When You’re Tired of Holding Everything Together

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that doesn’t always look like exhaustion.

You may still be functioning well. You answer the messages, remember the appointments, take care of what needs to be done. You show up for your family, your work, your relationships. From the outside, your life may even look quite manageable.

And yet, somewhere underneath all of that competence, you may feel tired in a way that sleep doesn’t completely resolve.

Sometimes what exhausts us is not simply how much we are doing. It is how much we are holding.

We hold responsibilities, of course. But we also hold other people’s needs and emotions. We anticipate what might go wrong. We remember what others forget. We notice subtle shifts in the people around us. We manage tension, maintain connection, make decisions, and quietly keep things moving.

After a while, this way of being can become so familiar that we stop recognizing it as effort.

When competence becomes a way of coping

Many women I work with are remarkably capable.

They have learned how to function through difficult periods, care for others, solve problems, and continue moving forward even when something inside them is struggling.

These capacities are real strengths.

But sometimes our greatest strengths also become the places where we learn to leave ourselves.

The part of you that learned to anticipate everyone else’s needs may have once helped you feel safe or connected. The part that stays organized may have learned that things fall apart if you don’t take responsibility. The part that keeps going may genuinely believe there is no room to stop.

From an IFS-informed perspective, we might become curious about these parts rather than trying to eliminate them.

Instead of asking, Why can’t I just relax? we might ask:

What does the part of me that cannot relax believe would happen if it stopped?

That is a very different question.

It moves us away from judging ourselves and toward understanding ourselves.

Your body may know before your mind does

We often think we need to understand what is happening before we can change it.

But the body frequently knows long before we have words.

You may notice your shoulders lifting toward your ears. Your jaw tightening. Your breathing becoming shallow. A heaviness in your chest. A knot in your stomach. Or simply a vague feeling that you cannot completely settle, even when nothing is immediately wrong.

These experiences are not necessarily problems to fix.

Sometimes they are information.

Your body may be communicating something that has not yet reached conscious language:

This is too much.

I need space.

I am tired.

I don’t want to carry this anymore.

Mindfulness can give us enough quiet to begin hearing those messages.

Not everything you carry belongs to you

One of the questions I return to often in my work is:

What are you carrying that may not actually be yours to carry?

For women especially, the boundaries can become surprisingly difficult to see.

There is caring for someone, and then there is feeling responsible for their emotional state.

There is being dependable, and then there is believing you cannot disappoint anyone.

There is loving your family, and then there is slowly disappearing inside the needs of everyone around you.

There is being strong, and then there is forgetting that strength can also include receiving, resting, asking, grieving, and not knowing.

Healing does not necessarily mean abandoning responsibility.

Sometimes it simply means learning to distinguish between what is yours to hold and what you have learned to hold for everyone else.

You don’t have to solve anything in this moment

This is one of the reasons I value meditation and embodied practices alongside psychotherapy.

There are moments when insight is important. There are also moments when another explanation is not what we need.

We need an experience.

An experience of not performing.

Of not solving.

Of not anticipating the next thing.

Of noticing what is happening inside without immediately doing something about it.

Even a few minutes of this can begin to change our relationship with ourselves.

Not because all of our responsibilities disappear, but because for a moment we are no longer abandoning ourselves in order to meet them.

And perhaps that is where something begins to soften.

Not with the demand to become less caring, less responsible, or less capable.

But with the realization that you are also one of the people deserving of your attention.

If these words resonate, my guided meditation When You’re Tired of Holding Everything Together (on Insight Timer, check out under Victoria Pekhnik’s Tracks) was created as a companion to this reflection, a quiet space to move out of thinking for a little while and listen to what your body and inner world may be asking you to notice.

Victoria Pekhnik, LMFT offers depth-oriented, relational and integrative psychotherapy for adult women, with in-person therapy in Connecticut and online therapy throughout Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts.

Going Deeper

If you recognize yourself in this experience, you may want to learn more about how I approach therapy when insight alone hasn't created the change you're looking for.

Learn more about my approach to therapy

I offer depth-oriented psychotherapy for women who want to understand not only what they are experiencing, but the deeper emotional and relational patterns that may be shaping it.
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