When Being the Strong One Starts to Hurt

Some people grow up learning that they can cope with almost anything. They find a way through, they manage, they hold things together. Other people see them as strong, capable, steady. And in many ways, they are. They get on with things. They don’t tend to ask for help. They’ve been doing that for a very long time.

Often the people I work with reach a point — usually in mid-life — where this way of coping begins to feel heavier. The body and the emotional life start to ask for something different. The strategies that once protected and supported you begin to feel less natural, less easeful. Something inside begins to stir.

For many, this goes back to childhood.Sometimes a family simply wasn’t able to reach the child emotionally in the way children need. Not dramatically. Just a sense of being slightly unseen in the emotional life of the home.

And because a child has no reference point, they assume:

“This is just how things are.This is how I am meant to be.”

So the child adapts.And those adaptations continue into adulthood.

Many of the people who come to me have:

• Focused on others rather than themselves

• Become naturally responsible, competent and reliable

• Learned to manage emotions inwardly, quietly, privately

• Grown used to “just getting on with it”

They don’t complain.They don’t want to burden anyone.They don’t want others to see them struggling.

Over time, this can lead to:

• Fatigue

• A sense of being slightly alone inside

• Feeling unsure what you like or want

• A subtle sadness or lostness

• The quiet thought: “I should be happy… and yet something feels missing.”

This is often the moment when someone comes to therapy.And I am always relieved when they do — because this is the right place for them.

You were never meant to hold everything without somewhere to set it down.The part of you that learned to cope can still exist — it just doesn’t have to carry everything anymore.

Therapy here is not about searching or analysing.It is a gentle turning back toward yourself — toward the emotional life that has waited quietly in the background.We go slowly.We go kindly.We begin from exactly where you are.

If something in this resonates, even in a soft way, you are welcome to come and speak with me. You don’t need to know what to say.

We simply begin.