What If You Could Put Some of This Down?
There’s a weight you’ve been carrying. Maybe for months. Maybe for years. Maybe for so long you’ve forgotten what it feels like to move through the world without it.
At Televero Health, we often meet people who have been carrying emotional burdens for extended periods – managing painful feelings, difficult circumstances, challenging relationships, or traumatic memories entirely on their own. When we ask what brings them to therapy now, many say some version of: “I’m just so tired. I can’t carry this alone anymore.”
Maybe you recognize this exhaustion. The feeling that you’ve been holding something heavy for too long. That your arms are shaking from the effort. That you’re not sure how much longer you can continue before something gives way.
What if you didn’t have to carry all of it alone? What if you could put some of this weight down – not abandon your responsibilities or magically solve all problems, but share the emotional burden you’ve been shouldering by yourself?
What might become possible then?
The Invisible Weight
The weight you’re carrying might not be visible to others. Unlike physical burdens that can be seen and measured, emotional weight often remains hidden – sometimes even from ourselves. We adapt to it gradually, adjusting our expectations, limiting our movements, forgetting what it feels like to be unburdened.
This weight might include:
- Unprocessed grief or loss that you’ve had to “move on” from before you were ready
- Chronic worry or anxiety that keeps your nervous system constantly activated
- Emotional caretaking for others while neglecting your own needs
- Traumatic experiences you’ve never had space to fully acknowledge or process
- Persistent stress from challenging circumstances that show no signs of changing
- The burden of keeping up appearances when you’re struggling internally
- Shame or self-judgment that colors how you see yourself and your life
One client described their realization: “I didn’t even recognize how heavy things had become until I finally started talking about it in therapy. It was like I’d been walking around with a backpack full of rocks for so long that I thought the exhaustion and limited movement was just normal. I’d forgotten what it felt like to move freely.”
Another shared: “I kept telling myself it wasn’t that bad, that other people had it worse, that I should be able to handle it. But eventually I had to admit that regardless of how it compared to anyone else’s burden, mine was crushing me. And I couldn’t keep pretending it wasn’t.”
This invisibility often makes the weight harder to address. Without external validation or recognition, you might question whether your burden is “real” or whether you’re just not strong enough to carry what others seem to manage without complaint.
How We Learn to Carry It All
Most people who find themselves carrying too much didn’t consciously choose this pattern. It developed gradually, shaped by experiences, messages, and circumstances:
Early responsibilities often create a foundation for later patterns of overcarrying. If you had to be the “strong one” in your family, take care of others at a young age, or manage adult-level problems as a child, you likely developed a capacity for carrying heavy burdens – and an expectation that you should.
Cultural and family messages about self-sufficiency, strength, or the unacceptability of certain emotions teach many people to internalize struggles rather than share them. “Don’t air your dirty laundry,” “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” “Don’t be so sensitive” – these messages encourage solitary carrying rather than connection and support.
Lack of safe outlets for emotional expression or vulnerability can lead to habitual containment of feelings and experiences. If sharing your struggles led to judgment, dismissal, or additional burdens in the past, you likely learned to keep them to yourself.
The gradual accumulation of responsibilities, stressors, or painful experiences can create a weight that builds so incrementally you don’t notice how heavy it’s become until you’re struggling to stand beneath it.
One person reflected: “I grew up in a household where no one talked about hard things. When something painful happened, everyone just carried on as if nothing had changed. I learned to do the same – to pack each difficult experience away and keep moving. It wasn’t until my 40s that I realized how much weight I’d accumulated that I’d never processed or shared.”
Another described: “As the oldest child in an immigrant family, I was translating for my parents at doctor’s appointments when I was eight years old. I was helping them navigate systems they didn’t understand. I was the responsible one, the capable one. That pattern just continued into adulthood – everyone leaned on me, and I never learned how to lean on anyone else.”
These patterns make sense as adaptations to your specific circumstances and experiences. They likely helped you survive and even succeed in certain contexts. The problem isn’t that you developed these capacities, but that they may have become rigid defaults rather than flexible choices – leading you to carry weights that are too heavy for too long.
The Cost of Carrying Too Much
While the ability to endure difficulty is a genuine strength, carrying too much for too long extracts significant costs:
Physical depletion emerges as your body responds to the chronic strain. This might manifest as persistent fatigue, tension-related pain, sleep disturbances, or increased vulnerability to illness as resources that would support immune function are diverted to managing chronic stress.
Emotional numbing often develops as a protective response when feelings become too intense or overwhelming to process alongside everyday functioning. This numbing might appear as disconnection from both difficult and positive emotions – a general flattening of emotional experience.
Reduced capacity for joy, creativity, spontaneity, and connection naturally results when so much of your energy is consumed by carrying your burdens. There’s simply less bandwidth available for the expansive and generative aspects of life.
Narrowed possibility emerges as carrying heavy weight requires you to limit your movements – both literally and metaphorically. Certain options or opportunities may seem inaccessible or too risky when you’re already at or near your capacity.
Increasing isolation often accompanies long-term solo carrying, as the gap between your internal experience and what you feel able to share with others grows wider. This isolation further compounds the weight, creating a cycle that’s difficult to interrupt without support.
One client described their experience: “I was so focused on just getting through each day that I didn’t realize how much my world had shrunk. I wasn’t doing anything I enjoyed anymore. I wasn’t connected to people in any real way. I was just surviving, not living. And I’d been in that state for so long I thought it was normal.”
Another reflected: “The physical toll was what finally got my attention. My doctor kept finding stress-related health issues – migraines, digestive problems, high blood pressure. My body was basically screaming what my mind wouldn’t admit: that I was carrying too much and had been for years.”
These costs aren’t signs of weakness or failure. They’re natural consequences of carrying weights that are too heavy for one person to bear alone – weights that often need to be shared or processed rather than just endured.
What Keeps Us Carrying
Even when the costs become apparent, many people find it difficult to put down burdens they’ve been carrying. This resistance often stems from beliefs or fears that have developed alongside the carrying pattern:
The belief that sharing the weight means burdening others can create reluctance to reach out, particularly for those who prioritize others’ wellbeing over their own. “I don’t want to dump my problems on someone else” becomes a barrier to connection and support.
Fear that putting something down means it will never be picked up again can keep people locked in carrying patterns, particularly around grief or difficult emotions. There’s a sense that if you allow yourself to fully feel or express something painful, you might be completely overwhelmed or unable to function.
Identity attachment to being “the strong one” can make sharing burdens feel threatening to your sense of self. If your identity has formed around your capacity to carry weight, what does it mean about you if you acknowledge you can’t carry it all?
Mistrust based on past experiences of vulnerability being met with dismissal, judgment, or exploitation can create legitimate caution about sharing your burdens. If reaching out has led to additional pain in the past, solitary carrying might feel like the safer option.
The illusion of control that comes from managing everything yourself can be difficult to relinquish, even when it’s causing suffering. There’s comfort in at least knowing exactly how things are being handled, even if that handling is depleting you.
One person shared: “I kept telling myself I was protecting others by not sharing my struggles. But honestly, I was also protecting my image of myself as the capable one, the one who had it all together. Admitting I was drowning meant reconsidering who I thought I was.”
Another reflected: “After my previous therapist dismissed what I was going through, I decided I was better off handling things alone. It took years before I was willing to try again with someone new. The fear of being invalidated again was almost worse than the weight I was carrying by myself.”
Understanding these barriers doesn’t mean they should determine your choices, but it does allow you to approach them with compassion rather than self-judgment. They’re natural responses to your specific history and circumstances – and they can shift with new experiences and support.
Putting It Down Doesn’t Mean Letting Go of Everything
One common misconception about “putting down the weight” is that it means abandoning responsibilities, ignoring problems, or magically resolving all difficulties. This all-or-nothing thinking keeps many people locked in unsustainable carrying patterns.
In reality, putting down emotional weight often looks more like:
- Sharing the emotional burden without necessarily changing external circumstances. The situation might remain the same, but you’re no longer facing it completely alone.
- Processing feelings you’ve been containing or avoiding, allowing them to move through you rather than remain stuck within you.
- Challenging beliefs about what you “should” be able to handle alone or how struggles “should” affect you.
- Developing discernment about which weights are yours to carry and which belong to others or systems.
- Creating space between yourself and your burdens – seeing them as something you’re experiencing rather than who you fundamentally are.
One client described their realization: “I thought therapy would mean stopping all my caregiving responsibilities for my parent with dementia. But what actually happened was I learned to carry the practical responsibilities differently – with support, with boundaries, with more self-care. I didn’t abandon the situation; I just stopped carrying it in a way that was destroying me.”
Another shared: “Putting down the weight didn’t mean my grief disappeared. It meant I finally gave myself permission to actually feel it instead of constantly pushing it away and pretending I was fine. Paradoxically, allowing myself to fully experience the sadness eventually made it less heavy, not more.”
This more nuanced understanding of “putting it down” creates possibilities that all-or-nothing thinking obscures. You don’t have to choose between carrying everything alone or abandoning your values and commitments. There are many ways to carry differently – more sustainably, more selectively, and with support.
Beginning to Put It Down
If you’ve been carrying too much for too long, how do you begin to put some of it down? While everyone’s process is unique, certain approaches tend to create movement where there has been stagnation:
Naming what you’re carrying is often a powerful first step. Simply acknowledging to yourself the full weight of what you’ve been managing – without minimizing or comparing it to others’ burdens – can create space for change.
Identifying one small piece to put down first makes the process more manageable than trying to shift everything at once. This might be a specific worry, a particular relationship dynamic, or a self-critical belief that adds to your burden.
Finding safe spaces to share what you’ve been carrying alone – whether with a therapist, trusted friend, support group, or spiritual community – creates the container for a different kind of carrying.
Practicing self-compassion for both the carrying and the struggle to put things down acknowledges the complex reality of these patterns. There’s often grief, fear, or uncertainty involved in changing long-established ways of being.
Creating small experiments in carrying differently allows you to test new possibilities without feeling you have to change everything at once. These might include asking for help with a specific task, sharing a feeling you’d normally keep private, or taking time for rest when you’d typically push through.
One person described their approach: “I started by just admitting to myself how exhausted I was. Then I made a list of everything I was carrying – all the responsibilities, worries, and emotional burdens. Just seeing it on paper helped me realize no wonder I was tired! No one person should have to carry all that alone. Then I picked one thing – just one – to try carrying differently.”
Another shared: “For me, it began with allowing myself to actually feel what I’d been pushing away for years. I’d been so focused on ‘staying strong’ that I never processed any of the losses or disappointments. My therapist created a safe space where I could finally let myself experience those emotions without being completely overwhelmed by them.”
These beginnings don’t require dramatic external changes. They start with internal shifts in awareness, permission, and possibility – creating small openings that can gradually expand into new ways of carrying what truly matters while putting down what doesn’t serve you or others.
What Becomes Possible
When you begin to put down weights you’ve been carrying alone, new possibilities emerge – not just for relief from burden, but for a fundamentally different way of being in the world:
Renewed energy becomes available for what truly matters to you, as resources previously consumed by carrying alone can be redirected toward meaningful engagement, creativity, and connection.
Authentic relationships become more possible when you’re no longer hiding significant parts of your experience. The connections that develop or deepen through appropriate vulnerability often provide ongoing support that prevents future accumulation of solitary weight.
Expanded capacity for joy, play, rest, and presence naturally emerges when you’re not constantly straining under excessive burdens. These experiences aren’t luxuries – they’re essential aspects of a fully human life.
Greater discernment about what’s yours to carry and what isn’t allows you to invest your limited energy where it genuinely serves your values rather than dispersing it across burdens that belong to others or systems.
Modeling different possibilities for others who may be carrying too much themselves creates ripple effects beyond your individual experience. Your willingness to put down unsustainable weights can give others permission to examine their own carrying patterns.
One client reflected after several months of therapy: “I didn’t realize how much the weight was limiting me until I started putting some of it down. It’s like I’ve been living in a small, dark room for years, and now the walls are expanding and light is coming in. I have energy for things I care about. I feel connected to people in ways I hadn’t in years. I’m not just surviving anymore – I’m actually living.”
Another shared: “The most surprising thing is how putting down some of what I was carrying has actually made me more effective at handling what truly matters. I’m not wasting energy on things I can’t control or burdens that aren’t mine. I’m more present, more discerning, and more sustainable in how I approach challenges.”
What if you could put some of this down? Not everything at once. Not all your responsibilities or commitments. But some of the emotional weight you’ve been carrying alone. Some of the beliefs that keep you isolated in your struggles. Some of the burdens that legitimately belong to others or systems rather than to you individually.
What might become possible then?
You don’t have to carry it all alone. Begin putting some of it down today.