Why Do Women Find It So Difficult to Put Themselves First?
You finally have an hour to yourself. No one urgently needs you. There are no appointments to attend, messages that cannot wait or immediate problems to solve. And yet, instead of relaxing, you notice the familiar pull of guilt.
Should you be doing something useful? Has everyone else got what they need? Is it selfish to sit down when there is laundry waiting, an email unanswered or someone you could be helping?
For many women, putting themselves first does not feel restorative. It feels uncomfortable. They may readily support a friend who needs rest, encourage a colleague to set boundaries or insist that someone they love deserves more for themselves. But when it comes to their own needs, the rules quietly change. Rest must be earned. A boundary needs defending. Saying no requires an explanation. Wanting something purely for themselves can feel almost indulgent.
So why is it so difficult? The answer is not that women are naturally more self-sacrificing or that caring for others is inherently unhealthy. Rather, psychological research suggests that gender expectations, relational learning, invisible responsibility and fear of disapproval can gradually teach women to treat their own needs as less important.
Caring is not the problem
There is nothing wrong with being generous, empathetic or dependable. Caring for others can create meaning, strengthen relationships and reflect deeply held personal values. The problem begins when care is no longer freely chosen - when it becomes an obligation that leaves little room for the self.
Many women do not consciously decide to put themselves last. It happens gradually: they become the person who remembers. The person who anticipates. The person who notices what is needed before anyone asks. The person who smooths things over. Eventually, putting other people first stops feeling like something they do and starts feeling like who they are. This can make even a modest act of self-prioritisation feel like a threat to their identity.
Girls often learn that being “good” means being accommodating
From childhood, girls may receive subtle messages that approval is connected to being kind, considerate, agreeable and emotionally attentive. These qualities are not negative. The difficulty is that girls and women may be rewarded for displaying them even when doing so requires suppressing anger, discomfort or personal preference.
They may learn to:
avoid seeming demanding;
soften their opinions;
maintain harmony;
anticipate other people’s feelings;
apologise quickly;
make themselves easy to accommodate.
Over time, the lesson can become: Other people’s comfort matters more than my honesty.
This does not require anyone explicitly saying, “Your needs do not matter”. Social expectations are often communicated through praise, criticism and the different reactions people receive when they behave assertively.
Research on self-silencing describes a pattern in which people suppress their own thoughts, needs or emotions to preserve relationships or avoid conflict. Although self-silencing can occur across genders, it has been particularly influential in understanding women’s psychological distress and the relational conditions in which women feel unable to express themselves fully (Maji & Dixit, 2019; Emran et al., 2020).
Putting yourself first can feel like risking connection
For some women, saying no does not simply mean declining a request. It can feel like risking disapproval, conflict or rejection. This is especially understandable for anyone who has learnt that relationships remain safe when they are helpful, compliant or emotionally undemanding.
They may worry: Will they think I’m selfish? Will they be disappointed? Will they stop including me? Will this create an argument? Will they still see me as a good person?
Seen in this light, people-pleasing is not simply a lack of confidence. It can function as a strategy for preserving connection. Insecure attachment has also been associated with self-silencing and depressive symptoms, suggesting that fears surrounding closeness, rejection or abandonment may make it harder for some people to express their needs openly (Emran et al., 2023).
The behaviour may appear passive from the outside, but internally it is often highly active. The person is continually monitoring reactions, predicting disappointment and adjusting themselves accordingly.
Women frequently carry responsibility that others cannot see
Putting yourself first is particularly difficult when your mind is already managing everyone else. Psychologists and sociologists increasingly use terms such as emotional labour, cognitive labour and invisible household labour to describe the planning, monitoring and remembering required to keep daily life running.
It is not only doing the food shop. It is noticing that food is running low, remembering what everyone eats, planning the meals, checking the calendar and knowing when the next shop needs to happen.
It is not simply taking a child to an appointment. It is recognising that an appointment is needed, researching the options, booking it, completing the forms, rearranging work and remembering the follow-up.
A systematic review of gendered emotional labour concluded that women continue to perform a larger proportion of this cognitive work, particularly in relation to childcare and household management (Reich-Stiebert et al., 2023). Research involving mothers has also linked responsibility for invisible household labour with role overload, lower relationship satisfaction, reduced life satisfaction and feelings of emptiness (Ciciolla & Luthar, 2019).
This matters because putting yourself first is difficult when your rest still contains responsibility. You may be sitting down, but your mind is continuing to organise, remember and anticipate.
Sometimes women become managers of other people’s emotions
There is also an emotional version of the mental load. Many women find themselves keeping track of:
who seems upset;
which relative needs checking on;
whether their partner is stressed;
who needs encouragement;
whether tension is developing;
how to phrase something without causing offence.
This ability can reflect genuine emotional intelligence. But when emotional awareness becomes emotional responsibility, it is exhausting.
There is an important difference between: “I care that you are upset.” and: “It is my responsibility to make sure you are never upset.”
The first allows for empathy. The second requires self-erasure.
Women who habitually manage other people’s emotions may experience a boundary as an act of harm rather than an ordinary expression of capacity.
They are not merely saying: “I cannot do that today.” Their mind translates it into: “I am letting someone down.”
Self-silencing can build resentment
Suppressing your needs may reduce conflict in the moment. But it rarely removes the need itself. The exhaustion remains. The disappointment remains. The anger remains. Eventually, these feelings may appear in less direct ways: irritability, emotional withdrawal, resentment or the sense that no one appreciates how much you do.
Research has linked self-silencing with depressive symptoms and difficulties around anger expression. In one study of women, greater self-silencing was associated with depressive symptoms and patterns of suppressed or misdirected anger (Tan et al., 2008). This does not mean that every woman who avoids conflict will become depressed. Nor does it mean that self-sacrifice is always harmful. It means that consistently disappearing inside your relationships can carry a psychological cost. You may successfully avoid upsetting everyone else while becoming increasingly disconnected from yourself.
Motherhood can intensify the pattern
For many women, motherhood expands both the practical and emotional workload.
The needs are real. Babies and children genuinely depend on adults, often unpredictably and intensely. During some stages, putting yourself first may not be realistic in the immediate sense. The difficulty arises when temporary self-sacrifice becomes a permanent identity.
A woman may become so accustomed to responding to everyone else that she no longer knows what she wants when nobody needs her. Even when time becomes available, she may struggle to use it.
She might think: I could go out, but it would be easier for everyone if I stayed. I could ask for help, but explaining everything is more effort than doing it myself. I could rest, but I should probably catch up.
The result is not simply tiredness. It can be a gradual narrowing of identity. The woman who once had interests, preferences and ambitions becomes primarily the person who keeps life functioning for everybody else.
Why guilt appears when you begin setting boundaries
Guilt is often interpreted as proof that we have done something wrong. But guilt can also appear when we do something unfamiliar. A woman who has spent years saying yes may feel guilty the first time she says no - not because the boundary is unfair, but because it challenges an established pattern.
Other people may also react. Someone who benefited from your lack of boundaries may experience your new boundary as a loss. That does not automatically make the boundary unkind. It may simply mean the relationship is adjusting to a version of you who has needs as well.
This is one reason boundary-setting can initially feel worse rather than better. There may be anxiety before relief. You may need to tolerate another person’s disappointment without immediately treating it as evidence that you have behaved badly. A boundary is not a guarantee that nobody will be disappointed. It is an honest statement about what you can and cannot give.
Putting yourself first does not mean putting everyone else last
The phrase “put yourself first” can sound harsh. It may conjure an image of ignoring responsibilities, becoming self-centred or refusing to compromise. Psychologically healthy self-prioritisation is not about believing your needs matter more than everyone else’s. It means accepting that they matter too.
It can look remarkably ordinary:
asking for help before reaching breaking point;
resting without first completing every task;
expressing a preference;
declining something you do not have capacity for;
allowing another capable adult to carry responsibility;
taking time for something that has no productive purpose;
noticing resentment as information rather than shameful ingratitude.
This is not selfishness. It is self-inclusion.
Why self-compassion matters
Many women try to change their patterns through self-criticism. They tell themselves to be stronger, firmer or less sensitive. But it is difficult to build a healthier relationship with yourself while speaking to yourself with contempt.
Self-compassion involves responding to personal difficulty with kindness, perspective and awareness rather than harsh judgement. Meta-analytic research has found a strong inverse relationship between self-compassion and psychological distress, while reviews of self-compassion interventions suggest they can produce small-to-moderate reductions in anxiety, stress and depressive symptoms (MacBeth & Gumley, 2012; Han & Kim, 2023).
Self-compassion does not mean telling yourself that everything you do is right.
It means asking: What would help me respond to this honestly and kindly?
Sometimes the compassionate answer will involve caring for someone else. Sometimes it will involve admitting that you cannot.
Start by noticing where you disappear
You do not need to transform every relationship overnight. A useful first step is simply to notice where your own needs vanish from consideration.
You might ask:
What do I automatically agree to?
Whose disappointment am I most afraid of?
Where do I say “it’s fine” when it is not?
Which responsibilities have become mine without ever being discussed?
When do I feel resentment - and what unmet need might sit beneath it?
What would I choose if I did not have to justify it?
The aim is not to become less loving. It is to understand the difference between love and self-abandonment.
A quieter way of looking at it
Perhaps you find it difficult to put yourself first because, somewhere along the way, being needed became closely connected to being valued. Perhaps caring for everyone else has helped you feel safe, good or worthy. Perhaps you have been praised for being the person who copes.
That pattern deserves understanding, not judgement. But you are allowed to exist outside what you provide for other people. You are allowed to have needs before you reach exhaustion. You are allowed to disappoint someone without becoming a disappointment. You are allowed to rest before everything is finished.
And perhaps putting yourself first does not really mean moving ahead of everyone else. Perhaps it simply means no longer leaving yourself out.
A moment to pause
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References
Ciciolla, L., & Luthar, S. S. (2019). Invisible household labor and ramifications for adjustment: Mothers as captains of households. Sex Roles, 81, 467–486.
Emran, A., Iqbal, N., & Dar, K. A. (2020). “Silencing the self” and women’s mental health problems: A narrative review. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 53, 102197.
Emran, A., Iqbal, N., & Dar, K. A. (2023). A moderated mediation model of self-silencing and gender in the association between insecure attachment and depressive symptoms. Current Psychology, 42, 7086–7096.
Han, A., & Kim, T. H. (2023). Effects of self-compassion interventions on reducing depressive symptoms, anxiety and stress: A meta-analysis. Mindfulness, 14, 1913–1928.
MacBeth, A., & Gumley, A. (2012). Exploring compassion: A meta-analysis of the association between self-compassion and psychopathology. Clinical Psychology Review, 32(6), 545–552.
Maji, S., & Dixit, S. (2019). Self-silencing and women’s health: A review. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 65(1), 3–13.
Reich-Stiebert, N., Froehlich, L., & Voltmer, J. B. (2023). Gendered mental labor: A systematic literature review on the cognitive dimension of unpaid work within the household and childcare. Sex Roles, 88, 475–494.
Tan, J., Rehfuss, M. C., Suarez, E. C., & Parks-Savage, A. (2008). Nonsuicidal self-injury in women: Links between self-silencing, anger and depressive symptoms. Journal of Counseling & Development, 86(3), 317–324.