I’m Tired. Are You Tired Too?
Being a therapist is strange at times. I’m given this quiet, ongoing opportunity to notice patterns — to step back and see how suffering, confusion, relationships, and resilience tend to intersect across many different lives. It feels like a gift to hold that wider lens.
While the details of each session vary, there are certain foundations that remain consistent.
Lately, one thing stands out: we are tired.
Sometimes it’s the kind of tired that more sleep might help. But often, it’s deeper than that. A kind of exhaustion that comes from trying — over and over — to feel better, to do better, to get things right.
And still, the horrors persist.
Even though many of us understand that pain is part of being human, something in us continues to believe that life shouldn’t feel this hard — and that if it does, we must be doing something wrong. A quiet voice insists, you should know better, or if you just tried harder, moved faster, did more, things would improve.
What’s striking is that most people I know really are doing their best. They’re learning. They’re imperfect. They care deeply. And yet, the exhaustion remains. Which has led me to wonder whether it’s not only the presence of suffering that wears us down — but the way we relate to it.
This question follows me through my days, sitting alongside the pain I witness in my clients, my friends, my own life, and the larger world.
So often, the response to suffering is to move away from it. We distract. We stay busy. We scroll, over-function, caretaking everyone else, or throw ourselves into work — anything to avoid slowing down long enough to actually feel what’s here.
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Compassion, at its root, means being with suffering. And without it, we tend to get stuck.
When distress feels intolerable, the instinct is to go around it rather than through it. That might look like distraction, numbing, constant productivity, or managing ourselves into a kind of emotional flatness. These strategies can offer temporary relief — but they rarely bring resolution.
Over time, life can become organized around avoiding discomfort rather than meeting it. We grow less flexible, more reactive, and less patient with ourselves. Eventually, even the necessary forms of suffering — the strain of meaningful work, the vulnerability of close relationships, the growing pains of change — begin to feel unbearable.
Not because something has gone wrong, but because we’ve lost the ability to stay with ourselves when things are hard.
Avoidance doesn’t eliminate suffering; it just demands more effort to keep it at bay. And the cost of that effort is often deeper exhaustion, greater disconnection, and a shrinking capacity for the discomfort that comes with living a full, engaged life. This doesn’t stay contained within us. How we sit with ourselves shapes how we show up in our families, our friendships, and our communities.
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So what might a different relationship with suffering look like?
One answer I keep returning to is self-compassion.
Self-compassion isn’t a feeling or a mindset. It’s a way of staying in relationship with yourself — especially in moments when you’re dysregulated, discouraged, or disappointed in your own reactions. It tends to matter most right when we’re tempted to turn away from ourselves: after snapping, shutting down, or noticing we’re caught in a familiar pattern we thought we had outgrown.
These are often the moments when shame rushes in, sharpening the inner voice in an attempt to manage pain through criticism.
Kristin Neff describes self-compassion as having three core elements: mindfulness, common humanity, and kindness toward ourselves. Rather than steps to master, they can be thought of as orienting points — gentle ways to return to yourself when distress arises.
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Below is a simple practice drawn from this framework, something to experiment with the next time suffering shows up.
Notice what’s here
The first step is simply naming what’s happening — without trying to change it.
You might pause and say, quietly or internally:
“This is hard.”
“I’m feeling overwhelmed right now.”
“This is a moment of suffering.”
Not with drama. Not with judgment. Just honesty. So often we rush past this step, either minimizing our pain or immediately trying to manage it. But compassion starts with acknowledging reality as it is.
Remember you’re not alone in this
When we’re suffering, it can feel incredibly isolating — as though something has gone uniquely wrong for us.
You might gently remind yourself:
“Other people struggle like this too.”
“This is part of being human.”
“I’m not the only one who feels this way.”
This isn’t meant to dismiss your experience — it’s meant to widen it. To loosen the grip of shame by remembering that suffering is not a personal failure.
Offer yourself kindness
This is often the hardest part.
Ask yourself: “If someone I cared about were feeling this way, what would I say to them?” You don’t need to believe the words fully for them to matter. You might offer something simple, like:
“I’m allowed to take this one step at a time.”
“I’m doing the best I can with what I have.”
“I don’t have to punish myself for being human.”
Somatic Practice
Sometimes clients struggle to access language that feels right at the start of building compassion for themselves. Somatic practices such as resting a hand on your heart, rubbing your hands up and down from your shoulder to your elbow, or rubbing your palms together gently can be a good place to start. Physical gestures of compassion can help us access something new, even when a part of us feels pulled towards criticism or distraction.
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It also feels important to name the context we’re living inside of. Many of us are moving through days shaped by constant input — expectations, comparison, urgency, and noise. Work demands, caregiving, financial pressure, relationship strain, and the pull of social media all stack on top of one another. Layered into that is a steady stream of political tension, global suffering, and collective uncertainty that’s hard to fully escape, even when we’re trying to rest.
Even when there isn’t a clear crisis in our own lives, our nervous systems are rarely given much space to settle. So of course we’re tired. Of course it feels harder to stay present, patient, or regulated. Compassion, then, isn’t just a personal practice — it’s a way of acknowledging the pace and pressure of the lives we’re living, and offering ourselves a steadier place to land within it. It’s a way of staying — with ourselves, with one another, and with the suffering we share — and I wonder if that’s where change actually begins.
~ Raelynn
Resources
https://self-compassion.org/self-compassion-practices/#guided-practices
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006299106X/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=selfcompassio-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=006299106X&linkId=72510bb0e43a8507025d9e3713f047e2
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0tv0uqPdpNLNsbtz5sb4j1
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