EP.40: What To Do With The Emotional Weight You’re Carrying
If you’ve been telling yourself you’re just tired… but deep down, you know it’s more than that—this episode is for you. In this gentle, hope-filled message, Bobbi offers five soulful invitations for what to do with the heaviness you’re holding. Whether you’re navigating a hard season, quietly unraveling behind closed doors, or simply longing for a breath of relief, this episode will help you name the weight, let go of what’s no longer yours to carry, and remember: you were never meant to do it all alone.
Tune in for practical encouragement, relatable stories, and reflective journaling prompts designed to help you create space for stillness—and start feeling lighter, from the inside out.
Introduction:
Hi Everyone!
Welcome back to The Be Still With Bobbi podcast.
I’m so glad you’re here. I have to say, last week’s episode struck a nerve with so many of you. I was grateful for those of you who reached out to personally say how the message of carrying too much emotional weight, often without even realizing it, really resonated with you.
If you haven’t yet listened to that episode, I encourage you to do that first. It’s episode 39, titled: “You Are Not Alone.” And it will properly introduce you to today’s discussion.
I wanted to carry that message forward into this week’s episode because I believe the topic is timely and so important. If you just look at the state of the world we’re living in, the volatile news, the comparison on social media, the heartbreak in our own towns, it’s all so much.
And that’s before you add in whatever you are personally going through, in your own communities and relationships. This week’s message is meant to feel like a gentle companion for whatever you’re walking through right now.
And to be clear: It’s not a fix. It’s not a checklist. It’s just something I want you to hear and hold onto.
Because you are not imagining the weight of the world. It really is a lot.
And you don’t have to keep carrying all of it the way you’ve been carrying it.
Today, I want to walk with you through five simple reminders—five invitations, really, for what to do with the heaviness when you realize you’ve been holding too much for too long.
So if you’re listening while folding laundry or sitting in the carpool line or hiding in your bathroom for five quiet minutes of peace, you’re in good company. Let’s dig in.
First, I have a question: Are you actually tired… or are you simply carrying too much?
It’s so easy to label our mental state as being “tired” or “exhausted.” Isn’t it? I catch myself doing this all the time. If I’ve had an emotionally draining day, by dinner time, I’m saying to my girls, I’m so tired. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. And when too many of those “tired” days are strung together in a row, I start to wonder if it’s me. I wonder if there’s something wrong with me or the way I operate.
But “tired” is what we say when we don’t have the bandwidth to explain what we’re actually feeling. Which is why I want to ask the deeper question: Are you truly tired… or are you carrying too much?
Because there is a difference.
True fatigue is physical. But emotional weight—that silent pressure we carry in our minds and our nervous systems—that’s something else entirely. And sure, the mental weight can make us physically tired. But when we try to convince ourselves that the emotional weight doesn’t exist … When we try to sell our minds on the idea that we are physically tired, without admitting we’re emotionally exhausted, that’s unhelpful.
And most of the women I talk to in The Be Still Collective are not just physically tired. They’re tired in their bones. They’re tired in their hearts. They’re tired of holding it all together for everyone else, without space to process what they actually feel.
And sometimes, when you’re in the middle of it, you can’t even name what the “too much” is.
It’s just… everything. All at once. All the time.
It’s the sick kid. The strained friendship. The endless dishes. The inbox. The headlines. The mental load. The emotional labor.
It’s the quiet, constant wondering: Am I doing enough? Am I being enough? Am I going to make it through this week without breaking down?
If that sounds familiar, just know this: You’re not failing. You’re not being dramatic. You’re carrying more than anyone was meant to carry alone. Can you just acknowledge that’s true? Because admitting that weight exists is the first step to dealing with it.
That’s reminder #1. Don’t minimize. Name it. And don’t sugarcoat it.
That leads me to the second reminder: There’s No Trophy for Holding It All Together.
Somewhere along the way, many of us got the message that we’re not allowed to fall apart. That strength means enduring in silence. That motherhood or womanhood or being “the strong one” means staying calm, staying pleasant, and staying together—even when we’re barely hanging on.
But can I tell you something I’ve learned the hard way?
There is no trophy for holding it all in. There is no gold star for pushing through every hard thing with a smile on your face. And there is no shame in needing support.
Just yesterday, in my therapy session, we were talking about a book that I’m sure many of you have heard of. It’s called “The Body Keeps the Score” by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. I admitted to my therapist that I own the book, but I’ve never read it. The pages are so chock-full of information that it’s almost too much to read. She echoed my admission and said, even as a therapist, she’s not been able to get all the way through it either, but only because the breadth of content is overwhelming. Especially when we realize how much emotional toll we’re subjected to without consent.
And that is what I want you to hear. That piece about consent. Because so often we’re subjected to whatever is happening to us that we don’t have time to stop and think about whether or not it’s even okay. Or whether or not we will allow it. We don’t have time or capacity for that.
I can tell you, however, (and I speak from personal experience here) that holding it all in and minimizing what’s true, eventually catches up with you.
Nearly 10 years ago now, when my girls were tiny, we had just made two major state-to-state moves back-to-back – first from California to Phoenix Arizona, and then less than a year later, from Phoenix to Tennessee. These moves were on the heels of me having a major surgery that I never let myself fully recover from, and I was also suffering from debilitating migraines that no one could find the root cause of. And there was also a lot of emotional dis-ease in my marriage …
But, I held it in as best I could. I took it all in stride and kept going. Kept pushing forward. Kept believing that one day I would magically take a vacation or something would give, and then I would feel better. Then I would allow myself to rest.
But I never got that vacation. Instead, I nearly lost my life. I wound up in the hospital with a major lung infection after a bout of pneumonia. I’d become so used to minimizing my own needs and the stress of my life that I’d ignored the pneumonia, in favor of believing it was just a cough.
Yet, there I was, lying alone in a hospital bed, struggling to breathe. Praying for healing. Promising God, and myself, that I would do it all differently if and when He allowed me to heal.
Thankfully, I got better. After two lung surgeries and a very long recovery, I could finally breathe again. But it took more than a year for me to gain the strength back to simply climb a set of stairs without feeling winded. However, the vow I made in that hospital room stuck.
It wasn’t easy, but I stopped minimizing my experience. And started recognizing when outside circumstances were being internalized, so I could better choose what to allow in.
That’s what I want you to hear.
You’re allowed to say, This is too much for me right now. You’re allowed to put something down. You’re allowed to stop pretending everything’s fine.
One of the most courageous things you can do is tell the truth. And maybe that truth starts in your journal. Maybe it starts in your prayer time. Maybe it starts with whispering to God in your car, “I can’t do this anymore. I need help.”
That’s not weakness. That’s honesty. And honesty is where healing begins. You don’t get a prize for being the strongest, the longest, or pretending that all is well when it isn’t.
Which leads me to Reminder #3: You Don’t Have to Fix Everything Today
Here’s something I say often, but it bears repeating:
You don’t have to figure everything out today.
You don’t have to heal everything this week.
You don’t have to create a 90-day plan or solve your entire life before bedtime.
The world is going to keep offering you a pace that doesn’t match your capacity. But you get to slow it down. And I say “get to” specifically, because you have the ability to, you just need to choose. You need to own your right to say, “Enough.” I’m done trying to keep up. I’m no longer interested in keeping up. I’m going to chart my own path.
And I want you to be careful here, because so often, we rush into fixing mode. We think, “Okay, that’s it. I’ll journal more. I’ll create a better schedule. I’ll finally say no to the things I hate doing.” And while all of those resolutions are good … they come after something much more important:
Stillness.
Breathing.
And honest conversations with God.
Because if we try to fix from a place of panic or overwhelm, we’ll end up recreating the same cycles with a new name.
So before you do anything, I want to encourage you to simply just be.
Be with what’s true today.
Be with what your body and spirit are trying to tell you.
And don’t rush past the part where you actually feel it.
Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is pause.
I can’t remember where I first heard this sentiment, but it’s stuck with me for years … And the sentiment is this: So often, we say to ourselves, “I’m so busy and so overwhelmed, I don’t have time to sit with God.” But in reality, the more overwhelmed and busy you are, the more you need to sit with God.
That is your choice. I know … because I choose it nearly every day. And I don’t sit with God because he’ll fix whatever I need fixed, right there in the silence. I sit with him because I know the stillness keeps me alive and aligned, and I know that eventually God will show me the way forward.
It’s counterintuitive to what the world wants you to believe. That more is better. That busier is best. That not missing out on a single opportunity is what will create success and happiness.
There are a million quick fixes on the market. But not a single one compares to the rest, recovery, and grace that resides in the stillness.
And that opens the door to Reminder #4: Let It Be Lighter
There is such power in those four words: Let. It. Be. Lighter. Not “make it perfect.” Not “get it under control.” Not “figure it out.”
Just… let it be lighter.
What does that even mean? What does that look like in real life?
It might look like saying no to a volunteer role that drains you. It might look like texting a friend and saying, “I can’t make it today.” It might look like letting the laundry pile sit for one more day, so you can sit with God instead.
It might look like being okay with a frozen pizza dinner or giving yourself permission to not hustle your way through the evening.
Letting it be lighter doesn’t mean being irresponsible. It means honoring your own limits.
And friend, that’s not selfish. That’s sacred.
Here’s a small example from my own life. I do my best to clean the kitchen and run the dishwasher every night. I like waking up to clean counters and an empty sink. But, if the day has been long or excessively busy, and I’ve been running my girls to activities and home again … if I get to bedtime tuck-ins and I just don’t have it in me … I let the dishes slide. It might only be once a week, or depending on our schedule, it might be every single night for a week, but when I realized the dish police weren’t banging down my door on the nights I didn’t clean the kitchen? It was the most freeing feeling.
Instead of berating myself for one more thing I didn’t get done, I sigh with satisfaction that I have the ability to let myself off the hook when I’m exhausted.
The dishes eventually get done. The tasks eventually get checked off the list. But the mental load is lighter and that makes all the difference in the world.
The last reminder is circling back to something we already touched on – The Healing Power of Stillness
I say this often, but it’s because I deeply believe it:
Stillness is not passive. It’s powerful.
When you slow down enough to be with yourself—and be with God—you create space for healing to begin.
I can’t tell you how many times during our Be Still Collective calls, when we sit in stillness, and allow ourselves to finally take a breath, something bubbles up to the surface that someone in the group didn’t even know was there.
A longing.
A fear.
A dream they forgot.
A memory they needed to process.
A word from God that lands so gently and so clearly, they wonder how they missed it before.
Stillness is not a waste of time.
It is the way in.
If you don’t know where to begin, begin here.
Create a few minutes of space.
Sit with yourself.
Tell the truth.
And let the healing begin.
Journaling Prompts to Process the Heaviness
Here are some journaling prompts to carry with you this week—into your stillness, into your journal, or just into a quiet walk:
- What am I carrying right now that feels too heavy?
- Where have I been pretending I’m fine, when I’m actually struggling?
- If I let myself be completely honest, what do I wish someone would ask me right now?
- What could I say no to in order to say yes to my peace?
- Where might God be inviting me to let go?
Start with one. See where it takes you.
Closing Words
Friend…
You were never meant to carry it all.
If you feel tired… if you feel numb… if your spirit feels stretched thin and worn out—I want you to know that you’re not alone. Not even a little bit.
You don’t need to have a plan today.
You just need a moment of stillness.
A whisper of truth.
And the courage to say, “This is hard… but I don’t have to do it alone.”
Take care of your heart this week.
Come back to your journal. Come back to your breath. Come back to God.
He’s waiting in the quiet, with a lightness you didn’t know was possible.
Until next time…
I’m right here with you.
Bye for now …
Join The Be Still Collective: https://bestillwithbobbi.com/community
Get Started With My Journaling Guide: https://bestillwithbobbi.com/Guide
