The weight you carried was real. And you are allowed to put it down.
By Abi Beri | Somatic Therapist, Dublin, Naas & Newbridge
You were the responsible one.
The one who noticed when things were falling apart and quietly started holding them together. The backup parent. The peacekeeper. The one who knew where everyone’s school shoes were, who needed to eat, and whether the mood in the house was about to shift.
You learned, very young, that someone had to be the adult in the room. And you decided it might as well be you.
If something in you just exhaled — or felt a familiar tightness in your chest — then this post is for you.
Eldest daughter syndrome is finally being talked about, trending on TikTok, featured in major media, even showing up in Taylor Swift lyrics. And for good reason. The experience of being parentified as a child — of carrying emotional and practical responsibilities that belonged to the adults — leaves deep marks that persist into adulthood.
As a somatic therapist working with clients across Ireland — in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge, and online — I see the effects of eldest daughter syndrome regularly. The burnout. The perfectionism. The inability to rest. The chronic over-giving that leaves nothing for yourself.
Let me explain what this pattern is, what it costs, and most importantly, how to heal it.
What Is Eldest Daughter Syndrome?
Eldest daughter syndrome is not a clinical diagnosis. You will not find it in the DSM. But the pattern it describes is real, widely recognised by therapists, and increasingly validated by research.
It refers to the experience of firstborn daughters (or the daughter who took on the responsible role, regardless of birth order) who carry disproportionate emotional and practical burdens within their family from a young age.
This might look like: caring for younger siblings as a fundamental part of family life, not just occasionally. Being the one your mother confided in — hearing adult concerns before you were equipped to hold them. Mediating conflict. Tracking everyone’s emotional state. Managing the household in visible or invisible ways.
The clinical term for this is parentification: when a child takes on responsibilities — emotional or practical — that properly belong to adults.
Research shows that girls between five and fourteen spend 40% more time on domestic work than boys of the same age. And when there are multiple children, the eldest daughter often bears the brunt — regardless of whether she has older brothers. Cultural expectations about female caregiving start young and run deep.
Why Does It Happen?
Eldest daughter syndrome does not require bad parents. It happens in all kinds of families, for all kinds of reasons.
Parents who are overwhelmed, unwell, grieving, or simply stretched too thin. Single-parent households where there is too much to do and too few hands. Cultural contexts where female caregiving is normalised. Family systems under stress — financial, medical, relational.
And sometimes it is subtler than that. Sometimes it happens simply because a sensitive, aware child notices what needs doing and starts doing it. Because she has the capacity to hold things, and no one explicitly tells her she does not have to.
The eldest daughter often becomes the one who carries because she can. Her gifts — empathy, awareness, responsibility — get recruited too early, for purposes that are not hers.
It is not a failing. It is an adaptation. The problem is not that she became responsible. The problem is what it cost her.
What It Costs: The Long-Term Effects
Growing up too fast leaves marks. Here are some of the most common effects I see in clients in my Dublin, Naas and Newbridge practices:
Chronic over-responsibility. Difficulty delegating. Doing everything yourself because no one else will do it right (or at all). A sense that if you stop holding things together, everything will collapse.
Perfectionism. Not because you love being perfect, but because you learned that mistakes had consequences — for everyone. So you stopped making them. Or at least, you stopped letting anyone see them.
Difficulty setting boundaries. When you have been the one everyone relies on since childhood, saying no feels like abandonment. Like betrayal. So you keep saying yes — even when you have nothing left.
Burnout. Not just work burnout, but life burnout. The exhaustion of decades of carrying, managing, anticipating, responding. A tiredness that rest does not fix.
Relationship patterns. Becoming the caretaker in friendships and romantic relationships. Attracting partners who need mothering. Resentment that builds because the dynamic feels familiar but unfair.
Inability to receive. Discomfort when others try to help. A sense that your needs are less important, or that receiving makes you weak or burdensome.
Lost sense of self. When you have spent your life attuned to what everyone else needs, it can be hard to know what you want. What brings you joy. Who you are when you are not managing someone else.
The Nervous System Pattern
Here is what makes eldest daughter syndrome particularly stubborn: it is not just psychological. It is somatic. Physical. Wired into your nervous system.
When you grow up in a state of chronic responsibility — always scanning, always managing, always ready to respond — your autonomic nervous system adapts. It learns that vigilance is survival. That rest is dangerous. That letting your guard down might mean everything falls apart.
This is why you cannot relax even when you have time.
Why a day off gets filled with cleaning, organising, doing.
Why stillness feels uncomfortable — or even threatening.
Your nervous system is doing what it learned to do. It is still waiting for the next crisis. Still scanning for who needs what. Still ready to spring into action.
This is not a character flaw. It is not just how you are. And crucially, it can change. The nervous system is plastic. It can learn new patterns. But it learns through experience, not through understanding. You cannot think your way out of a nervous system pattern — you have to feel your way out.
The Mother Line Connection
Eldest daughter syndrome does not appear from nowhere. It often passes through the mother line.
Your mother may have been an eldest daughter herself. Or she may have had her own unmet needs, her own overwhelm, her own patterns that spilled onto you because she had no other container.
This is not about blame. Your mother was probably doing the best she could with what she had. And her mother before her.
But patterns travel through generations. The expectation that women carry. The normalisation of female sacrifice. The invisibility of emotional labour. These are not just personal experiences — they are ancestral.
In my family constellation work, I often see multiple generations of eldest daughters: women who held too much, too young, who never got to be children, who gave until there was nothing left. The pattern repeats until someone becomes conscious of it.
You can be the one who breaks the chain. Not by carrying more, but by putting it down.
How to Heal: A Somatic Approach
Healing eldest daughter syndrome requires working with the body, not just the mind. Here is what helps:
Recognise the pattern without shame. You are not broken. You adapted. Your sensitivity and capacity to hold were recruited too early — that is not your fault. Compassion for yourself is the first step.
Work with the nervous system. Your body needs to learn that rest is safe. That you do not have to hold everything. That the world will not collapse if you stop managing it. Somatic therapy, breathwork, and body-based practices help retrain these deep patterns.
Practice receiving. Let someone else hold the door. Accept help when offered. Notice the discomfort — and stay with it. Receiving is a practice, and it gets easier.
Set boundaries without guilt. You are allowed to say no. You are allowed to let other people figure it out. The family system will not collapse — and if it wobbles, that is not your responsibility to fix.
Grieve what you lost. You are allowed to be sad about your childhood. To be angry. To wish it had been different. Grieving is part of healing.
Work with the mother line. Family constellation work can help you see the patterns you inherited and consciously choose what to carry forward and what to lay down.
A Practice to Try
Here is a simple somatic practice for eldest daughters:
Sit somewhere quiet. Feel your body supported by the surface beneath you.
Bring your attention to your shoulders. Notice if they are lifted, braced, carrying.
Imagine you can set something down. You do not have to know what it is. Just imagine a weight lifting from your shoulders — the weight of responsibility, of vigilance, of being the one who holds it all together.
Say silently: I can put this down. It was never mine to carry.
Notice what happens in your body.
I have created a full guided meditation for eldest daughters — a 45-minute somatic journey through the pattern, the cost, and the healing. It includes a 12-minute guided practice to help you lay down the weight.
Working Together
If you recognise yourself in these words — if you have spent your life carrying weight that was never yours — somatic therapy can help.
I work with clients in person in Dublin, Naas and Newbridge, and online throughout Ireland and internationally. We work with the nervous system patterns that keep you stuck in hypervigilance. We explore the mother line and ancestral patterns. And we practice — in the body, not just the mind — laying down the weight.
You did enough. You were always enough. And you can rest now.
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