Oxygen for Women with Perry Janssen

You are not just carrying your life.You are carrying everything that keeps everyone else’s life running. In this episode, Perry names something many women feel but rarely articulate — the invisible load. This is not just about tasks or responsibilities. It is the constant mental tracking, emotional attunement, and anticipatory thinking that happens in the background of daily life. If you’ve ever felt tired without knowing why…If you’ve ever sat down to rest but couldn’t fully relax…If you’ve ever felt like your mind never truly turns off… This conversation is for you.

In this episode, Perry explores why so many women struggle to say no, ask for what they need, or speak up without guilt. She weaves together psychology, history, culture, and nervous system science to help you understand that your difficulty with boundaries is not a personal failure — it’s an adaptation. If you’ve ever rehearsed what you wanted to say and then softened it…If you’ve ever said “I’m fine” when you weren’t…If you’ve agreed to something that drained you and later felt resentful… This conversation is for you.

Oxygen for Women Podcast with Perry Janssen Boundaries are not hard because you are weak.They are hard because you were conditioned not to have them. In this episode, Perry explores why so many women struggle to say no, ask for what they need, or speak up without guilt. She weaves together psychology, history, culture, and nervous system science to help you understand that your difficulty with boundaries is not a personal failure — it’s an adaptation. If you’ve ever rehearsed what you wanted to say and then softened it…If you’ve ever said “I’m fine” when you weren’t…If you’ve agreed to something that drained you and later felt resentful… This conversation is for you.

Grief is not the neat stages we were taught to expect. It's waves, surprises, moments you think you're okay and then suddenly you're not. In this deeply personal episode, Perry shares her family's recent loss and decades of experience working with grief. She explores what grief actually feels like, why it doesn't move in straight lines, and how we learn to live with it without rushing ourselves out of it. If you've ever felt confused by your grief or wondered why it doesn't follow a predictable path, this conversation is for you.

For more than 30 years, women have sat across from Perry and shared their stories—their exhaustion, heartbreak, shame, anger, trauma, and the fear of being too much or never being enough. This episode distills the profound lessons learned from three decades of listening to women's pain. Perry shares that women's pain is not personal failure or weakness. It's often a response to living in a world that's asked women to bend, shrink, endure, and disappear to belong. This is not theory. It's truth learned from real lives, real bodies, real spirits, and real hearts.

Anger has been treated as something dangerous—something to avoid, fix, or suppress, especially for women. We were taught to be kind, accommodating, and to keep the peace, even when something inside said "this is not okay." But anger is not the enemy. It's one of the most intelligent emotions we have—communication, information, a signal that something matters, hurts, or needs attention. In this episode, Perry explores why women were taught not to feel anger, what happens when it goes underground, and how listening to anger can become one of the most powerful acts of self-care and self-respect.

So many women are trying to heal by being hard on themselves—judging their patterns, criticizing the parts of them that learned how to survive. But here's the truth: You don't heal by rejecting those parts or versions of you. You heal by understanding her, by listening, by honoring, and by offering her the safety and compassion she probably didn't have. If you've ever felt ashamed of your coping mechanisms, confused by your reactions, or frustrated that you're still stuck in patterns you thought should be past, this episode is for you. Perry explores why survival patterns aren't character flaws, why compassion isn't optional, and how to finally step out of self-attack and into healing.

This episode explores something incredibly important and profoundly disruptive to how most of us were taught to relate to ourselves: the way you speak to your body. This isn't woo-woo—it's based on decades of research from neuroscience, neuroimmunology, and behavioral medicine.

This episode tackles a question many women carry quietly and privately, often with shame: "I love my partner and my family, but I feel invisible. I'm on autopilot in my own life. I'm forgetting myself. Why do I feel resentful and empty when I have so much to be grateful for?" Perry explores the invisible pattern of self-abandonment that capable, caring women fall into, and offers a pathway back to yourself—without blame, confrontation, or leaving. If you've ever felt like you're living around your life instead of inside it, this conversation is for you.

Have you ever been told you're "too sensitive"? This episode is for every woman who has heard those words from a partner, parent, boss, colleague—or from that critical voice inside her own head. Perry dismantles the myth that sensitivity is a flaw and reframes it as intelligence, attunement, and sacred power. If you've been taught to numb, minimize, or apologize for feeling deeply, this conversation will remind you that your sensitivity is not something to fix—it's something the world desperately needs.

In this first Thursday Q&A episode, Perry tackles one of the most common questions she hears in her therapy practice: "How do I ask for what I need from my partner without triggering defensiveness or feeling like my needs are too much?" This episode explores the nervous system dynamics behind communication breakdown, offers practical body-based tools for regulation, and provides a clear framework for expressing needs in ways that invite connection instead of conflict.

Welcome to the relaunch of Oxygen for Women! After pausing during the pandemic, Perry Jansen returns with a renewed mission: to remind women they are not alone in their struggles. This pilot episode explores the hidden epidemic of loneliness, the healing power of community, and why connection is literally medicine for our bodies and souls. If you've been giving more than you've got and are ready for revolutionary self-care, this is your invitation to breathe, restore, and reclaim your inner oxygen.

Welcome to Oxygen for Women — the space to finally exhale the pressure, reconnect with your truth, and remember who you truly are in the midst of life’s challenges. Hosted by Perry Janssen, psychotherapist, author, emotional intelligence and somatic expert, this podcast is your weekly breath of renewal — where psychology meets spirituality, and healing meets real life. Here, we explore what women are really facing today: stress, burnout, people-pleasing, perfectionism, emotional exhaustion, relationship challenges, the menopausal festival, and the longing to live with more ease, vitality, and self-connection. Each soulful episode offers inspiration, emotional insight, and critical tools for revolutionary self-care - the kind to restore your energy, lighten the challenges, and remember that your Self is sacred. If you’ve been giving more than you’ve got, this is your invitation to breathe, restore, and reclaim your inner oxygen. Keywords: women’s empowerment, somatic healing, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, burnout recovery, self-care, self-love, women’s psychology, healing, spiritual growth