You can only hold everyone else’s pain for so long before you realize you’re abandoning your own.

I just got out of the mental health field last year because, honestly?

I couldn’t carry anyone else’s trauma anymore.

After two decades of self-help work—yoga every day, teaching meditation, journaling my heart out, therapy, shadow work, crying on my mat, getting back up again—you’d think I’d be “healed,” right?

Cute idea. Healing isn’t a checklist. It’s a lifetime relationship with yourself.

I had my first spiritual awakening when I was 19, after the death of my grandmother triggered a major depression and hospitalization. I thought that was my big dark night of the soul. Turns out, that was just the first chapter. The real healing work—the slow, messy, daily kind—kept unfolding, year after year.

When I became a therapist, I thought I was walking my soul’s purpose.

Instead, within a year, I was burnt out.

Every night, I would shower after sessions, hoping the water would rinse off all the grief, the stories, the rage, the pain that clients poured into the space between us.

Spoiler: It didn’t.

So, I pivoted into coaching. I thought, “Okay, coaching will be lighter. Less trauma, more forward momentum.”

And yes, when things got too deep, I could refer clients to a therapist or a psychiatrist on the team.

But no matter how many walls I built, the truth seeped in:

I was still absorbing everyone’s pain, while my own inner child was waving a little white flag.

“Hey…what about me?” she whispered.

When I went back to school for my Master’s just before turning 40, I sat in a classroom full of bright-eyed 20-somethings.

During our intro counseling class, we shared our “why” stories—why we were called to this work.

Every single person had the same thread:

We were the friends who listened.

The ones who got trauma-dumped on at parties, on coffee dates, in the middle of Target.

The ones who absorbed, held space, and rarely asked for anything back.

I didn’t know it back then, but now I see it clear as day:

Codependency dressed up as compassion.

People-pleasing disguised as being “the strong one.”

And guess what?

It wasn’t just clients.

In my personal life, I was attracting addicts, emotional vampires, masked-up friends who only called when they needed a therapist for free.

I’d listen for hours to their relationship complaints—how toxic their boyfriend was, how their wife didn’t understand them.

Then the next day, I’d see glowing Instagram posts about their “perfect love.”

The split in their psyches was obvious. They needed someone to hold the part they didn’t want the world to see.

And for years—that someone was me.

Until it wasn’t.

Because here’s what hit me like a lightning bolt one day:

If you have to trauma dump about your partner to your friend group constantly…maybe that’s not your person.

And maybe I don’t have to be your free emotional landfill.

So, this past year, I made a different choice:

I chose myself.

I chose to be single.

I chose friendships that are built on equal give and take, not just who can leak the most pain into the room and call it intimacy.

And yeah—that choice cost me numbers.

Fewer friends.

Fewer texts.

Way fewer “Can I call you? I’m freaking out” emergency DMs.

But what I gained was everything I actually needed:

Depth. Integrity. Real support. Stillness. Space to hear my own heart again.

If you’re reading this…

Maybe you’ve been that friend too.

The empath. The sponge. The unpaid therapist. The listener.

The one who stayed on the phone for hours, when you were the one bleeding.

If so, I just want to say:

You deserve reciprocity. You deserve friends who ask how you’re doing and actually mean it.

There are no mistakes in the Universe.

If this article blew into your orbit, maybe it’s your sign to choose yourself too.

No guilt. No apology.

Just love—real love, starting from you, for you.

~