When It's All Too Much: A Letter to College Women Carrying Everything
The term has barely started, and you are already tired.
Not the kind of tired a nap fixes. The kind that lives behind your eyes. The kind that shows up at 2 a.m. with a list of everything you have not done yet.
Maybe you are a first-year at Northwestern, walking past the lakefill and wondering why everyone else seems to know what they are doing. Maybe you are at Oakton, taking night classes after a full shift, with a family counting on you at home. Different lives. The same weight.
This is for you.
The pressure nobody sees
College women carry a particular kind of load. You are supposed to be brilliant in the seminar and easygoing at the party. Driven, but not intense. Independent, but always available when someone back home needs you.
For many of you, especially first-generation students and women of color, there is another layer. You are not only doing this for yourself. You are doing it for a mother who never got the chance. For a family that sacrificed so you could be here. That love is real. So is the pressure that comes with it.
So you keep going. You say yes. You answer the text. You pull the all-nighter. You tell everyone you are fine.
What stress and anxiety can look like
Anxiety does not always look like panic. Sometimes it looks like a very productive person who cannot stop.
It can look like rereading the same paragraph five times. Skipping meals because there was no time. A stomach that hurts every Sunday night. Checking your grades over and over. Snapping at your roommate and then feeling terrible about it.
It can also look like shutting down. Missing the class you were most worried about. Leaving the email unopened. Pulling away from friends because you do not have the energy to pretend.
None of this means you are failing. It means you are carrying too much for too long without enough support.
A few things that actually help
You do not need a whole new life. You need a little room to breathe inside the one you have.
Start by naming what is yours. Not every expectation you hear belongs to you. Some came from a parent, a professor, a culture, a feed. Ask yourself, is this my goal, or someone else's voice in my head?
Protect one small thing each day. A walk to Lighthouse Beach. A quiet hour with your phone in another room. A real meal with someone you like. Small things done often matter more than big fixes done once.
Say the true thing to one person. Anxiety grows in silence. Telling a friend, a sibling, or a counselor "I am not okay right now" is not weakness. It is the first step back to yourself.
And let good enough be good enough. A B on a problem set is not a verdict on your worth.
You do not have to do this alone
This fall, Find Your Voice Counseling & Consultation PLLC is launching a support group for college women navigating stress and anxiety. The group is led by Alyssa Wilson, LCSW, and meets Thursday evenings at 7 p.m.
It is a space to exhale. To hear from other women who get it. To learn practical tools for the pressure, and to remember that you are more than your to-do list.
We work with college students of every kind, from first-years in the dorms to women working full-time by day and taking classes at night. We also offer individual therapy, in person at our offices in Evanston and Skokie, and virtually anywhere in Illinois.
If any of this sounds like you, reach out. We would love to save you a seat.
Because you came to college to grow. Not to disappear.
Find Your Voice Counseling & Consultation PLLC offers individual, couples, family, child, and teen therapy, plus support groups, in Evanston (820 Davis St, Suite 455) and Skokie (5225 Old Orchard Rd, Suite 2), and virtually across Illinois. In-network with BCBS PPO, Aetna PPO, Cigna/Evernorth, and United PPO, with self-pay and sliding-scale options. Call (847) 232-6353 or email intake@findyourvoicecc.com to start a conversation.
Written by Tyler Jasper, M.A., LCPC
Fall Back in Love This Fall
Somewhere around the second week of September, a lot of couples look up and realize they have not really talked since June.
Not about the camp pickup schedule, or whose turn it is to call the pediatrician, or whether the porch furniture needs to come in before the first frost. About anything else. About each other.
Summer does that. It is loud and full and unstructured, and it turns most of us into logistics managers. Then school starts, the days get shorter, and the house goes quiet in a way that can feel peaceful, or can feel like two people sitting on opposite ends of the same couch, scrolling.
If that second version sounds familiar, this post is for you. Not because something is wrong. Because fall, of all seasons, is the one built for coming back to each other.
Why fall is the season for this
There is a reason people fall in love in autumn in every movie ever made. The light is softer. The pace slows. The pull is toward inside, toward warmth, toward the person across the table. Sweaters come out and so, if you let it, does a kind of tenderness that August never had room for.
Fall also has an ending built into it. Winter is coming, the year is closing, and something in us wants to take stock. Who am I with? Do I still feel close to them? When did we last laugh at the same thing?
Those questions can feel scary. They are actually an invitation.
What "falling out of love" usually is
Most couples who walk into our Evanston or Skokie offices are not out of love. They are out of contact.
Somewhere along the way the relationship became a very efficient partnership. Two competent adults running a household, raising kids, holding down jobs, keeping the calendar straight. Nothing dramatic went wrong. But the small bids for connection, the hand on the back in the kitchen, the "hey, come look at this," the ten minutes at the end of the night that used to be just for the two of you, got crowded out one at a time.
Relationship researchers call these bids, and they matter more than the big gestures. Couples who stay close do not necessarily have more date nights. They turn toward each other in the tiny moments, dozens of times a day. Couples who drift have usually just stopped noticing the bids, or stopped making them.
The good news is that this is fixable, and it does not require a grand romantic reboot. It requires attention.
Small ways to turn toward each other this fall
Take a walk with no destination. The Northwestern lakefill on a clear October afternoon, or the loop through the Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park while the leaves are turning. Walking side by side is easier than sitting face to face. Things get said on walks that never get said at the dinner table.
Ask a question you do not already know the answer to. Not "how was your day." Something like, "what are you looking forward to this fall?" or "what's been on your mind that you haven't said out loud?" Then actually listen to the answer without fixing it.
Bring back one ritual. Coffee together before the kids wake up. A standing Thursday takeout night from that place on Dempster. Reading in the same room. It does not have to be impressive. It has to be reliable.
Say the thing you have been assuming they know. "I still like you." "I noticed you handled that well." "I miss you, even though you're right here." Couples stop saying these things because they seem obvious. They are never obvious.
Notice what you have been holding. Resentment is the quiet killer of closeness, and it usually grows from things that felt too small to bring up. Fall is a good time to gently say, "there's something I've been carrying, and I don't want to carry it into winter."
When it is time to bring someone in
Sometimes the distance has a longer history than one busy summer. If conversations keep turning into the same argument, if one of you has stopped bringing things up because it never goes anywhere, if you feel more lonely inside the relationship than you would outside it, or if you simply cannot remember the last time you felt like a team, that is worth taking seriously.
Couples therapy is not the last stop before the end. For most couples we see, it is the place they finally got to say the true thing, and the place they learned how to hear it.
We're here, in Evanston and Skokie
At Find Your Voice Counseling & Consultation PLLC, we work with couples at every stage. Newly together and struggling to blend lives. Married a long time and quietly drifting. Parents who cannot find each other under the weight of everything else. Our approach is warm, direct, and culturally affirming, and our goal is not to referee. It is to help the two of you turn back toward each other.
Why Kids Fall Apart in the Third Week of School
The first day went fine.
New backpack, new shoes, a picture on the front steps. Your child walked into the building at Lincoln or Devonshire or Niles North without looking back, and you drove away thinking, okay. We did it.
Then week three arrived.
Now there are tears at drop-off. Stomachaches at 7:40 in the morning that clear up mysteriously by ten. A teenager who was excited about junior year and is suddenly silent at dinner, or snapping at everyone, or "sick" again on Thursday. And you are standing in the kitchen wondering what changed, because nothing changed. Nothing you can see.
If this is happening in your house right now, you are not alone, and your child is not broken. Mid-September is one of the busiest times of the year at our Evanston and Skokie offices, and it is not an accident.
Why now, and not the first day
The first week of school runs on adrenaline. Everything is new, teachers are gentle, expectations are low, and the novelty carries kids through. Nobody has to sustain anything yet.
By the third week, the novelty is gone and the real thing has started. Homework is real. The friend group has quietly sorted itself, and your child has figured out where they landed. The teacher has stopped being nice and started being a teacher. The 6:45 alarm is no longer a fresh start. It is just Tuesday, and Wednesday, and every day after that, stretching out toward June.
For a lot of kids, this is the moment their nervous system does the math. This is hard, and it is not going to stop being hard. The smoke alarm we wrote about in our post on child anxiety starts going off, not because school is dangerous, but because it is relentless.
Teens feel a version of this too, just with different words. For them it often shows up as exhaustion, irritability, or a sudden loss of interest in things they cared about in August. A sophomore at ETHS who was thrilled about marching band may now be "over it." That is not always laziness. Sometimes it is a kid who is drowning a little and does not know how to say so.
What helps, and what quietly makes it worse
The instinct, when your child is miserable at 7:40 a.m., is to make the morning easier. Let them stay home just this once. Skip the club. Write the note. Drive them instead of the bus.
Sometimes that is exactly right. A sick kid should stay home. But when the reason is dread rather than fever, every skipped day makes the next day harder. School anxiety is one of the fastest-growing fears there is, because avoidance works so well in the short term. The relief is immediate. The cost comes later.
What helps more is smaller and slower.
Name it without making it enormous. "The first weeks are exciting and then it gets hard. That's normal. It gets easier again, too." Kids need to hear that the slump is a phase, not a verdict.
Protect the unglamorous basics. Sleep is the whole ballgame in September. So is eating something before school. A child running on five hours and a granola bar will find everything scarier than it is.
Keep the going non-negotiable and the rest flexible. Your child goes to school. What you can negotiate is how. Maybe you walk to the door together for a week. Maybe they get five minutes in the car in the Skokie Public Library lot before heading in. Maybe a text at lunch. Support the going, without replacing it.
Give them something to look forward to that is not a screen. A Saturday morning at Lighthouse Beach before it gets cold. Ice cream after a hard week. Something that says, the week has an end and it is a good one. And watch yourself. Your own September is probably hard too. Kids read our stress like a weather report.
When it stops being a slump
Most third-week wobbles settle by October. But reach out if your child is missing school regularly, if the stomachaches and headaches are becoming a pattern, if a teen has pulled away from friends or stopped sleeping, or if the mornings have become a daily battle that leaves everyone in tears. That is not a phase to wait out. That is a kid who needs a hand.
We're here, in Evanston and Skokie
At Find Your Voice Counseling & Consultation PLLC, we work with kids, teens, and their parents through exactly this season. We help children build the skills to walk into a hard day, and we coach parents on how to support without accommodating, so the progress holds at home.
Teen Therapy in Evanston and Skokie: Supporting Teens Through Life's Biggest Years
Your teenager used to talk to you.
Then something shifted. They stopped coming to you with what was happening at school, closed their bedroom door more often, moved through the house like a ghost. You cannot tell if they are simply being a teenager, or if something deeper has taken hold. Anxiety. Stress. Sadness. The pressure to be someone they do not yet know how to be.
And you are watching from outside the glass, wanting to help and not knowing how.
Parenting a teen is a different kind of hard than parenting a child. You cannot fix it for them the way you once could. But the right support, at the right moment, can open a door that lets them find their own way through.
What the teenage years actually demand
The teenage brain is not broken. It is building. The same architecture that makes a fourteen-year-old capable of questioning everything, feeling everything, and wanting independence is also the thing that makes them vulnerable to overwhelm. Between social media, college pressure, friendship drama, identity questions, school workload, and just the pure biology of growing up, many teens are running on empty without a word for it.
Some of what they feel is ordinary growing pain. Some of it is a signal that something needs to shift. The two can look identical from the outside, which is partly why so many North Shore parents are unsure whether their teen needs support, or just time.
The honest answer is both. What matters is having someone trained to tell the difference, and to help your teen develop the tools they need to move through it.
The teenage years need witnesses
Therapy is not about fixing a broken teen. It is about creating a space where a teen can be wholly themselves without judgment, figure out what they actually think and feel underneath all the noise, and learn that the hard things they are moving through are survivable.
In Evanston and Skokie, teens are living the North Shore experience: strong schools, high expectations, diverse and vibrant communities, and also pressure. Lots of pressure. A good teen therapist meets that reality without minimizing it. They do not tell a stressed Evanston sophomore that everything is fine. They say, yes, this is hard, and here is what you can actually do about it.
At Find Your Voice Counseling & Consultation PLLC, we work with teens experiencing anxiety, depression, school stress and burnout, peer conflict, family conflict, identity exploration, self-esteem struggles, ADHD, emotional regulation difficulties, and life transitions. We meet each teen where they are, respecting their growing independence while helping them build real skills they can use in their actual lives.
We also work with parents. Not to fix your teen, but to help you understand what is happening, where your own worry is showing up, and how to support them in ways that strengthen rather than enable. The strongest teens have parents who can stay calm and curious when everything feels like it is falling apart.
When it is time to reach out
Consider connecting with a teen therapist if your teen seems withdrawn or isolated, if they have lost interest in things they used to love, if anxiety or sadness is keeping them from school or activities, if they are struggling with friendships or family relationships, if sleep or eating has shifted noticeably, or if you are simply noticing that they feel like they are drowning and do not know how to ask for help.
You do not need a crisis to reach out. Sometimes the moment of reaching out is how you prevent one.
We are here, in Skokie and Evanston
At Find Your Voice Counseling & Consultation PLLC, we create a safe space for your teen to be heard. Our therapists specialize in adolescent therapy and bring warmth, respect, and practical skill-building to every session. We work with teens individually, and we partner with families when that support matters.
We have offices in Evanston and in Skokie, plus virtual sessions anywhere in Illinois. We are in-network with BCBS PPO, Aetna PPO, Cigna/Evernorth, and United Healthcare, with self-pay and sliding-scale options available.
If your teen is struggling and you do not know where to start, reach out. We would love to hear what is happening and to help you both find the way through. Because the goal was never a teen who never struggles. The goal is a teen who knows, deep down, that they can get through the hard things and come out on the other side.
How to Help a Child With Anxiety, Without Feeding It
Your child is scared.
Not of anything you can see. Of the sleepover. The math test. The dog three houses down. The thought that you might not come back when you say you will.
And you would do anything to make it stop.
That instinct, to reach in and pull the fear out of the room, is one of the truest things about being a parent. It is also, sometimes, the very thing that teaches anxiety to stay.
This is not a blog about blame. It is a blog about relief. Because there is a difference between comforting a child and rescuing a child, and once you can feel that difference, so much becomes possible.
What anxiety actually is
Anxiety is not weakness, and it is not bad parenting. It is a smoke alarm.
A smoke alarm is a good thing to have in a house. The problem is when it goes off because the toast is a little dark. The alarm is not broken. It is just too sensitive, firing at things that were never going to hurt anyone.
An anxious child has a smoke alarm that goes off at ordinary life. The birthday party. The raised hand in class. The unfamiliar bathroom at a friend's house. Their body floods with the same chemicals it would use to outrun a bear, and there is no bear. Only a Tuesday.
They are not being dramatic. To them, the danger is real. Which is exactly why the answer is not to argue them out of the feeling, and not to build the whole family around avoiding it, either.
The trap of "let me just fix it"
Here is where love gets complicated.
When your child panics at bedtime, you lie down with them until they fall asleep. When they are afraid of the school drop-off, you let them stay home one more day. When they cannot order their own food, you order for them. When they ask you the same worried question for the ninth time, you answer it for the ninth time.
Every one of these is an act of love. And every one of these is what therapists call accommodation, the small ways a family rearranges itself around a child's fear.
Researchers who study childhood anxiety, including the team behind Yale's SPACE program, have found something both hard and hopeful. The more a family accommodates the anxiety, the more the anxiety tends to grow. Not because the parents did anything wrong. But because the child's brain quietly learns the lesson, I could not have handled that on my own. Good thing someone stepped in.
The fear never gets the chance to be proven wrong.
What to do instead: two sentences that change everything
You do not have to choose between "toughen up" and "let me fix it." There is a third road, and it runs right down the middle.
The most powerful thing you can say to an anxious child is built from two parts. Validation, and confidence. It sounds like this:
"I know this feels really scary. And I know you can handle it."
Read it again. Both halves have to be there.
The first half tells your child their feeling is real and you are not going to shame them for it. The second half tells them you believe in their ability to get through the hard thing, which is the exact belief anxiety is trying to steal.
Most of us are good at one half and terrible at the other. Some of us skip straight to "you're fine, there's nothing to worry about," and the child feels dismissed. Some of us drown in the first half, matching our child's panic with our own, and the child learns that even the grown-up thinks this is a disaster. The magic is in holding both at once. This is hard. You can do it.
A few more things that help:
Let them feel the feeling without rushing to end it. Discomfort is not an emergency. A child who learns that anxiety rises, crests, and passes on its own has learned something no reassurance can teach.
Shrink the accommodations slowly, together, and out loud. You do not rip away every support overnight. You pick one. You tell your child the plan in advance. "Starting Monday, you're going to order your own food. I'll be right there." Predictable, gentle, and firm.
Watch your own smoke alarm. Kids read us before they read the room. When you can stay calm in the face of their fear, you become the proof that the moment is survivable.
And notice your own story, too. So many of us are parenting through voices we inherited, a mother's voice, a teacher's voice, a culture's voice about what a "strong" child is supposed to look like. Untangling your child's anxiety sometimes means listening for the fear underneath your own.
When it is time to bring someone in
Some anxiety is the ordinary weather of growing up. But sometimes it stops being weather and starts being climate.
Consider reaching out for support if the fear is shrinking your child's world, dropping friendships, skipped school, abandoned activities they used to love. If it shows up in the body, as stomachaches, headaches, trouble sleeping. If the meltdowns are getting bigger, not smaller. Or if you, the parent, are exhausted from managing it all and quietly wondering whether you are making it worse.
You are not. You are noticing. That is where help begins.
We're here, in Skokie and Evanston
At Find Your Voice Counseling & Consultation PLLC, we work with kids, teens, and the families around them. Anxiety is one of the things we know best, and we treat it the way the research points us. Not just working with the child, but coaching the parents too, so the changes take root at home.
Our care is warm, practical, and culturally affirming. We meet families where they are, with no judgment about the accommodations you have been making, only a path forward from here.
And we have grown to meet you. You can now find us at our established office in Evanston (708 Church Street, Suite 248) and at our new Skokie location, two North Shore homes for the same work, plus virtual sessions anywhere in Illinois.
If your child is anxious and you are tired of guessing, reach out. We would love to hear what's happening in your house, and to help you find the way through.
Because the goal was never a child who is never afraid.
The goal is a child who knows, deep down, that they can be afraid, and handle it anyway.
Find Your Voice Counseling & Consultation PLLC offers child, teen, family, individual, and couples therapy in Skokie and Evanston, IL, and virtually across Illinois. In-network with BCBS PPO, Aetna PPO, Cigna/Evernorth, and United Healthcare, with self-pay and sliding-scale options. Reach out to start a conversation.