Psychiatric Therapy Won’t Heal What Feminism Broke

The Cost of Having It All

I have spent my career as a psychiatrist sitting across from women in deep distress. Women who, by all modern feminist measures, have done everything right—high-achieving, independent, and financially stable—yet arrive in therapy inconsolable. Best-case scenario? They regret not spending more time with their kids. Worst case? Forty years of palpable pain.

I say this with compassion, but also with anger. Women have been sold a lie. The messaging is relentless: You can do anything you want as long as you want it badly enough.Kids are optional. Career is everything. The right man will just show up when you’re ready.

When they wake up in their mid-30s realizing their deepest desires were put on hold for too long? The same voices tell them it’s just society making them feel this way. That they must “reframe their narrative.” That therapy can help them be happy with what they have.

I know this lie because I used to believe it, too.

Where I’m Coming From

I grew up in Norway, the feminist utopia of the world. Like most girls there, I was raised with egalitarian ideals. I studied medicine, trained in psychiatry, and worked alongside brilliant women who had been given every opportunity to succeed. Yet, there were so many we couldn’t help.

It wasn’t until I had my first child that I understood it. The instinct to nurture and nest is undeniable. My priorities shifted overnight. Suddenly, I saw my female patients with new eyes. The women I had been treating for years—burnout, anxiety, unexplained fatigue—were all presenting with the same sets of symptoms. At first, I assumed it was just coincidence. But over time, a clear pattern emerged.

Two Archetypes, Two Outcomes

The women who came to me in their 20s often presented with anxiety and panic attacks. Many had been pushed into academic and career paths that didn’t truly fulfil them, chasing an idea of success that was supposed to make them happy. They looked up to characters like Rory Gilmore—effortlessly achieving, hyper-intelligent, and indifferent to male attention. In reality, very few women live up to this ideal.

Beneath their anxiety was something deeper: an unmet emotional need for attachment, love, and intimacy. They weren’t consciously aware of it, but they were trying to fill that void with academic achievement and ambition. I saw how much male attention mattered to them because when they had a successful date, they came into therapy glowing. When the guy disappeared—he was, after all, a 20-something in college—they were in despair. Some would be misdiagnosed with rapid-cycling bipolar disorder.

By their 30s, a different picture emerged. These women were no longer anxious—they were exhausted. High achievers, thriving in their careers, with long-term boyfriends who saw them as a ticket to freedom—men who viewed these women as a way to avoid commitment.

They had been told “you have plenty of time for family, you can always decide later.” “Having kids is right for some women, but wrong for just as many other women.” “It’s imperative that financial independence precedes whatever comes next.” “Focus on yourself, and the right man will follow”.

Then, suddenly, something shifted. The feminist narratives they’ve internalized fail to align with the increasing intrinsic desires for connection and family, as the hormonal feedback of declining ovarian reserves hits in their 30s. The inevitable motivational conflict between “what is” and “what should be” manifests differently than it did in their 20s. Now, instead of panic attacks, they suffer from fatigue, burnout, and a growing sense of meaninglessness.

The next promotion doesn’t feel like a victory. They look around and see friends getting married and having children. Their relationships? Stuck. Their partners, drawn to their independence and career focus, had no interest in marriage or family life. And now, as they sit across from me, I see the same look time and time again—confusion, grief, and a desperate attempt to make sense of why they feel this way when they’ve done everything right.

And what do they do? They turn to therapy. They say, I don’t know why I feel so exhausted. Why nothing brings me joy anymore. They are prescribed medication. They are told to reframe their expectations. They waste more of their fertile years in therapy. It is easier to believe more lies, than to adjust one’s worldview.

The Feminist Lie

The root of her distress lay in the belief that achieving academic success could fill the void left by unmet emotional needs. Rather than confront this reality, feminist-influenced therapy pushes her to reframe her dissatisfaction as a product of internalized societal expectations. This postmodernist approach, common in the majority progressively leaning psychological community, assumes that distress stems from internalized narratives rather than external realities.

Feminism was never a benevolent movement that simply lost its way. It was, from the beginning, an ideology of resentment. It tells women they must view men with suspicion. That they should never be vulnerable, never sacrifice, never trust. By equating success with male-dominated spheres, it wires women to view any trade-off as a loss and at every turn, resentfully ask, “Why should I, and not him?”

This ideology has profoundly shaped the way women approach relationships. They are told to “love themselves before they can love someone else.” That they should spend years alone, single, working on self-acceptance. But how does that work in practice? If a woman is overweight, does standing naked in front of a mirror and repeating “I love myself” change anything? Rarely, because there are inherent truths and knowledge. And denying that things can be better or worse is a postmodernist fantasy.

Feminism, like any pathogen, infects the worldview of those who adopt it. Depending on personality structure and competence level, living by its principles leads to psychopathology unresponsive to medication. It warps decision-making and pits women against their own psychological needs and against the opposite sex—without whom these needs can never be fulfilled.

At its core, feminism is an ideology of resentment. It indoctrinates girls from a young age, stunting their emotional maturity by teaching them to blame men and societal norms instead of taking responsibility and recognizing men’s struggles and sacrifices.

This betrayal of their psychological needs creates deep motivational conflicts, leading to psychiatric symptoms that ripple through families and communities. Until we eradicate this poison, generation after generation of women will continue to suffer its consequences.

The Reality Women Need to Hear

The women who seem to have the best outcomes—the ones I rarely see in therapy—are those who willingly saw their choices through a family-oriented lens from an early age. Who dated with intention. Who chose careers that were flexible. Who didn’t buy into the feminist notion that to sacrifice for family is to be oppressed.

This is because our biology is not a social construct. The deepest yearnings of a woman’s heart are not simply internalized narratives that can be cognitively “reframed.”

Despite what we are constantly told by social media, women receive endless consideration and encouragement to achieve their career goals and, in the Western world, every possible accommodation to continue progressing after childbirth. Norway, for example, is praised for giving women the perfect work-life balance. And yet, their mental health statistics, divorce rates, and fertility rates are increasingly devastating.

Norwegian women’s poor mental health is evidence that women’s well-being cannot be improved by playing the perfect game of chess with the hours of the day. The key is finding fulfilment through ungrudging sacrifice—giving freely without resenting and receiving unconditional love in return—while daring to take the necessary risks, for only through risk can we achieve the highest yield.

Hannah Spier, MD

Psychiatrist