words by Andrea Wilkin, a transformational coach & author
What if the reason you’re feeling exhausted isn’t because you’re doing too little, but
because you’re carrying too much?
Not the obvious things like your overflowing inbox or endless to-do list. The invisible things, conversations you never had, grief you never fully processed, dissapointment you convinced yourself was no big deal… We live in a culture obsessed with adding more. More self-care, more supplements, more habits, more optimisation. Yet perhaps true wellness isn’t found in adding another thing to
our lives, but in gently putting down what no longer belongs there.
A few years ago, if you’d asked me whether I was carrying emotional baggage, I would probably have laughed. Not because I wasn’t carrying any, but because I genuinely couldn’t see it. Like many women, I was busy. Life was full. There were people to care for, responsibilities to manage, deadlines to meet and countless things demanding my attention. And besides, wasn’t everyone carrying something? Every one I knew had something they were carrying seamlessly, isn’t that whats expected of us?
It wasn’t until I began navigating some of my own significant endings, including the loss of both of my parents, that I realised how much emotional weight I had normalised. That’s the thing about emotional baggage, we rarely notice we are carrying it, and when we do, we just accept it as normal. Not because its hidden but we’ve become accustomed to its weight. It becomes a part of who we are and we adapt ourselves to carry it, we compensate for it and tell ourselves we’re fine. Yet despite all our efforts to appear fine, many of us feel exhausted, overwhelmed or quietly disconnected from ourselves. Its not something we feel comfortable admitting because that can feel like failure on some level. However we feel it, deeply and theres parts of us that feel easier to disconnect from than to fully embrace. Looking inward is rarely convenient, theres so many other things that need our attention, family, work, another task to complete, another reason why now isn’t the right time. There’s always something more urgent, something more productive, something that appears more worthy of our attention.
The truth is, acknowledging whats going on beneath the surface can feel very uncomfortable, we are asking ourselves to be vulnerable and we don’t know how deep that may take us – or if we’ll hold it together if we do go there. Sometimes it feels frightening, other times self-indulgent. However, what remains unacknowledged doesn’t simply disappear. Sometimes we hear a quiet voice that says ‘surely I should be over this by now?’ One of the things I’ve noticed through my work is that people rarely come to me because of what happened yesterday, more often its something that happened years ago. A relationship that ended, a bereavement, a friendship that changed, a divorce that unsettled family and friendship dynamics far more than expected or a dream that never unfolded. On the surface life has moved on, they’re functioning, working, caring for others, doing all the things that life requires of us. But underneath, theres a lingering heaviness that they can’t navigate or quite explain, as though on some level they are wading through treacle. The reason they can’t explain is simple…Nobody ever taught us how to put things down.
We are taught to do more, add more, keep going. We are expected to be resilient, to stay busy and to cope. Very few of us are taught how to acknowledge what we’re carrying before it becomes part of our normal. And we rarely notice we’re carrying it because we’ve become so accustomed to its weight.
Careers to build and maintain, children to raise, relationships to nurture, emails to answer and endless responsibilities demanding our attention. Many of us have become expert plate spinners and in many ways, ‘busy-ness’ protects us like armour, from ourselves. Emotional pain sits deeper than physical pain and doesn’t dissolve with avoidance. It lingers quietly until we have the courage to meet it. It’s expected by society to keep moving, to keep doing and we rarely stop to ask ourselves what emotional weight we may still be carrying. Even if we do allow ourselves to consider that question, do we then allow ourselves to sit with it and process the answer. The unseen often has more power over us than the seen. A physical wound heals with the right medical help in a couple of weeks – emotional wounds are a vastly different experience, they can be held onto for years quietly affecting many areas of our lives without us truly realising how. If we take it a little deeper we can no doubt see wounds our parents have carried for years, keeping themselves busy, wearing a mask whilst everyone around them avoids broaching the actual reason for fear of what could ensue. They normalised carrying it all too.
Over time, these experiences become woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. The challenge with emotional weight is we rarely recognise it for what it is. We think it should be obvious, surely we’d know if we were carrying something unresolved?
Emotional baggage doesn’t always announce itself though, it can slip quietly into our lives and become a part of who we think we are. Maybe it shows up as lack of trust, even when someone has given us no reason not to. If you’ve been hurt before you keep a part of yourself protected convincing yourself its safer not to need too much from anyone. Maybe you’ve become uncomfortable with joy, not because you don’t want happiness but past experience has taught you that life can change in an instant, so you wait unable to fully relax into good moments for fear they won’t last.
Has it become difficult to ask for help? You’ve become accustomed to being the strong one, the capable one, the one who holds everything together and vulnerability feels uncomfortable. Somewhere along the line you’ve learnt that strength means coping alone. The words ‘I’m fine’ have perhaps become an automatic response, however you’re anything but. Its not that you’re being dishonest, its that you’ve become disconnected from what you are truly feeling. The heaviness that lingers despite ticking all the wellness boxes and an exhaustion that rest doesn’t seem to lift.
A sense of shame can arise when we tell ourselves “I should be stronger, it wasn’t that bad, what’s wrong with me, why am I still bothered?” Yet, one of the greatest acts of self compassion is recognising that there is nothing wrong with you, you may simply be carrying something that has never been fully acknowledged. The sadness, the heaviness, it isn’t who you are, its something you’ve been carrying. Endings can change us more than we realise and unless we pause long enough to notice what we are carrying we continue adapting to their weight believing its simply who we are.
So, where do we go from here, adding another item to your already over flowing to-do list isn’t the answer, however creating small moments of awareness is. The first step is simply acknowledging…
“What am I carrying that no longer belongs to me?” It might be an expectation, a regret, a responsibility that isn’t yours to hold alone, a version of you that you’ve been trying to return to, or, an ending you’ve never fully allowed yourself to acknowledge, or even accept. Sometimes the answer can arrive quickly through a conversation with someone you trust, journaling, a walk in nature, or giving yourself the permission to sit with a feeling rather than rushing past or pushing through it. One of my favourite practices that I often return to is looking at the night sky – there’s something very humbling about being reminded how vast life is and how small we are within it. How brief and precious our time here really is, in these moments many of the things we’ve been gripping so tightly begin to soften. The guilt, shame, blame, the pressure to have it all figured out.
We were never meant to carry every hurt, disappointment, responsibility for the rest of our lives. The most compassionate thing we can do for ourselves is acknowledge what we’ve been holding and set it down, not because it didn’t matter, not because it wasn’t painful but because we matter too and we are not infinite. Life wants us to experience it, to feel deeply, love fully, grieve honestly and ultimately to keep moving forward a little lighter than before.
Perhaps wellness isn’t about becoming more, its about releasing what no longer belongs to us, so we can return to ourselves with a little more wisdom. Sometimes the greatest act of self-care isn’t adding another thing to your life. It’s finally giving yourself permission to release something. Maybe that’s where true freedom really begins.
AUTHOR BIO
Andrea Wilkin is a transformational coach and author. She helps women navigate life’s
endings, rebuild self-worth and reconnect with themselves after periods of loss and transition.
Her new book ‘Permission To Put It Down’, explores how the experiences we carry can
shape our lives and why healing truly begins when we learn to release guilt, shame and blame
and live fully. Her book is available on Amazon, here. You can find out more about Andrea’s work on her website: www.andreawilkin.com
