Who Supports You When You’re Supporting Everyone Else?
How to care for yourself when you’re always caring for others
There’s a strange ache that lives in the hearts of those who care for others. This one is for the caregivers, the healers, the empaths, the “strong” ones, and anyone who finds them putting the needs of others before their own.
It’s not always obvious. Sometimes it hides beneath the surface as a heaviness you can’t quite name. An exhaustion that lingers even after you’ve rested. A tenderness that doesn’t fully heal. A quiet question that asks: Who holds me while I’m holding the world?
If you’re the person others turn to when life breaks open, the caregiver, the doula, the healer, the steady friend, the parent, you may know this ache. It doesn’t always roar. It shows up in smaller ways. The sigh you catch at the end of the day. The resentment you didn’t want to feel. The longing for someone, anyone, to notice you and ask how you’re really doing.
The Invisible Weight of Care
To steady trembling hands. To sit with silence without rushing to fill it. To offer your presence like a light in the storm. These are acts of care that change lives.
But presence costs something. It costs time. It costs energy. It costs a piece of your nervous system each time you soften yourself to hold someone else’s grief or fear.
The paradox of being “the strong one” is that people forget you are breakable. They lean on you for stability and miss the cracks forming inside. They come to you for calm and are often blind to your chaos.
So what happens when you are the one unraveling?
Where do you go when the storm is yours?
How do you give yourself what you so easily give away?
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What It Really Means to Hold Space for Yourself
“Hold space” is a phrase we often use in caregiving, healing, or grief work. It means creating room for someone else’s truth without judgment or agenda. But what about when the person who needs that space is you?
Holding space for yourself isn’t just self-care as it’s usually marketed. It’s not only candles or baths or the occasional day off. Those may help, but they don’t reach the deeper need.
To hold space for yourself is an act of radical self-compassion. It’s the choice to pause long enough to notice what’s happening inside. To meet your own grief or weariness without judgment. To honor your feelings without rushing to fix them.
It is saying: I matter, too.
Even when someone else needs me.
Even when the house is a mess.
Even when I feel like I “should” be fine.
It’s to remember: the healer also needs healing. The caregiver also needs rest. The strong one also needs to collapse sometimes.
Beyond the Self-Care Industry
When we talk about caring for ourselves, the world often hands us a list: take a bubble bath, book a massage, buy the right face mask or scented candle. None of these are wrong. Yet they are also not the whole picture.
For space-holders and caregivers, real care has to reach deeper than what can be sold in a package. It has to speak to your nervous system, your limits, your spirit, and your right to be witnessed.
Here are ways to hold space for yourself that live outside the self-care industry:
1. Self-Witnessing Practices
Caring for yourself doesn’t always mean doing. Sometimes it means noticing.
Speak your truth out loud, even if only to yourself: “I’m tired.” “I feel invisible.”
Look in the mirror with curiosity instead of critique. Not affirmations. Just presence.
Record a voice note to yourself. Let your words live somewhere outside your body.
The act of naming what you feel is its own kind of care.
2. Nervous System Rituals
You don’t need an hour-long meditation to reset. Small interventions remind your body that it is safe to belong to itself.
Take micro-pauses—two minutes of breathing between tasks.
Ground yourself with weight: a heavy blanket, a stone in your palm, or leaning against a wall.
Use temperature: a warm mug cradled in your hands, or a splash of cold water across your face.
These are tiny ways of saying: I know you’re here, body. I haven’t forgotten you.
3. Boundaries as Self-Care
Boundaries aren’t walls. They’re doorways back to yourself.
Practice one refusal a week without apology.
Give yourself a pause before saying yes. Even 24 hours makes a difference.
Block time on your calendar that belongs to you, and guard it like you’d guard someone else’s appointment.
Boundaries are not selfish. They’re what make your care sustainable.
4. Small Acts of Reverence
Not everything has to be grand to be sacred.
Prepare even the simplest meal with attention, as if you’re feeding someone you love.
Create small rituals in the ordinary: light a candle before bed, pour tea like it matters.
Allow your space to be messy without shame. Sometimes, reverence is letting things stay undone.
These small gestures remind you that your life, as it is, deserves tenderness.
5. Community and Witnessing
You don’t always have to be the one holding. Sometimes the most radical act of care is allowing yourself to be seen.
Tell one trusted person the truth about how you are.
Accept help when it’s offered, rather than deflecting it.
Seek out fellow space-holders: grief circles, caregiver groups, even online communities where you don’t have to be strong.
Letting yourself be witnessed is not weakness. It’s how we remember we belong.
6. Reframing Care as Resistance
There’s a reason so many of us struggle with rest. We were taught to measure our worth by what we produce, how steady we stay, and how much we give.
Don’t bypass exhaustion. Name it. Say out loud that this culture profits off our burnout.
Rest as rebellion. Stop moving even when the world tells you to go faster.
Claim slowness as a right, not something you earn only after breaking.
To care for yourself in a culture that benefits from your depletion is an act of resistance.
The Myth of Endless Strength
I want to pause here and say this loud and clear: being endlessly available is not a virtue. It’s a survival mechanism many of us learned because the world rewarded it.
Maybe you grew up in a house where your needs came last. Maybe you were praised for being “so strong” or “so selfless.” Maybe you were taught that your worth comes from how much you can give.
But here’s the truth: endless giving without receiving eventually hollows us out.
To hold space for yourself is to challenge the myth that your capacity is infinite. It is to admit that you are human. That you get tired. That you deserve the same tenderness you so generously extend.
When you feel stretched thin or lost inside everyone else’s needs, try this simple ritual. It isn’t meant to solve everything. It’s a way back to yourself.
You’ll need: a timer, a quiet moment, and your own presence.
Set the timer for 5 minutes. This is your time.
Sit somewhere soft.
Place your hands on your heart or belly. Feel your breath rise and fall.
Whisper your own name. Out loud. Softly. As a reminder.
Say: “I’m here. I see you.”
Ask yourself: What do I need right now—emotionally, physically, spiritually?
You don’t need to act on it. Just name it.
End by placing one hand on your chest and the other on the earth or any grounded surface. Breathe in the reminder that you are held, too.
It may feel small. But sometimes the smallest rituals open the door back to presence.
A Gentle Reminder
You are not only the container.
You are not only the steady beam.
You are a whole, living human being.
You deserve the same tenderness you so easily extend.
So may you rest your tired body.
May you meet your own eyes with kindness.
And may you remember:
You are worth holding.
Love today,
Heather 🌸
Reflection Invitations
What parts of me have gone unseen while I’ve been caring for others?
Where do I feel depleted? Where do I feel nourished?
How could I offer myself the kind of presence I give to others?
What is one small thing I can do today that restores me?