshells around a volatile parent, and now you find yourself doing the same with your partner. Perhaps you learnt early on that your needs didn't matter, and now you struggle to voice them at all. Perhaps you were the child who had to be responsible, perfect, the caretaker, and now you can't stop.

When You Learnt to Read the Room Before You Could Read

Many women I work with grew up with parents who were emotionally needy, demanding, or unpredictable. Perhaps your mother needed you to manage her emotions. Perhaps your father's mood dictated the entire household's atmosphere. Perhaps you learnt, very young, that your job was to keep everyone else happy, stable, okay.

So, you became hypervigilant. You learnt to read the subtlest shift in tone, the smallest change in facial expression. You became an expert at anticipating needs, managing moods, smoothing over tension. You learnt to scan every room for emotional danger. Your nervous system was constantly activated, always on alert.

This wasn't a choice. This was survival.

But here's what happens: that hypervigilance doesn't just disappear when you grow up. It follows you into every relationship. You're still reading the room, still anticipating everyone else's needs, still making yourself small to keep the peace. You've become a people-pleaser, not because you're weak or lack boundaries, but because your brain was wired early on to believe that other people's emotional states are your responsibility, and your safety depends on keeping them happy.

And now?

Now you're exhausted. Anxious. Burnt out. Because you're still that child, constantly monitoring, constantly adapting, never able to rest. Your body remembers what it learnt: I am only safe when everyone else is okay.

But you were never meant to carry that weight.

We adapt to survive. The coping strategies you developed as a child, people-pleasing, perfectionism, withdrawal, hypervigilance, made perfect sense then. They kept you safe. But when we carry these patterns into adulthood, into relationships where they're no longer serving us, they become the very things that trap us.

Your anxiety might be the little girl in you still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Your depression might be the exhaustion of a lifetime spent meeting everyone else's needs but your own.

The Stories We Inherit

And there's another layer: the patterns we inherit from generations before us. Family trauma, unspoken stories, ways of coping that have been passed down like heirlooms we never asked for.

Perhaps your grandmother learnt to stay silent. Perhaps your mother learnt to martyr herself. Perhaps there's a legacy of women in your family who carried the weight of everyone else's emotions whilst their own went unacknowledged.

These patterns live in us. They shape how we see ourselves, how we relate to others, how we interpret the world. And sometimes, our mental health struggles are our psyche's way of saying: This old story doesn't fit me anymore.

Why ‘Fixing Yourself’ Isn't Working

This is why all the self-help strategies in the world might not be enough. Because if you're trying to feel calm in a relationship that constantly activates your nervous system, the problem isn't your inability to meditate properly. If you're trying to boost your self-esteem whilst surrounded by people who diminish you, the problem isn't your lack of positive affirmations.

You cannot think your way out of a relational problem.

I see so many women blaming themselves for not "getting better," not realising they're trying to bloom in soil that cannot sustain them. They're working so hard on themselves, and yes, that matters, but they're not looking at the system they're embedded in.

What Now?

If any of this resonates, I want you to pause and ask yourself some questions:

• What are my symptoms trying to tell me? If my anxiety or depression had a voice, what would it be saying?

• Where in my life do I feel unseen, unheard, or unsafe?

• Are there relationships where I'm constantly adapting myself, shrinking, performing?

• Do any of my current relationships feel familiar in an uncomfortable way, like I've been here before?

• What patterns did I learn in childhood about relationships, about my needs, about my worth?

• Am I still hypervigilant, still reading the room, still managing everyone else's emotions?

• Am I in a dynamic where my reality is regularly questioned or dismissed?

• What would change if I believed my symptoms were wise rather than wrong?

This isn't about blaming others and definitely isn’t about abandoning all your relationships. It's about bringing awareness to the relational dynamics that shape you. Because you are not separate from your relationships, you exist in connection. And true healing happens not in isolation, but in the context of healthier, more authentic connection.

Sometimes, the bravest thing you can do isn't trying harder to fix yourself. It's asking whether the relationships in your life are allowing you to be whole.

Your mental health struggles aren't signs of weakness. They're signs that something needs to change. And perhaps, for the first time, you can stop asking, what’s wrong with me? and start asking, What's wrong with this?

If you're ready to explore your wellbeing through a relational lens and understand what they might be communicating to you, please do get in touch for a free consultation. Therapy isn't about fixing you, it's about understanding the bigger picture of your life and relationships.