I have been doing a bit of work with a biodynamic cranio osteopath on my pelvis. I have had pelvic issues for years, predominantly starting with a car accident as a kid, and things just go layered upon it. I have worked with different body workers over the years and I have to say it is in a pretty good state now. If you aren’t familiar with this modality it is a lot of neuro-affective touch work, and the body in all its wisdom and intelligence, reorganises, because it knows how to heal. It is very similar to the touch work we do sometimes in somatic experiencing.
My osteopath and I have big chats when I am on the table. Last session she asked me “do you think it is trauma that causes all the autoimmune issues in women”. (if you don’t know the stats, something like 80% of autoimmune condition sufferers are female bodies). I said sometimes, but I think it is because as women we carry so much of the relational field and after a while that takes an enormous toll on a woman’s body if there is not enough sharing of the load going on in the family system or she does not have a good circle of support around her. After a period of time the body screams whether it be relational rupture, physical pain or discomfort, illness. It tells us, things need to change now!
So let’s talk about that because there is a price we pay for holding the relational field.
Why do we hold the relational field and how does it prime us to lead change?
Well some of it is biological, some is cultural and some is archetypal.
Biologically and neurologically we are wired for connection. Our estrogen creates the oxytocin that drives us to connect and attune to our children.
Women’s bodies are literally designed to attune:
Oxytocin, the bonding hormone, is more prevalent in women. It surges during intimacy, birth, breastfeeding—but also during conversation and emotional connection.
Our mirror neuron systems, which help us sense and empathise with others' emotions, tend to be more active.
From a nervous system lens, many women are socialised (and biologically primed) to track relational dynamics, often before we even understand we’re doing it.
The social conditioning is strong. From a young age, girls are typically taught to; caretake others’ feelings, keep the peace, maintain connection and be “good,” agreeable, relationally aware. We are socialised to value harmony over truth.
On a deeper level, the feminine principle (not just in women, but especially expressed through them) is associated with; holding, containing, gestating, weaving the web between things
So the relational field—that unseen space between people where emotion, meaning, energy, and nervous system cues travel—is often carried by the feminine. Not because it’s our duty, but because we feel it first, and most acutely.
Women tend to track what's happening in the in-between. This might look like noticing when something feels “off” even if nothing is said, adjusting ourselves to keep harmony, carrying the emotional labour of a relationship or family.
While this conditioning can be limiting, it also hones an early sensitivity to emotional tone, unspoken tensions, and disconnection. We’re trained, often unconsciously, to sense and hold the relational space around us. My neighbour always said to me, ‘if mum is okay the whole family functions well. If she is not the cracks start to occur’. We are the emotional anchor in the family system.
From a more archetypal or somatic-mystic view, the womb is not just a biological organ but a relational centre; a place where life is created, held, and nourished. Even for women who do not have a physical womb, the energetic imprint always remains. The womb and ovaries have a incredibly strong energetic imprint, so even if you have an hysterectomy, the energetic imprint never leaves you.
This womb-space can sense the field like a tuning fork. It picks up resonance and dissonance, and often prompts us to move toward repair, connection, or withdrawal. So even beyond personality, trauma history, or conditioning—there is an embodied deep knowing that many women carry. A sense of what’s happening in the space between.
The big challenge.
Many women hold the relational field at the expense of themselves.
We track everyone else’s nervous systems, needs, moods—and forget our own. We become hyper-attuned, hyper-responsible, and depleted. This is where somatic reclamation, reconnecting with our body, becomes essential. Learning the skills to come back to your body so you can hear it when it is speaking to you. We learn to track ourselves first, then engage from a resourced place. This is what transforms holding the relational field from a burden into a gift.
It is this gift, that tells us when change is needed.
Women don’t hold the relational field because we ‘should’, we hold it because we are tuned to life, to connection, to what moves between. To coherence in the field, to what is working well and what is not working well.
Midlife, when the cost and payment becomes due.
In midlife, the body begins to speak more loudly. Years of holding the field—of tracking, softening, absorbing—can begin to show up as: chronic fatigue, autoimmune conditions, thyroid dysfunction, mystery symptoms, emotional exhaustion and uproar or a sense of grief no one can name.
Many women reach a point where their bodies refuse to keep playing the role. Where the cost of emotional labor has accumulated and the body keeps the score. Not because we are broken. But because we are done.
I often wonder if all of these health issues in midlife or the tough perimenopause journey experienced by some midlife women are the body’s way of saying:
“You’ve spent a lifetime turning against yourself to preserve connection. Now I’m turning inward to get your attention.”
It’s not our fault. But it is our invitation—to begin again, from the inside out
But we’re also being called now to hold it differently; not by abandoning ourselves, but by anchoring into our bodies, our knowing, our rhythm.
That is where true healing begins, not just for us, but for the whole field we’re in.
The healing path isn’t about abandoning our relational gifts. It’s about reclaiming ourselves as part of the field we’re so attuned to.
It’s about learning to: track our own nervous systems first, let others hold space for us, to feel safe saying no, set boundaries without guilt and recognising that we are not here to carry it all alone
This is where deep nervous system healing and somatic work become essential. They help us untangle the pattern of self-abandonment woven into our care.
We were never meant to carry it all.
We are capable of holding so much but we were not meant to hold all of the emotional dysregulation of others, all of the unspoken weight of a relationship. Nor were we meant to hold all of the relational field of a family, the workplace, the world - at the cost and detriment of our own health.
This is a huge price to pay and our midlife transition is the initiation into change we need to let some or all of it go. When this initiation happens it causes change in all the relational fields we are in.
So if you are finding ourself, exhausted or unravelling at midlife, you are not failing, your are awakening. Your body is asking you to step out of the role of ‘holding all the relational energy’ return to yourself.
I work with women who are ready to listen to what their bodies are saying, to come home to their own rhythm, needs, and truth.
Part 2, coming next week…..
